I just wish the Scootacar had something more sophisticated than the Villiers. I am not a fan of Villiers really, save for the twin blower 3T of which I am a double fan of course. Then again there are plenty of folk who get good performance from their Villiers. Perhaps it was the supply of dodgy pistons or something but all I recall is the Bond owners happily knocking down an engine at events between them to repair some malady using spares bought in full expectation of a failure. Or is this a product of the cars then being all but worthless. I do not recall Schmitts suffering the same level of faults though. In fact the level of Schmitt failures at event seems to have risen if anything - money does not instil reliability, use does. And before you start I am as guilty as I am not using my car much, which is why I know.
The Peel on the other hand had a pretty good engine for the time. I hate to think what it would have been like with one of those horrible custard stirrers that were available in Britain at the time and infested much of our low powered equipment like lawn mowers, generators and mopeds like the Wisp. Indeed it is hard to re engine the Peel with a period engine that would be much of an improvement. You cannot say the same for a lot of Microcars.
I agree. However my verdict is the Villiers engine is tough as old boots and will accept abuse all day.
You can rev the nuts off it and smash it through the gears and it doesn't moan. It's a very agricultural engine and smokes like a navvy but I liken it to an Austin B series engine. Not terribly sophisticated, efficient or refined but reliable. The Amal carb doesn't even have an idle adjust screw relying on the cable adjuster. Thus the idle will never be constant due to variable such as heat and wear etc. Mine does idle but it's no sewing machine like the Bing equipped Sachs unit.
The KR motor is much sweeter using higher quality materials and build. They sing on a motorway or A road and once warm produce minimal smoke. However they are on the limit of power versus application and tend to suffer from various maladies. I keep thinking something will go catastrophically wrong with mine but after 12k miles it soldiers on perhaps with 5% less power. I worry about the clutch bearing, primary chain, big end and fragile recalcitrant gearbox.
The Peel engine is a jewel. With 49cc it has 4.2 PS. The KR with 191cc has 9.4 PS so it's plain to see the DKW motor is much more highly tuned. Mr Cannel went for this motor for that very reason. It has a lovely gearbox and seems to enjoy being revved to death which is what you have to do in a Trident. The Bing 17mm crab is also a nice unit and has an idle screw. The Peel engine however does seem to smoke quite a lot with the usual 25ish/1 mix. The Peel is like a Morgan Aero 8 (stay with me here!!) i.e., a mass produced German engine in a handmade and handsome low volume body! As Al says, should it have had a Brit 50cc moped lump it would have been an even worse machine. You can't really say they would've not sold on that basis because they, err, didn't anyway with a total of perhaps 130 units of both models.
The Scootacar is the link between a Peel and say a Treinkle or Isetta. Bonkers but usable. With what appears zero availability I predict values to follow the Peel. In fact what is the value? Like Peels they never come up so no one knows what they achieve. I value them much to Bobs chagrin as way in excess of a KR.
