# Pumped up wagon tales... a (nearly) complete fabrication.



## Allen (Aug 31, 2012)

Since this doesn't really fit anywhere else, I thought I'd put it here...

About a decade ago our local antique machinery club was donated a collection of steam pumps from  a longtime member's estate. Originally they were going to build a  stepped rack (something like bleachers) to display them on. It never  happened. Instead most of them were put "into storage" (ie dumped in the tree  line at the bottom of the showgrounds.)

A couple years ago my fiancee Kim decided that these orphans really needed rescued. So she started to paint them right where they were. This Transit duplex is the largest of the ones in this lot.














A bit later, Kim and I decided that putting them  on a wagon just might be better than waiting on the club to decide to scrap them or leaving them in the weeds for the  scrappies to steal..... Except we didn't have one.

Last year a family  friend was scrapping out a bunch of old rotted machinery. So I purchased a pair of  axles with steel wheels from him for $35. A steering axle from a wagon  type manure spreader, and a straight axle out from under a husker  shredder..... Except I couldn't get them hauled until this Spring....  Meanwhile, the guy who was cutting up the scrap got a little torch happy  and cut away all the steering parts from MY axle. Grrrrrrrr!

The  guy felt bad and gave me another set of steering parts. They looked  close, but weren't quite right. So I spent over 3 hours making  them fit. I needed to lengthen the tie bar almost 4", so I got the  bright idea of splicing it in the center. Then I had to graft on the  part that holds the tongue since that was burnt off as well.... It  doesn't look factory purty but it should be serviceable.









Then I had to widen the rear axle just a _little_ to match the front. While I was at it I welded a smaller pipe inside the axle pipe to give it a bit more strength.









Welding in 90+ degree early Summer weather wasn't much fun, but soon they were a (mis)matched pair.





Next  step was to weld mounting perches on the rear axle. Which was finished the 3rd week of June. After that I wanted to  get a couple 12 foot 4x6 or perhaps even 6x6 beams for the sills. The big pump (about a 6x7x6) goes directly  over the rear axle, and 2 or possibly 3 of the other ones ahead of it. These  things are bloody HEAVY, so I figured I may well need to build truss rods before  I'm done.

Meanwhile, one of the club directors had already  begun poo-poo-ing the whole bloody project. He says that the pumps are  "junk"... (I asked if we were a "preservation" group, or scrappies) Since they've been out in the wather so long, I'll probably have to tear into them after they're mounted and see what they'll require to be gotten running again. This may sound backwards, but they'll  be at a nice convenient height to work on once they're on the wagon -  rather than fighting with them down in the dirt!

About this time the club president told me NOT to buy the sills (about $80) because the club had a couple ash logs they would cut for me. So i didn't. And they didn't. July slipped past, then the 50th show, then half of August and STILL no sills........................................

So, rather than wait any longer, I decided to go another route. Another friend donated me 2 sections  of used 12" mobile home frame I beam. He delivered them the third week of August. I decided I'd  probably better go over and start mounting them a few days later, before the  scrappies saw them. And of course it had to rain.





Tramming everything up took a lot longer than the actual welding did. But  the end result is that it's within 1/16" of perfectly square. NO 'dog  tracking' allowed! Besides, it gave me something to do while waiting for the rain to quit.





This was the first of many braces. I trust my welds. But I also trust  some of the guys in the club. I trust that sooner or later one of them  WILL hook a tractor to this thing, rip 'n snort and run it into a  doorframe, post, tree, or other bit of machinery.





Since it was getting dark I had to stop there for the day. My last  project before leaving was to flip the steering stuff over (I'd somehow managed  to mount it upside down!) Luckily that was a 5 minute deal. One big bolt  from the pivot, a kotter pins at each end of the tie rod, and turn it  all over as a unit. By golly, if it didn't fit even better than it had the  other way!

Then we rolled it outside in the rain so nobody could complain that it was in the way.

We had 3 nice days this past week, so I made a lot of progress on this.
I was warned that due to the thin material, mobile home I-beams don't have a lot of side strength. So first I added two vertical X braces made from 3/4" Schedule 80 pipe to help hold the beams square. Since the big pump will be centered over the rear axle, I also put on a pair of braces on the outer stubs to help keep the axle from springing





There was this angled flange on the rear axle, so I decided it was a really good place to attach a horizontal diagonal to help keep the frame from going diamond shape... It looks sort of like a panhard bar.





