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- BEFORE & AFTER
The move to Hamble also marked the beginning of the "modern era" for these engine manufacturers. Petter Staines continued to mass-produce small engines and Hamble was split into four divisions: Petter Generator Divisions, Petter Marine Division, Petter Service Division and the Thermo-King Division, which made refrigeration units under license from Thermo-King of Minneapolis, Minn.
At Staines, new engines included the B-type, water-cooled diesel, up to 4 cylinders; the PD and PDV horizontal diesel engines, 2-to-8 cylinders; the PH and PHW, already mentioned; the PJ and PJW diesels, 1-to-4 cylinders; and then the lightweight "A" range aluminum engines - the AA1, AB1, AC1, AC2, BA1 and BA2.
In the 1970s, sales of small engines were down worldwide because of over production. The situation adversely affected Hawker-Siddeley Brush and its main competitor, Lister. The upshot was that Hawker-Siddeley took over Lister and in 1984 merged Petter and Lister to form the Lister-Petter Co. Ltd. The Petter Service Division, which had remained in Staines with the headquarters' offices, was moved to Hamble, and all the other Petter divisions were phased out.
By 1986, the headquarters' offices were moved out of Staines to Dursley in Gloucester, and the company was renamed again, to Lister Petters Co., Ltd. The new management offered me a position as troubleshooter for the Petter products; in the meantime, all service and supply of parts for the other companies' engines was ceased. So, it was back to only Petter products.
In 1988, the engine production work that had continued at Petter Staines was moved into the Lister-Petter facility at Dursley, and the Petter Staines site was sold and, in 1989, demolished. The sale of that property ended the era of Petters as an autonomous factory; from then on, production was geared toward common, new designs called Lister-Petter.
And eventually, the Lister-Petter factory was sold twice more.
With the historical knowledge gained over 43 years, I became recognized as the "old-engine expert," and in April 1990, when I decided to retire, I had acquired by agreement with the company a vast library of materials on Petter history. These archives included microfilm records and drawings of the Petter companies as well as the obsolete records of other manufacturers.
The McLaren records alone were so considerable that I donated them to the Leeds City Industrial Museum, as McLarens was one of the first Industrial Revolution factories in Leeds.
Since retiring, I have offered my services to the monthly "Stationary Engine" magazine, and I am on their "Help Line" list for various engines. As a result, I probably receive an average of six or seven letters a week asking about dates and original histories of engines from all over the world. And I still get an occasional query from Lister-Petter on the old engines as there is now no one left at the firm with knowledge of the old engines.