* Ol’ Man Foster, the CrosleyKook, recently posted a touching story about taking his 1949 Crosley convertible off the road. The need for downtime for the Cros is understandable after Foster used it as a daily driver for many years.
* Etienne Musslin likes 2CVs. Etienne Musslin is an excellent photographer. Thus, a great photoblog is added to my RSS reader. (via)
* We like Jeff Teague’s work, and now Jeff informs us that he’s teamed up with Mark Jordan – Chuck Jordan’s son – to form a new design studio called JTDNA. We expect great things from the pair.
* Up on Truckfax, they recently celebrated Fargo, Mopar’s maple-leaf truck brand. Until now, I’ve never given pause to wonder why Chrysler chose the name of a North Dakota town for its Canada-only brand. Did Chrysler execs at the time just associate anything northerly and cold with Canada?
* Dave Thornton spotted this hot rod Diamond T at the annual Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Automania car show. He didn’t get many details on it, but did note that it features both a supercharger and a turbocharger atop the Detroit Diesel V-8. As I told Dave, I always wondered how long it would take from the time the Blastolene boys started doing this to when we started seeing big-rig-based hot rods at local shows. Now I know.
* Earlier this week, Ryan of the Jalopy Journal posted the above photo he bought down Mexico way of a very unusual hybrid of Cadillac, Lincoln and aircraft parts. It didn’t take much time at all for the H.A.M.B.sters to id the cockpit (Consolidated-Vultee BT-13 trainer) and post more photos of the Cadillinc, including some in color and some of it running Le Carrera Panamericana.
* While we’re on the topic of hot rods, ze Last Chance Garage recently posted more Rex Burnett cutaway drawings than I’ve ever seen in one place at one time.
* BLB came across a few photos of an Icelandic four-by-four junkyard. As of the writing of this post, nobody’s identified the red box topped with the snowmobile. Or the sled, for that matter.
* Finally, as suggested by John Lee, Kashgar’s ruminations on the car token in Monopoly. What was it patterned after, he wonders. We found it a little more interesting that there’s an entire page on the history of the tokens (there was, at least), and that at one point, the car token had a driver in it.
Now, John Deere did at one time build and sell snowmobiles. In fact, there’s a pretty active community of guys who collect JD snowmobiles. Wyatt Kram, from up in North Dakota, is one of those guys, and last year got the itch to combine a 1980 John Deere Liqufire snowmobile and a 1977 John Deere 210 lawn mower.
It’s not simply a matter of tossing the body of one on the chassis of another, as we can see from Wyatt’s build thread over at VintageSledders.com. As to the end result, Wyatt writes:
It rides pretty well, the suspension is smooth and pretty comfortable for sitting on your butt the whole time. At first it seems like it would be tippy but then you realize that it won’t tip that easily. The top speed is 45mph and it gets there pretty quickly. So far it has performed well in every situation it has been in, I have yet to get it in really deep snow but judging by what it has been in I think it will do well.
Why? Well, what would else you do to get through a North Dakota winter?
So in reading up on Crosley history, we come to find out that one of Powel Crosley’s efforts to win World War II for the Allieds, along with motorcycles, three-wheelers and the Crosley Pup (and, oh yeah, the proximity fuse), was an experimental snowmobile.
This is not that snowmobile.
Instead, it appears to be something built by the proprietor of Rig All Tool and Die (or is that Riggalls – it’s spelled both ways) in Utica, New York. Riggalls is now Rig All, a crane and specialized fabricating company, as it has been since 1962, though it’s been in the same location for an unknown length of time before then. Just prior to a recent move to another location, Ryan Williams, an employee at Rig All, saved this contraption from the crusher. “Nobody knows who built it,” Ryan said. “All they know is that it hadn’t moved from that spot in 35 years.”
He said the original Crosley engine and transmission are gone, replaced with an Austin or an MG engine and transmission, connected by an ultra-short driveshaft to a narrowed Crosley rear axle. On the ends of the axle are Crosley mechanical brakes and then gears that drive chains down to each skid. Ryan said the whole thing steers “like a bulldozer” with separate brake cables going to either side of the axle. The tracks are made up of long chains bridged with wooden paddles and rubber sheets.
Up front, a fiberglass nose cone replaces the stock Crosley sheetmetal. “The craftsmanship is immaculate,” Ryan said. “Just from looking at that, you wouldn’t think it was homemade.”
Ryan’s agreed to send along photos as he restores this unique creation. In the meantime, if anybody can clue us in on who exactly built this rig, let us know in the comments.
It’s all kinda like the American version of the SnowFootCar. Kinda.
In the span of two days this year, more than 16 inches of snow dropped on us here in Vermont, certainly the most snow I’ve seen at once since I moved up here. Also in the span of a couple days, I got emails from two separate readers regarding the great steam-powered Lombard logging vehicles, both full of excellent histories and photographs.
