1906 Advance Steam Traction Engine - Jay Leno's Garage

welcome to another episode of Janne Lana's garage if you've been to this website before you know I'm a huge steam enthusiast we're here in the steam section of my garage these are all Stanley steamers are all various doable and white and all steam posters on the wall this is about 1810 something like this is picture there's a steam flying machine and a steam walking machine and a steam riding machine is another great picture over here this is 1829 Atkins illustration of modern prophecy novelties of the Year 1829 people riding a steam carriage I know how accurate is look at the guy holding on to the chimney like that wouldn't be red-hot someone said to me you got it what's the biggest steam vehicle you have would have to be this one here the 1906 advance steam attraction engine this thing is huge weighs 13 tons take a look these are the machines that more or less built America at the turn of the century the advanced threshing machine company I think they got started about 1881 and they went to about 1911 when they merged they became really advanced but advanced with its own company for years and years this thing is pretty amazing it it's a traction engine it could plow it could haul you could put a big belt off of this flywheel here and drive a sawmill whatever you wanted to do it's a pretty beefy machine it's single cylinder take a look here come around I'll show you one big giant piston doing all the work this particular engine pulls 55,000 pounds I'm a sled not that long ago this thing was beautifully rebuilt by a friend of mine Armand Rawlings is his name and Armand thank you so much for doing this you know the guys that put their heart and soul into these things now an engine like this would normally run on coal or wood or even straw you just whatever would build a fire this has been converted to run on propane it just makes it easier it doesn't smoke as much and it's just easy to deal with because you can turn the fire on and off if you've got big logs in there and they get red-hot and your boiler runs low water oh you got a lot of problems with gas you can just turn it off right away we keep the propane in here other than that she's exactly as she would have been in in 1906 as you can see it takes two men to run it we'll go over all the controls and a little bit I'll tell you what I'm going to show you some pictures of the engine and of the machine and I'll tell you the history of it well we're looking at that as I mentioned this type of traction and was built up until about 1916 this engine was ordered from the advanced steam company in 1905 by mr. the name was Bertha Hennepin in Minnesota and his son had gotten a contract in u.s. Navy to supply lumber for Navy ships and at the time he was clearing like six to seven hundred acres of timber and he got another 600 acres or something so he needed something big that could haul logs and this is what he chose the engine stands about nine and a half feet tall it's 104 inches wide and it gives either 16 or 20 horsepower at about 325 rpm as I mentioned this engine is different from a lot of the advanced engine sees the engine is set back from the steam dome most traction engines keep the engine close to the dome this one keeps the weight and balance and reduces the heat by keeping the main feed line short you can see the line is very long on this engine the reason this engine is set back towards the rear wheels is to add traction to the rear of the engine more weight on the rear means more traction during World War one the demand for scrap metal was so high that this engine was actually hidden way out in the woods to Prince scrappers from getting it once the war is always put back into service and then again during World War two this type of engine was pretty antiquated but still work is still cheaper to run it on logs and wood and Coleman was to run it on gasoline even during World War two in 1950 it was parked for the last time and it was pretty far gone another guy bought it I don't know where it went after that then my friends a guy named Sonny Rowland's and Norman Rawlings those are the two guys that restored this arm and really did all the work on it he just did a heck of a job 87 pounds of bearing Babbitt was poured into the bank rubber was put on so it could be ridden on the street so it didn't tear up the roads too badly let me show you the work he done on it just incredible now look how rotted out that boiler was all that had to be replaced look at how chewed up these gears where all those gears had to be remade you know guys that do this stuff you don't get rich dune and it's really a labor of love and I'm so glad that he was able to save this engine you need about 250 gallons three 300 gallons of water to get this thing fired up then you got another 110 gallons here there's 55-gallon drums on each side the Fillies with water once it gets hot we'll show you how the injector works to inject to hot water inject cool water weather into the boiler this is your steering here not exactly rack and pinion it takes two men one to steer it and then one to work the throttle and the clutches this vehicle has no brakes at all you just put it in reverse and then pull the clutch and get it going the other way we got air in the compressor now so we can move it but I don't want you to see it moving on the air just yet it's best on Steam so