I recently purchased a headless single-cylinder gas engine that I am having trouble identifying. Enclosed are two photos. I have been looking online and in the gas engine encyclopedia to no avail. Can you help identify it?
John Matalis
Lombard, IL
Email
Your engine looks like a marine engine of the type made from the early 1900s to the mid-1920s or so. While most of the small engines of this type were 2-stroke, with its half-speed timing gear yours is clearly a 4-stroke.
I looked through Stan Grayson’s excellent reference book American Marine Engines 1885-1950, but wasn’t able to identify it. Keep in mind there were hundreds (Grayson says close to 900) American and Canadian engine builders, so I could easily have missed it. I believe Grayson’s book is out of print, but copies show up regularly on Amazon at www.amazon.com and are also available from www.marineengine.com. – GEM
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