A Basket Case:
RESTORATION OF THE MONTH
15 hp Foos rebuilt from a pile of parts
By Leslie C. McDaniel Submitted Photos
When you see Mike Cartwright's 15 hp Foos Type S (with wipe spark ignition) on the show circuit, it may be hard to figure why he affectionately refers to the mammoth engine as his "basket case." But if you'd seen it when he first got his hands on it, you'd understand.
"It was just in pieces on a trailer," he said. "Every piece, every bolt had been taken off."
The engine, which Mike said hadn't been run in at least 60 years, had been completely disassembled decades ago near Oklahoma City. Manufactured in 1903 in Springfield, Ohio, the Foos once powered a cotton gin. It showed signs of having been through a fire.
"The cylinder was cracked, and had to be bored and sleeved," Mike said. "Jerry Abplanalp in Wichita did that work. Glen Whitworth (a friend with a home workshop in Tulsa) helped me a lot. One of the counterweights on the crankshaft was busted, so he machined two rings to put over the counterweights. They had to be heated and pressed on - that's the kind of tolerance it had to have. And then we had to use a forklift to lift the crankshaft up on the lathe."
And that was just the beginning.
"Three-quarters of the governor was missing, so Glen made those parts. He made an arm for the wipe spark, and made all the valves for the intake and exhaust cages. He also made a new valve stem and knob for the fuel mixer, and made a new part for the fuel mixer itself."
Some of the restoration targeted flaws that were in the engine from the beginning.
"We also had to make a pin to go through the flywheel into the spoke," Mike said. "There was a stress crack in the spoke - it was probably there when the engine was new. When they poured the original flywheel, it was probably cooled too quickly. So we had to make a 12-inch pin with threads."
On this engine, of course, everything is big. The Foos has a 54-inch flywheel, an eight-inch piston and a 14-inch stroke. The 12-inch I beams it sits on are 10 feet long. The four-foot-tall cooling tank measures 22 inches by 24 inches. The whole package is estimated to weigh 3,500 pounds.