Customs Anybody into Steam Power?

You could buy eight Model Ts for the price of a late Stanley 740.

 

Another big draw back was cold weather. Most were stored over the winter due to freezing over night. You either kept the fire on, or drained the whole system. Not practical for most owners.

You could buy a lot of Model T's for the price of a Stanley, they were not for everyone.

The car with what looks like dual steering wheels is a White steamer. The inner wheels is for steam, the outer is for steering. If I remember right, you run the throttle with the inner wheel. I have another uncle with a 1919 White Steamer. The flash boiler makes steam only as needed, no storage like a Stanley has, speed is also limited since it can only make so much steam at a time. The Whites used a compound engine, where high pressure steam was injected into a small piston then as the piston moved and the steam expanded, it was expelled out to a larger piston to use the rest of its energy. From there it was run through a radiator to cool and condense back to water. Good system but messy. You needed to drain out the nasty steam oil from the radiator all the time. The operators manual suggest digging a whole in the grave road or drive to drain the oil into.

Steamers were used in the mountain lodges to get guest up the hills from rail depots. Steam is not effected by al***ude like the gas cars were, and with 600 ft lbs of torque, they could easily climb the grades.

 

Had a much older co-worker who grew up in New York state and went to high school in the 40's. He told me about his high school autoshop that had a Stanley Steamer, they would run it across the shop and parking lot on compressed air.

 

I think that was ROAMER, I had a nice photo of that setup in a magazine article. Jay Leno had one under restoration a while back, should be finished by now. Bob

 

Imagine if the roads were full of steam cars...........!.........................

 

At the turn of the last century steam engines were pretty much advanced and internal combustion was just coming into use.


Ago

 

Off the top of my head, I seem to recall American, Baker, and Endurance being part of the '20s revival. Missing from the list is Brooks, though I believe they were Canadian.

 

I did some internet searching on several of the makes and most were in and out of business within 3-5 years.
Some were in and out the same year
White, Stanley and Doble and maybe 3 or 4 others lasted more than 5 years.

 

forgot to mention in my first post...i had a Locomobile for a while , regret selling it now

 

I was at the Newport Hill climb and saw the Stanley Vanderbilt car go up the hill as mentioned in a previous post in this discussion. The driver of the Vanderbilt Racer is the same person who built and ran the motorcycle at the ECTA event.

 

Brooks steam cars were made in Canada about 1925 - 26. They made between 100 and 200 cars I think, there are about a dozen left around the world.

An old motorcycle mechanic who lived in Toronto in the twenties said they had a fleet of Brooks taxicabs. This seemed like a sensible idea, they burn nice cheap kerosene, don't mind sitting idle with the engine not running, and firing up and shutting down are not such a problem if the car is in service 24 hours a day. And, a steam engine will go hundreds of thousands of miles without an overhaul.

 

I had an interest in steam cars at one time. About 20 years ago I saw an ad in Old Autos for a Stanley for sale, the original body was long gone and it had a crude buckboard type body (think Beverley Hillbillies truck). The price was only $2500 but when I called up about it, it turned out it was a misprint for $25000. Still it may have been a bargain, but too much for me to afford at the time.

 

In the very early days, like 1890, it looked like the steam car or the electric car would be the thing. Both steam engines and electric motors were more developed than the crude gas engines of the time. But, by 1912 at the latest, the gas car had made such advances it was obvious that steam was obsolete. Someone asked the Stanley brothers why they didn't make a gas car, they replied that they could make more money off gas cars, but had more fun building steamers. There was a hard core of New England Yankee steam fans who kept them in business but when they died out so did the Stanley Steamer.

 

Its fascinating how gas took over electric and steam avenues. I partially think the big money behind gasoline/oil helped keep other possible compe***ors out of business. Id love to see steam available today.

I also remember reading a quote from henry ford somewhere. He had put a spark advance/retard control on the steering column I think, and it was for different grades of ethanol. He said something along the lines of "I think gasoline will become obsolete, as farmers can make all the fuel they need themselves" referring to ethanol.