He who dies with the most toys wins!

[Brad Brady]

John ...that was exclent.....Brad

[Kyle Wolfe]

While I was in MT archery elk hunting, Becky decided to get her Allis out and lead a tractor parade! She can't throw the crank hard enough to get it started so I'm wondering just which one of my so called friends helped her out!

It's not an Indian, but it's getting closer and closer to my speed! Thought some of you tractor nuts might enjoy!

http://cu.faribaultcountyregister.com/p ... ery=298515

[Indopilot]

Nice Tractor, but where is the picture of the Elk?

[GAHorn]

..., Becky decided to get her Allis out and lead a tractor parade! ...

That's a MODERN Allis! (got RUBBER tires!) .............

(And looks FANTASTIC too!)

[jrenwick]

That's some class, Kyle! She's a keeper! (Well, both of 'em are!)

John

[W.J.Langholz]

She can't throw the crank hard enough to get it started so I'm wondering just which one of my so called friends help

That "Lady", that "smile", that "tractor"..........if I was close and I knew you were gone....... .....

Hows the airplane repair going? Are you guys back up in the sky again? I still haven't made it in your direction yet. Hope too this fall maybe as the leaves are turning. We will give you a shout if we get close.

W.

[iowa]

do i dare post this pic
of some of my toys?
iowa

[flyguy]

do i dare post this pic of some of my toys?

IWAY U SURE OLE BLUE ELDER AINT VISIN U? HESA ALW AYS BRAGGIN BOUT HIS SCOOTERS ! !!

[blueldr]

That red Vespa scooter looks VERY similar to my green '55 Vespa L200 Granturismo except my headlight is round.
On the basis of miles driven, the scooter has saved me just about $300.00 a month on fuel compared to my Ford Explorer.
I bought it on 15 Mar 08 and was gone up to Idaho without it for twelve weeks. I have now put something over 6000 miles on it.
It is getting about 70 MPG on premium gas cruising at 50 to 55 MPH. My almost daily round trip to my hangar is 80 miles.
Takes me about 50 minutes each way. I certainly am not looking farward to the rainy season when I have to use my car.

[170C]

Kyle, I didn't know Becky was a tractor girl. She's OK! Who did the restoration on the Allis? Makes me want to get my JD & restore it.

Ole Pokey
(On my daughter's computer so hope it works)

[Kyle Wolfe]

The Allis is one of those "Why did I do that?" stories.....

Several miles from our family farm is an annual farming show. Each year they give away a tractor. Several years ago we had the usual gaggle of tractors there (JD 60, JD B, Allis G, H Farmall, VAC case and I can't recall what else) and when they drew for the tractor Becky's name was called. It was a rough ol Allis. She had a choice of $300 bucks or the tractor. Of course I said "Take the tractor! The money would soon be gone and this way you'll have something to show." It ran but that was about it.

I have a buddy who is into Ford tractors. He is really patient and all his tractors look better than show-room condition. We took the Allis to his hobby shop a few miles from my place where we spent countless hours on it. I like mechanical stuff (my dad ran a gas station) but I HATE body work. Once we finished the mechanical stuff, I'd work on the body stuff for hours, then ask my buddy "What do you think, are we ready to paint?" He'd look at me with a cock-eyed glance and I'd go back to sanding. He's good with a gun and he did the all the paint work.

When I finally got done, I had more than two thousand bucks for all the stuff I'd done. I was real glad I'd spouted off to her "Take the tractor!" Anyway, she's had fun with it and really enjoys showing it at that annual event - especially to the group of local farmers. They really enjoy seeing it.

And I don't think I'll ever try my hand at body stuff/painting again. Ugh!

[n2582d]

Interesting picture of the young lady and the Indian Motorcycle. I note that someone has apparently converted the Indian shifter to the left side of the bike so as to conform the controls to the Harley Davidson configuration. Indian and HD were on opposite sides with the spark control grip, accelerator grip, shift lever, and the clutch pedal operated heel down engaged on the Indian and toe down engaged on the HD. The indian could be readily convertated to the HD configuration, but due to the shift lever gate mounted on the fuel tank, the HD configuration was locked in.

