The Holland Engine

(This article was written by John Bailey and is from his perspective.)

It had been a couple years since I restored my last flywheel engine. I had been concentrating on other projects. In fact, after finishing my 16” Sprout-Waldron grist mill, I pretty much didn’t do anything for about six months. I had spent a couple months in the fall of 2005 recovering from damage done by Hurricane Rita. But by winter, I really wanted another engine to restore. At the same time I did not want to turn loose of a lot of cash. I knew that a friend of mine, Raymond (Buzz) Bradley had a Fairbanks-Morse Z Style D that he wasn’t really attached to. So, I asked him one day if he would sell it to me. “Sure”. Though not that challenging of a restoration, at least I had another engine to work on.

Buzz also had a Stover CT-2 that I was interested in. Long before I had completed the work on the FM ZD, I asked him if he would be interested in selling it to me. He kind of hesitated but said if I really wanted it he would sell it to me. He named a price. Now the price was good, but it was a little more cash than I wanted to part with at the time.

Though I have a meager collection of flywheel engines, I get most of my pleasure not necessarily out of owning engines, but out of restoring them. I’ve restored and sold a number of engines over the years. So after a day or so, I called him back and asked him if he would simply let me restore the Stover for him. I explained the possible costs, the Stover was missing the magneto, and he agreed. So, suddenly I had a second engine to restore.

That’s not the end of the story. The next day he called me back and told me that if I just wanted an engine to restore, he had another one that he would much rather I restore for him, a 3 HP Holland. In fact, he told me he would give me the Stover for restoring the Holland. The next weekend, both engines made their way to my shop. I was happy. He was happy.

Holland is kind of a rare breed of flywheel engines, not to be confused with the New Holland. The following information is taken from the Central Massachusetts Steam, Gas, and Machinery Association’s web page.

“These engines were built by the Brownwall Engine & Pulley Company which was established around 1911 in Lansing Michigan. The company also made governor pulleys for cream separators as well as 1 hp and 1-1/2 hp air cooled engines and 1-1/2, 2, 2-1/2, 3, 5, and 10 hp water cooled engines. In 1914 the Company moved to Holland, Michigan, and at that time the 1 hp air cooled engine was discontinued. All of the engines made in Lansing have lettering of the name and town cast into the flywheels. Most of the engines made in Holland used a brass plate or a decal instead, but at least one has been found with Holland, Mich. cast into the flywheels”.
    “The Brownwall Engine & Pulley Company went bankrupt in 1924 and was taken over by the Holland Furnace Co. which continued to make engines under the "Holland Engine Co." name. These engines would be even more rare than the Brownwall engines.”

Here in Buzz’s own words is his story about how he acquired the Holland.

“About three years ago I was talking to Paul Daigle, my Father-in-law’s neighbor, about old flywheel engines, and he said he would keep an eye out for one. Well about a month went by and he contacted me and said that he’d found one. The engine belonged to his best friend, Bill Laughlin. It didn’t take long for me to make the trip to my home town of Eunice, LA, to take a look at the engine. The engine had no tag and was missing quite a few parts, but was by no means a “Leverite”, even though is was frozen and missing the magneto, governor weight, igniter, igniter trip rod and lever, and one of the main bearing caps. Well being a true engine enthusiast, this was no deterrent to trying to acquire it since it was a headless, open crank, a hit-‘n’-miss engine, probably in the 3 H.P. range. The engine had been stored outside under an old tree for the past 35 or so years. Bill and I talked and he agreed to let me have the engine on the condition I bring it back one day running. That was a pretty tall order that I hoped I could live up to.”

“As soon as I got the engine home, I started soaking the cylinder with PB Blaster and looking in Wendell’s big book. No exact match. The next week I took it to a local club’s show to show off my new found treasure. Some of the guys said it looked sort of like a Brownwall. OK. I was making some progress in identifying the engine.”

“About 3 weeks later, Bill sent word that his son had spotted another flywheel engine about 5 miles from their home. I was told it was in front of a small country restaurant called G.J.’s. Once again, Paul Daigle and I set out on another quest. We found the restaurant and the flywheel engine. Upon inspection it seemed to be an exact match to the one I already had. This one, also froze up, had an original brass tag, a froze up igniter, the cam lever, and both bearing caps. Voila! I had a complete engine between the two of them. Now to try to acquire the second engine. Could I be this lucky?”

“This acquisition turned out to be a much greater challenge than the first one. The engine had been found in the Atchafalaya Basin, a large swampy area between Henderson and Grosse Tete, Louisiana. In 1990 the Corp of Engineers drained part of this swamp in the Henderson area. Gary Fruge, the owner of the restaurant had had a camp at Henderson for over 40 years. When they drained the area, he spotted the engine in an old boat. His effort to recover the sunken boat was unsuccessful but he was able to retrieve the engine. My next question was would he part with it? He said it wasn’t for sale. I said I really needed some of the parts. He came back with, you don’t understand, it’s not for sale! I said you don’t understand. I’m not leaving without it! Well about an hour later, after a lot of negotiating and some trading, he said “if you can get the engine in the back of your truck, it’s yours”. Off to Westlake, LA, to pick up the trade engine and back to Gary’s to load up my new treasure. Well enough suspense. The tag identified the engine as a 3 H.P. Holland, (Holland Pulley and Furnace Co. of Holland Mich.) The rest is history, and it seemed I’d be able to live up to the promise of bringing back a running engine.”

