Wheel Tracks Articles Archives

From a home in the Great Northeast Kingdom To The Champlain Valley…

January 20th, 2013 was a cold and windy day in Greensboro Bend. Hundreds of Snow Rollers were poked up in the white fields around Dave and Dot Maunsell’s home on Cook Hill. Dot had prepared a great lunch while outside at times one could see only a few feet through the swilling snow, only the Champlain Valley folks seems to be amazed at the weather outside.

Four VAEers had made their way to Cook Hill to haul the 1917 Studebaker back to Milton. The car had spent the last 18 years in Dave Maunsell’s garage and driven frequently . Gene Towne of Milton had finally convinced Dave to sell him the car after many months of negotiations. Dave is pictured above on the left and Gene on the right. (unknown to all of us at the time…the two trailer tires you can see are flat! Try to picture some ole-guys taking turns replacing the air with a hand pump…yes you have it.)

A friend had told Dave about the car and in 1995 Dave and Pev Peake drove to Michigan to examine it. The car was mostly original and had very little wear. So Dave bought the car and had it hauled home. He and Gael Boardman put new rod bearings and piston pins into the engine. Gael knew of two sisters who did leather work, and they made a new leather band for the cone clutch. Otherwise, very little has been done to it. The interior leather is in good condition but the top is not useable. Gene said that will be his first priority, to find a shop to replace the top.

It is a fair weather car. It has a 16 gallon gasoline tank, a vacuum tank and takes six quarts of oil. The owner’s manual states the car will use about a quart of oil every 85 miles. It is capable of 50 miles an hour but with two wheel brakes, which are marginal and have never been replaced, 40 MPH is a safer speed today. The speed limits in 1917 were 25MPH on the highway and 10MPH in town.

One unique feature is that the front passenger seat can be flipped to face the rear passengers. Another is that there are two ’jump seats’, with arm rests that can be used and then stored under the rear seats. The front seats are adjustable back and forth along with the clutch and brake pedals. It has a 6 cylinder engine with a monobloc (no remova-ble head) that produces 50HP. The car has a ‘transaxle’ type transmission where it is ‘married to the rear differential. It was sold new for $1075 in 1917.

In 1917, Studebaker was the largest man-ufacturer in the world of horse drawn equipment, wagons, buggies, gigs harness and the like. They got a contract in 1916 to supply the Allied Armies with their extensive horse drawn army equipment including the wooden caissons and wheel used for field artillery. With the end of the war in 1918, the company directors decided that automobiles were their fu-ture and ceased operation of all horse drawn equipment. They built a new mod-ern auto factory in South Bend, Indiana, where they remained until the end of 1964.

In high school, my car was a 1950 2-door Ford painted black, and had dual exhaust. Two of my classmates had ‘49 Chevies with split exhausts (one of which was done in shop class.) This is when the envy started. How could I make my Ford sound like the Chevies? The answer is: you cannot!

Transportation for the next 45 years consisted of a VW, 3 Chevy wagons, a Nova, a Buick, an Omni, two K-cars, two Tauruses, and a Mercury, before we became a two-car family.

One day while getting gas for our return trip home from South Hadley, MA, we saw a really nice 1954 Chevy 210 2-door with the sweetest sounding pipes. I was hooked again. On another visit to South Hadley, my cousin said that “my” car was for sale and did I want to take a look. Of course I did. Off we went. But the owner wanted too much money. The next time we were in South Hadley was for our 45th high school reunion, Thanksgiving weekend, 1994. My cousin said the Chevy owner wanted to see me; he had become more reasonable. A test drive, a handshake and the deal was made.

The following weekend my son and I went to bring the car home along with a box of some 38 trophies, various moldings, speedometer, a bumper, and several boxes of small parts.

Since owning the Inliner I have made some enhancements. Visually, it has been painted black suede, rims painted red, with caps and rings and whitewall tires. The engine was rebuilt some years ago and mildly modified. The transmission, a Power-glide, was replaced with a TH350 with a shift kit. (Boy, does that car love second gear!) We also replaced the rear end with a ‘57 that came with 3.36 gears.

