Box 89, Cosmos, MN 56228
Saturday, June 23, my husband (Arnold) and son (Bud) and Duane
Adams of Cosmos, Minnesota, went to an auction at Mayer, Minnesota.
They are always interested in auctions with gas engines listed, as
I’m sure all Gas Engine Magazine readers are. They were only
gone a short while so I assumed they found nothing they were
interested in, but they were ‘grinning ear to ear’ over
their purchase. They had come home for a bigger trailer to get the
8 HP Fuller Johnson side shaft gas engine they had bought. This
engine had originally been used in an elevator, then was bought by
Gerhardt Walters of Norwood, Minnesota. In 1916, Peter Terlinden of
Mayer, Minnesota bought it from the Walters family. He used it to
run a 4 roll McCormick Deering corn shredder and also to saw wood
and grind feed using an 8 inch burr mill. At that time gas was
about 8 a gallon including the 1 federal & state taxes. He got
about 25 an hour for his work and machinery. (The Terlinden’s
son, Dudley, of Watertown, Minnesota, gave me this
information.)
With the help of our other son, Douglas, my husband took the
engine all apart, sandblasted it, put in new rings, and painted it.
I even got in on it a little bit by putting in bolts where Bud
couldn’t reach, finally the big day came when it was ready to
be started. Two neighbors (also gas engine enthusiasts), Wes
Youngblom and Clarence Boll, had been waiting to hear that first
‘pop’ so I called them and invited them to the celebration
of engine rebirth. The boys put a tractor on a belt to get it
started and not long after that the first pops came out. It really
is a quiet running engine. Needless to say there were smiles all
around on that day in September in 1985.