So now Buzz had two 3 HP engines with enough good parts to make one. Little did we know that further down the line the second engine would become a key contributor of parts.

Picture 1 is of the first engine when Buzz acquired it. He did a considerable amount of work on it before it came to me some couple years later. From picture number 3, you can see that the engine was in fairly good shape when I got it. In fact, it had been run with a battery and coil. The Webster magneto was weak and the trip finger on the magneto was worn so badly it wouldn’t operate correctly, so it had never run on the magneto. There was also a problem with the hit and miss governor. Just looking at it I could not figure out what the problem was. So, I got on the Internet and did some research. I found very little information on the Holland. But I did find one person, Art Lora, who also owned a complete and running 3 HP Holland. He was kind enough to send me a series of pictures of the governor. From these pictures I was able to determine that the detent lever was bent causing misalignment of the other parts of the governor. I would have never known that without the pictures. The only other problem with the engine was the crankshaft gear. Buzz was able to get another gear made by a friend of his. In fact, while he had the mill set up, he made three of the gears.

Disassembly of the engine was a breeze. Managing some of the heavy parts was a little more difficult. I’m not nearly as young as I used to be. Buzz took the flywheels and crankshaft to his shop and removed the governor side flywheel and gear. I placed the crankcase on a pallet outside my shop and continued with the work on it there. Picture 4 is of the crankcase with a coating of Bondo on the water hopper. The water hopper is the only area smoothed out with Bondo. I did this not only to pretty up the engine a little, but so that the decals would stick better.

The gas tank is cast into the base. There are two freeze plugs that we removed so that I could pressure wash the inside of the tank. Though I was able to get it pretty clean, I encouraged Buzz not to use the built in tank, for two reasons. First, there was no way we would ever get the tank completely clean thru those two small freeze plug openings. Second, I figured this engine would run most of the day on a quart or two of gasoline. Using the built in tank we would probably have to put a substantial amount of gasoline in it just to raise the level enough to run the engine. Chances are we would always have residual gasoline left in the tank. The way gasoline sours these days, we didn’t think that would be a good idea. So we decided to mount an auxiliary tank under the skid and plumb the mixer to it.

Everything else was just a matter of sandblasting, painting, and reassembly. The rings were in good shape. All of the babbitt was in good shape. Buzz had already found replacement valves and had ground them and the seats.

We encountered one major setback though. Buzz had removed the governor side flywheel so that I could replace the crankshaft gear. Since he had not encountered a problem doing that, I asked if he would remove the other flywheel simply to make it easier for me to clean and paint them. Unfortunately, the other flywheel wasn’t as cooperative and the hub was broken in the process of removing it. We both nearly cried. At this point we were quite a ways into the restoration and now the whole project was in jeopardy. Unfortunately, the same flywheel from the second engine also had a cracked hub. Fortunately, the other governor side flywheel didn’t. But the hub was an inch or so longer to accommodate the governor. Buzz ended up cutting the excess off the flywheel hub and squaring the new surface. Though it was not exactly original, the difference would be covered up by the pulley and not visible.

Both the magneto and ignitor required some serious attention. The magneto was effectively dead. The magnets had lost their magnetism and the armature shaft was worn badly. The shaft of the moving electrode on the ignitor was also worn badly. Bob Legnon did all of the machine work on the magneto and ignitor including building up the armature and ignitor shafts and turning them back down to size. He also installed new bushings in the magneto base.

In the meantime, we have a friend who could recharge the magnets for us. But, at this point I felt it was time for me to own my own magnet charger. I ordered a copy of David Gingrey’s book and decided to build a magnet charger for myself based on his design. This in itself ended up a rather significant side project that I figured would not only assist in the restoration of the Holland, but would also be a fine addition to my collection of tools. Picture 6 is a picture of the restored magneto and ignitor, hot as a fire-cracker.

I learned a valuable lesson with the Webster magneto. When I disassembled the magneto I didn’t pay any attention as to how the armature came out thinking it wouldn’t make any difference which way it went back in when I reassembled it. Wrong. First time I reassembled the magneto I put the armature in backwards. I was able to obtain only the weakest spark. I posted a message to Harry’s SmokStak and somebody clued me into the fact that the armature had to go in a certain way. I checked and sure enough I had it in backwards. I remedied that and got a hot spark off the ignitor.

In my research, I found the engine painted several different colors. It seems that many of the engines had come from the factory in a “ship deck gray” color. I also found them painted kind of a rusty brown as well as a light green and light blue. Buzz decided on Model-T engine green with black accents and yellow decals and pin stripe. He also decided on hammer tone aluminum for the flywheel faces. He designed and had the decals made in yellow vinyl. The engine was pinstriped in yellow by Marc LeFevre.

As we approached finishing the engine, it was obvious that we needed a cart to carry it on. Buzz made the wheels and trucks. The skids are black walnut.

Finally, on Saturday, May 27, 2006, the engine was all back together and ready to start. As with any restoration, hope was high that the Holland would kick right off. I had already made the engine pop a few times using starter fluid so I was fairly confident that it would run. I had also checked and doubled checked the hit and miss governor to make sure it was working right. To make a long story short, it didn’t kick right off and run. But, with just a little bit of adjusting on the needle valve and some adjusting of the tension on one of the governor springs, in short order the engine was off and running. What a beautiful sight and sound.

Saturday, June 10, 2006, was a special day. Buzz and I took the engine back to show it to the original owners. What a joy it was to see the glow in their eyes at the sight and sound of the newly restored Holland.