Sitting patiently in the rafters for 50 years

It's days like today that reaffirm my love of The Garage.  Sometimes, unexpectedly, that old stone structure springs something on me that I couldn't have seen coming, even if it fell from the rafters.  Despite the never-ending battle against dust, the constant necessity for cleaning and the bevy of rusty implements that always threaten to drain me of my blood, sometimes The Garage just blows me away.

The magneto gear.  Note the cutouts.

I have been extremely busy working up there lately, namely on the Maxwell, but partially on cleaning and organizing.  I put the mag on the car in a dry run only to learn that I was missing a crucial piece that marries the magneto shaft to the magneto gear (which is inside the crankcase).

This is a very unique part, and I'm absolutely positive that we have nothing like it.  Held in with a D-shaped pin, the little metal sleeve fits around the magneto shaft and is held onto it by the mysterious nut and split washer that I've mentioned before.  The little sleeve has two wings on the end closest to the mag, and these fit into notches on the center sleeve of the larger magneto gear.  Between these wings and the D-shaped pin, this is what allows the spinning of the car's engine to spin the magneto and thus distribute the spark.

The magneto shaft with the nut and split washer.

A World War II vet in California graciously sent one of his to me from his Maxwell Model G, but thankfully it's the same size.  So with that, I turned it over to my father.  He took it to some men who can use their machines not only to replicate this part but to train others in the machine's operation.  It's a win-win!

In the last couple of weeks those men have scanned the piece into a CAD program, measuring it to the third decimal point before using another calibrated machine to corroborate their numbers.  They were actually impressed at how this small, well-machined piece could have been made 100 years ago, so they're going to try a couple of different methods to recreate it---I'll let you know what they find if they are successful.

In the meantime, I learned that the Maxwell spark plug wires (which should be 7mm wires, but can be nine if need be) were brown, not oak like I originally thought.  Using some old shoestrings, I figured out how much of the wire is needed to reach the four plugs as well as the coil.  Assuming I want some extra, here's what I found:

• The first two spark plugs require 36 inches of wire to reach them.
• The back two plugs need 28 inches of wire apiece.
• The coil wire, of which there is only one, can be 20" in length.
• This adds up to 148 inches in total.

Figuring out the distance to the coil was tricky, though, since I didn't know where the coil attached to the car.  Consulting another member of the Maxwell Registry, I found that the part I figured to be the coil holder was, in fact, the coil holder, and it attaches using two bolts to the front hole on the left firewall support bracket.  The top hole goes on top of the bracket's front hole, and the bottom part of the bracket sits on the bottom lip of the frame rail.  This way, the coil is hidden under and angled floor board and is not that far away from the magneto.

This is what the left rear frame looked like.

I'm also waiting on the measurements from this same gentleman on the Maxwell's oil tank.  Holding just two quarts of oil, the tank is relatively small and shouldn't be hard to make, but my lack of a sight gauge is a bit difficult.  If nothing else, I'm thinking of taking cardboard and mocking up a tank to see how it fits in the engine bay, and I can adjust the measurements from there.  The original tank was sweat soldered together, which is something I presently don't know how to do, but we can work on that later.  If I have to weld it, I'll weld it, but I'd prefer not to (given that there isn't a weld on any other part of the car).

I should qualify that last statement, I suppose.  There are now welds on one part of the car, and I'm fairly proud of it.

The plate is now gone, so I can make a new one.

The left rear corner of the frame, to the keen-eyed who may remember, was incredibly rusty and full of holes, and one of those mysterious plates that may have been used to square the frame was nearly gone.  After considering my options, I figured that I could not only fill the holes but also replace the plate with some leftover sheet metal from the body I made last summer.

I measured the remnants of the old plate before knocking it out, finding it was a triangle that was six inches long on one side and seven on the other.  The longer of the two rested against the rearmost crosspiece, but not smoothly.  There had been some repairs done sometime in the past to this area, so I had to make cut-outs in the new piece with a Dremel tool after tracing around the obstructions.  This was mostly trial and error, but eventually I got a suitable union between the two, so I clamped it in place and began the welding process.  Using relatively small rods with a medium-to-low setting on the welder, I was able to fill in all the holes and, by doing so, affix the new plate to the frame rails.

The new plate with cutouts.

I used this opportunity to fill other deeper holes in the back half of the frame, and after grinding it down and laying some smoothing filler over it, the entire back half of the frame looked brand new!  Even though it will be covered by the lower body, I felt this was an important thing to do not just for aesthetics but also for the strength of the metal.  Hopefully my work will stand the test of time, but that remains to be seen.

