[SEL] Japanese engines

[fero_ah at city-net.com]

Hi Rob,

You reminded me of my one "near death" experience in Japan.  (That morning-after
the Hostess Bar incident doesn't count...)

We were driving up to the fishing village of Mihama (where there is also a nuke
plant complex).  The trip took us through a lot of other small coastal fishing
villages.  Naturally, as one well trained in the arts of Old Iron Questing,
you're ALWAYS looking for flywheels.  Well, I spotted some nice, curved-spoke
FLYWHEELS!!  I scream "STOP" to the driver, who slams on the brakes and skids
to the side of the road.  I open the door, glance down the road (totally
forgetting in the passion of the moment that the Japanese drive on the WRONG
side of the road) and make a move toward the flywheels.  Blaring horn,
screeching tires, and one VERY narrow miss.  WHEW!!  Get the breathing and
heart rate under control, look BOTH ways (twice), and cross the road, and head
down toward the harbor where I saw the flywheels.

Yep there they were, big, lovely, S-spoke flywheels attached to a multi-ton
winch used to haul the fishing boats up out of the water.  Why they'd have
flywheels on a winch is beyond me.  More looking and I became convinced that
the electric motor attached with a half-dozen V-belts to the winch pulley had
been there for YEARS.  Not a trace of an engine anywhere.  Sigh...

That's the closest I've come to finding one "in the wild" in Japan or Korea.

See ya,  Arnie

Arnie Fero
Pittsburgh, PA
fero_ah at city-net.com

Quoting Rob Skinner <rskinner at rustyiron.com>:

> Surely, there must be SOME really old Japanese iron laying about,  
> under a collapsed barn or half buried in a creek.  We Gaijin are  
> taught in school that the pre-WWII Japanese were nothing better than  
> feudalistic ox drivers, but that's just western propaganda.