Terry Harper is one of those readers, and as he wrote in his history of the Lombard on Old Snow Plow Equipment, the Lombard was a purpose-built vehicle designed by Alvin Orlando Lombard at the behest of E.J. Lawrence, then the president of a lumber company in Maine, who envisioned a machine that could take the place of his numerous draft horses engaged in pulling felled trees out of the woods. Lombard a year later applied for the first of his many patents (674,737) that would eventually prove to be what some consider the first practical tracked crawler. He didn’t wait for the patent to be assigned to him, however – his first “Logging Engine,” as he called it (“Mary Anne,” as it was nicknamed), started up on Thanksgiving Day 1900. Mary Anne looked rather like a steam locomotive, except for the skis at the front and the cog-wheeled tracks on either side at the rear. Though the steam engine was worth just 50 horsepower at 300-400 RPM and motored the Logging Engine at 3-4 MPH, Mary Anne could pull 125 tons of logs.
Lawrence immediately bought Mary Anne and ordered two more. Lombard set up shop in Waterville, Maine, and licensed the construction and assembly of the Logging Engine to other companies: Phoenix Manufacturing Company of Eau Clair, Wisconsin; and Jenckes Machine Company Limited of Sherbrooke, Quebec, among them.
Because they were steam-powered, the Logging Engines (also called Log Haulers) could run on either coal or wood, the latter making more sense for a logging operation. Also because they were steam-powered, each Log Hauler required a crew of four: and engineer, a fireman, a striker and a steersman. But they could pull eight sleds at a time, and would usually work around the clock.
Steam-powered Lombards were built through 1918, and by best estimates, 83 were built. They were phased out by the gasoline- and diesel-powered Lombards that A.O. Lombard began to develop in 1909. These were not only cheaper to purchase and maintain, but also had brakes and could be operated by one man. Several steamers still exist, including one at the Clark Trading Post in Lincoln, New Hampshire, and the one in the video below that the Crooker family recently restored.
Our other email came from Gene Herman, who supplied more information on the Lombard’s historical claim to fame – that of being the first tracked crawler. Gene writes:
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, it is believed to be the first successful application of the crawler track, beating the Holt Co. (later to become Caterpillar) by quite a few years. Only eighty-three were ever built. I only know of two left running; one in Lincoln, NH and the other in the video link below in Maine. What follows is a brief history, mostly cadged from other sources, and a few more pix:
Alvin O. Lombard (1856-1937) of Waterville, Maine was issued a patent in 1901 for the Lombard Steam Log Hauler that resembles a regular railroad steam locomotive with sled steerage on front and crawlers in rear for hauling logs in the Northeastern United States and Canada. The haulers allowed pulp to be taken to rivers in the winter. Prior to then, horses could be used only until snow depths made hauling impossible. Lombard began commercial production which lasted until around 1917 when focus switched entirely to gasoline powered machines. A gasoline powered hauler is on display at the Maine State Museum in Augusta, Maine.
After Lombard began operations, Hornsby in England manufactured at least two full length “track steer” machines, and their patent was later purchased by Holt in 1913, allowing Holt to be popularly known as the “inventor” of crawler tractors. Since the “tank” was a British concept it is more likely the Hornsby, which had been built and unsuccessfully pitched to their military, was the inspiration.
In a patent dispute involving rival crawler builder Best, testimony was brought in from people including Lombard, that Holt had inspected a Lombard log hauler shipped out to a western state by people who would later build the Phoenix log hauler in Eau Claire, WI, under license from Lombard. The Phoenix Centipeed typically had a fancier wood cab, steering wheel tipped forward at a 45 degree angle and vertical instead of horizontal cylinders.
In the meantime a gasoline powered motor home was built by Lombard for Holman Harry (Flannery) Linn of Old Town, Maine to pull the equipment wagon of his dog & pony show, resembling a trolley car only with wheels in front and Lombard crawlers in rear. Linn had experimented with gasoline and steam powered vehicles and six wheel drive before this, and at some point entered Lombard’s employment as a demonstrator, mechanic and sales agent. This resulted in a question of proprietorship of patent rights after a single rear tracked gasoline powered road engine of tricycle arrangement was built to replace the larger motor home in 1909 on account of problems with the old picturesque wooden bridges. This dispute resulted in Linn departing Maine and relocating to Morris, NY, to build an improved, contour following flexible lag tread or crawler with independent suspension of halftrack type, gasoline and later diesel powered. Although several were delivered for military use between 1917 and 1946, Linn never received any large military orders. Most of the production between 1917 and 1952, approximately 2500 units, was sold directly to highway departments and contractors.
The Lombard has been designated as a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Ceremonies were held Aug. 14, 1982, at Patten, ME, site of the Lumberman’s Museum where a tablet was unveiled reading……
“This steam crawler-tractor emancipated horses from the killing work of hauling trains of sleds over iced roads in the winter woods of the U.S. & Canada.”
