Coin operated petrol pumps

[treefrog]

Post copied & split from Re: Peter Wilson Sale: 18/07/19 Site Admin.

What did interest me in this sale was the Brecknell BMR Slot Automatic petrol sign from a petrol pump from the '20s... See below a machine it would have sat on... I guess unattended coin-op petrol machines would not be allowed in our world today.

[coppinpr]

The BMR piece is very interesting. Is it common knowledge that they made a coin op petrol pump? I notice it dispensed Cleveland Petrol - that brings back memories. When I had my first car, Cleveland was the cheapest petrol around at 5/- a gallon or to quote their advertising "4 gallons for a £1". Petrol was so cheap we would drive from London to Brighton in the evening just for a drink in a pub! Long gone now for so many reasons Cleveland were big on the free gift collections. Anyone remember this one?

[pennymachines]

I guess unattended coin-op petrol machines would not be allowed in our world today.

Some of the pumps at my local Morrisons garage take card payments and I've used pumps in France that take banknotes.

The BMR piece is very interesting. Is it common knowledge that they made a coin op petrol pump?

I wasn't aware of it. What date and newspaper was that clipping from TF?
The text is a bit puzzling. It describes it as a "French, Theo Sumura multiple pump... Importers Theo Co. Ltd., of Liverpool", but the sign proclaims it "'The Brecknell' Slot Automatic Petrol Brecknell Munro & Rogers Engineers Bristol".

So it was bought in 1929, just three years after William Bryan, together with Slack & Parr Ltd., filed patent GB280355 for a suspiciously similar-looking device. Slack & Parr Ltd., like Bryan, started as a Kegworth-based garage and had associations with Rolls Royce. This small, private engineering company celebrated their centenary in 2017 and describe their core business as "the design and manufacture of high precision geared metering pumps for man-made fibres and other industries; and Hydraulic flow dividers." It's interesting that Archie says of the pump, "the weights and measures men like it" because apparently, like the Speak Your Weight scale, Bryan's petrol pump fell foul of Customs & Excise. According to Melvyn Wright, "the Weights & Measures authority raised a number of objections to his petrol pump idea, but not before 1000 of them had been made and sold by Slack & Parr Ltd. of Kegworth!"

[brigham]

The THEO Multiple isn't the coin-op pump shown. Two different pumps are described, the BMR being the coin-op one.

The THEO Multiple is something of an icon: It's the 'old pump' that looks like a lighthouse!

[bryans fan]

A picture, as you can see, copied from the internet at some stage found lurking on my HD.

[treefrog]

Sorry it is confusing, but the article is from the early '80s. The garage in Handcross in the south was run by a Archie Quick. The French pump talked about was still in use well into the 1980s and is still there with the Esso top and pump arm and pipe work... though not now in use, and is a classic motorcycle garage. Archie invested in the BMR machine when it first came out in 1929.

I didn’t buy the sign as online bidding took it to £550 with commission, but a nice bit of coin op and motoring history...

[pennymachines]

Thanks for the clarification(s). I'm none the wiser as to what was meant by the "French Theo Sumura multiple pump", referred to as imported by Theo & Co. Ltd.
The Theo multiple pump, by all accounts was manufactured by Theo & Co. Ltd. in Liverpool and looked something like this.

Lots of great old petrol pumps here: http://www.petroliana.co.uk/History.asp

The American automotive industry was decades ahead of us, so no surprise that they were making coin-op pumps in 1913: Coin-Operated Gas Pumps

[pennymachines]

So here's the Bryan/Slack & Parr coin-op petrol pump fitting, from www.OldShopStuff.com, August 2017:

Back at the Beaulieu Spring Autojumble this Spring, a fellow stall holder brought to me a coin operated attachment for a very early petrol pump. The unit was constructed with a cast iron body with a sophisticated mechanism requiring a one shilling coin to operate the mechanism.

No indication of which pump it would have been fitted to was shown, but the full manufacturers name and operating instructions were affixed with their address.

I contacted the company as they still existed, but although they were helpful, they had no information or drawings associated to the mechanism.

The unit was made about 100 years ago in the early days of the Slack & Parr Engineering Co.

So my research began to identify the correct pump this would have been manufactured to fit. Three factors limited the pump used. It required a continually wound pump to deliver the fuel, had to have a matching curvature on the door to match the mounting bracket of the coin attachment, and needed to be in common use in the mid 1910s. Only one choice was available, the Gilbert and Barker T8 (“Fat Lady” pump.)

I soon purchased a donor T8 requiring restoration to begin consideration of how to link the mechanism of the G&B pump to the coin mechanism. The unit could only fit in one place on the door to remain parallel to the pump thus giving me the exact mounting position. It then required the extension of the drive shaft and fitting of a second original gearbox, which I had in my spares collection, to connect the drive to the coin mechanism. I then made the male section of the connection as shown in the attached photos to bring the two units together.

Now complete the unit now with both doors closed and locked can be used “out of hours” with a one Shilling coin, yet during opening manned hours, the rear door can be opened, thus disconnecting the coin mechanism, and used as a normal T8 pump.

I restored the pump to match the distressed paintwork of the coin unit and added Shell artwork to complete the restoration.

[badpenny]

I've never understood the petrolelole'oleum industry. We pay so much in the UK for it, but have you noticed how it doesn't matter where they open a new filling station they always strike petrol? So much of it at times you sometimes see road tankers pulling in to carry it away.
Rip off UK!

BP

[coppinpr]

its the same with water, if £2 will pay for clean water for a family in Syria for 6 months why do I have to pay so much in the UK