With the holes filled, for the first time in over a year I put the back half of the lower body back on the car.  Along with the fenders, which were already in place, I put the new front halves of the lower body onto the car and stepped back to admire the gestalt.  For the first time in a long time, the Maxwell was truly looking like a car again.

Here's after the first (messy) round of welding.

So while I wait for the integral components to getting it running (the wires, the oil tank measurements, etc.), I thought I would tidy up some more of the bodywork---namely the running boards.  By focusing on these key pieces of the car, I would finally have an idea about exactly where the fenders sit in relation to the frame.  A correctly-installed running board would allow me to correctly line up the fenders and finally get them hooked to the car (instead of just sitting/hanging on the tires and fender supports).

From my research and from other Maxwell owners, the running boards were either ash or oak, 3/4" thick.  Using the fenders and the arm that holds the board, I determined it should be nine inches wide.  After fiddling with the fenders and getting them lined up (which was tricky without hooking them on), I estimated that the running board should be around 48 inches long, though this was meant to be an overestimate.

So all I had to do was call up the local lumber yard and order the wood, right?  If only.

Done for now!

They first quoted me a very cheap price for pine, which was in the ballpark of $7.00.  I told them that I need ash or oak.

"We don't carry ash," they said.

"What about oak?"

"How long do you need it?"

"I need two pieces around 48 inches in length."

"We don't have that size.  You can either get two feet longer or two feet shorter than that."

"How much is the longer one?"

"That will be $80.00."

Ouch.  Needless to say, I quickly said no to that.  That was a ridiculous amount for something that is a relatively common building material.  So I called the local Menard's for the same order, which they quoted at $62 of oak (they didn't have ash, either).  That was still a bit high for me, so we looked online and found a website that had poplar (which was commonly used for the floorboards, not the running boards) for $30.  This was going to be our plan, and we would probably order it later in the day.

So in the meantime I went back to work in The Garage cleaning a seldom-seen corner that houses a cabinet full of parts from a closing store my grandfather acquired back in the '50s.

My father soon got home from work, and I told him of my troubles at ordering the wood for the boards, and I asked if he could help me line up the fenders to double check my measurements.  As we stood there between the Maxwell and the old Farmall tractor, we began looking above us for some reason, perhaps out of boredom or curiosity.

Incredibly, directly above our heads was a beautiful, dusty, dark board stretched across the tops of several rafters.  Buried beneath a pile of plywood, chrome mouldings from old cars and my father's childhood toboggan, this long, broad board stared back at us.  Extremely out of place with the other pieces of wood around it, neither my father or I had ever noticed this nearly perfect piece of hardwood, looking down like the Cheshire Cat smiling from a tree branch high above our heads.

I climbed up onto the wheel of the tractor and slowly maneuvered the board from under the pile, careful not to upset a late '50s Oldsmobile grille that rested quietly on the object of interest.

When I climbed down, this amazingly out-of-place piece of lumber stood upright, propped against the tractor for us to inspect its dusty surface.  It looked like it was oak, and this was confirmed after I cleaned off all the dust and bird droppings from its wooden skin.  It was 3/4" thick, one foot wide and six feet tall.  It was exactly what I needed for a strong running board, and we were left dumbfounded by its presence.

I took it outside where my father and I cut it down to size.  One end had a split right in the center of the board, so I cut this end off when I sought to make the board 48 inches in length.  Improbably, what I just cut off was actually a very suitable piece of wood for the angled floor board that covered the magneto and the coil.  Even more amazing, after I measured how much of that floor board I would have to remove, I found that the split would be completely cut off with less than half an inch to spare.  It was like this random piece of oak was made for the Maxwell, sitting patiently in the rafters for 50 years while it gathered dust and waited for the day I would call upon it to become part of the old car.

Perhaps my grandfather saw the same potential in this wood that I did, which is why it was placed in the back of the garage nearest to the Maxwell.  Perhaps he put it up there with no purpose in mind, but the voice in our heads that told my father and I to look up today knew that we would get the message now.

I cut the running board to its correct width, and in doing so I was left with a narrow sliver of oak that can also be used as a regular floor board when that time comes.  Amazingly, only a few inches of this piece of oak will not be used, and I'm still blown away whenever I think about it.