Sometimes I'm positively amazed at the trivial BS an old geezer can remember from the days of his apparently misspent youth!

I thought of Blueldr recently when picking up some parts at a powdercoating place. The owner was turning a motorcycle front rim that he had cast in his enormous lathe. The chuck had to be 18”-24”. As part of a collection of Indian motorcycles gathering dust was one highly modified to be water-cooled. The “radiator” was tubing coiled on one side of the rear wheel. In the middle of the wheel were fan blades like something from an oscillating table fan. But the pièce de résistance was found in a an old dilapidated trunk. It was a disassembled three cylinder radial engine with cast iron Indian cylinders. I can’t imagine it made enough horsepower to power anything larger than an Aeronca C-3 “bathtub”. What was unusual were the connecting rods. Normally, on a radial, there is a master rod and, attached to it, articulating rods. This engine has three identical rods joined in series to be connected to one crank journal. While I didn’t find any information online regarding this engine, it turns out that Indian did make aircraft engines. See here.

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[cessna170bdriver]

Cool! Anzani perhaps?

Edit: I showed this to A&P/AI friend who used to restore antique airplanes, and he said the only manufacturers of 3-cylinder radials were Anzani, Szekely, and Lenape.

As to the motorcycle “radiator”, I was at the Packard Museum in Dayton, OH this past January and saw a very early race car with copper tubing applied in a serpentine manner on the sides of the car plumbed as a radiator.

[n2582d]

The owner was under the impression that this three cylinder radial was made by Indian. I’ve been looking for similar cylinders online. To me, the case looks more developed than I would expect from an experimental prototype. The Indian “Powerplus” engine had cylinders that used a four bolt flange, a flathead, and head fins that appear to be in a radial pattern around the center spark plug. But, as seen in these photos found here, they are not an exact match. I’ve reached out to Indian to see if there might be a graybeard there that might provide some helpful input.

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My questions concerning the three cylinder radial include 1.) how did the connecting rods attach to the crank as there is no rod cap? 2.) how did the three counterweights fit? 3.) The carb attached to the base of the case. (The hole is seen in the case photo). Would the engine use a fuel/oil mix like a 2-cycle engine and thus have a dry case? Clearly I need to go back and study this some more.

While the Szekely (jokingly pronounced “sickly” because it shook so much), Anzani, and Lenape may have been the most popular three cylinder radial engines, there were several others. In addition to the list found here, I found a couple of others. Jacob Ellehammer is said to have built the first air-cooled radial engine. Another engine that didn’t make the list was the Poyer 3-40. According to Edward H. Phillips , in Cessna: A Master’s Expression pg. 82-83, an earlier version of it was reportedly installed in a plane designed and flown by Clyde Cessna’s son Eldon. Here’s some information on that engine:

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[GAHorn]

Just as another interesting engine…. I once had the pleasure of replacing a cylinder on a SIX-cylinder, Radial engine.

It was installed on a Curtiss-Robin just a few miles from my home, on a private strip known as “Deer Pasture”. It was a Curtis Challenger engine which had been installed to return the airplane to originality…. replacing the W-670 Continental which had been on that airframe for a couple decades. The Cont. had been installed to keep the airplane flying while a custom set of pistons were manufactured by a company in California for the Challenger.

How did a radial have an Even Number of Cylinders..? Easy. It was constructed of Two Banks of Three.

As another interesting tidbit, the Curtiss Robin had set a flight-record back in-the-day by staying aloft for almost 28 days using another plane to drop refueling hoses to it. In addition, a Complete Spark Plug Change had been performed during the flight. This was done by climbing to altitude and shutting the engine down…the mechanic stepping out onto the landing-gear and changing half of the spark plugs while the airplane was gliding. The engine was re-started…climbed back to altitude…and the rest of the plugs changed-out.

Elevates “shade-tree” mechanics to higher status, heh?