Progress that is wonderful to me, but inconsequential to an oblivious world

Some days in The Garage are definitely more fun than others, and while the past few days have been wonderful, there have been tinges of disappointment as well.  First, I'll start with the good.

As storms worked their way through the area and the humidity soared, I knew I couldn't do much with paint/primer and filler, so I thought I'd explore The Garage a little.  Moving the ladder around, I peeked above the plywood boards that make up the ceiling to see the loft---a mysterious frontier that has sat perfectly still for half a century.  The last person to move things around up there was my late grandfather, slowly accumulating items that he would buy from businesses that were closing their doors.

As a result, the bizarre mishmash of everything that occupies the loft in The Garage is wonderfully enigmatic.  Here's a fender, there's a grille, here's a box of bearings from the 1920s, there's a 1930s soapbox full of 1930s gauges.  On and on it goes, and it's all tossed so haphazardly in the dark, dusty space under the peak of the roof that I have to carry a light with me as I slide my way around on my stomach.

I spent several hours up there over two days, and I found a multitude of things that only I could appreciate (at least around here).  I plucked countless antiques from the dusty piles of randomness, cradling them in my arms like precious cargo each time I descended the ladder.  Meticulously I would brush them clean, admiring them both for the fact that they had sat untouched for decades and that they were last handled by my grandpa so many years ago.

In the end I was so thrilled with some of the treasures I uncovered, even if most people would dismiss them as a disjointed set of car parts and knickknacks.

By the time the weather improved I could finally work on the Maxwell and continue with my cleaning of the transmission.

In a way I had been blessed by the foibles of the old compressor, as all of the word I had received from the gentleman who had worked on these cars said not to sandblast the alloy case.  Thankfully my blasting had only knocked off the top layer of grease and not damaged the transmission, so I took down the tarps that hung from the car's sides and got a screwdriver and mineral spirits.  Scraping off the thickest dried grease, I then dabbed the metal with mineral spirits recycled from the transmission case.

The exhaust (L) and intake (R) gears, with the magneto's gear (C).

After letting it sit for a few moments, I used a wire brush to scrub, and that worked extremely well.  As of today, the entire crankcase is perfectly clean, and it looks incredible.  Yes, this was much more work than using the sandblaster, but my unspoken mantra of using as few power tools as possible during the restoration appreciated it.

With the case clear, I set out to remove the remainder of the linkages that would normally sit under the front floor (these included linkages for the brakes, clutch and gears).  It was here where the bane of my existence, those pesky rusted pins, began to mess with me again.

So painfully simple, these smooth pins are only held in with a cotter pin, yet over the last century they've become rusted and seized in their holes, refusing to budge even with the roughest persuasion I could apply.  Two of these pins in particular hung up my restoration for several hours in the past couple of days.

You can just barely see it here, but this is the cracked clamp.

Over the course of my efforts I used a screwdriver, a hammer, a bigger hammer, various chisels, vice grips, other bolts, two C-clamps (one of which I actually managed to crack in two) and a blowtorch.  Eventually I triumphed over both, but one of the arms coming off the clutch had bent slightly, so I used a massive four-foot-long prybar to bend it back today.

After all of this, I had every one of the linkages off and began work on cleaning and smoothing them.  I did the same for the gear selector plate (that pivots on the gearbox and moves the fork inside).  I scrubbed incessantly with the wire brush on the frame, occasionally uncovering some of the original blue paint that once adorned the entire underbody.

Over time I headed up to the engine to scrub there, and at the same time I started some disassembly (only of the most superficial parts).  I took the radiator fan off to clean and smooth it, and I must say, that turned out beautifully.  I only had to replace the ball bearings a few times after they all fell out, but by the end I had provisions in place to stop them from escaping again.