Before I left The Garage today, I walked with my newly-hewn lumber and placed it on the car.  For the first time since 1910, the little Maxwell got a new running board, and damn did it look good!  I positioned the fenders to rest on top of the board, and in doing so I saw them slide a bit closer to their correct location---something I will measure and mark and photograph before I begin the attaching process.  Then I will take those measurements and apply them to the other side, whenever I get around to finding another piece of suitable wood.

I stood back to admire our work, and I thanked whatever or whoever put that board up there.  I folded up some rags and took off my gloves, setting them gently on the red paint of the Farmall before turning to leave.  As I did, I shot one more glance skyward, partly out of curiosity, partly out of amazement.

Hanging four feet from the board we just discovered was another one just like it.

Letting the cauldron boil and bubble the rust away

What a busy last few weeks it has been, toiling away in the old stone Garage.  In a very short time, the Maxwell looks like a car again, and I'm starting to realize that this folly of an adventure may actually lead to a working car.  There are many unknowns, but it's wonderful to see.

I'll update you more completely in a future post, but I want to touch on a topic I've mentioned in passing several times this summer without a proper explanation:  Electrolytic rust removal.  Yes, I can hear the droves of people (probably all four of you) heading to the exits at this point, but stick with me!  I promise this can be a helpful topic.  If nothing else, hang around to see how many times I've shocked myself by trying to mix electricity with water...

Here's the test item hanging from the board before cleaning.

My delving into electrolytic rust removal actually started a while back, after reading about the topic on countless restoration websites.  They say it's a hands-off way of removing all of the rust from the surface of metal without the messy grinding, naval jelly, WD40 or other wives' tales of how to get something clean.

Let me preface this by saying that the process works, and it works really well.  But how?

I don't want to bore you with a sciency explanation of what regular, red rust is and why it's bad, because believe me, I could (and I would probably be the only one enjoying it).  In order for you to understand electrolysis, though, you have to know some things in a metal nutshell.

The point is, after getting weathered over time, a chemical reaction takes place at the surface of a metal object, and the process of the metal being eaten away leads to rust forming from the new compound---iron oxide.  This happens when metal is exposed to water and carbon dioxide.  The iron acts as an anode, which means it gives up negatively charged electrons, while other parts of it act as a cathode, which is the opposite.  This is what usually can be brushed off or flakes off when the part is handled.  Underneath is basically newly-formed magnetite, or "Black rust," which is what we're working to reverse (I swear this knowledge will come in handy later).

Here's my initial setup with rods and wires. It's not high tech.

In most cases, when water hits the metal, whether through rain or humidity in the air, the water and carbon dioxide that makes up a portion of our atmosphere (0.04%) combine to make an acid.  The oxygen component of the acid reacts with iron and oxidizes it (which means that the iron loses electrons.  The opposite to this is called reduction, which is gaining of electrons).  The electrons go from anode to cathode, or from negative to positive.  Think of it like how one end of a magnet is only attracted to the opposite end of another magnet.  Like charges repel, opposite charges attract.

So, once we know this, how can we reverse the process?  The metal underneath the outside corrosion should still be okay (unless it's really rusted all the way through), so we need to remove the rust without hurting the underlying metal.

So let's use electricity and water---two things that you normally shouldn't combine, but since this is The Garage, why not?

Alright, ready to connect!

To set up your electrolysis, you'll need a five gallon bucket, five gallons of water, some washing soda (this is different than baking soda), some metal wires, a battery charger and some pieces of metal that you don't mind getting really rusty.

After filling the bucket with five gallons of water, add five tablespoons of washing soda and mix it in.  Washing soda is not baking soda.  The former is sodium carbonate and the latter is sodium BIcarbonate.  Long story short, the former makes the process go faster than the latter, but if you can't find washing soda, baking soda will work, just not as quickly.

Using the wire, connect all the pieces of sacrificial metal together in a series, but do NOT close the loop, as your battery charger won't appreciate it (one of many ways that you can upset your charger).  Set these pieces of metal (rebar works extremely well and is quite cheap) into the water, but make sure one of them sticks up above the water so you can connect the battery charger.

The next step is to submerge the item you want to de-rust in the solution.  It is extremely important that you don't let the object touch any of the metal rods, or else your battery charger will get very angry (thankfully this is easy to avoid depending on how you wire your rods together, which I swear is not a euphemism).

The way that I first did this was to set a piece of wood across the bucket (since wood does not conduct electricity), then hang my part from it using a separate piece of wire.  You can also submerge your metal part into the water if part of it stays above the water line.  Then you can clip the battery charger here instead of the wire.

