Throttle Governed Associated

By Staff
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Associated 3 HP as unloaded after purchase. Son Wesley Jr. on tractor.
Associated 3 HP as unloaded after purchase. Son Wesley Jr. on tractor.
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Side view of the 3 HP showing skids and new tank.
Side view of the 3 HP showing skids and new tank.
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Finished Associated, front view. Note kero mixer.
Finished Associated, front view. Note kero mixer.

11239 Alleghany Road, Foresville, New York 14062

Seven or eight years ago my son Tom heard about an old fellow
who wanted to sell some engines. Mr. Gordon Brooks and his brother
(since deceased), had accumulated many gas engines in their
backyard, tucked between a railroad and the edge of Franklinville,
New York. I was interested in a 7 HP Economy with Webster mag and
ignitor that the Brooks brothers used for threshing in their
younger days. It must have been a small thresher. The rest were all
missing the magnetos and it was later revealed by his friend that
he first sold the mags and then the engines. We looked at the other
engines after a deal was made on the Economy. Under a protective
layer of rotten boards and rusty tin sheets were two Associated
3-Mule Team engines in fairly good shape. My son Tom bought one on
a cart and I got the other on rotted skids. I got it home and
covered it for a future project. Last year my sons suggested that
it was time to get it ready for the upcoming shows, so the
Associated was brought in the shop and disassembled.

Although I knew that it was throttle governed, I didn’t
realize that it was a less common kerosene engine and it had some
interesting features. The mixer has three needle valves for gas,
kerosene, and water from the hopper. When started on gasoline and
warmed up, one could switch over to kerosene and enough water to
stop engine knock. An exhaust bypass sends hot gases through the
mixer to better vaporize the kerosene. Someone in the past had
driven a bolt into the kerosene valve to plug it and the water
valve was rusted tight and the line rotted away. The needle valve
for gasoline was formed from an old nail and all seats and threads
were badly damaged. This mixer also has a compensator valve that
had rotted and I needed to replace that. However, the mixer housing
itself was in fair shape.

When the head was removed, I found that the valves, especially
the stems, were burned beyond fixing. I have been told that this is
common in kerosene engines due to the reaction of water vapor on
them. My son Tom put in new guides, built new valves, and re-cut
the seats. Outside of cleaning and light honing, the bore looked
like new. New rings came from former GEM advertiser Forest Glide
well, who has recently retired. I also decided to replace the
piston pin and bushings, and Joe Detrick of East Concord, New York,
did a first class job creating them.

Mr. Brooks had painted this one a dull red, green, and blue, but
it must be said that any paint keeps an engine protected better
than none at all. The old paint plugged up wire brushes, and paint
remover didn’t do very much either, so I tried a lye bath,
making sure that no one would be near it. Batches of parts were
soaked for about two hours and the paint peeled off in a thick
layer down to the metal. This worked even with the flywheels. After
a thorough scrubbing it was easy to remove any stubborn rust left.
I repainted it ‘with three coats of Rustoleum Sunburst Red over
a gray primer. It is close to one of the reds that was used at
Associated. It is also striped in chrome yellow to set it off a
little better.

At last, after a month of steady work, I tried to start it. I
put on a reproduction ignitor and hooked up the coil to a battery.
Following much adjusting and turning of the flywheels, it finally
started but ran much too fast for engine shows. My older son kept
readjusting the linkage to the mixer. There is a very large amount
of iron that controls the butterfly valve on the Associated, at
least ten times the amount on a Fairbanks-Morse of equal size. At
one point, the weights almost balance themselves but there is still
a lot of inertia. Gradually it was slowed down where I wanted it.
However, it sounds much like a hit and miss until a load is applied
because the mixer shuts down so much.

The local Amish tin shop, run by John Hershberger, made up a
nice new tank using the remnants of the old one as a pattern, and
luckily I had a replacement for the special check valve that the
company used. The original had frozen and split at some point. The
needle valves were supposed to shut off everything when the engine
was new but I installed a ball cutoff valve in the gas line for
safety’s sake. I took it to the Chautauqua County Antique
Equipment Show and the East Concord Fire -men’s Show and
received quite a few comments about it. The people in our area
haven’t seen’ a throttle governed Associated before and one
large collector had only seen a piece of one once in a
junkyard.

  • Published on Sep 1, 1997
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