First Cummins-Made Engines: Tributes to Men and Early Beginnings

By Staff
Published on September 1, 1983
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Mr. Ken K. Welliver of Rural Route 1, Seymour, Indiana, with his 1919 6 HP Cummins Engine.
Mr. Ken K. Welliver of Rural Route 1, Seymour, Indiana, with his 1919 6 HP Cummins Engine.
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Mr. Jake Maley of Austin, Indiana, with his 3-horsepower Cummins Engine at a show.
Mr. Jake Maley of Austin, Indiana, with his 3-horsepower Cummins Engine at a show.
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Close-up view of Mr. Welliver's 6 HP Cummins Engine.
Close-up view of Mr. Welliver's 6 HP Cummins Engine.

Rural Route 1, Box 67, A Flat Rock, Indiana, 47234

Close-up views of Mr. Welliver’s 6 HP Cummins Engine in
operation. The horizontal piston works between the flywheels. Mr.
Welliver added the emblem and name plate.

‘I started playing with gasoline engines in 1913. In
1920-22, they cut all the frills off of them to get the price down.
Anything they could leave off, they did, to get the price
down,’ Jake Maley of Austin, Indiana, lamented. About this time
Cummins Engine Company of Columbus, Indiana, began manufacturing
diesel engines.

‘I went to work at Cummins in 1933, until 1944, and worked
with fellows who built this (his) engine.’ In 1935, Jake Maley
began his search for an early Cummins Engine Company Diesel Engine.
He finally managed to purchase his 3 HP model in 1978.

This 3 HP engine plus the 6 HP engine owned by Ken K. Welliver
of Rural Route 1, Seymour, Indiana, and the 1 HP engine purchased
by Lotus W. Alexander of Columbus, Indiana, comprise three of only
four such models known to exist in Indiana.

Ken Welliver’s 1919 6 HP engine represents the first engines
made by Clessie L. Cummins. The only one of these three motors to
be built and sold by Cummins as a Cummins engine, it has the words
‘Cummins Oil Engine, Cummins Engine Company, Columbus, Indiana,
U.S.A.’ cast in the metal on top of the water hopper or tank.
The Cummins Engine Company had been incorporated on February 3,
1919. Mr. Welliver owns number 77 of the more than one hundred made
that year in the Cerealine building, and then shipped to distant
points from the near-by Pennsylvania Railroad Station.

Mr. Welliver, a Cummins Engine Company employee in the
1940’s, read ‘inGas Engine Magazine about
a fellow who had an engine and wanted information on how to restore
it. The man lived in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and had found the
engine laying along a creek where it had been since 1938. He had
bought it from the fellow who put it there. The engine had been
used in the oil fields of West Virginia, and had several parts
missing. I traded a three-horse Fairbanks for this engine.

The words ‘Cummins Oil Engine, Cummins Engine Company,
Columbus, Indiana, U.S.A.’ cast in the metal on top of the
water hopper.

‘I made the rocker levers, the linkage to operate the oil
pump and the fuel pump, plus the push rods. In addition, I bored
and machined the connecting rod bearings,’ Mr. Welliver
commented. ‘In 1979, I suspect I put in close to 300 hours
restoring it.’ He bought the oiler from Ray Smock, of Columbus,
who worked as a machinist in the company when Cummins built this
engine. Located on the back of the engine, the oiler forces oil
onto the horizontal piston while the engine operates.

‘This has a Hvid injector. On the intake stroke of the
piston, it draws the fuel into the pre-combustion chamber in the
injector.’ Mr. Welliver continued, ‘then on the compression
stroke, at a point before the piston reached top dead center, the
low flash point particles in the fuel fire by expanding or
exploding which forces the low grade fuels into the cylinder. As
the piston continues on the compression stroke (moving forward as a
horizontal piston), at a certain point, the heat ignites the low
grade fuel and drives the piston into the power stroke.’