Either way, when you're ready to start, hook the positive lead from the charger to one of the rods (or to the wire connecting them).  You need to make sure all of your connections are tightly wound to the rods and the object, or else this won't work.

The negative lead will attach to the object/the wire suspending the object.  You can check the connections in the rods by lightly brushing the negative lead against each one to see if there's a spark.  If not, readjust the wires and make sure they are wound tightly around the rods.  It may also help to run the portion of the rod where the wire wraps around it under a wire brush to make sure you have the cleanest contact possible.

When your connection is solid and the charger shows a current is flowing, you should notice tiny bubbles coming from the metal part and around the rods.  Congrats!  It's working!  But why?

By adding sodium carbonate to the water, you're giving the newly-made solution a way to carry ions between your anode and cathode, creating a current.  Sodium is positive, so it will move to the negative connection (the part), whereas the carbonate is negative, so it moves to the positive.  This helps create an environment where the black rust can be reconverted into iron.

So once the part is cooking, you can leave it for several hours, and it should be fine.  Just as a heads-up, use only regular iron pieces in the solution.  Trying to de-rust any plated metal or stainless steel or anything won't work very well, and it will release dangerous gases (which are never good).  Also, don't spend a ton of time breathing in the gases from the regular process, either, and avoid sparks or open flames while you're doing it, too.  The process won't suddenly explode, but why take a chance?

The pick head after it was taken out of the solution.

After the piece has been in the solution for a while, you should see its surface turn black in places, meaning that the process is actually working.  When you remove the part, IMMEDIATELY wipe the piece dry, removing that black coating and staving off the corrosion from starting right away.  You can even run the part under the wire brush after drying it off, and this should yield a brilliant, bare metal finish.  But know that this bare metal is again susceptible to rust, so either prime and paint the piece or oil it right away.

So has this worked for me?  Absolutely!  I tried cleaning a random pick head that I found in The Garage a while back.  It didn't have a handle, and it was rusty, so it seemed perfect for an experiment.  I hung it from a wire and dipped it in the solution, letting the cauldron boil and bubble the rust away.

Oh, hello Beale Brothers logo.

When the day was done, I removed the piece and wiped it dry, suddenly noting the wonderful manufacturer's logo on its side.  I had never been able to see it before!  From this information (and in true Garage fashion), I found that the pick was 100 years old and produced in Alton, Illinois, by the Beale Brothers Company, which ceased existence well before 1920.  Go figure!

I have also cooked several Maxwell parts in the solution, from the coil holder to the brake rods and exhaust manifold.  With each of these, I let the piece stay in the solution for several hours before wiping it off, running it quickly under the wire brush and priming it (except for the manifold, there).  I'm always amazed at what brilliantly shiny metal awaits under the black coating, and I know with certainty that rust will not suddenly spring up from under my primer and paint, since I eliminated nearly all of it in the process.

So yes, electricity and water together are normally dangerous, but as long as you pay attention and make sure your setup is sound beforehand, you will soon have the most thorough solution to rust problems, and it won't even require grinding, lathering on naval jelly or being covered in dust after wire-brushing the rust away.  This novella of a public service announcement was brought to you by Woodsie's Garage.

At the time using a giant, sparking machine from the 1960s

Just as the seasons slowly cycle around the calendar, so too does the school year that inevitably brings me back to summer.  The massive dichotomy of the stress and difficulty of school versus the casual, thoroughly enjoyable summer always gives me mixed emotions---I know that the wonderful freedom of break will allow me to get back in touch with myself and my true loves in life, but I also know that it will end sooner than I'd like.

It would be detrimental to sit and mope or dwell on the finite summer, since doing so guarantees that it will only pass quicker.  Instead, I choose to relax on my break by getting as exhausted as possible.  My mantra has always been to sleep when you have to, and in the meantime do everything you possibly can so that one will leave this summer tired (but in the best kind of "tired" possible).

That's why most nights at home I'm actually up later than when I'm at school, yet I continue to get up at the same time as during the academic year.  This is doable since I'm far more active than during med school, so the urge to nap always fails to creep up on me when I'm at home.

This year was awful, to put it simply.  But the purpose of this blog is not to waste your time reading about my troubles, it's to talk about cars and rust and history and racing.  What I will say is that I had several one-two punches throughout the semesters, for a while I grew quite resentful and disheartened with med school, and I have reassessed my desire to stay in this profession more than once.  I have also learned quite a bit about myself, I've grown as a person, and I've been attempting (but failing) to enjoy the single life for the first time in my adult existence.

