Gas Engine Survey Results

In response to a reader request from Bill Honey last year, we
ran an informal survey of gas engine owners (see GEM April 1993, P.
38), to glean some information on the relative rarity of different
types of gas engines. For those of you who may not remember the
survey, we requested make, model, type of cooling, fuel, and
ignition for each engine, and region where the collector was
located. We took in information on over 2,000 engines from nearly
200 individual collectors. Much of what we found will be no
surprise to the experienced collector.

The first thing we learned was that our form was really flawed.
We had no specific place to put ‘horsepower,’ so that ended
up in the ‘model’ slot or the ‘comments’ place.
And, ‘model’ of course, meant different things to different
people: for some it was the letter designation( like Z, or N); for
some, the name or orientation (like ‘phantom four’ or
‘vertical’) and for others, the horsepower. This meant that
our information is not always comparable, but we are able to
discern a few rather interesting facts from this experiment.

Please keep in mind that we have made no attempt to combine
groups by manufacturer or distributor we merely list the
‘make’ as it was filled out by the individual who sent in
the form. Thus, engines listed as ‘International’ are not
combined with those called ‘McCormick Deering,’ and
‘Economy’ is limited to engines listed as ‘Economy’
regardless of manufacturer, etc. Also, numerous engines were listed
as ‘Bull Dog’ or ‘Little Jumbo,’ without reference
to manufacturer. A few engines are of foreign manufacturer, and
spelling may have been misinterpreted!

The eleven most numerous makes among collectors overall: (50 or
more)

Associated
Briggs & Stratton
Cushman
Economy
Fairbanks Morse
Fuller & Johnson
International
John Deere
Maytag
Stover
Witte

The next category of makes would be engines which were mentioned
more than 10 times, but fewer than 50:

The next category of makes would be engines which we might
consider as ‘medium rare,’ those for which there was more
than one record, but fewer than 10:

In what we might call the very rare category, we found the
following ‘makes’, those which were listed only one time.
You’ll recognize that some of these engines are definitely not
rare, they just were not reported much because, for example, they
might be tractor engines, or might be more typically known by a
different name.

We asked respondents to include their region so that we could
see whether there were regional patterns other than those one might
expect. Unfortunately, the total response was not sufficient to
establish any true regional trends. It’s safe to say that
engines that were not widely produced often found most of their
customers fairly close to home.

With regard to the relative rarity of engines by cooling system,
and ignition, here is what we found:

Nearly half the engines were hopper cooled, about 10% air cooled
and 10% tank cooled. We received no cooling data for 387 replies;
only 29 were screen cooled. Gasoline was of course, the most
frequently used fuel, other fuels amounted to little. Ignition was
most frequently achieved by a magneto. Only 83 engines were
sideshaft.

In any case, we are grateful to Bill Honey for his idea, for we
did enjoy tabulating the data and learning something about the
relative rarity of gas engines. We heard from less than 1% of our
subscribers, so this experiment is far from definitive. The average
number of engines per respondent is over 10.