Old cars, old engines keeping the dream alive

Everyone bitten by the car bug loves a good car show, whether it’s one of the big ones occupying several city blocks or the little small town ones where the locals show off their rides. Or the Friday night cruise-ins where cool cars come and go like a scene out of “American Graffiti.”

But there’s something really special when you spot a moving car show, a line of vintage automobiles motoring along on their way to a common destination, all sharing the adventure of the open road. People wave, some honk their horns or give the motorists on tour a thumbs-up as the vehicles roll past. Everybody’s having a good time.

That’s how it was with the Wichita chapter of the Horseless Carriage Club of America last weekend, as a group of collectors went exploring in pre-World War II automobiles, radiating out from Newton and returning there each evening with new stories and experiences to share.

We were lucky enough to run into one of the hosts of a destination stop a week or so before the event. Tim Unruh invited us to come over to his big shop on the edge of McPherson and enjoy the cars and check out his latest projects.

“We’re going to fire the `Big Engine’ up for them,” he told me.

I had heard stories about the Big Engine, but never got the chance to see it run, so I put the date on my laptop’s calendar so it would remind me in plenty of time.

I showed up, camera in hand, at the appointed hour, but the cars weren’t there yet. Unruh was tinkering with the Big Engine, an old stationary single-cylinder oilfied engine with a 12.5-inch bore and 18-inch stroke, prepping it for a trial run. He fiddled with the homemade ignition system, filled the gas tank, squirted a little fuel into the cylinder head and then got the cylinder to the appropriate point in its travel by hand-turning one of the massive twin flywheels.

With a hand-made compression release attached, Unruh was able to cycle the motor through its paces and suddenly, it woke up and began huffing and chugging along under its own power, producing 25 horsepower, running at approximately 90 rpm. Tim told me that before he and some friends had slowed the Big Engine down a bit, it had run at 400 rpm, a rate that caused it to walk three feet across the yard. That’s torque at work.

How much torque?

“Bucketfuls,” Tim says.

The big payoff was when he picked up a scorched tennis ball and dropped it down the exhaust pipe, launching it skyward. A previous projectile had actually been ingested by the Big Engine, which spluttered and coughed before ejecting it like a flaming fur ball.

“It was really cool,” Unruh grinned, as he shut off the engine.

Finally, the caravan of old cars came rolling in and everybody piled out to be greeted by Unruh. I saw a lot of guys that I knew and got to spend a few minutes visiting with them. They went inside to check out Tim’s ongoing reconstruction of a 1906 Cadillac open car and a 1911 International Harvester Auto Wagon, which is basically a heavy old farm wagon with wood-spoked wheels and wooden body powered by a twin-cylinder, air-cooled engine.

“It was International’s first truck,” Tim explained.

I had already taken the tour of the shed, so I busied myself shooting photos of all the great cars parked around the locale, trying not to drool on them. Some time later, the vintage car drivers and passengers migrated back outside and Tim wowed them by firing up the Big Engine and firing the overheated tennis ball through the overhanging trees a few times.

It was a great way to spend a warm September day, topped off by a tour of the McPherson College Auto Restoration Program. As the cars fired up and headed for that destination, I realized that everyone, myself included, was fascinated by the fact these grand old machines, some of them a century old, still work as designed and are enjoyed for what they represent: old-fashioned American ingenuity.

And these are the guys that keep them running, for all of us.

This story was originally published September 12, 2015 at 7:42 AM with the headline "Old cars, old engines keeping the dream alive."