we'll get it outside we'll show you how we'll fill it up and we'll take it for a ride okay we got it outside now we're gonna put about 250 gallons water in it and takes about a half an hour and we'll light the fire before you fire this thing up you want to lube it up a little bit you got a lubricator up here jackhammer joy I got in there I got plenty of oil I had crank discs this what's a little oil on my steam cylinder we should be ready to go by nightfall nothin else is kind of cool this is steam generated light now what you have that fits right on top of here I'll show you that inside we have a steam electrical generator the steam powers the flywheel spins it makes electricity and runs that light right now we have motorcycle battery in there but I'll show you the steam generator we haven't rebuilt that yet this is our steam generator this goes on top of the boiler so you take steam in it spins it it checks the steam and the spinning turns the armature which creates electricity which runs the light so that's basically how that works we'll clean this up we'll paint it will store it we'll mount it on top of the boiler and we'll use that to generate light so when we go for night drives in this thing come over here just a little sidecar deal here a little trailer you fill this is water and you're out the field you need to pump a little extra water you can pump water in with this as well we got to restore this too that's the next thing you got your oil is right here at your governor up there we'll show you what the gates of hell look like take a look good steam men have no eyebrows right here you got your crown sheet that heats up you got a piece of a sheet of metal there and they got water on top of it and it will let me get too hot as long as the water is on top of it because the water will conduct the heat away so you always want to open this valve here make sure you get water out of there so you know you're not burning the crown sheet if you got no water in there and you got a big fire in here run away it's going to it's going to explode up here this is forward in Reverse that's neutral this is your throttle and this is your clutch right up here come on up here big wooden blocks in there I tell you stop put it reverse it's a lot of work to move this thing four miles an hour it doesn't sound like fast when you go to four miles this thing it'll scare to death it's hilarious I think we're about ready to go for a ride we've hit all our oiling spots as you can see much like the old steam engines that we have inside you've got that kind of packing there at fiber material you pour oil over that and that lubricates everything we got our Bell a high-pitched whistle middle whistle and low whistle when people hear that they get out of the way we have our steam injector right here once you get about 70 pounds in this thing when your boiler starts to get low here's your boiler level here when that gets low you pull this back under press you're injecting fresh water into the boiler from those two tanks right there hey Jill ready to go for a swim right okay as you can see it takes two men to run this thing that's little chip around the block takes us about an hour it shouldn't be water coming out of there sure there we got it if you got a crack in the crown now you see those are like a firetube boiler the heat goes up through there through those tubes and we thought oh maybe they cracked and water was coming out of the board low but it's not it's just coming off the exhaust so false alarm but now it's going to get inside there well I shut the door to see if there's any leaks he's he's got a Nomex racing suit as you can see our wheelman George is a great job steering this thing as you can see it steers just by these chains if you go too tight then well then you'll bend this you'll bend these you know you'll bend these bars right here it's not the most sophisticated thing but boy been sitting around for 104 years and I'm sure we'll be around another hundred and four cuz it's a real piece of classic Americana 1906 pretty cool well you know this and all those things you to get it to your dawn and I love steam and I hope you get a kick out of it too Orman once again thank you very much almond Rawlings uh the guy who did the initial restoration on this he did a great job and arm and I'm gonna keep checking in with you see what we're doing wrong see you next week

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 1,732,023

Rating: 4.9188123 out of 5

Keywords: Jay Leno, Automotive, Cars, Garage, horsepower, Jay, Leno, mods, custom car, Speed, Fast, modded cars, mechanic, fastest car, Jay Leno's Garage, cars, exotic cars, interview, custom, Leno car, funny, Leno funny, car show, Rare, Motorcycles, racing, jay leno interview, auto, drive, power, fast, amazing, cool, the cars, vehicle, 1906 Advance Steam Traction Engine, Traction Engine (Business Operation)

Id: M9FuCDRRb7k

Length: 12min 27sec (747 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 13 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/RashestHippo]

I really like jay when he is in his garage, a very genuine guy with a deep passion for things with wheels. always acknowledges that most of the time he is just paying for it and gives the credit to the correct people

[u/Budpets]

That is fucking terrifying and no brakes.

[u/iLLNiSS]

Jay Leno would be one of the coolest neighbours to have.