[SEL] Quick engine trip

[Best, George]

Got up at 3am on Saturday and picked up a collector friend at 4am and we headed to California to get some engines!  I'd made a verbal deal two weeks ago for a 1903 4hp tank cooled Stover with the embossed cylinder, but didn't want to tell anyone until I was able to actually have the engine in my possession.  I've seen too many engine deals fall apart at the last minute, buy the seller changing his mind or someone else offering more and seller going for the higher price.

My friend went along just to see if he could buy an engine too and we really didn't know what other engines were available to buy.

Having never been to the seller's place before I really didn't know which house on the street was his so we were basically driving down a street looking for a likely house with some clue that an engine collection resided there.  No problem.... drove past a house with the garage door open and big flywheel engine running!!  Got to be the right place!!

To keep this from being a long story, I'll just say we got my engine loaded up and my friend got a real nice 6hp Samson.  I would have loved to have gotten the Samson too, but after buying the Stover my wife would have divorced me if I had bought it too.  Plus there was the problem I didn't have enough to buy two nice engines at a time.

After loading the trailer in 100+ weather we headed back home.  We got a motel room just before 10pm and had gone 1000 miles, saw a nice collection of engines, and had two nice ones on the trailer!

Sunday morning we got up and only had another 500 miles to drive to get to my friends place to unload his Samson.  When we got to his place we hooked up a propane tank and fired up his new engine.  Runs real nice and slows down pretty good.  Only problem with the engine is a little wristpin noise, other than that it was in great shape.

When I got mine off the trailer at home I put some gas in the tank, primed it, and took right off!  Runs great although this one does look like it could use some new rings at the minimum as it slobbers gas/oil out the back of the clylinder.  Hopefully it isn't so bad it will need to be resleeved.

However, it does run good. Put some water in the cooling tank and the water pump works great.  It has a Wizard dynamo and I switched it over to the dynamo and it keeps running!  So I'm quite happy with my new engine.

I took some pictures last night but haven't had time to resize them and load them so they can be viewed.  I'll try to have them available tonight.

George




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