The first show for the Inliner was the last VAE show at the fairgrounds in Essex. There I met Conception Conti, he signed me up, and gave me a handful of old dash plaques. I have been collecting them ever since.

That same year was our first time at Stowe. As I was heading down the hill looking for my registration number, I heard, “What are you doing with Ray Faginski’s car!?” And that is how I met Barry Rickert, apparently a friend of the man I bought the Inliner from.

Marty and I have become good friends with Barry and Ginny Rickert from Wilbraham, MA. Over the years together we have put many miles on our Stovebolts.

We meet great people who share our interest in the old car hobby!

Editor’s notes….Andy tells me there are over 3000 members in the world wide “Inliner Car Club”. For you folks just learning, like me, the term inliner means the cylinders are inline and not like a v8 or v6. Although in Europe the term inliner can include V configurations. An Inliner can be two, four, six or twelve cylinders but the Chevy inline six engine is where the term resides most of the time.
What does stovebolt mean? Well I asked that too and it seems if you want to tear down a Ford you can do most of it with a 9/16 inch wrench…..but when it comes to Chevies they used half inch ‘bolts’ just like they use to build stoves….you know, with quarter inch slotted bolts and the square nuts. Many non-Chevy folks have some fun with that but mostly there are no smiles on the Chevy guy’s face when the term is used.

Many VAE members have seen Bill Erskine’s Sears Motor Buggy. Some have even seen him arrive at a VAE meet with the crated motor buggy just like it arrive by train from Sears, Roebuck in 1910 and watched him assemble the vehicle.
Bill has had this Motor buggy since 1999.

Reprinted from old publications Wheel Tracks found that…..Lincoln Motor Car Works was an automobile company in Chicago, Illinois. It produced cars for Sears Roebuck from 1908 until 1912. Nine models were offered, priced between US$325 and $475. They were sold by mail, out of the Sears catalog. Sears had a very lenient return policy: cars were sold on a ten-day trial basis.

The cars had an air-cooled, two-cylinder, horizontally-opposed engine, similar to that later used on BMW motorcycles. The engine was located under the floorboards, beneath the drivers feet, and started from a hand crank in the front. Early cars were rated at 10 hp, and later models developed 14 hp.

In the interest of simplicity, all models used a friction-drive transmission. A roller (a metal wheel with a rubber surface vulcanized to increase its grip) on the front sprocket shaft was pressed against the machined rear surface of the engine flywheel, thus driving the sprocket shaft, the drive chains and the rear wheels. Moving the shift lever set the drive roller to various positions on the flywheel, either nearer the center or nearer the edge, effectively changing the “gear ratio” for climbing hills or driving on level roads. Moving the roller past the center point spun it backwards to give reverse gear. The “clutch pedal” worked differently from most other cars, in that the operator had to hold their foot on the pedal to keep the roller pressed against the flywheel (the catalog claimed that the weight of the operators foot was sufficient to provide forward motion). Removing the foot from the pedal allowed the roller to spring back from the flywheel, effectively providing “neutral” so the car could be cranked without moving forward.

The engine was lubricated by an “oiler”, essentially a tank mounted under the seat which had several adjustable drip feeds with separate lines to the engine bearings and other areas. All components of the transmission were exposed, so several bearings and pivots had to be oiled or greased manually from time to time.

Despite Sears’ solid financial bases and great marketing ability the Sears Motor Buggy was doomed from the start. Sears competitors were making many advancements and by 1912 Sears automotive division had lost $80,000. After selling around 3500 Motor Buggys in four years Sears decided to stop. Lincoln Motor Works continued into 1913 to make vehicles under their name until they also stopped.

Today we call the vehicles “High Wheelers” but the term very likely will confuse any ‘old timers’. Sears had it’s Motor Buggy and International Harvester had its “Auto Buggys” and “Auto Wagons” like the picture to the left. Auto Buggys had a back seat and Auto Wagons did not. IHC made this type auto wagon from about 1909 through about 1915 when the term motor truck slowly took over. IHC made many models of vehicles during this period: from the auto wagon and auto buggy to the roadster and the touring car, in all over 11,000 vehicles were built.

