Dutch Stover Comes To Life

Langhuisterweg 45 9076 PL Sint Anna Parochie, The
Netherlands

When visiting some engine collectors in the southern part of
Holland, where I had picked up a fuel pump for my Blackstone
vertical, we came to a collector with a magnificent collection of
engines. Parts of his collection are an inverted Durkopff, a
Blackstone hot bulb, and a Crossley sideshaft.

While we were looking around in his engine shed, my eye fell on
a flywheel lying under his workbench. We discussed it and I was
told it was a vertical Stover ‘A’ type and he said this was
the first style Stover vertical with a one-piece
cylinder/frame.

I asked him if it was or sale and he told me it was, but he
warned me that it was in very bad condition. We looked at it as it
was standing under the bench, and it was obvious that the cylinder
had been cracked, as there was a layer of bronze on it where it had
been repaired. It was all in parts scattered around, so it was
difficult to get an idea of its shape. At this point, I did not
seriously think of buying the engine, and later we drove home after
a nice day of having seen many engines.

When I came home I told my dad about the Stover, and we took the
‘Big Yellow Book’ to see how it would actually look. The
rest of the week, the engine was always in my mind and we discussed
much about it. We both agreed that it would be a nice item to add
to our collection. At the end of the week, I called the owner and
asked if it was complete, and the condition of the rest of the
engine. He told me that most of the parts were there, and we agreed
that we would come and look the next Saturday. He would collect all
the parts that were all around in his engine shed, and assemble the
engine so we could see what it was like.

The next Saturday, August 6, 1994, we made the trip back to him,
and when we arrived, he had already assembled the engine. It was
far worse than we thought. The igniter and the igniter trip device
were missing, the rocker arm was broken and one half missing, and
the fuel pump lever was lost. The worst thing seemed to be the
approximately ?’ thick layer of welding bronze on the side of
the cylinder. You can only imagine what would be underneath it.
Last but not least, the cylinder head was cracked in two places.
However, it sure was nice in appearance, with its large diameter
narrow flywheels. We discussed whether to buy it or not, but in the
end we decided to take it. We took it apart and loaded the pieces
into the car.

The next day we reassembled it again to take a few pictures and
to figure out how to start the restoration of the engine. First, we
would take the bronze from the cylinder to see how bad the damage
would be. Well, after the bronze had been removed, things were only
looking worse. There were nine cracks in the water jacket, three
going from top to bottom. We decided to set it aside until we had
figured out how to repair it. A couple of months later, we had a
discussion with some engine collectors and they told us they had a
cracked cylinder head and it was repaired by a company who could do
metal spraying. They told us that their head had been repaired and
it just looked like cast iron when it was done. The company was
only 70 miles from us, so we called them and made an arrangement to
meet a couple of weeks later. We went to them and they said they
were able to fix it. We left the engine to have it repaired.

The next step was to find out what the broken and missing parts
looked like. After lots of measuring and looking in the book, Power
in the Past, Volume 3 (Stover Mfg. & Engine Company), we made
some patterns from wood with the help of Henk Herrema who has all
the equipment for this job. After we made all the patterns we
brought them to the foundry, and they made the castings for us. All
this took a lot of time, and in the meantime we were going on with
the restoration of our Associated Six Mule Team.

When we got the engine block back and the castings, we left it
alone for one year, because we were working on the Associated to
get it ready for the next show season.

It was almost two years later before we got to work on the
Stover again. We first made the hole in the upper rocker arm and
made a new pivot pin for it. Next came the lower rocker arm, which
supports the cam roller; we made the hole and then had to remove
the middle part of the fork where the roller would come. The next
step was the cylinder head. The exhaust valve was bent and rusted.
I cut the stem of the valve just above the guide, and was able to
get it out. The guides and the seats, however, were very bad. We
decided to put in oversize valves. We reamed the valve guides from
5/16’** to 3/8’** bores. Next, a friend who does head
revisions as his job, inserted new rings in the head. He had some
old Caterpillar valves that would fit perfectly in the guides, and
he ground the valve heads to fit the new seats. That work done, the
cylinder head was like new. We cut the valve stems to the correct
length and cut 3/8**’ threads on them. This wasn’t easy, as
the stems were very hard. We made them red hot and let them cool
for a while. When they were cool enough we put them in the chuck of
the lathe and cut the thread.

Next we attacked the mounting hole of the camshaft; the shaft is
mounted in a hole in the block, which has a collar. The collar was
cracked, but fortunately was still there. We removed it and cleaned
it thoroughly. We reassembled the shaft in the right position,
drilled a hole through the collar and shaft, and cut threads in the
lower part so it could be clamped to the block. We took it apart
again, applied some very strong industrial glue, and mounted it
back again.

