old gas engine restoration

[chuck foster]

i was looking through some old pictures of one of my full size engine projects and thought i would show a before and after of one of the engines i have restored.

the first picture shows what i bought (not much)



in the picture it is missing the connecting rod, piston, main bearing caps, sub base, gas tank, fly wheels, exhaust rocker arm, carburator, crank guard and some other bits and pieces.

a good friend of mine loaned me all the pieces i needed, so i set out and copied his parts for my engine.
my dad made a pattern for the fly wheels (heres a pic of the pattern)



we took the pattern to a local foundry and had them made of iron. the fly wheels are 24" in dia. and weigh 165 pounds each.

and look like this




from start to finish it took me six months to get to this



now the engine is kinda dirty in the above picture due to some renovations we did in our barn were we store some of the full size engines.

it has been run at several steam and gas engine shows in the last 3 or 4 years.
i just thought you might like to see the kind of things i do for fun, i have been restoring engines for the last 30 years and i have owned about 60 or 70 of them.

chuck 

[tinkerer]

That is pretty cool. Is that a hopper on top? Does it have a specific use or is it intended to drive other machinery?

[Darren]

WOW,

That first picture looks like a basket case .... would never have thought you could have brought that back from the dead 

[sbwhart]

Great work, I love it when old machinery is brought back from the dead.

 


Thanks for showing.

Stew

[bogstandard]

Chuck, devastatingly wonderful, 'nuf said.


Hero worship

 



John

[dsquire]

Chuck

Doing what you are doing to help preserve our past mechanical history is wonderful and appreciated. You have the right to be very proud of the work that you do.

Cheers 

Don

[Gerhard Olivier]

Wow Chuck that is absolutely amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If I could only do 1 of that level I would be so pleased.

Gerhard

[chuck foster]

tinkerer that is indeed a water hopper on top and this engine came with a flat belt pulley bolted to the spokes of the fly wheel. with that pulley you could drive a multitude of things. the most common things to be driven would be a water pump, a grain grinder or a saw to cut fire wood. this engine is rated at 5 h.p.

darren,stew,john and don  thanks for the comments. dad and i have rebuilt engines that were in worse shape than this one was, but that was before all this computer stuff and digital cameras. we never took pictures of half the stuff we fixed. i wish we had but we didn't.

geroli: you could do the work. it is just like building a model or anything else, you just do it one part/piece at a time and if it isn't right you do it again.
when i start a project i look things over and get a game plan, then i just start working on one piece till it is finished then move on to the next part. eventually with enough parts finished you will have the project finished.

glad you guys enjoyed this post.

chuck 

[chuck foster]

for what it is worth i found a better picture of the fly wheel pattern that my dad made.



the fly wheels are 24" dia. and weigh 165 pounds each.

chuck 

[Powder Keg]

Your dad did a great job on that pattern!!! It looks wonderfull. A lot better than some of mine. Can you find out what he coats them with? It looks like it would about jump out of the sand:o)

Thanks, Wes

[chuck foster]

wes i just spoke to dad about what he coat's his patterns with and he told me he uses water based varnish. it seams to coat well and it dries hard and shiny.

hope this helps.

chuck