Interestingly, Lombard’s work on the Log Haulers immediately followed (and probably derailed) his work on a steam car that he had planned to manufacture. He built the prototype in September 1899 and drove it around town, but seemed to have not filed a patent on all the innovations he promised with it, nor did he pursue the idea any further once the Log Haulers proved successful. Not until 1929 did he turn his inventive gaze toward automobiles again, this time filing a patent (1,774,835) for an automobile-to-snowmobile conversion.
Apropos to the massive amounts of snowfall over the weekend along the East Coast, we bring you a few links today. First, to the circa 1926 photo of a Model T snowmobile above, which TA spotted among the National Postal Museum’s collection on Flickr.
An unidentified rural letter carrier poses next to a Model-T Ford vehicle with a snowmobile attachment. The vehicle is fitted with a kit advertised as the “Mailman’s Special” from the manufacturer, Farm Specialty Manufacturing Company of New Holstein, Wisconsin. It included skis that replaced the front tires and caterpillar treads that wrapped around the back tires. Rural carriers are responsible for providing their own transportation. At a time when automobiles were not yet equal to the demands of icy or snowy roads, the skis and tread kit saved carriers the expense of purchasing and maintaining a horse and sled for winter deliveries.
Next, we’ve all by now seen the following video of the Armstead Snow Motors concept snow vehicle, circa 1924:
But reader David Caldwell went one step further and sniffed out U.S. Patent 1,431,440, given to Frederick R. Burch of Seattle in 1922. Burch apparently assigned his patent to Armstead and had taken out an earlier patent in 1917 (1,228,093) along the same lines. He also in 1906 (and then based in Minneapolis) told the New York Times he planned on making a trip to the North Pole (NYTimes article) with his brother “in an ice automobile of their own invention.” The description of said automobile is sparse, but it doesn’t sound much like the Armstead Snow Motor.
The Tucker Sno-Cat is a fairly unique and easily identifiable vehicle, but one which we’ve not really read much about until recently, when we added the January 1957 issue of Mechanix Illustrated to our growing collection of MI issues. In that issue, we not only find a flight-of-fancy story on interchangeable bodies for cars (which Ryan at the Jalopy Journal highlighted last year), but also a four-pager on the history of the Tucker Sno-Cat, the invention of Emmitt Tucker. All good inventors are named Emmitt, right?
In the same issue, we also see a one-pager on a custom-built fiberglass car built by electrician Ken Mace. Anybody know where this car is today? Pretty much all we’ve seen on it so far is a random listing in an old race newsletter that refers to the car in a November 1955 race as a “Wildfire Cad” – it DNF’d.
UPDATE (18.November 2009): Our friend Geoff Hacker did some digging on Ken Mace’s car and came up with the following:
Built by Kenneth Mace – Norwalk, California
Body – Wildfire with custom fender additions
Frame – Wildfire rectangular tube steel
Running gear – 1940 Ford, 3.54 comm’l gears and open truck drive line
Engine – 1954 Cadillac (stock)
Transmission – 1954 Cadillac Hydromatic [sic]
Upholstery – Cal Top, Long Beach
Paint by – Kenny Lucas, Downey
Final finish (polish) by – “Vic” Frazier, Downey
Speed, top – 125 MPH
Quarter mile drag – 92 MPH
This beautiful sports car was constructed by Mr. Mace in approximately two months. He purchased a Wildfire frame kit from Woodill Motor Co. (with special engine and transmission mounts) and transferred the running gear from a 1940 Ford to the Wildfire frame. A new Cad engine and Hydromatic [sic] were mated to the early Ford shaft and rear end. A Jeep hot climate radiator was installed and the chassis was complete. The Wildfire body, with custom front and rear fender additions, was bolted to the chassis; bumpers, instruments, etc. were installed and there was Mr. Mace’s own Wildfire. Built by an amateur with no special tools. No cutting. No welding.
Notice no mention of an inspiration by Mechanix Illustrated in that Woodill-provided writeup.
UPDATE (30.November): Geoff has been led to believe that the Ken Mace Wildfire still exists, so he’s started a search for it.
Inevitably, some things work and some things don’t for every event. As I continue to comb through my shots from this year’s Hershey, I noticed some of both.
Yup, we got snow up here in New England. Enough to get me thinking about a vintage snowmobile again. It apparently has a bunch of H.A.M.B.ers thinking about vintage snowmobiles as well, but along some different lines.
* Looking at the cobbed-up fiberglass airbox that Chevrolet used for only a handful of 1957 fuel-injected Corvettes, I’m not too ashamed of my own cobjobs. As long as they work, that is. And don’t feel bad about not knowing what an Airbox Corvette is – it seems many Corvette experts and enthusiasts also have never heard of them. (via)
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