"The piston was not rusted, but it was seized," Gene said. "It took me over a year to get it out. It was kind of nasty.
"And the bottom ... somebody earlier had to tried to free it up, and they broke the bottom off, so we made a new one. And we made new valves, and a hot tube. The carb was missing; so we replaced it with a Kingston sideshaft."
When the work was complete, the couple held their breath.
Gene has yet to find any literature on the Virtue and Pound, so the restored engine's paint job was the result of study of engines of the era.
"The engine had just a speck of black paint on it," he said. "I looked at some old books from 1896, and I had the pin-striper come in and look at it. I told him to make it look very pretty, but not like a French whorehouse."
Once numbering more than 50 engines, Gene's collection has decreased to about 25.
"I only wanted one engine, so I could join the club," he said. "But then that one turned in to about 50."
His collection includes an Allan hot tube made in Aberdeen, Scotland; a Fairbanks vertical 50 hp hot tube, and 12 sideshaft engines: Columbus, Ohio, Brown and Cochran, Witte, National and more. His first engine was a 5 hp Simplicity.
"I bought it for $8 in 1943," he said. For a time, he also collected tractors.