Indeed I'm surprised they worked at all!

The family business was power tool and light plant hire,servicing and sales and all through the seventies it was Villiers lumps that we used on small generators,mowers and the like. Some of which still used a small oil bath air cleaner rather than the paper elements that came later.

The engines we tended to avoid, without wanting to start a colonial flame war, were the small Milwaukee Briggs and Stratton motors as fitted to small cement mixers, generators, water pumps etc, which a lot of our customers renamed as Briggs and scrap-em. mainly because their useful life, in our experience, tended to be measured in days rather than years. We found the bores wore out in double time turning them into excellent "Nebelwerfers", were bad starters (British damp weather perhaps) and our customers would point blank refuse to hire/buy equipment fitted with them. They were cheap to buy and many OEMs fitted them to their kit solely for that reason whilst at the same time offering better, albeit more expensive, alternatives

Then one fine day Honda and Robin did hove into view and we never looked back, replacing as we did all our Villiers motors with tack from the land of the rising price. Engines which started first time every time not the occasional lunchtime, were overhead valve not the ancient side valve of the other two and in some cases overhead cam and all fitted with low oil level cut off devices. Something which was the bane of the plant hire game as checking oil levels was the last thing on Bill the builder's mind and in the main, obviously not recommended, would take abuse the other aforementioned motors would baulk at.