The next part was to make a new igniter–with only some drawings
from the Stover book, it seemed it would be quite difficult. When
we made the patterns for the foundry, we had also made one for the
igniter body so, we started with a rough piece of cast iron. First,
we made it smooth on both the front and back sides. Next, we
drilled two holes about 1′ apart for the electrodes. One of
these holes was reamed at ³/₈‘ so it
would give a perfect fir to a valve stem. We made the moveable
electrode from an old ³/₈‘ valve and
welded a hammer on the end. We made an insulated electrode and
riveted the contact points on both. Then we made the trip finger
and some other small parts. All of this was a lot of trial and
error. Now the igniter was ready and tested and it gave a nice
spark when attached to a coil. Next was to make the igniter
tripping device. We had to mount the head, the rocker arm, and the
cam gear. Now we had the correct distance between the igniter and
the pushrod. Making the trip finger device took a lot of time. The
hard thing was to make it look original and work properly. The next
thing was the fuel pump; the check balls were badly rusted and the
pump cam was missing. The seats were also pitted, so with a ball of
the same diameter welded on an electrode and some valve grinding
paste, the seat was refurbished. We machined a new pump gland cap.
I machined it from a solid bronze bar and the tricky thing was to
cut the thread on the inside because it was very narrow. We made a
new fuel tank and a temporary cooling tank from an old fire
extinguisher. At this point, most parts were made, and it became
time to reassemble the engine. All of the bearings were
surprisingly good, as were the cylinder and piston; even the old
piston rings were good. After it was all together again it was time
to make it run for the first in (???) many years. We filled the
fuel tank and the water tank, pumped fuel up until the mixer was
overflowing, hooked up the battery, and turned the flywheels over.
After twice having pulled through the compression, it took off, and
was actually running on its own! This gave us a great feeling after
so much work. It was running very constant at approximately 180
rpm. We thought it could run even slower and, with some
experimenting with the governor spring, we had it running at 140
rpm. This was on August 5, 1997, exactly three years after we
brought it home. We thought it would be a good idea to take the
engine to a show and have it run for a complete day, and see if
there were things that had to be modified. However, we started at
the show at 10:00 a.m., it had been running until 5:00 p.m., and it
never stopped or even misfired. Now we knew we could take it apart
and paint it. Before restoring the engine, we decided to make a
cart for it. We had some oak left from another cart we made, and
cut the wooden layers to the correct size, and made kind of points
at the ends. Then we made the battery box from oak. We varnished
the woodwork, sandblasted the wheels, and painted them. The cart
was assembled and set aside waiting for the engine to be mounted.
The last part that had to be made was the name tag. After studying
the Stover book, looking at the tags, we were quite sure how it
should look. We made a drawing on the computer, and made a sticker
of it. The sticker was mounted on a clean copper plate, then laid
in an acid bath for two hours, then cleaned and painted black.
After the paint dried, the high spots were sanded so just the
letters and the text are in copper.

The engine was totally taken apart and every part was
sandblasted. We decided to make it very smooth with filler to work
away all the visible repairs. Another plus point is that the engine
is easy to clean. It’s an open crank and the oil will be thrown
out by the openings in the crankcase. After two months of sanding,
all the parts were ready to paint. This was done in two steps. The
first day we put primer and filler on the engine. The next day we
sanded it in the morning and painted it in the afternoon. We used
DuPont Centari No. 93-2564-H, a deep red color. The spokes of the
flywheels needed to be painted in a light green. We made eight
half-rings in the diameter of the flywheel (from the outside of the
spokes to the rim), and stuck them on the flywheel outside. Then
the flywheel was painted again in a green color. The rings were
removed and the result was a green flywheel with a red ring on the
outside. Then the lettering STOVER WORKS FREEPORT, ILL. U.S.A. was
painted on the flywheel in bright yellow. This was almost a
day’s work. The engine block was put on the cart, and the
engine was further assembled. The engine was ready. The final task
was to make a cooling tank. Originally, there was a large cooling
tank of approximately 17 gallons, however, we thought this was too
much for a two horsepower engine running without load. We decided
to make a large galvanized cooling tank with a small separate tank
inside. The large tank was made by a neighbor who works at a
company that fabricates sheet metal. The small tank, which was made
from an old fire extinguisher, was mounted inside the tank. All the
pipe connections were made and water was poured in to see if there
were any leaks. Everything seemed to be okay so the moment of truth
was almost there. We filled the gasoline tank, installed a new
lawnmower battery, closed the switch, a few spins on the flywheel,
and it was running! It’s a great feeling when you have an
engine operating for the first time after a restoration.

Two weeks later, we had a small engine show just four miles
away, and of course, the Stover was going along to the show. It ran
all day without problems, and attracted many spectators. We have
brought the Stover to many shows during the 1998 show season, and
it always started at the first try, to run all day.

Now, I would like to thank the following people who helped with
the restoration of this engine. Thanks to Gerrit Venema for
restoring the cylinder head, and mounting new valve seats. I also
want to thank Henk Herrema, a good friend, for his help with all
the woodwork. I also want to thank Jeff and Marja Allen from
Edmonton, Canada, for their help in putting this story
together.

We are currently restoring an old International Nonpareil. The
engine is in very bad condition, the block was broken in pieces,
and it was put together with plates and rivets, but we seem to like
these ‘old verticals.’