Excitingly, I'm nearly ready to reassemble all of those linkages, which means I can move entirely to the engine for the immediate future.  I realize some aspects of this may require quite a bit of work---possibly removing the entire engine from the car for a while, or at least taking off the heads to clean the cylinders---and in some cases this will take a couple of people to do, but I'm thrilled to get there.  I didn't know how long it would take me to sort everything out rearward, but I didn't figure I would get into the engine for quite some time.  I can only do so much, though.

The radiator fan before...

Scouring the exploded views from some 1910 books, I'm wondering where the oil tank on my car went (or even if it had one).  I'm wondering when the fuel lines disappeared (or the entire gas tank, for that matter), and I'm wondering how the shaft of the magneto interfaces with the sleeve on the top of the transmission case.  I don't know where the coil went (but I think it poked through the firewall), or if we can find a new one.  I don't have a wiring loom yet, nor do I have a couple of hoses.  I know the carburetor is not the correct one, which was common for cars back then, but I don't know how to make this one work with the car, either.  I could go on and on, but I won't.  The point is, while I can see the necessary steps to complete the restoration in my head, I'm not sure how I'll complete a couple of those steps along the way.

This is definitely disappointing, as every other time I think about the car, it feels like I'm getting more and more ahead of schedule in completing it.  What was once a distant, undated future completion date is drawing nearer and nearer with every 6+ hour shift I put in, but some thoughts make it drift helplessly farther into the future.

...and after!

Further adding to my uncertainty is the isolated state in which I work on this car.  Day after day I work alone in The Garage, accompanied occasionally by an Oldies radio station that fades in and out throughout the afternoon.  Some days I have the garage door open, sometimes I don't.  And it's here I toil for hours a day, making progress that is wonderful to me, but inconsequential to an oblivious world that only peers inside when I blog about my endeavors on here.  Even then I'm not so sure anyone reads what I write, but considering that I started this blog merely to be a record of my restoration projects, I guess I never intended it to be widely read.  But I digress.

This isolation makes it difficult to gauge my work.  I can't find other blogs out there that walk readers through a brass car restoration like mine, so I have no idea if my progress is average, slow or incomplete.  Many of the notes I send to owners and brass car specialists go unanswered, and the few that come back only address one of many questions I have over time.  It's frustrating, but not totally unexpected.

Some of that fortune changed the other day when I received two emails from two different gentlemen in Australia.  Neither have restored a Maxwell like mine, but both have worked on two-cylinder versions of my car, and both have gorgeous cars to which I hope mine can compare someday.  The first email, especially, caught me off-guard with one short line.

"Keep at it," he wrote, "you are doing well."

He didn't elaborate, nor did he sing my praises anymore than beyond that line, but I needed that.  I stopped reading for a moment and smiled.  Only a few people in my life have ever said that I'm doing a good job on the Maxwell, and while I'm not a narcissistic person who needs to hear encouragement, it felt very good to hear such words from someone who has been in my shoes.  To read that from someone who has resurrected a Maxwell of his own, it felt great.

So as I continue on my project, only I know the remaining steps of the restoration.  Each and every one is planned out in my head, and at any given time I have countless aspects of several steps swimming around my thoughts.  I know which parts should be easy and which ones will be challenging, and I know that there are many steps along the way that won't go as planned, too.  There will inevitably be moments when I'm thrown a wonderfully complex loop, and there will be moments when I do something foolish and set myself back a few steps, but that's part of the game.  That's what I find so enthralling with restoring this little car.

When people will ask me what I did this summer, I'll say, in part, that I worked in The Garage and made great progress on the Maxwell.  They'll smile and nod and find that interesting, but they'll have no idea of the moments when I sat inside the car's frame, my arms and neck intertwined with the rusted linkages as I scrub 100 years' worth of grime from the car's body.  They'll have no knowledge of the bloodied hands and the countless times when I've left The Garage covered from head to toe in dust, dirt and grime.  They won't know of my occasional frustration from fighting back the hands of time, and they won't know the sheer joy I share with the spirit of my grandfather whenever I make substantial progress.

