Virginia, Illinois 62691
One time when I was a kid I got a bunch of empty wooden spools
out of mom’s Singer sewing machine drawers. I put a nail
through the hole in the middle and nailed them all over the back of
the chicken house. I didn’t nail them tight, but left them
loose so they would turn. Next, I put a string or rubber band
around one spool and then another till I had them all connected
together. I then put a nail in the outer edge of one of the bigger
spools and used it for a crank. As I cranked one spool round and
round, it turned the next, and the next, until every spool on the
back of the chicken house was turning one way or another. It was
sure pretty to watch. I cranked those spools till I had a blister
on my finger.
I enjoy mechanical things even yet, especially old things that
don’t work anymore but could. Some of the people around here
know that and tell me about some aging piece of machinery that
might interest me. Several years ago a farmer a few miles east of
here asked me to come look at an old gas engine beside his
shed.
‘It don’t work anymore, but I’d like you to get it
out’a there so I can mow my weeds,’ he said.
Well, it was a pretty good sized piece of old iron laying there
on its side with the finer working parts buried in the mud. But I
agreed to ‘get it out’a his weeds,’ for a few dollars.
A local tow truck uprighted the heavy engine and delivered it to a
place beside the garage here at home.
I scraped and cleaned and found it was about a 1915
International Harvester six-horsepower engine. A one cylinder that
weighed close to 1000 pounds. It had not run in 20 years or more.
To get it running was going to take some time and patience. The
first thing I do with such an old piece as this is begin oiling
everything that moves and things that don’t but should. I do
that for several months. At the same time I try to find out as much
as I can about the old engine and where I might find parts. It
takes a little neighboring and letter writing to people all over
the Midwest. I enjoy it and meet some really fine folks that way.
And there are meets where gas engine hobbyists get together to
exchange stories and parts.
Within a year after I’d gotten the old engine, I had the
ignitor off and sent to a shop in Minnesota that repairs nothing
but ignitors. In a few months I had it back good as new. But it was
the only part of the engine that was.
I had the cylinder head, complete with valves and springs,
soaking in a bucket of kerosene. It must have been there close to a
year. When I got it out I was able to free-up the valve stems. A
machine shop in town re-ground and seated them for me. A little at
a time I was getting the thing back in shape. I traded some other
odd engine parts for missing grease cups. Still I didn’t have a
magneto. That is what makes the spark, to fire the gas, to make it
run. But this spring, after three or four years of looking, I
located a magneto in Michigan. With a bit of dealing we agreed on a
price and I soon received the magneto by mail in a nearly destroyed
shipping box. Magneto- okay.
By now the engine had been painted a solid dark green color near
to the original and was mounted on a truck which is something like
a heavy duty four-wheeled toy wagon.
The cylinder head with valves fitted was installed, the igniter
was fastened on and the magneto was mounted. I read through the
instruction book that I had acquired for the engine. I went down
the check list. Oil in the dripper, grease in the cups, water in
the hopper, and gas primed up. ‘Now spin engine rapidly,’
it said. Well! Ho! Ho! Ho! How was I going to spin those big old
flywheels rapidly? I fastened on the crank and turned the engine.
It wheezed and wheezed, then I wheezed and wheezed. I cranked some
more, then huffed and puffed. I squirted a great gob of gasoline
down the carburetor hole, then we cranked and wheezed together till
I got a blister on my finger. On another turn it let out a big puff
of smoke. ‘Well, by golly,’ I thought, ‘after 20 years
of laying in the weeds and 4 years of tinkering, this old engine
was trying to run again.’
I added a spring to the trip rod, then more gas and cranked
again. Ka-Boom – – Ka-Boom – – Ka – Boom. This was a serious
effort. As the old engine picked up speed, I adjusted the gas feed
which was all new to me, and the choke flap. It was running faster
than it should and I was trying to slow it down with the governor
rod. At the same time I squirted more fuel down the carburetor. In
all my checking and years of working on it I failed to remember to
put the proper keeper on the intake valve. So about that time the
engine decided to swallow it whole and chew it up inside the
cylinder. Such luck. The engine clanked and coasted to a stop. Back
to the begging and bartering for parts.
But, the engine wasn’t damaged as much as I thought, so in a
few weeks I had valves reworked and back in the head. By now I have
it starting easy. I can spin it rapidly. I have figured out the
right combination and how to hold my tongue in my teeth just right
to make it fire. The blister on my finger has healed.
This evening I started it and let it run for maybe a half hour.
I sat on a five gallon bucket and watched the gears, eccentrics,
trip rods, and springs all moving in a rhythm to make the exhaust
go chuff, chuff, chuff as measured as can be. It was worth waiting
for. Better than spools on the chicken house.