Clessie Cummins, seeking a way to break into the engine business
and keep his men working when World War I ended, had first seen a
description of the new development called the Hvid engine in
October, 1918. To begin making Hvid engines, Clessie L. Cummins
signed a leasing agreement, in early January, 1919, with the Hvid
agent who represented this Netherlands company in the United
States. Using these manufacturing rights and financial backing from
W.G. Irwin and other friends in Columbus, he planned to build the
new engines in his shop.

‘The Hvid engine represented an attempt to eliminate the
injection of fuel by high pressure or an air-fuel mixture, a
principle found in most diesel engines of that day,’ Clessie L.
Cummins wrote inMy Days With the Diesel. Late in April,
1919, his company completed its first engine, a 6-horsepower unit
using a single horizontal piston with a 5′ bore and 7′
stroke which turned at 600 revolutions per minute and was cooled by
water from the hopper.

Mr. Ken K. Welliver recalled, ‘the advertisement gimmick
used to sell the diesel or compression-fired engines was that it
operated on 1/3 less fuel, consequently, the cost was much less
than for gasoline or spark-fired engines. They were made to operate
on kerosene and that also cost less than gasoline.’ Mr.
Welliver can remember when 1 in the price of an item made a big
difference in a person’s decision to buy. ‘But the diesel
had two disadvantages-it was hard to start in the winter, and the
operating speed was hard to control.

‘It’s a miraculous machine for that age,’ Ken
Welliver concluded. ‘I operated mine six hours a day for the.
week of the Jackson County fair and it used about 4 gallons of fuel
on a slow idle.’

With the stock holders remaining loyal in 1919-20, the Cummins
Engine Company began work on smaller engines, for which the dealers
of the 6-horsepower engine had found a demand. By April, 1920, the
1 and 3-horsepower models had been designed. Mr. Lotus W. Alexander
of Columbus owns the 1-horsepower engine with a 3′ bore and a
4′ stroke. By mid 1920, the company began producing the
3-horsepower engine with the 37/8‘ bore
and 5’ stroke. Sears marketed these models as Thermoil
Engines.

Clessie L. Cummins wrote in My Days With the Diesel:
‘The Sears, Roebuck catalogue offered our engines on sixty
days’ free trial. If an engine was returned, the catalogue
further stated, the purchaser would receive full refund, plus
freight charges. The guarantee, as announced by Sears, covered any
defect in material and workmanship for the life of the engine.’
Cummins Engine Company lost several hundred thousand dollars before
ending that association. Many had ‘taken advantage of’ the
offer and used the engines free of charge.

Raised three miles north-west of Clifford, Bartholomew County,
Indiana, Mr. Jake Maley, of Austin, worked at the Cummins Engine
Company from 1933-44. ‘I worked in Plant 1 when only 105 men
worked in the whole place. Clessie Cummins went up and down the
aisles just like everyone else.’

Mr. Jake Maley guiding the wagon which carries his 3 HP Cummins
Engine as the winch and cable pull the wagon onto the bed of his
pick-up truck, at the show’s close.

He began his search for a Cummins Engine in 1935 and located his
model in Ohio in 1965. For the next twelve plus years, he kept in
contact with the owner who decided to sell him the 3-horsepower
engine in January, 1978. ‘When I called him, he said, ‘I
just wrote you a letter saying I would sell it.’ I responded,
save your 15. I’ll be over in the morning.’

‘I had never run one of them. I had seen that one of mine
run, but I had never run one of the Cummins engines.’ Mr. Maley
continued, ‘after buying it, I just added fuel and started
it.’ The man I bought it off of got it from the original owner,
but I never asked him for what it was used. It was used on a farm,
so I suppose it was used for buzzing wood and pumping water,
etc.

‘Deloss Cummins, a brother of Clessie who now lives in
Alabama, wrote the instruction books for these engines. All the
Hvid engines had the horizontal piston.’ Mr. Maley recalled,
‘the company built some vertical piston engines shortly
thereafter.