But I will.  I remember all of it, and that's why I love doing this.  I'm not restoring a car for other people, nor am I struggling and hitting the car to impress others.  I'm doing this because I want to.  I'm being so meticulous for myself and for the spirit of the little car, whose sad life saw it spend most of its existence forgotten or neglected.  I want to make the car a show winner not for me, but because she deserves it.  And when she gets the honor and love she's been due for decades, I'll remember the blood and sweat, and I'll know every minute was worth it.

For the first time in over 50 years, the Maxwell had shifted gears

I was planning on writing a post about the verdict that came from the FIA's international tribunal today, but I spent so much time up in The Garage and made enough progress on the Maxwell that I thought I should document it.

I started the week sicker than a dog and spent the next few days bedridden.  When my strength finally returned, I received a wonderful jolt by the arrival of a well-taped box from a gentleman in California.  A native of my home state, he had moved to the the coast after World War II to work as a civil engineer, prepped by his years of working on tractors at a supply store.

When his brother propositioned him to take a rotting car off his property, he was well-prepared to tackle the project that faced him.  And so began Merle's passion for restoring two-cylinder Maxwells.  He has since resurrected a few of these wonderful little cars, so he had no need for a hefty Splitdorf Model F magneto, which was made for a 1910 four-cylinder Q3.

. . .

So when the box arrived, I unwrapped it with a restored vigor and plucked the gorgeous magneto from the cardboard.  In exquisite shape, the Model F honestly took my breath away.  There are only a handful of these contraptions left in the world, and few of them are as complete and spotless as this one.  The terminals on the front are a bit dusty, but the magnets and the brass on every inch of the thing are reflective, smooth and rust-free.

The Splitdorf company had already been in existence for decades when Jonathon Maxwell began using them to power his cars.  The Model F in particular was a strong mag.  Used (in adapted form) in the next few years on Indian and Harley Davidson motorcycles, the Splitdorfs for the Maxwells utilized a special base that hooked them to the top front crankcase cover.  A gear situated between the intake and exhaust gears allowed the engine's motions to turn the magneto's stator (for lack of a better term), and this, in concert with the coil, helped distribute the spark to the correct plugs.  I'll get to the wiring description later, though.

The gearbox, as I found it (mercifully in neutral).

With the mag now proudly displayed on the mantle back at home (until my mother gets fed up and puts it away), I instead focused on working my way through the Maxwell now that the rear end restoration is at an acceptable point.

With the brakes reassembled and the wheels remounted, I started cleaning the gearbox, which (as you know) was pretty gunky.  My grandfather, the first Woodsie, had the foresight to leave plenty of lubricant inside, and thankfully this staved off the rust over the last half century.

Using a screwdriver, I picked most of the gunk off and threw it in an oil pan, but after a while I knew I would need to go deeper.  Whether this meant total disassembly or a powerful liquid cleaner, I didn't know, but either way it would be a learning process.

I sought help with the Maxwell group online, which, by now, must think I'm a buffoonish amateur who is in way over his head.  The responses were very few, but all recommended against my father's insistence on using gasoline.  ("My dad cleaned parts with gasoline all the time," he said, "on everything.  It shouldn't hurt.")

So armed with a giant jug of mineral spirits, I poured some in.  Scrubbing with a little brush, I turned the thin, clear liquid into a dirty-oil-colored mush.  Naturally I added more.

As I scrubbed and removed more material, the shifting gears spun easier and easier, and more and more of the other gears slowly appeared from the murk.  Over time and after much staring, I ascertained how this wonderfully simple machine worked.

The center shaft you see is the transmission shaft.  It spins on its own, not powered directly by the engine, and turns the driveshaft/propshaft to the rear axle.  The gears that float on the transmission shaft slide forward and backward (in the picture above, which is positioned with the front of the car to the bottom of the picture) and engage the gears on the shaft to the left (right, in the picture), which is the countershaft.

