The Restoration Begins
The hardest part of any project is figuring out where to get started. It made sense to begin by taking the head off and taking a peek inside the cylinder. Here is what it looked like.....
As you can see, the cylinder was nice and shiny. What a pleasant surprise that was!
The next thing we decided to do was take a good look at the valves and lagging. Here is a "before" shot...
The lagging on this side of the engine and the top was not the original. This was wainscoting and we are pretty sure that the original lagging was car siding, as found on the other side of the engine. The engine had survived at least three fires and portions of the wooden lagging had been replaced, most likely with whatever was handy. All of the valves were stuck to some degree. Only one required some gentle persuasion with a sledgehammer and they all look to be in fine shape, just needing a bit of cleaning.
We decided that the next thing to do was to remove the lagging and the insulation, which was an unmentionable substance that was once commonly used for the purpose. The wood was given to Don Blausey, who has fashioned replacement pieces of cherry. Once the cylinder was stripped down, we started steam cleaning. Even though the wristplate and valve linkage had been exposed to the elements for several years, the rust was minor and steam cleaning made a big difference......
Meanwhile, we decided that it was time to get going on the foundation. The easy way would have been to hire professional contractors to dig the hole and form up the foundation, but who wants to do it the easy way. Jeff Buelow brought his backhoe and started digging.
It didn't take him long and we had a big hole in the ground. Next step was to start forming it into something usable. Here is a shot of Smokey Clift, Paul Young and Paul Grotophorst working on forming up the flywheel pit....
We worked at it on and off for a few weeks, whenever time allowed. We really did not have that many hours in it, just wasn't easy to find the time. Here is a shot of the hole showing the bolts in place and waiting for the cement truck to show up.
Bill and Paul are hard at it here, finishing the concrete...
And here is Bill, relaxing after a long day......