This has also meant that my work in The Garage this summer is far more therapeutic than normal, and I'm excited for the progress that I hope to make in the ensuing weeks.  Some of that progress began just a few days ago.

Unfortunately, just as spring turns to summer, it seems that every winter The Garage's interior explodes in a mess of dust, clutter and disarray.  That usually translates to the first couple days of the summer being cleaning days, putting The Garage back together so I can use it regularly.

So after the initial sweeping, folding of scattered tarps, reorganizing of the work bench and getting stung by a wasp, I had to decide what I wanted to do first.

Magneto almost secured behind the engine.

Since the end of last summer, the Maxwell had been reassembled and tucked away quietly in the corner, buttoned up with its new body and freed transmission.  Today I brought the Splitdorf Model F magneto up and put it on the car, although through correspondence with a WWII vet out in California, I learned that it's missing a little piece that allows it to interface with the magneto gear (which runs off the engine spinning so that it can deliver spark in the correct order).  I'll either have to make one from my imagination or have him send me one of his so I can make a replica.  Either way that's probably doable, as I already have an idea of what the interface will look like.

Part of the reason I think this is doable is because of a random (and, for anyone else, probably unfulfilling) gift I received for Christmas:  A small welder.  Over the past few days I've been brushing up on my welding skills, although I admit they were never very developed in the first place.  Still, in the decade or more since my last welding experience---at the time using a giant, sparking machine from the 1960s---I imagine I've lost some of my touch for fusing metal together.

Here's my shoddy---but effective---setup.

So using very thin pieces of metal left over from when I made the lower body last year, I have been fiddling with the settings on the fun little welder.  Ideally this will prepare myself for when I join the body I made with the one that was made in the past.  I've burned through the material several times, but in the past two or three days I've gotten to where I can make pretty steady lines, and I've developed a much better feel for getting the arc going.  It doesn't help that the sticks I'm using are probably 30 years old and soggy, but once I get them hot they work just like they should.

Another project of mine has been running in the background of my garage work for the past couple of days.  After thinking about trying it with the '72 Honda's gas tank for a couple of years, I finally began to dabble in electrolytic rust removal.

And here's the "before" picture of the pick.

After seeing it the other day on Reddit, I set about to make my own setup in a five-gallon bucket.  I'll explain the full process in another post (this one's getting long), but it's been fascinating to see it work, both on a Maxwell part and on a pick head that I determined was over 100 years old.

Anywho, this summer is off to a good, productive start, and I hope to keep that up.  So stick with me as I get back into the swing of writing these blogs and working on the Maxwell (and my countless other projects).  In the meantime, take care and thanks, as always, for reading!

I could enjoy many an afternoon in this wonderful place

It's been a busy last couple of weeks working on this car, so I'm happy to report that the little Maxwell is closer than it's ever been to starting.

When we last spoke, I had just rebuilt the oil pump and reattached it to a freshly-lubed engine.  The firewall was off the car for the first time in my life, as was the cowl.  Best of all, I had done a ton of research online and through talking with a couple of fellow Maxwell owners, thus filling in a spreadsheet I have created to address the lingering questions I have about the car.  At some point I'll plug all that information in here.

Anyway, the car has been cooperating relatively well after that steering mechanism quagmire.  I found plenty of bolts to match the ones missing from the top plates on the gearbox and crank case, and I've now smoothed and primed the entire engine.  This required special engine primer (that can withstand heat up to 500F) and the taping off of the bare areas on the crank case.  What's left is now a wonderfully homogeneous engine color (for the first time in at least half a century), and it's started to show me how brilliant the power plant will look when it's painted.

From the right side, cylinders 3 and 4 are primed.

Speaking of which, that's another thing I learned.  Contrary to the paint that currently adorns the T-heads, the color of the Maxwell Q3 engine was black.  This means the primer caps and the spark plug caps will stand out even more when they're re-brassed.  This also means choosing the spark plug wires themselves will be even more important---a decision with which I'm still wrestling as I type.  As of tonight, I'm between the classic "oak" lacquered finish with black and red dual tracers or the yellow with black and red tracers.

The hoses also need to be correct, and I feel like I shouldn't order the spark plug wires until I know what color the hoses will be (heaven forbid their colors clash).  My father believes some of the brass cars had black or even red hoses, but he's not sure; thus, I will have to investigate further.

Once I get the type of hoses and color of plug wires down, I'll measure out the lengths needed to get to the cylinders, plus a couple of other wires to go back and forth between the mag and the coil, the battery and the coil switch, and the coil and the coil switch.