The gears on the countershaft are fixed and are directly coupled at all times to the turning of the crankshaft (powered by that small gear you see on the transmission shaft at the bottom of the picture).  The single shifting fork pivots on a shaft that sits just laterally to the hole in the picture, and it slides the transmission gears back and forth on the shaft.  This is what engages slow, low, high and reverse (which is the little gear in the upper right corner that sits below the little gear on the countershaft).

I'm pretty sure this is how the Maxwell Q3 transmission works, but I'm not positive on ever aspect of it.  The countershaft can be adjusted with a bolt head on the outside of the gearbox casing that is on the anterior end of that countershaft, and on the posterior end it sits nestled inside a roller bearing.  The reverse gear can be removed with a large bolt head that sits just below the plate that covers the aforementioned roller bearing on the posterior end of the outside of the transmission case.

Cleaned somewhat, the gears now shift.

But okay, enough technical stuff.

Eventually I got curious with my cleaning efforts, so I took a wrench and gripped the post that pivots the shifting fork.  With a relatively easy pull, the transmission gears slid backward on the transmission shaft and settled nicely against the reverse gear on the back end of the gearbox.  For the first time in over 50 years, the Maxwell had shifted gears.

Now I can slide the gears all the way through their ranges of motion, accessing all the speeds the Maxwell can provide.  Moreover, this morning I removed the drain plug (which is at the front end of the transmission case) and drained the old mineral spirits before replacing it with new.  This, too, turned a dark brown after some scrubbing, but everything is much cleaner than it was before.

For the 'afternoon session' of Garage work I dug the old, once-used sandblaster out of a pile of junk by the '50s refrigerator with the intention of cleaning the bottom of the crankcase.  As you can tell by the photo, it's a bit greasy.  I took the coarse wire brush attachment on the ancient Montgomery Ward drill and tried to clean earlier, but it didn't do a great job punching through the caked-on grease.  The big gun would be brought in, but the sandblaster was a tad incomplete.

After finding a hose to come from the sandblaster, a hose to go to the gun, the gun itself and a connector to hook it to the compressor, I began patching up the holes in the hoses with duct tape.  Once this was complete, my dad found an old sandblasting hood for me while I hung tarps from the Maxwell to catch the flying silica sand.

With some adjustment of the pressures (starting at 60, moving up to 100), I eventually settled into a rhythm and got to work on the blasting.  Some parts of the case cleaned up well, but others proved trickier.  In the end, the old compressor was working pretty hard to keep up with the 80+ pounds of pressure I used with each blast, and with the duct tape patches in the hose leaking, I thought it best to power everything down and head home for the night.

There's much more I can say about the last couple of  days, but this post is long enough, and I still have silica sand lodged in my skin that I probably need to remove.  That's another good tip if you ever want to do some sandblasting---it definitely doesn't hurt to wear long sleeves.  Do it on a cool day, too.

I step over the footprints forever cast in concrete from The Garage's dedication half a century ago

One of my favorite moments of any summer is the first trip up to The Garage after a year away at school.

The old stone structure spent the past nine months enduring rain, bitter winds and driving snow.  My father once again became its primary caretaker, and as a result the interior gets a bit out of shape.  Tools are strewn about in different places from where I left them in August.  Several strange items find their way through the doors and end up tossed in a corner or in a potential work space (things like air conditioner covers, enormous blue tarps from purposes unknown and giant power tools purchased from Craigslist).

But when summer rolls around, I don my ratty garage clothes and practically sprint my way through the yard.  Swinging the off-kilter, green door open, I step over the footprints forever cast in concrete from The Garage's dedication half a century ago.  In a way, I'm home.

When I crossed the threshold for the first time this morning, though, I discovered the house was a mess.

I approached the day knowing full well that the first part of my work would involve cleaning and making the space usable, but the labor was necessary.  When I finished, I couldn't wait to dig in to all my projects that had been stewing in my mind for so many busy nights and days away at school.