Since the axle attach point was a little below the bottom I-beam flange, it allowed me to run the other diagonal flat and tie them together.





I then decided I probably needed to put something across the rear for strength and to help minimize the chances of someone punching the end of the beams through a building.





Sadly, I ran out of the real pretty dark blue and couldn't find more, but a local odd lot store had this other "dark" blue on sale for $4 a quart... so far I've used 2 quarts.









The big pump got brought up out of the weeds. It's 5 feet long, and the wagon is 12.... the other pumps will get mounted crosswise.





I was going to salvage the oak skids to place crosswise to mount the pump on ... but, while they still looked good on top, they're kind of punky underneath. So I'll have to see if I can find some used channel.





Some fat guy at work....





The wagon itself is pretty much done except for the tongue. It ain't fancy, but it should keep the pumps out of the mud for a bit.


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## rhitee93 (Aug 31, 2012)

Nice work at preservation Allen.  It is good that you are proceeding with what sounds like a thankless job.


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## Allen (Oct 14, 2012)

Since one of the club directors had his big Lull forklift at the showgrounds the weekend of the 6th to move apple crates, he kindly volunteered to set the big pump on the wagon. (I can't decide whether that machine more neat or fugly)










We also got most of the rest of the orphans up out of the tree line. here's two of them. We're considering leaving the one covered in old crude and sporting mismatched bolts "in "as-found" condition just so folks realize how much work is often involved in restoring this stuff.





Funny how I finally got the help I really needed to 'proceed' on this project just as the weather went totally to crap....

Then last Tuesday Ben Midkiff decided we really needed to take a peek inside the big pump before we mounted anything else. So we broke out the wrenches and started pulling covers. Surprisingly, after a decade in the weeds, not only was it not stuck, but the bores were super oily and clean!





The steamchest OTOH was full of mouse nest. It will probably need the valves lapped, but for now we just scooped the crap out and poured oil all through it.





The pump bores were full of something that might once have been kerosene. Impact marks showed that the rod on this side was hitting the cylinder head, so I removed about 1/8" off the end before closing it up. Hopefully that will cure the problem.





The pickup pipe was packed solid with chipmunk leavings. More scooping and oiling.

Then we coated all the studs with anti seize shtuff and put it back together.

For those curious about such things, the steam cylinder bores are 7-1/2" the pump bores are 4-1/2"- making it a fairly high pressure pump -  and the stroke is something near 8". The pump is obviously set up to pump oil (solid pistons with iron rings)... and should be easy to get completely operational...


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## lee9966 (Oct 16, 2012)

What a big project. Did you have to buy materials out of your own pocket?

Lee


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## ChooChooMike (Oct 16, 2012)

Very cool !!  There aren't too many of those type of pumps around any more, let alone operating !!  Keep going !!


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## Allen (Oct 16, 2012)

Lee, so far we've spent about $100 on the wagon (axles, steel, welding rods, paint). The club supplied the electric to run the welder, the pipe for the bracing, and the channel holding up the big pump (and I'm not sure they know they did that much... I didn't ask on the pipe, it also was in "storage" for years..)

On the UP side about 2/3 of the board of directors have said they like the idea after they saw that big pump up on the wagon.

On the DOWN side (for me), another club has offered MONEY for some of the pumps so I'm not quite sure which ones they're still planning to keep.......... (There ARE 4 big simplexes (well, 2 large 2 huge) that we haven't gotten to, yet... but I haven't got a clear answer which ones they were actually bidding on)

Meanwhile, there's a huge-ish air chamber down there we could adapt to fit the big pump, and a 2-foot diameter vertical oil tank we could set between the sills and actually pump (recirculated) oil with it. I just wish these folks would make up my mind what road I'm taking BEFORE I have to rip something back out.


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## Allen (Oct 18, 2012)

Micro update: Yesterday afternoon was fair and balmy, so Kim and I went over to do "something". That something consisted mostly of drilling holes. I made a linkage for the hand pump on the roller, hitch plates for the wagon tongue, and stole the heavy channel out from under the green pump for the larger crusty one...