On one of the engine mounts, I found original blue paint and
some red that apparently adorned the car after a re-spray.

Thankfully any modern 6-volt coil or battery one can buy today is much better than the kinds that were available in 1910, so then the issue is disguising them to look period.  Supposedly an empty can of Metamucil is the exact size of the old coil, so the modern coil can be hidden inside of it and mounted on the bracket (I just need to figure out where the bracket mounts).  The battery sits directly under the front passenger seat, I'd say.

A major issue I have is the absence of a Splitdorf coil switch.  This was the 1910 version of an ignition in a modern car.  One would keep the switch in the "Off" position until it was ready to start, then the switch would be moved to the "Battery" position.  Once the car was cranked and running, the switch would be moved to "Magneto" since the mag is powerful enough to keep the spark going, whereas it's not strong enough to start the car.

I have a strong suspicion I can fashion a coil switch that would work, but I'm not sure how to do that (and it would probably take a bit more electrical knowledge than what I currently have).  Ideally I want to get the correct Splitdorf one, but I know that's a slim chance.  In its stead I just want to get one that looks correct or is of a similar vintage.

Speaking of fashioning things, I talked to the head of the Maxwell Registry, Vern Campbell, and he's sending me pictures of his 1910 Q2's oil tank.  Mine is missing, but I believe it's something I'll be able to make at some point (or have it made).  It's a little rectangular tank that sits on the engine side of the firewall.  Rectangular at the top, the bottom comes to a point where a shutoff valve sends oil to the pump and then to the drip gauge on the dash.  It's painted black, and on the other side of the firewall, a brass and glass sight gauge shows the driver and passengers the oil level in the tank (the capacity of which is just two quarts).

While I can make the tank, the brass sight gauge will be a bit more tricky.  It wouldn't be impossible for me to make this, though, but it wouldn't be easy.  We'll see.

I also spoke to the only other person in the world (who I can successfully contact) who has a 1910 Q3 like mine.  Howard is a jovial man who was working in his garage when I called him.  He doesn't seem to do email, so he's going to take some pictures of his car for me and send them by mail.  I asked for him to take some pictures of the rear body/doors, and I think some of the engine, too.  Either way, anything he sends will provide a wealth of information that I currently don't have.  I never would have imagined seeing pictures of a car exactly like mine someday, so that will be thrilling.

Both heads and side panel painted, this time from the left side.

I finished making some new linkages for the brakes and clutch, and now those are on the car.  I continued smoothing and priming the frame, and I also WD-40'ed the heck out of the tube that runs across the frame to move the internal and external brakes.  I asked Campbell how he got his loosened up, and he chuckled, noting that was literally the only part of his car that he did not disassemble during restoration.  He did what I have done by spraying it and moving it around, and that loosened up the brakes.

Sadly, talking to Howard, it appears I'm missing the interior brake shoes to the car.  I thought I just had that diamond-shaped parking brake, but he tells me there should be a second set of shoes inside the drum (almost mimicking disc brakes).  I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

Here's a busy shot from the rear of the car with the newer body sitting to the left.

Today was also an interesting story.  Yesterday I had taken the existing body off the car (the new steel lower body that someone had started to make on the rear) and made measurements for the front part of the lower body.  Despite the rear end flaring outward, which would have been extremely difficult to make, the front half is straight and vertical, with the transition taking place where the body is its thinnest---in the three inches under the rear door frame.  This leads me to believe that I can make that front half, since we have some rusted remains of the original at the back of The Garage.

I scribbled down some drawings with measurements galore, and in the end I was convinced I could fabricate a body.  My father, who has dealt with metal for the better part of 40 years, figured that the original bodies used on Maxwells were around 20-gauge steel, but the newer one that sat on the back of our car was 18-gauge.  For strength's sake, I decided to go with 18-gauge for my lower body.

Armed with my drawings, my father and I headed out to the local scrapyard this afternoon for what he intended to be a reconnaissance mission.  The heaps of rusted treasures that greeted us were enough to pique my interest to the point that I could enjoy many an afternoon in this wonderful place.  It also tells me that we're going to need the truck to get this stuff home.

When we found that they had suitable metal, most likely from coil ends, the gentleman offered to cut it to size for us with a plasma torch.  I figured this would be much quicker than the Dremel tool I planned to use, so we agreed, but we needed to go home and get Black Beauty first.

