320 Locust Street Ridgecrest, California 93555
Restoration of any of these old engines requires a lot of work,
but more importantly a lot of LUCK. In the case of this
restoration, I believe I used up a good share of my allotted luck.
One day out of the blue, I received a phone call from someone who
wanted to talk engines. He was fairly new to the hobby and, like
most of us, was eager to exchange information. During the course of
our conversation he mentioned that he had acquired an engine which
was too large for him to store and which he was looking to trade
for a smaller one. He had researched the engine through scanning
the big ‘yellow book,’ and he believed that the engine was
a Reeves. He described it as having a huge water hopper but missing
most of the small parts, including the entire governor assembly.
Well, I was ready for a challenging project, so we eventually
worked out a trade after exchanging photographs and numerous phone
calls.
I never expected to find any of the missing parts, so my initial
approach was to research engines that had similar designs with the
intent of possibly copying and duplicating these parts. During my
research, I located an old article in GEM regarding a 2 HP Reeves
and its owner, Mr. Lotus Alexander of Columbus, Indiana. I called
Mr. Alexander and had a brief conversation with him regarding the
large Reeves. He informed me that according to my description of
the size, it had to be a 12 HP since they didn’t make 10 HP.
The bore is 7 inches with a 14 inch stroke. He had never seen
one of this size and was somewhat amazed that I had turned one up.
I sent Lotus a picture of the engine, but unfortunately he passed
away two months after our conversation.
Good friend and fellow engine enthusiast Ed Cooksey noticed that
the Reeves engine governor design was similar to that described in
the Holm patent which had been used on the Sparta Economy engines.
With this in mind, he drafted a letter to Mr. Glenn Karch, an
expert on Economy and Hercules engines. Mr. Karch had no
information regarding this similarity, but was wise enough to
forward our request to Don Siefker. Don provided some information
on the Reeves governor and suggested that we contact Mr. Charles
Reeves of Plainview, Texas, for additional information on Reeves
engines.
This was where we hit the lucky jackpot and the engine gods took
pity. The first thing I discovered by talking to Charles Reeves was
that he had a 12 HP Reeves which he had believed to be the only
surviving one. His engine is a portable model with the original
horse pulled trucks, while mine is a stationary model with a
sub-base. The next thing I learned was Charles Reeves is about the
nicest and most helpful individual an engine collector can hope to
run into. Mr. Reeves offered up any, or all, of his engine parts
for loan to assist me in making copies of the parts I needed. Since
Ed Cooksey was planning a trip through Texas that summer, we agreed
to have Ed stop by and remove any parts that would be needed in the
project. During the remainder of the year and the following summer,
weekends were taken up with getting parts reproduced so that the
original ones could be returned. The cast iron parts were taken to
Covert Iron Works in Huntington Park, California. Roy Covert was
very helpful and produced excellent castings from the original
parts. The cast iron crank guard alone weighed 55 pounds.
With the exception of the fuel mixer, the borrowed parts were
copied and machined by the following Thanksgiving. My wife and I
decided to take a quick trip to Plainview, Texas, and return the
parts during the Thanksgiving break. Of course, this involved
spending a very enjoyable afternoon with Charles discussing
engines. He insisted that I keep the fuel mixer longer until Ed
Cooksey could return it the following summer when he came back
through on his way to Mississippi.
Now there were two major parts to be completed, the fuel mixer
and the connecting rod. Ed had always wanted to learn about casting
parts, so the fuel mixer provided a formidable challenge. The fuel
mixer on this engine is a l inch Lunkenheimer, type B, LH. We made
a core box first and attempted to make some cores using the green
sand techniques described in the literature. I had to wait for a
day when the wife was out of town and I could use her oven for
baking. We learned from this attempt that the core sand would not
hold up long enough to make the trip to the foundry and we should
leave the core making to the pros. The fuel channel in the
carburetor that routes fuel from the fuel line around the
circumference of the mixer 90 degrees to the jet presented somewhat
of a challenge. As a core for this channel, steel tubing was filled
with molten lead to keep the tube from collapsing. The tube was
bent to shape, the lead melted and removed, and the tube was
positioned in the core box. The tube was cast within the brass
casting and trimmed afterward to length. We completed the core box
and traveled to Ontario, California, where the brass foundry is
located. The owner gave the core box a passing grade and agreed to
cast the mixer body. We decided that a few spares would be good to
have since we were going through all this trouble. When we
completed the machining on the mixer body, which was very
challenging in itself, the reproduction mixer looked identical to
the original. With this success under our belt, it was declared the
first and last fuel mixer that we would ever attempt to duplicate.
Whatever price you are paying for those reproduction Lunkenheimer
mixers, it is worth it.
The final major component was the connecting rod. Ed’s
philosophy is that almost anything can be made if you work at it
long enough. The connecting rod was fabricated by splitting the web
portion of a three inch H beam lengthwise, tapering the web portion
of each of the two halves and welding them back together. Next, a
grinder was used to provide the necessary taper on the flanges. The
Reeves uses a pinch bolt design for connecting the end of the rod
to the wrist pin. Both ends of the rod were fabricated and welded
to the tapered channel beam. The end-product was completed without
any warping and looked like the original connecting rod, with the
exception of a missing part number. Having had no success in
locating a correct 7 inch cast iron piston, I was fortunate to have
located a similar piston with a shorter skirt. The piston had been
removed from an old air compressor. The piston was modified to
adapt to a horizontal lubricating system and worked out fine.
When everything was completed, I applied a layer of sandable
filler, two coats of sandable primer, gave it two coats of acrylic
enamel, Dupont RS907AK, painted the flywheel rims royal blue with
Rustoleum spray paint, and had a local sign painter do the
lettering for me in imitation gold color. On 18 April 1998, Ed
Cooksey and I gave it a charge of gas, hooked up the battery and
coil and started turning the giant flywheels. The compression was
so good that we had to open the compression release to get past top
dead center. After a few false starts, the engine started firing
and began to run. It was quite a relief to see all the new governor
parts, ignitor and mixer work as they should. The flywheels, which
are 42 inches in diameter with a 3 inch face, are so heavy that
when the governor detent disconnects, it takes two ‘hits’
to get the flywheels up to governing speed before the detent
catches and it begins the ‘miss’ period. The total engine
weight is approximately 2700 lbs.
I located a Wizard AC flywheel magneto that mounts perfectly to
the magneto bracket on the opposite side of the engine. I am still
missing a large ball type muffler that would mount to a three inch
pipe thread exhaust. Any help in locating a muffler would be
appreciated. Shortly after completing this engine, I located a 2 HP
Reeves with flywheel magneto and bracket. I have restored this
engine as a companion to the larger one. Both engines made their
debut at the Chowchilla, California, show in June 1998. I can be
contacted at the above address or by calling 760-375-3658.
