3 speed Elgin Velocipede 1934

Hello Harry,
Thanks for your offer of help. What's wrong is that the fuel bowl has the wrong bolt holding it to the carb and is missing a piece. Consequently it is not firmly secured and leaks in spite of having made new gaskets. it is also missing the throttle cable adjuster which has a weird threading I can't find. It is probably Whitworth. So I need at the least to order parts from England and might do as well to just buy a rebuilt one complete and ready to use.

Before Steve left for Vancouver ( this morning) we worked on designing and then got started fabricating a bracket for the idler pulley armature to engage and disengage the belt, in other words acting as a manual clutch. It will be spring loaded so that it is engaged unless the handlebar clutch lever is depressed which will release the idler from pressing against the belt. In theory anyway. That's the plan. I think it will work. if it doesn't then something else will.

No money right now for the carb, so I'll work on other things and it will be ready when it is ready... probably not until spring since snow is just a month away here at the border with Canada. I'll work on it this winter and perhaps if there is a break in the weather I can start it up and see how it runs. I think it will be worth waiting for. Should be a hoot with the three speed shifter and buggy sidecar.
SB

Well,
To say that it has been awhile is an understatement. This thread was started back in June of 2011 and the most recent post was in September of 2012. The bike has pretty much been sitting since. No bike camp in 2013 and this past summer bike camp was taken up with work on the Indian Hiawatha tri-car (another longgggg project) and the start of a hybrid delta trike. Both of those builds have been tucked away for the winter as there is no place to work on them other than outside. So they are nice and dry in my bike stowage trailer.

I do have room inside my old trailer house to work on a two wheeler now that I have relinquished my bedroom for a little work space with work bench. I moved my cot out by the wood stove in the living room so that I'd have a place to tinker on projects. The Elgin is now up on the workbench and I'll be making some progress on it over the course of the winter. Nice to be staring at it again, like saying hello to an old friend (a neglected old friend).

I've been thinking about how to start this old girl's engine and had figured on either a pedaled bump start or a leather belt wrapped around the flywheel, like a rope start. Then I got to thinking about an old sports car I had onceupona, a 1951 MGTD roadster that had a crank start recess under the radiator shell. It also had a regular electric start, so I never used the crank and now don't recall if I even had one. But I got to thinking about that hand crank and got an idea that I could make one from an old type of wood working drill called a "brace & bit". I knew I had one and after a search turned up the one you see in the photo which someone through the years modified so that a strange and lethal looking bit was welded in place... looks like a large hunting arrow head and I'm wondering if it was using for tapping trees in a sugar bush...bore a hole for the wooden bung where a bucket would be hung to collect the sap. Dunno.

I cut off the "drill bit" and ground the shaft to a square shape the size of a driver for a socket to fit on the nut holding the flywheel in place. I hammered the socket onto the brace's shaft and gave it a try on the engine. With very little effort it turns the engine over so I think it will work fine. A portable electric drill and socket would work well, but is not in keeping with 1934, now is it? I plan to make a couple of spring clips so that the hand crank can fit under the seat affixed to the seat post in two places. I think I like it. Only kid on my block with one of those...
(cont.)
SB

And two more photos with the second one showing where the crank will be stowed.
(cont.)
SB

While I was on the east coast this summer I had an opportunity to spend some time with my friend Dan (Tinsmith). I was admiring his stretch Worksman cruiser and liked very much an old brass squeeze bulb horn he had attached to the side of the bike. It gave a nicely toned and impressively loud honk with each squeeze of the bulb and I decided then and there that one of those would be just right for my Indian Hiawatha.

Once back home in Minnesota I did some looking around on ebay and the prices on similar horns was all over the place with some of them being quite reasonable. Many of these old timers are tarnished and dented, but still operable providing the petrified rubber bulb gets replaced. Those babies aren't cheap and often cost as much or more than the brass horn itself. It occurred to me that a pump of some sort with an air hose would work as well as a squeeze bulb so I did some more looking. In the end I found a nice brass air pump and a matching pair of brass horns from a 1900's Austin Motor Car made in Wisconsin. The pump cost nearly $20.00 with shipping and the pair of horns I got for less than that with shipping.

I found that with some elbow grease they clean up nicely with Wizard metal polish (thanks to 2 door for the polishing tip), so I give it a go now and then cleaning them up. No hurry, summer is a long ways away...

I'm picturing these horns as a pair, one to each side of the wicker seat on the tri-car. I tried the little brass pump and it was barely powerful enough to honk one of the horns... hmmm, back to the drawing board. I kind of thought that. It will take more air power so I got to thinking about a portable air tank and gave that idea a try with my compressor, making a little T out of copper fittings. Gave the two some air through the blow gun and... oh yeah! That's more like it! They give a nice sound, much more mellow than an electric car horn, but loud enough to get attention. They're going to look great on the tri-car for sure!