(If you don't remember, my mother has been wanting a vintage truck for years, merely for the purpose of "hauling stuff."  My father found a monstrous 1979 Ford pickup in a nearby town for a few hundred dollars, so we got it.  The truck, which has a massive engine, a lift kit and mudding tires, is affectionately called Black Beauty, due to its eggshell black finish [which included a green tailgate, a Lariat door on a non-Lariat truck and diamond plate running boards].)

After a few cranks, the old truck roared to life, presumably burning a gallon of gas in the process.  Lumbering and rocking its way down the road, we made it back to the scrap yard 15 minutes later.  Despite my father's concerns that she may not start when we went to leave, we headed back into the building to get the metal.

Here's the fellow using the plasma torch to cut the new panels.

The gentleman who would go on to help us stood by a large saw, cutting some angle irons for another man who was making some targets for a shooting range.  We talked about the Maxwell, and he relayed the fantastic story of the "Field of Dreams" in Pierce, Nebraska, where loads of new Chevrolets were left in a field in the 1960s.

While we conversed, the man helping him came back into the room.

"Is that your Ford out there?" he asked us.

"The black one?  Yes, that's ours."

"Nice truck!  Is that a '70 or a '71?  Those custom taillights were only made for those years."

"It's a 1979, but it's a patchwork of several trucks," I laughed.

He went on to tell us how his brother had a truck just like that years ago, and how it was a wonderful machine.  Black Beauty had an admirer.

The gentleman cut our panels to my specifications, and in the end we had spent just $20 for sheet metal that I intend to turn into a Maxwell body.  Despite the fact that I've never done sheet metal work, this one should be interesting.

And here's the finished product.  I can't wait to start fabricating!

This car doesn't always like 'simple'

Why is it that summer always seems to fly by?  Here we are, cruising along and enjoying life, and July is over.  August, that month that inevitably offers a dichotomy of joy and sorrow, that month that sees the state fair while also begrudgingly ushering the return of school, is a month I love, but I also despise it.

Despite the time flying, I have not sat idly by and let the days go past.  Instead I've made wonderful progress on the Maxwell, far beyond what I thought I would accomplish in three short months (my God, it will have been three months since school ended...).  I won't go step-by-step, but I do want to chronicle my progress.

With the cowl and firewall gone, it's a much different car.

When we last spoke, I had just restored the radiator fan and reattached it to the cooling inlet pipe on the top of the engine.  If you saw the car now, though, you might notice a few more things have changed.  For one, I completely removed the firewall and the cowl over the engine.  I unbolted it from the frame and set it aside for later.  This gifted me better access to the reclusive corners of the engine, which has since allowed me to progress greatly on my cleaning.

Undoing five bolts on the right side frame rail, I delicately removed the steering column and steering mechanism, careful not to rip out the oil lines that snake from the oil pump to each of the cylinder bases.  What faced me was a dark, slightly rusted contraption that somehow translated a turn of the steering wheel into organized movements of the front tires.

This is the housing as seen from the front right.  Resting on its side,
the floor board can be seen with linkages still attached.

As with most parts of this car, after staring at it for quite some time, I formulated a process that I hoped would allow me to disassemble the entire thing.  The problem was, I wasn't sure how the steering wheel was held onto the steering column, and I didn't know how to disassemble little brass rods and lever arms that control throttle and spark advance.

A large nut was first removed from the swing arm that has a ball joint on the end of it.  This held a square peg that passed through the metal housing, held in place with a bolt that passed through a groove cut in the corner of the square.  In theory I should have been able to pull the whole thing free, but this car doesn't always like 'simple.'

What ensued was a titanic, two-hour-long battle that involved me hitting the thing with every hammer I could, heating it with a blowtorch, spraying it with every penetrating fluid I could find, then eventually deciding I didn't need to get the damn thing apart in the first place.  I figured I could smooth and prime it the way it was, so I found it prudent to reassemble it.  The only problem was, the threads on that main lever arm were warped from my incessant pounding.

It took me a little bit to stare and process what just happened, but an overwhelming disappointment dawned on me after realizing I had made such a rookie mistake.  I tried to re-thread the nut back onto the arm but was unsuccessful.  Of course we didn't have a die that was big enough to recut the threads, so I found several small screwdrivers and chiseled the bent ones back into place one thread at a time.

