More Than Machines: The Stories Behind the Iron
From gas engines to tractors to trucks, Bob Riebel’s relics tell colorful tales of the past
Bill Vossler
January 2010
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Bob Riebel with his 1931 REO Speedwagon truck.
Bill Vossler
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Rare pieces, tons of variety, flawless restorations: Those are the hallmarks of a great collection of old iron.
But Bob Riebel goes one step further with his collection – seemingly every piece in it tells a story. From gas engines to tractors to trucks, Bob’s relics tell colorful tales of the past.
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Bob, who lives in Le Sueur, Minn., has spent a lifetime gathering unusual pieces. Take his collection of more than 80 gas engines. It includes at least half a dozen extremely rare pieces, like a tractor cut-away engine.
As a teenager, Bob attended the University of Minnesota Farm School in St. Paul. He learned about gasoline engines by way of a 1947 Minneapolis-Moline U tractor engine that had been cut apart to show the internal components working. “An electric motor ran that engine real slow,” he recalls. “The pistons and rings were exposed and the carburetor was partly exposed, so you could see the moving parts, and the instructor could explain what the parts were and what they did while the engine was running.”
Years later, after the farm school closed, Bob visited the campus. “I asked if they had any engines left over,” he recalls, “and they still had that Minneapolis-Moline U tractor cut-away engine.” Specially built for the farm school, it is a one-of-a-kind, and shortly after his visit, Bob added it to his collection.
Backward and forward
Then there’s his 5 hp 2-stroke Fairmont gas engine, circa 1925, that runs forward and backward. “These engines were designed for use on railroad tracks for those little doodlebug cars that went from one town to the next, checking the tracks,” Bob explains. “Flip a rod and the engine will go the other way and take the little cart back to where it started.”
Built in Fairmont, Minn., Bob’s engine was put to work in a different application. It was used in an attempt to aerate Clear Lake (near Lexington, Minn.) with the goal of providing oxygen to fish so they wouldn’t die during the winter when the lake was covered with ice and snow. The engine was dragged into place on runner skids over the ice and a pair of holes were chopped in the ice. A propeller pushed lake water across the ice, aerating it, then down the second hole back into the lake. “It was quite a patent,” Bob says, “but it didn’t work.”
After running for a while, the engine wore a hole through the ice. “They would have to drag it out of the water, get it started again, chop two more holes and start all over,” Bob says. “Doing and redoing all that work didn’t go over very good.”
The original hybrid
Another of Bob’s treasures features one of the most unusual gas engine designs of all time. The Edwards 2-cylinder engine was manufactured for just a few years in the 1920s by Edwards Motor Co., Springfield, Ohio. It could be run with both cylinders, or for lighter loads, just one, saving fuel. With one cylinder it ran at 1-1/2 hp; with both, 6 hp.
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