7625 Harmony Grove Road Wellsville, Pennsylvania 17365
I’ve just recently restored my 1 HP Tom Thumb engine by
International Harvester Company, thanks to information I was able
to glean from past issues of Gas Engine Magazine!
This little engine was purchased new by my grandpa back before
they had electricity on the farm, to run Grandma’s wash
machine. And with seven children, I’m sure it received plenty
of use.
Since Grandpa had mounted it on an Associated Manufacturers
wagon I decided to do the same. This is the second time this
particular engine has been worked over. My father put it into
working order and ran his corn sheller with it, about thirty years
ago, right after getting it from Grandpa. As you can see by the
before picture, after sitting around idle all those years it needed
major attention again.
As a result of my knowing absolutely nothing about hit and miss
engines, I owe all of my success in this restoration endeavor to a
distant neighbor, friend and old iron enthusiast
‘extraordinaire’ by the name of Harvey Myers. It was
Harvey’s back issues of Gas Engine Magazine (it seemed back to
the beginning of time) from which I got the information for some
needed replacement parts and an article on rebuilding model-T
coils, like the one used in this system. It was while going through
all those back issues that I decided to write you. I had hoped to
find color pictures and maybe an article on Tom Thumb engines to
aid me in deciding on what color and where to paint it, but there
just wasn’t much available except for two small black and white
snapshots. Now it runs very well.
