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wheeledhorseman

New information about WH production in Belgium

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wheeledhorseman

Seeing Neil's post with a Mountfield ad from the sixties reminded me that I've been meaning to post some info on the Amnor factory in Belgium for just over a year now. (Sorry folks!)

I managed to track down a guy who worked there from 1980-81 and who provided a snapshot of how things were at that time based on some questions I put to him.

I was Manufacturing Engineer at Wheel-Horse Amnor N.V. in 1980 and 1981.

It was a fast growing company (revenue increased from 10 Mio to 17 Mio and to 25 Mio Euro in 3 successive years) for the markets Europe, Middle east and North Africa and assembled from small to medium size lawn- and garden tractors.

This too fast growing caused then severe cash problems and a series of take-overs  by other companies started until finally the company became a Toro company which it still is. 

The plant mainly existed of 3 different assembly area:

1)     Pre-paint assembly

2)     Pretreatment (degreasing, washing, phosphating, washing, passivation and neutralizing, final washing, drying), wed paint booth, cure oven 

3)     Final assembly

Different models were assembled in different batches (very seldom two models were assembled simultaneously). 

The sheet metal parts were all imported from the main plant in US, (greased but not painted).
(we did not have sheet metal presses to produce the parts ourselves)

The engines were Briggs and Straton (US brand) or Kholer (European Brand).  

The majority of the other parts were also imported from US,
except when European distributors were specifically asking for European parts, meeting the metric standards, in stead of the inch standards: e.g. bearings, belts, bolts, shafts.

This was to my knowledge the only difference in models. So, using parts from another model as substitution to maintain production, was never done, as far as I know.
 

Design engineering was done completely in US and they produced the ‘first-offs’.
We at Geel only started assembling when the new model was full mature.
(with exception of 1 ‘walk-behind’ model which was specially and solely designed for Europe by 2 engineers in Geel).
(this model was not a big success because too expensive).


My thanks go to Marc S in Belgium for sharing this with us.

While on the subject does anyone in the US have a copy of 'Horse Power' (Wheel Horse Collectors Club Newsletter) from November 2003. There is an item about the Amnor factory in it. I have a pdf copy but unfortunately when it was scanned a critical page was missed out. I'm hoping that somebody may have collected the newsletters and can help by scanning the article in full for me.

Andy

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Jparkes43

cool information andy! really nice to hear some of the stories etc.

james

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muz123

Cool information!

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stevasaurus

Andy...great information.  Thanks 
I would send a PM to Wild Bill  (BPjunk) concerning that WHCC News Letter.  He is the guy that does the parades at the show, and if he does not have it, he would know who to go to for a copy.  :)  Hope that helps.

 

 

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meadowfield

Great info Andy! :thumbs:

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dennist

Very nice post, great information.....Thanks

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wh1257

in a few years we were invited back to the factory in yellow amnor nv we were invited to the big boss of the factory that was the son of the founder of this factory in 1967 and 1968, the factory itself (toro) was now enormously been expanded many bijgebouwt there was still a small piece of history of the lodge which used to be on the wall stood at the front of the factory also you saw the old lines in the factory sooner all wheel horse in rows running behind each other and collapsed were built was also the boss of the factory to tell how in 1970 to 1980 at the plant itself helped to build the wheel horse's


greetings vincent

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953 nut
:text-goodpost:Great information, love glimpses of the past.

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