Have you ever seen a Sears Motor Wagon and an IHC Auto Wagon race?
Watch here, or go to this address on the web, it is a hoot. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qLpBv4qm6A

If somehow we could take ourselves back to visit 1910 when the Sears and IHC were trying to make a buck building motor vehicles you will find a few competitors. No wonder Sears stopped and IHC went to trucks! Here is a partial list of the other car companies.

Following WWII, the British auto industry was under the mandate of “Export or Die”. As a result, the most popular imported cars in the States after the War were British. According to Ward’s Auto World, the British had a 96% share of the U.S. imported car market in 1952. Today it is less than 1%. Popular post-war British cars were the MG TD and the Jaguar XK120. When most “car people” think of British cars, sports cars come to mind. Indeed, at the British Invasion of Stowe car show, Austin Healeys, MGs and Triumphs are the most popular entries among the hundreds of cars that show up.

But the highest volume product ever made by the British auto industry was the Mini. With 5,387,862 units produced from 1959 to 2000, the Mini outlasted several of its corporate owners. Though Minis were never imported in great numbers to the U.S., they were highly innovative when introduced and set the style of transverse engine design for practically all front-wheel drive cars that followed. The concept was exceptional:
a practical sub-compact car 10 feet long, 4 feet wide, 4 feet tall that would seat 4 adults. Over 80% of the car’s volume is for its occupants. Its 10″ wheels are located at the corners of the body. Originally called the Austin Seven, the car came equipped with a 38 h.p. 4 cylinder en-gine of 850cc. capacity. By 1964, some were factory-modified with a 1275 cc, 78 h.p. engine by Formula I car designer John Cooper. Thus was born the Austin Cooper, aka Austin Mini Cooper. These cars went on to win rugged European rallys with boring regularity in the 1960s, including the Monte Carlo Rally in 3 separate years. A highly modified Mini from New Zealand recently clocked over 200 mph at Bonneville.

Most Mini enthusiasts don’t recognize the current BMW-made Mini offering as a “proper” Mini: It weighs almost twice as much and is a full 2 feet longer. It is available in styles that are even heavier and longer yet. That being said, the new Mini is a car better suited for American conditions than the original Mini ever was. In standard form, the old Minis suffered from the usual British car maladies: overheating, leaking oil, weak engine internals, poorly shifting transmissions and generally poor quality control. But an old Mini is so light and small that it can corner at frightening speeds if you keep your right foot into it. It has been described as a go-cart on steroids, with (as the Brits would say) cheeky good looks to boot.

I bought my Austin Mini around 1977, but family responsibilities kept me from getting it on the road until the late 1990s. I had wanted one since I was a kid in the 1960s. Knowing the mechanical shortcomings of the original car, I knew I was fated to perform an engine swap. The Japanese small car field could provide the powerplant needed to make my Mini a durable highway performer. Equipped with a tape measure, I checked the junkyards for a donor vehicle with an engine/transmission of suitable size, such that I wouldn’t have to cut the Mini body. I found such a front-wheel drive power unit in a 1993 Geo Metro. I was a bit wary at first since this car has a computer on board to control the fuel injection system. But then I reasoned that it’s only wiring and I should not fear. I was right – with a factory wiring schematic I could tell where each wire had to go and it all worked out well.

This Geo Metro engine is made by Suzuki and it is “the Little Engine that Could”. It is a 3 cylinder, 993 cc. 55 h.p. unit coupled to a 5 speed transmission that shifts as smooth as silk and weighs 100 pounds less than the original 38 h.p. engine. My car weighs in at just under 1300 pounds without the driver. The powerplant swap necessitated some tricky surgery on the front subframe but it, too, went well. My Mini looks absolutely stock. But its a sleeper that will elicit a loud chirp from the front wheels when you shift into 2nd gear with a little extra throttle. Its a blast to drive. A recent 210 mile trip was accomplished using 4.1 gallons of regular gas. Prius owners, eat your hearts out!