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For everything that man has created, there is a group of enthusiasts that love these creations. They band together to talk about, restore, operate and enjoy these things. Steam
locomotives, automobiles, aircraft, are some of the obvious. Vintage engines are on the edge, and they have their group of enthusiasts as well.
In the early part of the 20th century, people had a great desire to have portable rotating power. Not in the form of steam engines, but something more portable that could be used to
grind grain into flour, crush rocks, pump water or air, saw wood, and so on. The earliest successes in this desire was the internal combustion engine, operating on kerosene, heating oil, diesel, and gasoline. They
were pretty much the same. A single cylinder surrounded by a water jacket for cooling (a few air cooled), a very heavy flywheel, two valves: intake & exhaust, a rudimentary means to mix the fuel with the air and
a governor controlled ignition system that regulated the speed of the engine. To some of us they were called "hit & miss" engines, due to the ignition regulated speed mechanism that gave an occasional push to
keep the flywheel moving: "pop - popop - pop - - - pop-popop...
In September 2000, while I was visiting Tina, Jim & Ethan in Ann Arbor, a group of enthusiasts had a "meet" nearby. Naturally, we investigated...
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