I also smoked my 3YO Skil angle grinder.... well, slightly more than "smoked". It decided to suddenly belch 6" green flames out of the motor vent holes and seize up.... back to my 15 year old Hitachi, I guess.  

We also measured the oil tank, it's 21" and so are the I beams under it. The space between the sill webs is 27" (and it needs to straddle one of my braces), so....... I'm thinking of using 2" pipe, since it's what we have a bunch of, but it's going to be rather FUN to get those tank channels to set exactly on them (The tank has about 15 gallons of used motor oil in it, so it's kinda heavy, too )





On the down side, while the weather is supposed to be still good for this kind of outdoor work early next week, I'm nearly out of 1/8" welding rod (about 4 sticks left) and the 1/4" 6010 I've got left would just blow through in a few seconds... (I've got some spare #40 and # 60 sprockets and a 3/4" parts injector up on fleabay, but no there's guarantee that anybody will bid. Other than that, we have no money coming in until the 3rd -- You sorta get used to being "poor", but "flat-assed broke" is still really, really inconvenient!)

At least I now have all the parts I need for the tongue, and they don't need welding. That's tomorrow's project since we have to go over for the election meeting anyway.


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## Allen (Oct 19, 2012)

At 10:15 this morning the phone rang. It was Ben, he said, "if you want  help setting those lumps of Sh--, meet me at the showgrounds in 20  minutes." Okay.. it took 30 because I had to change into grubbies. It  took us about an hour to load the tank and the pump. Most of it arguing  with the club's clunky junky Ford hi-lift (some members have a real bad  habit of abusing it, and then not telling anybody when they screw it  up.)

Anyway, it turned out there was no oil in the tank (after I was told by 4  different people there was oil innit), just a skin of tar in the  bottom. so lifting it was easy. It's just sitting on wood blocks for the  moment. I'll try to cut the pipe supports next week. The Union pump  gave us a bit of a scare when the chains shifted (the brakes on the Ford  tend to be nothing or grab, so it was swinging pretty good), but it  then went on with no other troubles. I didn't do any welding today  because the grass is pretty wet, and I really dislike being "tickled".





After we got it on the wagon, and more or less balanced, Ben got curious  what the tags and stamps said. They told us that it's a 6x4x6 tar pump,  that was once owned by a company called Koppers
http://www.oil150.com/essays/2008/0...vision-neville-synthese-rhone-poulenc-merisol


He also got rambunctious and pulled the water side on the Worthington It has leather cups so it probably was for water.





Meanwhile, he also agrees that a mid-sized National duplex wandered off  sometime in the last 3 years.... We really hope they got hernias loading  it.

While I was there I took some pix just for y'all's edification. This is  one of the really big simplexes... they are about 9 feet long





The valves on this thing are pretty interesting. The rocker drives a  smallish slide valve, which activates a larger piston shuttle valve that  controls the cylinder





And for those who have read about "bull plugs" but didn't know what the  heck they were. This is a field made one.  They also come factory made  of cast iron





Since we have to go back for the meeting tonight anyway, I'll probably  go a bit early and see about finishing that tongue... the front end is  getting kinda heavy and really hard to steer with just the stub.


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## Allen (Oct 25, 2012)

Today Kim and I went over to work on this thing a bit more... 

It turns out the tank was sitting drunk because it was BUILT about 1/4" off square. The simplest solution was to weld one support crosspiece lower than the other. Close enough for government work!





The Worthington got painted grey. Kind of boring, but historically correct. Most vintage industrial equipment was painted either green or grey. And this one showed spots grey paint. We also found not one, but TWO 6" long cracks in the pickup (suction) part of the pump end. If we decide to make this one operate it's gonna need either brazed or grooves ground for JB weld... since they're both underneath, and behind stuff that will be FUN I also still need 2 short pieces of 4" channel to mount it. I looked on Craigslist, but the only guy I found wanted $70 for a 6 foot piece! And the scrapyard doesn't have any.





It's sooo hard to get good help these days...





The tongue... They griped that they didn't want the long one I had planned "to trip over". So they gots a really, really short one, which will make this thing a royal PitA to back up. It will be painted red to match the wheels





About this point I was getting dehydrated, had too much sun and paint fumes, and starting to feel woogly - so we bagged it for the day.


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