2059 State Highway 29 Johnstown, New York 12095
I would like to share my second restoration project with fellow
subscribers. Although this is not a rare engine, I still found it
an educational and enjoyable project.
My project was a 1927 2 HP Stover ‘KA’ with serial
number 185516. I had just finished restoring a John Deere 1? HP
‘E’ engine for my father-in-law, when he mentioned that he
had an old ‘non’ John Deere engine sitting out in a shed.
When I went to investigate, I found a rusty old engine, bolted to a
few pieces of scrap lumber.
My preliminary check over showed a missing gas tank, no spark
from the mag, crank guard and oiler missing, and a small patch on a
cylinder head crack. I did a temporary hookup to an external gas
tank and wired an automobile coil through the mag points with a
battery charger for power.
With this setup, I was able to get the engine running and check
for leaks. It seemed to run quite fast for what it was rated at, so
I adjusted the governor screw to bring it below 600 rpm. After
that, it ran nicely.
Since the magnets had no magnetism left, I sent the mag to be
rebuilt by an advertiser I found in GEM. While waiting for
the mag to come back, I bought a gas tank and a cart (also from GEM
advertisers!). The cherry skids came from a local lumber yard, and
my wife did the lettering in a style found in Wendel’s
Power in the Past, Vol 3. The other remaining missing parts
were found and installed. The crack in the head was not leaking,
but I cleaned it out and used JB Weld. I decided to replace the
head at a later date. The engine had good compression, so a
complete tear-down was not necessary.
After a complete degreasing, cleanup, paint job, bearing
adjustment, and a maintenance update, it was running once
again.
I learned quite a lot from this project. I will admit I
hadn’t the slightest idea what a WICO ‘EK’ was or how
it worked when I was given the engine, but I do now! I have been a
Volkswagen mechanic for all of my adult life and this new interest
in something else mechanical is really enjoyable. It was really a
challenge to get an engine back to the way it was 20 years ago.
I know the placement of the pin striping on the flywheels is not
exactly correct, but I had fun doing it. I would hope that if old
D. C. Stover was still around, he would approve!