‘I’ve never had the head off the Cummins, but I have had
the fly wheel off and the piston out.’ Mr. Maley, a tool and
die maker by trade, has used many of his skills in restoring other
engines. ‘I would say my engine burns less than a drop of fuel
per firing stroke. I read in a book that there are 93 or 94,000
drops in a gallon. It runs 450 revolutions per minute and it fires
every other revolution. The engine was designed to run faster, but
I put a weaker spring in the governor so it runs only about 450
revolutions per minute.’

Mr. Lous W. Alexander of Columbus, Indiana, with his 1 HP
Cummins Engine. These views show the silk screen decals which he
made and the generator with light bulb which the engine
operates.

Mr. Lotus W. Alexander, of Columbus, had been looking for a
Cummins engine for about eight years. ‘Then I heard of one at
Kansas City, Missouri. We drove over on our vacation, but it went
for too much money. Then the next year (1979), I heard of one in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but I didn’t get that one either. It
went for too much money. Ken Welliver saw this one at the 1980
Portland (Indiana) Engine Show. He called me. I was already
planning to go. The man didn’t want to sell. In a matter of six
hours, I told him it had been built in Columbus and I wanted to
take it back with me. He kept putting me off, then he came to my
booth and said he’d sell. He had found it 32 miles south of
Marathon, N.Y.

‘It’s a 1 horsepower Thermoil engine built for Sears and
Roebuck by the Cummins Engine Company between 1920-22,’ Mr.
Alexander noted. ‘My only restoration was tearing it down and
cleaning it. It didn’t run. What it really needed was a good
cleaning. I had it started within about a week.

‘Then I completely tore it down and washed out all the oil,
etc., Mr. Alexander added. ‘I restored the original parts that
were there, but I now plan to re-ring it. I mounted it on an old
express wagon and painted it. I silk screened my own decals. They
are exactly like the originals.

‘This was a farm engine; they found it in a barn.’ Mr.
Alexander has ‘a feeling the guy ran it until it quit, then he
put it in the barn- because it was in excellent condition. It was
not pitted, there was no water on the pistons, etc.’

Mr. Alexander worked 14 years for Reeves and acquired a Reeves
engine first. ‘I got interested in it (Cummins) because it was
a local engine. Cummins built his first engines to run at 600 rpm
not 500 rpm as did the Hercules engines then made in Evansville. He
had to order many components, including oil cups, grease fittings
and possibly the timing gears, from outside suppliers.

‘Even though the Sears sixty-days-free-trial offer cost
Cummins Engine Company several hundred thousand dollars, these
three engines put Cummins on a production system, and thus the
Cummins Engines of today have evolved,’ Mr. Alexander
observed.

‘It uses about one pint of fuel per six-hour day,’ Mr.
Alexander speculated. ‘The tank only holds about one quart. Of
course, I am loading this some with the generator. They have come
out with these new kerosene stoves, smokeless, so it is coming back
to the place we can get fuel now.

‘The biggest problem is they are too heavy for their
horsepower,’ Mr. Alexander stated. An early Sears, Roebuck Co.
catalogue listed shipping weights as 365 pounds for the 1
horsepower engine and 660 pounds for the 3 horsepower model as
‘shipped from factory in Southern Indiana.’ The catalogue
said the 1 horsepower engine used 6/10 gallon on load while the 3
horsepower engine used one gallon. On a full load, the 1 horsepower
engine consumed a gallon and the 3 horsepower engine utilized two
and one-fourth gallons for an eight-hour run.

Ken K. Welliver, Jake Maley, and Lotus W. Alexander own and
exhibit Cummins-made engines which not only led to the
incorporation of the company and its entry into the engine business
but also to the organization of a manufacturing system. The company
made improvements in their production and assembly operations while
manufacturing Thermoil engines for Sears. Further advancements in
the technical design, construction, and development of their
various diesel engine models have helped the Cummins Engine
Company, Inc. in Columbus, Indiana, to supply over fifty per cent
of the diesel engine market, today. photo identifications:

112D/5A and 7-7A Mr. Ken K. Welliver of Rural Route 1, Seymour,
Indiana, with his 1919 6 horsepower Cummins Engine.

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