About half an hour into my repair I realized that if this didn't work, I would need to take the whole thing apart anyway to go get it fixed by someone with a big enough die.  Ironically, I had to press on after trying, failing, deciding to backtrack and failing again.  I employed a new method using a few increasingly larger chisels, also getting help from the blowtorch.  Amazingly, after quite some time I noticed the arm had moved ever so slightly, backing its way out of the housing.  I continued hammering at odd angles and prying, turning the arm every chance I got.  Somehow, in the end, I got it free of the housing and everything else came apart.

The arm is now free!  That was way more work than it should
have been, but now it works very well.

After an hour or so of sculpting the bent sections, the nut took to the threads almost as easily as before, and we were back in business.  Another bolt sat perpendicular to the steering column, and this helped hold the column casing into the aforementioned housing.  With this removed the column (and thus the gear on its end that turned the tires) slid free.

Eventually learning that the steering wheel was held on with a taper pin, I figured out which end to hit, but of course we didn't have an adequate size of drift punch to remove it.  Add in the fact that the opposite head had mushroomed over the edges of the hold, and I had to get the Dremel tool and a cutting wheel to smooth it and cut it back to size.

After using (and bending) a selection of bolts and drill bits and nails, the pin dropped out of the column and the steering wheel was free.  This allowed me to remove the inner rod and gear from the metal column casing, which I then took out and smoothed and primed.  In the meantime I took to the spark advance arms and rods.  Thankfully these were held in place by straight pins, but as before, I lacked a correct drift punch.  I looked in every drawer of our tool boxes, but I found nothing.  I decided to wait until my father came home from work to see if he knew where one could be found.

Oddly, he walked over to the drawer (which I had just emptied), opened it, and there lay a drift punch exactly the size I needed.  I have no idea...

With everything apart, I began to soak the brass parts in carb cleaner while taking everything else to the wire wheel.  After this, I smoothed and primed every piece, and I put the housing back together sans the steering column.  This will be much easier to maneuver into the frame rails; I can always put the steering column on later.

This was originally a 1910-1920s Ford wheel, but it's the right size!

On that same front, during some of my explorations recently I uncovered several wooden steering wheels.  As you may have noticed from the pictures here, the Maxwell has the arms to hold a wooden wheel, but there is none on the car.  This could have rotted away whilst the car sat pinned under the barn, or it could have been broken in the collapse.  Either way, all I have are the brass arms.  Interestingly, one of the wheels I uncovered should fit the Maxwell, so today I repaired a crack, sanded it down, and have the wheel ready to stain mahogany (which, from what I understand, is what Maxwell used as a color).

The problem is, the barn collapse bent the brass arms, so they don't line up with the holes on the wooden wheel.  With my father's engineer mind, he and I started a long process of hitting the arms and squeezing them between blocks on the vice, and slowly we're getting it back into shape.  At the end of the working day up in The Garage, he and I had the holes much closer to perfect than they were, but we still have a long way to go.  If I have to drill new holes, I will, too.

Here's the wheel after some initial sanding.

Also over the past few days I took the oil pump off the car---held in place by three bolts that hold a metal plate to the gearbox case.  With these removed, the oil pump slides forward and un-meshes with a gear that is attached to the exhaust gear.  From here, I removed the eight flathead screws on the front of the pump, which gave me access to its (wonderfully simple) interior.

I found out that there are two compartments with gears in the oil pump, each one of which has a solid gear that rotates with a hole in its metal.  This hole periodically lines up with holes that lead to the oil lines as the gear spins, thus distributing oil to wherever the car needs.  The middle wall of the oil pump sits between two gears that are attached to each other.  The posterior one turns from a gear that is attached to the gear that meshes with the one inside the gearbox (I know this is sounding rather abstract; I'll stop).  In all, it's a brilliant system, and the inside of the pump was incredibly shiny.

Piece by piece I disassembled the entire pump, periodically soaking parts in carb cleaner or running them under the wire brush.  Making sure not to damage the gaskets (which were very thin and plasticky), I discovered the last piece to remove was the gear that meshed with the exhaust gear.  This was held in place by a tight fit on a square peg that turned the first gear inside the pump.  Using a punch, this came out and revealed four flathead screw heads (which held the pump to the three-holed plate).  With these removed, the pump was now completely disassembled.

This is the pump when I took it off the car.

As of right now the pump is back together, spinning so much better than when I first tackled it.  It's back on the car, and it looks fantastic (even catching the eye of Steve Matchett the other day on Twitter!).

This is the oil pump completely disassembled and cleaned.

But this post is long enough.  In the next installment I'll go over my process for freeing up the engine, finding several new parts, thoughts on making a body and more.  Onward!

And the finished oil pump!

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.