StanleyRegister

Thhe Lloyd Partridge car in the 1949 list is #5195, still in Illinois as far as I know. The Marquardt car is #24652, also still in Illinois. The rest I haven't yet been able to link to present-day cars. Casey Creek is a long way from where the car was in Iowa in 1993. Stayton could still have owned it in '72 - unfortunately it's still unkown how it made its way to Iowa. It would be nice to at least find a newpaper ad for an estate sale. 🙂

jschoenly is the man with the real answers, but here are my opinions. The boiler doesn't look abused. I'm not sure it has been hydro'd, but I wouldn't replace it on general principles - I'd get some pressure in it, cold or hot, and check for leaks. If there are some but they aren't bad, they will probably respond well to some swedging. Papers with the car indicate that it was running in 1993, and not fired since then. There'd probably be a lot of junk come out of the blowdowns when it's fired up, but just sitting doesn't necessarily ruin a boiler. If the small burner was up before, and the pan and grate haven't been damaged too badly, there'd be no reason the car wouldn't run on the small burner until you wanted to invest in the larger one. Since the burner is already off, I'd be inclined to get it working on the ground, so you know it's ok and don't end up having to put it up and down a lot. (This will also make you put the fuel supply systems into working order - which are actually some of the simplest ones on the car.) I'll tell you, it makes a fearsome fire when you can look at it out from under the boiler. Slotted burners tend to make more heat than drilled ones, so this might be a sort of middle ground between a standard 23" Stanley setup and the full power 27" setup. It would actually be pretty interesting to experience the transition from small burner to large one. I'm a big fan of making things go, at minimum expense, then deciding what to improve. The water level gauge is generally referred to as the "Bristol-Derr" gauge. There's a water column that echoes the level in the boiler, some thermocouples along its length, and some reference thermocouples at the top where there's always steam. It's slightly magical, but the more (relatively) cool water and less steam there is in the column, the more electrical power is created to move the needle. There's a nice discussion of it here - http://stanleysteamers.com/phorum-5.1/read.php?1,9430 . Very early electronics!

I believe that the piston valve is supposed to be a little more efficient with steam. It also doesn't have the heavy sliding metal contact that the slide valves have, which is supposed to rob a little less power. In the Marshall Collection, we have a 735 with a piston valve block, a different design that Nergaard's. It's hard to say whether or not there's any performance difference. There is at least one drawback, though, in the way that car drives. Since piston valves can't lift to let any condensate pass, there have to be spring-loaded relief valves for that purpose. In this car, that calls for a fairly light touch on the throttle when starting off, or the relief valves will make impolite sounds and dump steam. I'd guess that there aren't more than a half-dozen or so Stanleys running today with piston valve blocks. Certainly all the highest-performing cars - Model K & Vanderbilt replicas, etc. - run the standard, obsolete-even-in-1900, well-understood, slide valves. Interestingly, toward the end of the Stanley brothers' involvement with the company, FE was experimenting with piston valves. The car in which he died had a piston valve engine, which survives today and is now powering a later condensing car.

The condensing cars are heavy, and closed cars are even heavier. But this car has an oversized boiler, which should make it easy to fit an oversized burner. As in any powered vehicle, the amount of fuel you can effectively burn is a big determinant of performance. Power-to-weight ratio really jumps out at you in a light little Stanley EX, but a big fire will make any Stanley peppy. A nice fresh Baker burner from Bill Barnes, and all the stored energy capacity in the 26" boiler, should make this car a nice ride. And sedans don't have to be slugs, if they are in fine working order. Tom Marshall once told me that 1923 Stanley #23627, a large limousine, was one of the best-performing Stanleys he'd ever driven.

I'm in the process of researching the history of this car. I have a newspaper article on it from 1946 when owned by Robert D Stayton (It looked pretty much the same as it does now), and it was sold by Bernard Cox in Iowa in 1993. I'd really appreciate it if anyone has any clues about that 47-year gap.

Just bumping this up... If anyone knows a way to locate this Model 57, I'd love to find out. My dad will be 90 in April and he'd be very happy to be able to see the car again. Thanks...

This is E. O Hayes, racing at Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on Oct. 9, 1909.

Now that is as cute as a bug's ear!

Yes, Mr. Marshall was disappointed with the performance. It sat for a very long time and was eventually given to a member of the Friends of Auburn Heights, who has given it stronger burner performance and is not far from getting it on the road. It's a huge amount of weight for a 20hp engine to push around. But it will probably move ok with lots of firepower. The capacity of the burner is typically the biggest determining factor for a nice drive in a steamer. By the way, in that interior shot, you can see the standard Stanley reverse and hookup pedal in the left position. And no accelerator pedal - he used the original gearshift lever for the throttle.

Another one of these slinky Mercedes tourers. This is one of my favorite old car photos. The angle that the photographer got, against the sweep and proportions of the car, and the way that back tire fills the fender - I admire it every time I look at it.

I guess if the original owner's kids had let the car run down this badly, it could be an "heir crueled Franklin." 🙂

Didn't they usually put those carbide generators where the driver could reach them?

A little scary that way eh... Here's the auction that photo came from - https://www.goodingco.com/vehicle/1927-packard-343-convertible-sedan/ Auction text and a couple more photos here - https://coachbuild.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=1905

I love the look of that thing. The later ones were pretty OK, too.

The Packard coupe windshield is very reminiscent of Brewster's windshields.

This is an intriguing pair of photos. The angle is EXACTLY the same, left to right and up to down. Every little bit of space between parts, every bit of something that's revealed, is identical. I was tempted to say that the car was edited into the building picture - the shadow looks vague, and the reflection above the running board is the same as the waterrside picture, with the top of the reflection brushed away. Even the dirt marks on the rear tire are at the same place. BUT - the front wheel is in a different position! Valve stem & dirt marks are rotated.

Any license plate people, or know who I should contact? This is from a photo that looks like '30s-'40s. It vaguely strikes me as being from somewhere in Europe, but scans of European license plate sites didn't turn up anything. Thanks.. .

"But officer, I didn't see the baby carriage coming."

Buck Grundy's bar opened in Miami in 1940, and it looks like a 1934 Jaguar SS1.

3 moms, maybe?

Thanks Bob, that makes perfect sense. What a machine.

Happy Mother's Day! What is this rangy-looking chain-drive tourabout? I'm pretty sure the B doesn't stand for Buick.

The big "P" on the side begins both the words Painting and Paperhanging. He advertised a lot in May - July of 1914, and no mention of him before or after.

Here's a little more on this car. The copy of this photo in the AACA Library has this writing on the back, and the 1916 California registration list shows the car. There's no way to be sure whether 1287 was the frame number or the engine number, but either way, it doesn't seem to be one of the survivors.

It looks like this came from one of those spectacular glass negatives. No idea what the car is, but the fore-and-aft handles on the radiator cap are interesting.