# Economy model



## Oldmechthings (Feb 11, 2008)

Below is a picture of my first attempt at building a Gasoline engine. My friend Lawrence Jordan had bought a casting kit, and before starting to work on it, he dropped it of so I could use the castings as patterns to make my own. It required making up a core box, but that was still a lot less effort than starting right from scratch.
Economy engines were built by Hercules engine company, and were sold by Sears Roebuck under the Economy name. Hercules also built the Jager engines that were put on Jager cement mixers.
For this little engine I even built my own spark plug using Coran as an insulator. People marvel at that, but the spark plug was much simpler to build than the drip oiler up on top. It is equipped with a miniature homemade buzz coil, built from the magneto out of a lawn mower type engine. It works like the old model T Ford coils. It can run off a flashlight battery. Construction details were sent in and published in both Gas Engine, and Modeltec magazines.







Lawrence Jordan, I believe would be classified as a heavy duty mechanic! He had worked at the Ironton plant between Provo and Springville. That was a facility, which is now just history, that took iron ore from southern Utah, coal from eastern Utah and locally quarried limestone and produced pig iron. The pig iron was then marketed to iron foundries. By todays standards it was ancient. It had steam engines to power the skip hoists the run the material up to be dumped into the blast furnaces. And it had huge steam powered blowing engines to provide air to the blast furnaces. Lawrence gave me a couple pictures one day.






Two engines were horizontal. To give you an idea of their size, that building is 80 feet wide. Lawrence told me of taking a manhole cover off the side of the engine, crawling inside the cylinder and sitting on the piston rod while changing the valves. Note that you cannot see the spokes in the flywheels, the engines were running as the picture was taken.






Two other engines were of the vertical type, I measured the flywheels once while at the plant, and they were 22 feet diameter. Lawrence told me of an occasion one time when the top end of one of these engines broke or blew off, and came tumbling to the floor. No one was hurt, but he said it was quite a task getting it repaired and back together again.
If some of the viewers would like an interesting challenge, here are a couple steam engine designs, that I do not remember seeing models of. Here is your chance!
        Birk


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## rake60 (Feb 11, 2008)

I love that Economy model Birk!

I collect antique engines and happen to have the remains of a 
Jager Mixer engine in my basement shop.




I've been making parts for it, off and on, for 2 years now. 
It still has a ways to go.

I've looked at a few of those castings kits.
One of these days I'm going to have to give one a go.

Great work on yours!

Rick


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## Oldmechthings (Feb 11, 2008)

Rick 
Guess what? I have a 1917 1 1/2 HP economy that looked very much like yours. It was missing almost everything except the basic engine, but it is now a running model. In fact I crank it up for visitors all the time. Unless they are along in years they are fascinated, but want to know what the heck it is.






That is the fun of having those things. Mine has a low tension magneto and an igniter, all of which I built from scratch. Those old engines are simple enough that you can do that. I also had to build the mixer, push rod, rocker arm, most of the governor, etc.
      Birk


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## rake60 (Feb 11, 2008)

VERY nice Birk!

My Jager is a 1924... Just a pup! LOL

I've done a few sketches working on ideas to attempt to reproduce it 
on a 1/4 scale. I've never stuck with that project long enough to make 
any real progress at it.

Rick


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## Kactiguy (Feb 11, 2008)

Rake- it sounds great running too. The next time I'm at Birk's I'll see if I can get him to crank it up and I'll take a video of it.


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## rake60 (Feb 11, 2008)

Please DO!

If you ever go to an antique engine show in PA you'll most likely see a skinny old
bald guy taking videos of the engines running.

Please don't step in front of him!
I'd feel real bad if I found out the person I'd just kicked was friend from HERE! 

Rick


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## deere_x475guy (Feb 11, 2008)

I would love to see that video also. ;D


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## Bernd (Feb 12, 2008)

Birk,

First nice job on those engines. I'd love to get a hold of a Hit-n-Miss engine, but the cost is just way to much for my buget to handle. I would also like to see a video of that engine.

Second, any idea what those holes are on the rim of the verticle engine? Could they have been used to manually rotate the engine for service?

Again nice job on those engines.

Bernd


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## Oldmechthings (Feb 12, 2008)

Bernd
The holes in the rim of those vertical engines were used to bar the engine to a point off dead center so that they could be started, and I'm sure that they were also used to move the flywheels around for maintenance as you suggested.
       Birk


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## Bernd (Feb 13, 2008)

Thanks Birk. That's what I thought but wasn't sure. I've seen them use holes like that to start an engine, It was a big two cylinder Fairbanks-Morse. The only thought I had watching that is, what happens if the bar gets caught? 

Bernd


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