R.R. 2, Haubstadt, Indiana 47639
Several years ago I ran into a friend of mine one day and in the
conversation I asked if he knew the whereabouts of any old gas
engines in the neighborhood. He said that there was one at his
place in the junk, and it was a Kankakee. After I got home and
looked through Ruben Michelson’s list of 1600 gas engine names,
there was no Kankakee listed. Whoopee! We had stumbled onto
something rare. Several days later I went by his place and he was
there working on some farm equipment in front of the shop. He told
me to go around behind the shed because the junk pile was back
there, and he would be there in a minute. I looked and couldn’t
see a sign of a gas engine any place. Directly he came back there
and showed me where it was. Only the corner of the water hopper and
the edge of one flywheel were visible. We dug away the grass, dirt,
leaves, hickory nut shells and iron until it was about half
exposed. We grabbed the flywheel and rolled it the rest of the way
out of the dirt. On the side of the water hopper was a raised area
with an Indian head in a circle and the words Kewanee Water Supply,
Kewanee, Illinois. Well, that wasn’t as rare as a Kankakee, but
it was plenty good enough for me.
You couldn’t tell much else about it because it was all
covered and filled with dirt and trash, but I bought it anyway. He
got out his loader tractor and we put it into the back of the
pick-up. Once home, I unloaded it with the fork-lift and set it on
the ground. We turned the hose on it and washed until we could wash
off no more. It was truly a real rusty mess and kind of an odd
engine.
The Kewanee sat around our shop for a while and every now and
then the boys and I would look at it and wonder what we would ever
do with it. We squirted it here and there with solvent and finally
decided to see if it would come apart. Believe it or not, every
nut, bolt, pin and screw came out. It must have been well oiled at
one time. The bearings were all brass on the crank and cam shaft.
All springs were rusted away along with the pipe parts, and some of
the operating mechanism was rusted and eroded away beyond use. Of
course the piston was stuck, but luckily it was only 1/2′ from
the rest of the cylinder. Since the Kewanee is headless, we
couldn’t look inside.
After everything else was apart, we sat the cylinder and hopper
part on end with the rod sticking out the bottom. Through the spark
plug hole we put a mixture of diesel fuel and automatic
transmission fluid and let it soak. Three months later it began to
look a littly oily looking around the bottom side. We put the whole
thing away on the shelf and sort of forgot about it for about a
year.
In late 1976 we decided to get the pieces out and try to restore
it. We took out the valves, polished the stems, reseated them and
made new springs and put them back in. We filled the cylinder with
40 weight motor oil and fitted the spark plug hole with a grease
fitting. Three tubes of grease later we had a grand mess on the
floor, but the piston had come out. Would you believe the rings
were free on the piston and that we just cleaned the piston, rings
and cylinder up and put the same parts back in? That is pretty good
for an engine with the connecting rod rusted half way through
because of the water that sat in the back side of the piston.
After looking at an engine some 200 miles away at Tipton,
Indiana, we were able to remake all the damaged parts needed for
the governor, push rod assembly and the electrical system. We sent
the fuel pump to Gordy Nelson for rebuilding and by early spring we
had the whole thing put back together and painted red. We don’t
know the proper color, but the previous owner remembers painting it
Chinese red many years ago. We made an oak skid for it with a
battery and coil box. Eventually a friend of ours painted up the
Indian head medallions to suit her own taste and did a fine job of
it.
We still didn’t have it all. There were two tapped holes for
a connecting rod shield. I asked the previous owner about that and
he found that for us some four years after we got the engine.
The Kewanee engine is unique in several respects. It is headless
and has all the operating parts on the opposite side from most
other engines. The operating parts all line up in a straight line
behind the exhaust valve stem. The flywheels are rather heavy and
have a slight crown rather than a flat face. It appears to be about
2? HP. The brass name plate merely states ‘Kewanee Private
Utilities, Kewanee, Illinois, type B No. 4338.’ It starts
easily and runs nice and smooth.
We removed the vertical exhaust pipe for the picture so the
Kewanee medallion on the side of the water hopper would show.