I started the day tending to the Maxwell.  So much has happened in my planning process while I've been away.  A gentleman in California found me a genuine magneto (which is a huge step).  I now have the dimensions of the gas tank, for when I make it/have it made.  I have inquired about the springs and systems for the brakes, and I now know about the fuel lines.  I have a better handle on the color scheme for the car, and I have leads on material to use for the brake shoes (I'll be explaining all of this in the future as I reach these steps, so don't worry, I'm not leaving out details altogether).

In the short term, though, I needed to get the left side rear brakes apart.  I made good headway on this last summer, finding that the left side was coming apart a ton easier and quicker than the right side, but I still had issues separating the elements of the parking brakes.

Once I gathered most of my tools, the hand lights flickered on again and I settled in beside the old car, nestling myself against its cold, metal skin.  (I never did find Thor, though, which is a bit disconcerting, although it may have been off helping my mother lay some bricks several weeks ago.)

My first order of business was to clean the grime off the brakes so I could assess the state of the cotter pins I would be removing.  Armed with my safety goggles, I plugged in the ancient Montgomery Ward drill with the gnarly metal cleaning brush attachment and began scraping away the years.  By the time I finished, the sleek metal casing of the drill and most of my body were covered in brown and black dust that had been ripped from the car's metal.

In a pleasant surprise, I learned that the left side was, in fact, not more rusted than the right, it was merely covered in more gunk.  Suddenly I could see the subtle loop in the top of the crushed cotter pin on the parking brake.  I could see traces of blue paint left over from the Maxwell's glory days.  It was wonderful to see after such a short time working.

Using an old nail and a hammer with a wobbly head, I removed the cotter pin (the small hole in the right center of the picture) and squirted some WD-40 in the space it once occupied.  Using a series of chisels with increasingly wider tips, I began hammering between the brake support on the axle and the arm of the parking brake.  Slowly but surely this increased the space (after I filed a little off the end of the square post that makes up the actual braking mechanism), and in about ten minutes I had the pieces apart and ready to clean.

Pieces of the parking brake before...

For the first part of the cleaning process I put the newly-freed pieces to the wire brush, spinning the 40+ year-old motorized brush/grinder combo for maybe 20 minutes.  When I was done, the pieces were mostly rust-free but were pitted and rough.  I ground some surfaces of the parts before giving them all a bath in carb cleaner.  After letting them soak for a while, I started the smoothing process, which is still underway.

Pieces of the parking brake after cleaning (but before the smoothing)

In the meantime I put the right rear tire back on the car, although it seems to wobble a little more than when I took it off.  I suspect the locking pin may be a little off, or I may need to re-tighten the lug nut.  We'll see.  I'm not too worried about that for now; instead, I want to finish up the rear brakes and be done with them.  That way I can focus on the transmission and whatever else I want to get a start on this summer.

I have so many plans in my head, and I know what the next steps will be and in what order they need to be done---which is weird because I've never restored a brass car before.  I've just given it all so much thought that I know nearly every major piece of the car and what is required to make them functional and like new.  For now, though, I hope to finish the smoothing process on the left rear brakes and the axle tomorrow, but it's a time-consuming process, so we'll see.  In the meantime I've been cleaning and smoothing the fender supports on the front so that we can set the new fenders on the car to prevent their warping.

The supports weren't in bad shape, partially because my grandfather painted them long ago to protect them from rust.  In the days before he did this, though, they had gotten pitted and a little rough, but that's nothing I can't reverse.

I cleaned and started smoothing them this afternoon and evening, making great progress on the right side support in particular.  That's another piece I hope to have finished tomorrow, but the forecast of rain may delay the drying of the filler and primer.  It doesn't have to be perfect at this point; I just want to get the fenders sitting in a natural position.

I'll show some more pictures of the supports and things in the next post, but for now that's enough.  In all, it's been a wonderful day.