Whatever happened to the oil return patent ?

[piper]

Many years ago when I owned a Scott and a SOC member, I lived in S E Essex, near Southend.
There was a fellow in Eastwood near Rayleigh who was a club officer I believe (1965) whose Scott had lots of plastic pipes coming from the crankcase.
He told me he had patented (perhaps pending) a system of recirculating the oil instead of burning it out of the tail pipe. He would not give me any details as the patent had not been awarded yet. I think he wanted to sell it to SAAB or something like that.
He did his work with another fellow who had a motorcycle shop on London Rd, Leigh on Sea who also had pipes coming out of his sidecar equipped Scott.
Unfortunately I cannot remember the names of either of these people but I would be intrigued to know whether the system was actually patented and how it worked.
Does anyone know ?

Thanks,
Steve Cotsford

[efr215]

Don “Lofty” Avis is the guy you are thinking of. The shop, Pease Bros., was in Station Road, Leigh-on-sea, near the Elms pub, (it is now a Supermarket). I recall it being a dark scruffy place stuffed to the roof with all sorts of “goodies” that I did not appreciate at the time. My visits were overseen by Len Pease who treated this then callow “yoof” with kindly, patient contempt, after all I rode 1/2 a Vincent at the time! Thus I’d guess the answer to the other half of your question was Len Pease.

[Stan Thomas]

It was indeed “Lofty” Avis, the dyen of the Scott Marque, who sadly died just a few years ago.

Is system was “Loftylube” (or “Avisoil”) and consisted of the (correct)theory that the then oils of the time did not necessaryy mix immediately with petrol.

What Loftylube” did in principle was pumy as much oil as the dear old Pilgrim could deliver (set one in one) feeding both cylinders, and the other side of the Pilgrim scavenged the oil from the crankcase reservoirs via non-return valves – the engine in the meantime consuming what it needed etc.

And the system worked, no smoke and no seizures.

I used to follow lofty up the A41 to the I.O.M on a Dommie, and could not keep up!

Happy days!

Stan Thomas.

[Mike Fennell]

I haven’t checked this forum for about 2 months and it’s interesting how much stuff gets put on it. As it happens I have a special interest in Don F Avis and his lubrication system and can add a bit which will point you in the right direction if you want to read up on LoftyLube.

Firstly, you could look up Technicalities which has his original write-up of the system in 2 articles called “Pilgrims Progress” – 1965/6. If you don’t have hard copies then get the CD version. Lofty emigrated to Canada
in 1967 and rode his 1949 FS test-bed ( the Smokeless Special) for about
2 years which amounted to a 30,000 mile roadtest of LoftyLube. Thereafter
it was put into storage and did not see the light of day for many years. In 1986 he made a once only return trip to the motherland which seemed to re-ignite his interest and there followed a steady flow of anecdotes and technical commentary that delighted the membership right up to his passing around 1995/6. These later epistles contained interesting but fragmentary references to LoftyLube if you dig deep. You need access to old Yowls from ’86 to ’96. Also, I have published 3 articles called “LoftyLube Revisited” over the past 2 or 3 years which add some details of the system not previuosly available. I can email these to you
if you wish to contact me direct at michael@mfennell.fslife.co.uk

Mike Fennell

[Author]

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