Both Weller and Portwine resigned from AutoCarriers Ltd in 1922 and I've wondered what happened then to John Weller. Postings on the forum, and elsewhere, received no responses and I could find nothing in print. I've come across some answers, albeit brief, on the website of Grace’s Guide (
https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/John_Weller), which gives a chronological history of his technical and business life from 1877 – 1966.
After leaving AC, the following is recorded (to read the earlier history, click the link above).
1922 Automobile engineer on his own account; living at Great Bookham, Surrey. By this time he had taken out c.25 patents, mostly concerned with motor vehicles or their components.
c.1926 Member of the Institution of Automobile Engineers
1926 Offered associate membership of Inst of Mechanical Engineers, which he questioned on basis of 25 years practical experience. The Council would not change its decision.
1926 Took out his first patent on tensioning devices, followed by more than 20 others in the same area.
"Many of Weller's inventions and patent applications relate to automatic tensioning and guiding devices of warp knuckles. Since the end of the 1920s, better and cheaper-to-produce drives of overhead camshafts for four-stroke engines were sought in automotive engineering. The so-called Weller drive is a constructive solution in which, using Weller's patents, a spur-gear drive is combined with a warp drive. This solution was taken up by AJS in 1927 to replace a king shaft drive from a motorcycle motor and in 1932 by Hermann Reeb with the newly designed engine of the Horex S 600."
1927 Membership of I Mech E "voided" a few months later.
1928 Married in Guildford to Olive Nicholls
1940s Weller was still patenting including improvements in lawn mowers and vices
1966 August 31st. Died.
Some observations from the above:
(1) Conjecture, but he may have returned his IMechE feeling he deserved ‘membership’ (even ‘fellowship’) not ‘associate membership’, based on his previous mechanical successes
(2) His first(?) marriage was at the age of 51 years
(3) Note, he worked improving lawn mowers – it’s interesting to consider the divergent lineages, that the man directly responsible for mechanical and design success of the AC company was later working on lawn mower technology (and that the company was to build the Cobra!) yet, of course, he was an engineer first and foremost.....
