Paging ShadowsPapa, @ShadowsPapa please come to the courtesy counter

[Munkey Boy]

GORGEOUS IRON!!!

Cute little Briggs, 5S? Loved the S curve fuel line on them. What's on that light plant? Looks like a Lauson from this side, maybe even a Kohler 91. I had a B&S generator that was water cooled! I think it was a WYJ, my memory is shot and my dad sold off all our iron. Rare little beasty, maybe 2hp at best, 1.5 on a hot day. About the same cute little size but with its own B&S radiator on top like a smaller version of a Kohler 4 cylinder gen. Love the Deere green everywhere. Also had a '28 model G engine that we ordered a brand new OEM gas tank for from Deere in the late 80s. They were still manufacturing the damn things some 60 years later! Gotta love stubbornness.

My Caldwell only had a piston about 3" long, but it had two of them little rascals. We didn't heat it, but that was next if the ATF didn't work. But then, there's always C-4. We knew we were lucky with that Caldwell, truly a gamble. But it was so weird we had to try. The two pistons were in parallel and didn't alternate for balance. It was essentially a single cylinder that ran two pistons that only alternated firing sequence. Well, if they fired, the coil was hoping to run on hopes and dreams. It didn't. We could never get it to run, coil was too far gone and any of our Wicos just wouldn't do what this needed. Traded it for a Moto-Mower with a B&S FI engine. Totally worth it.

I think a lot of credit can be given to Caldwell for making a rather poorly built piece of junk. Engineering on it was silly and there's likely zero consistency with the alloys. Pig iron is pig iron unless it's PIG iron, then it's a crap shoot. Problem with your Chapman is that it's probably quality. The Caldwell was just heavy and stupid. 7' of surface area won't go gentle into that good night. You've tried everything and more than I could, next option is a lovely flower pot. Wish you and her the best of luck, but sometimes stuck is stuck. Outside drilling, reaming, remanufacturing, resleaving, and realizing a flower pot can be nice too, I think you have a forever tough nut that refuses to crack. That little 2hp can keep the name up though. Beautiful work by the way.

God, I haven't thought about those antique engines in this detail in forever, wish I had some of them still (not the Caldwell). I miss the seat-of-your-pants jury-rigging we'd do just to get that "pop". Then the panic/excitement/back it off a bit but not too much "iron CPR". GREAT times. Miss the smell most of all, ain't nuthin' like it.

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[ShadowsPapa]

WMB - lighter and shorter than the 5S. The WMB was commonly used on washing machines, sort of like the Maytag twin (or the earlier hit and miss Maytag single and fruitjar engines)
Chapman engines are very rare. Before I stopped tracking and the database got messed up, I was only able to locate a total of about 30 around the world. That includes a mix of all models and sizes. Only a handful of the 2hp exist. They were heavy for their size (the 7hp is 2,000 pounds, each flywheel is about 300).
The battery box on the Chapman is an ORIGINAL wood box a Canadian fellow sent me in the 1990s - a spare he had saved. It's a spark plug buzz coil ignition.
The "light plant" was a Signal Corps 110v DC generator with a B&S engine. Somewhere I have the engine info/documents from Briggs and Stratton. In the 70s I wrote to them and their archive guy sent me info. The light plant was originally olive green, sort of, of course.

I've since sold several of my hit and miss engines at auction - just had too many for the time and space I have. Sold the John Deere, the Simplicity, gave my Lindsay-Alamo to a friend in Fort Wayne, sold the McCormick-Deering.
The blue one is an Alamo Blue-Line engine, my very first hit and miss engine I'll likely never part with. I have a full color catalog from the company dated about 1918.

The big one has a mud pump, brand "Humdinger" made in NY. I also have 2 smaller transfer pumps with the Humdinger brand name, one is Lauson powered, the other B&S.

I have a larger version of the hack saw but it's too heavy to transport easily and it was converted decades ago to run via electric motor so I actually use it at times. I was using this small one to cut rebar at the show. Haven't gone to a show with my engines since about 2005. Club around here sort of fell apart and the owners of the ground found money more important than history.

 

[PyrPatriot]

FYI that last picture looks to have your full name in it @ShadowsPapa

 

[Munkey Boy]

God, those bring back great memories. The antiques were really all my dad and I had that we shared a love of. Kinda sounds depressing, but it wasn't any of the classic tropes of father/son angst. He had a small engine repair shop in Southern California where I grew up with more oil on me than grass stains. We belonged to the club down in Vista that will keep running well into the future, they focus on teaching the history and heritage. And bratwurst. When my dad finally retired, they moved out near me in AZ and he brought a handful of old iron and several Cushmans he and I were looking to restore and fart around with. He dramatically thinned down the collection before the move, some of those engines were the only ones I had ever seen. Funny story, I went to a small show here in Prescott one time where I was watching a Briggs FI engine clacking away. The owner comes over and says, "Bet you've never seen one of these before." To which I smiled and said, "You'd lose that bet, I have THREE of them, two with a kick start and an FH with a hand lever start." My dad was really looking into showing there and setting up a museum of sorts to tinker and talk. Unfortunately, Lewy Body Dementia got the better of him and we ended up selling off the entirety of the collection. Not sure I want to get back into it without him, or without the space. But I really do miss everything about old iron. Wow, that all sounded more depressing than it really is. Sorry 'bout that.

I'll see if I can rustle up some pics of what we had, unfortunately we never bothered documenting anything. But we had everything from scooters (Cushmans and Simplex), outboards (ELTO, Johnson, and a 1918 Caille), hit & miss (Deere, MD, Stover), tractors (IH, Gibson), generators/light plants, mowers, saws, and WAY too many flavors of Briggs' to keep track of.

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