No valves? No "Hit and Miss." Darn. That was cool.

That starting proceedure must have been fun 30 miles
offshore at night in a storm. (Fire?)
Sounds a lot like my "Dream".

That's when "Men were Men."

Pat

--- In MessaboutW@y..., jhkohnen@b... wrote:

My Gray is pretty dull compared to some of the machinery at the

Brooks

fest: no exposed valve gear (no valves!); no make and break

ignition; no

hit or miss governor... Once it's running all it does is "phutt,

phutt,

phutt!" with the big flywheel spinning. You can watch the timing

gears go

around out in the open air (don't get your fingers caught in them!)

and the

ignition timer jumps around a bit because of a worn commutator,

buts it's

not the sort of performance that makes you just want to stare at it

trying

to figure out how it works.

There were moments of excitement when I first tried starting it

though. The

spark comes from a "buzz coil" like model Ts used. Instead of

working

itself up to produce one (hopefully) mighty spark at the right

moment like

a modern car coil, a buzz coil starts buzzing at the right moment

and

produces a continuous stream of sparks until the timer tells it to

stop. I

pulled the spark plug to see what kind of spark I could get, turned

the

engine over 'til the coil started buzzing, and that plug started

hissing

with an arc like a welding machine! Smoke began curling off the end

of the

plug as bits of fouling burned off-- it was kinda scary! No problem

with

spark, I almost always got a pop of some sort when I bounced the

flywheel

back.

The steps when starting the engine cold are to open the priming

cup, turn

the engine until the air stops blowing out of the cup; pour some

gasoline

into the cup; turn the engine over a few times to suck the gas into

the

cylinder (if you weren't all the way to top dead center when you

started

some of the gas might blow back out of the cup, as it might also on

the

second revolution-- keep a fire extinguisher handy!), you'll know

it's all

in there when you hear the engine suck and blow air through the

priming

cup; close the priming cup; set the spark advance and throttle

levers where

you think they should be; turn on the ignition switch; grab the

flywheel by

the rim and rock it slowly in the direction you want the engine to

go until

you feel it start to come up against compression (so you have some

free

play); take a strong grip on the flywheel (no handle) and pull it

sharply

up against compression in the _opposite_ direction than you want

the engine

to run; there'll be a "pop" and with luck the engine will spin over
compression in the direction you want it to go, "pop" again, and

again, and

again... If not, repeat the above steps as necessary... It's

definitely

going to take some practice to get the hang of the process.

Roger Fletcher seems like a nice fellow, I talked with him a bit at

the

Depoe bay festival.

On Sat, 18 Aug 2001 15:36:52 -0000, Pat wrote:

John,
I have no life.
I had a dream last night about you trying to start your Gray.
It was kind of a cross between starting an engine and trying
to set off cannon. Lots of sparks and fire. In the dream
you finally got it going.
...
The Brooks show was my first exposure to those engines.
And what an exposure. I think I could have spent hours
watching just one of them, trying to figure out how they
do all the amazing things they do.
Very cool.
...
I accidentally ran into Roger Fletcher in the parking lot of the
Molalla Sentry Market.
...

--
John <jkohnen@b...>
http://www.boat-links.com/
There are two means of refuge from the misery of life - music

and cats.

<Albert Schweitzer>