The big Wheelock engine is sitting in place on the Dalton,
Minnesota threshing grounds awaiting the finishing touches to what
has been a very big project. What else could you call a project
that involved 6 semis hauling over 200,000 pounds of stationary
steam engine 500 miles to its new home, but bigvery big.
The Wheelock was used in a zinc factory in La Salle, Illinois.
It drove a series of rollers directly off the crankshaft. Unused
for many years, the engine was donated to the Lake Region Pioneer
Threshermen’s Association by the plant’s present owners,
the Carus family of Perum, Illinois.
The engine was set in a pit a couple of feet below the level of
the main floor. This allowed the outboard bearing to be set on the
main floor level. The pit for the flywheel was about 14 feet deep
and it always had a couple of feet of water in it. One of the
problems that faced us on our several trips down to Illinois to
work on the engine was the rainstorms that always seemed to show up
about the same time we did. The rain was usually quite heavy and
the roof did leak in places; mainly it seemed to be where we were
trying to work.
The Wheelock is bolted together in three sections: the main
frame, the crosshead frame, and the cylinder. The flywheel is
bolted together in 12 sections. Each section consisting of a spoke
and a portion of the flywheel rim. The spokes fit between two large
disks on the crankshaft and are fastened to the disk by three large
bolts. At the rim each spoke is fastened to the next by two bolts
and eight dog bone-shaped keepers. There are 2 dog bones in each
hole or four in all on each side of the connection.
The keepers had to be removed first. After steam cleaning the
joint, the keepers were heated to stretch and loosen them for
removal. Most of the outside keepers came easily but the inside
ones were tough. We had to make special tongs and pries to get them
loosened up and pulled out. Incidentally each keeper and each bolt
had been marked at the factory with a mark that corresponded to one
on the flywheel so they would be put in the right place when the
engine was assembled. This must have been necessary because of the
exactness of some of the fits. Ninety-six dog bones later we were
ready to go on to the next step.
Next we had to tackle the bolts that held the spoke to the
central disk and the bolts that held the spokes together at the
rim. To loosen the nuts holding the spoke to the disk, we were able
to use an overhead hoist that ran on tracks above the engine. We
just fastened the hook on to the end of the wrench and pulled away.
Fortunately we were able to find a wrench that fit most of the nuts
on the engine somewhere or another around the factory if we kept
looking long enough. Then the bolts were forced part way out of the
disk by a hydraulic jack pushing against the wall of the flywheel
pit. They couldn’t be pushed too far out or they would hit when
we had to rotate the wheel, but they were much easier to start
moving when the spoke was pointing down and we had something solid
to push against.
Next the wheel was turned to allow loosening of the bolts
holding the spoke that we were working on to the two adjoining
spokes. This usually took two or three men and about 20 feet of
pipe on the end of the wrench. After the nuts were removed, the
bolts were pushed out with a jack.
Then the flywheel was turned again so the spoke was about 15
degrees past perpendicular. This was necessary to give the crane
more room to work since there were overhead beams and tracks in the
way. Of course, this made it much more difficult to pull the spoke
than it would have been if we could have made a straight pull.
With a combination of porta-powers, come-alongs, jacks, sledge
hammers, and shafts, we forced the bolts the rest of the way out of
the disk. Then the crane worked the spoke out and set it down where
it could be carried out by a forklift.
One down and eleven to go! The flywheel was turned and the spoke
opposite to the first was removed to keep the flywheel in better
balance. With each spoke weighing about 10,000 pounds, this was
very necessary. The operation continued in this way until all the
spokes were out.
In the meantime the coupler to the rollers and the bearing caps
were removed. A simple job. Comparatively!
Removing the cylinder was a job too! The piston rod had to be
unscrewed from the crosshead, but to do this we had to turn the
whole piston. After oiling the piston up, we were able to work it
from side to side a little bit using our ever-present 20 foot pipe
on the end of a 48′ pipe wrench. That was the start of a long
afternoon for two men on the end of the pipe to unscrew the 12
inches of fine (of course) thread connecting the rod to the
crosshead. Most of this time was spent jumping off a 3-foot
platform and sinking slowly to the ground hanging on to the end of
the pipe. The stroke of the wrench was limited by the size of the
opening in the crosshead frame, which added to the slow going. The
next day when the piston started to move easier, we fabricated a
socket from a piece of steam pipe to fit the nut on the end of the
piston. By putting a sturdy metal rod through a hole in the end of
the socket, we could take a longer stroke and finished unscrewing
the rod in a short time. This left only cutting off the exhaust
pipe, unbolting the exhaust elbow from the bottom of the cylinder,
cutting off the intake p, removing the intake, unbolting the
cylinder from the crosshead frame, and lifting it up and away.
Next, the crosshead frame was unbolted from the main frame and
removed. Only the crankshaft, the main frame and the outboard
bearing left to go!
The crankshaft was next. By using the crane on one end and the
overhead hoist on the other, we were able to inch the shaft up and
over the frame to the main floor. There we set it on a cribbing of
railroad ties on top of I beam runners. Then we hauled it out of
the building with a large Cat.
The outboard bearing was worked loose with bars, blocked up, a
cable placed around it, and was lifted off its anchor bolts. The
nuts on the bearing were very stubborn and had to be cut off with a
torch. Incidentally, we had to be extremely careful whenever we had
to use the torch since there was a lot of grease and oil around
from the years of use of the engine. Of course the grease and oil
was also a blessing because it lead to our getting the engine. A
junk man had been in the factory and had cut up most of one engine.
He had also cut part of the valve mechanism off of our engine. Then
he started a fire and was asked to leave.
This left only the main frame, and we had probably saved the
worst ’til last. We had hoped to be able to jackhammer out
holes under the frame just large enough to get our small
porta-powers in and gradually jack the frame off the bolts. This
wasn’t possibly because after the engine had been originally
placed, most of the hollow main frame had been filled up with
grout. The grout held too well and we couldn’t budge the frame
at all.
Then we had to go to our secondary plan. This was to use the
jackhammer to expose the anchor bolts and cut them off with the
torch. After seemingly endless hours of jack hammering the hardest
cement that any of us had ever seen, we were seriously considering
a third plan dynamite. Well, we finally got enough of each bolt
exposed to cut them off and it was time to load up the last piece
along with the several tons of cement that remained inside it.
The assembly of the engine was actually completed during our
’82 show. It was temporarily hooked up to a 25 Nichols &
Shepard, and we were able to turn it over about 30 times before we
ran low on steam. Since then we have brought two large boilers to
the grounds and one or both of them should be hooked up in time for
the ’83 show. Hopefully we will be able to put a building over
the engine in the near future.