I didn't want the neglected Velocipede to get jealous, so found another brass horn with petrified bulb listed as not working. I bought it for $5.00 and paid more than that for the shipping ($7.50) There isn't much to go wrong with these horns and the brass reed deal that makes the honk sound is replaceable if needed. It came in the mail today and blowing through the tube revealed a really nice sound. Plus it is smaller than the other horns at maybe a half or two thirds smaller. Perfect for the Elgin and small enough that the brass pump will power it.

I have located the pump behind the headlight ears on the Tomos suspension fork... nicely located for either hand to reach out to the pump handle "Honk", "honk"... as if specially made for my velocipede. I gave the horn a bit of polishing and tied it with leather thongs into a likely placement as seen in the photos below. Along with the putt putt sounds of the vintage Villiers engine, this old horn is just right... the goldilocks model.

Tomorrow I'll show you the copper headlight I'm making. This tired old bear is going to bed. G'night...
SB

Thanks for the nice comments and Annie thanks for the Triumph story. You probably have more experience with a hand crank starter than any of us. I have little myself (limited to a model B Allis Chalmers tractor), but I have read cautionary tales of broken wrists from Model T Fords and other old timers.

No, I have not run this motor yet as I did not have the proper gasket for the carb before and now have removed the gas tank in readiness for an eventual cylindrical copper gas tank behind the seat. I had figured to be quick about pulling out from the flywheel as soon as the engine starts to fire... a light touch in other words. It does turn the engine over quite easily and it is a small engine.

Thanks for the caution, Kirk. As I was making this thing up I was trying to picture what the Allis Chalmers crank fitting looked like... there was something about it that looked like an attempt at saving the wrist. And I was thinking about a ratchet so that once the engine started it would kind of "freewheel" until the tool was disengaged. There must be something out there in the great world of tool stuff that could be re-purposed and save our geezer wrists from damage. I haven't done any real looking yet. Any ideas, anyone?
SB

This would work nicely... it is called a breaker bar ratchet adapter and fits between the breaker bar and the socket. Perfect, if I had one.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SNAP-ON-TOO...27184744?pt=US_Hand_Tools&hash=item1e93b5cf68

I'll be watching for a deal on one of these, I think. Or am I missing something and this would not work... not "freewheel" when the engine engaged?
SB

Well, this is it for awhile in updates. When there's something for show and tell I'll do another post. I bought a copper pot a couple of years ago in a junk shop for a couple of bucks telling myself I could use it on the wood stove for hydrating the air. Burning with wood makes for very dry air and itchy skin so a pot with snow or ice in it melting makes for more comfort for north woods hermits and bears. But mostly I bought it due to an irresistible attraction to shiny things like brass and copper, "poor man's gold". I believe there was a raccoon somewhere in my family tree which may account for this compulsive disorder.

Anyway, I have upgraded my hydration system with two brass spittoons replacing the single copper pot. Onward, upward, more better than before! I bought the matching spittoons thinking they would become headlights for the Indian Hiawatha tri-car but have opted instead for harbor freight dune buggy lights made over into tear drop headlights. So the spittoons are on the wood stove.

What about the copper pot? You guessed it... a headlight! The motorbicycle thing has transformed my life. There was a time when a trip down the grocery aisle was mostly an array of different sized metal cylinders waiting to be transformed into gas tanks, tool boxes, lights of one kind or another (once the food got emptied out). Yard sales and junk shops became sites for treasure hunts, looking for things shaped like a carburetor air filter and such. You know how it is, perhaps.

While polishing up me new brass honkies I got to thinking about that copper pot and gave it a few minutes go with the polishing... under the crud of years of accumulated oxidation and mineral deposits... under the going green from brown a bit of sunshine appeared in the polished metal... a satisfying warm glow of COPPER! IT'S ALIVE! And with it the consideration of it's possible new life as an old headlight. I cleaned some more and then held it in place between the ears of the Tomos suspension fork on the old Elgin. Behind it I already had the shiny new/old brass air pump for the brass honky and seeing them together I decided they made nice neighbors... "copper and brass kick a$$, oh yas" (a short poem).

So, I will drill holes for mounting it to the ears (earlobes?) and where the wooden handle screwed on to a threaded bolt coming out of a brass fitting I will grind off the bolt and drill a hole for the wiring to make an exit. Inside a 32 LED unit from a harbor freight flashlight (about $6.00) will get fitted to a smallish mandarin oranges can which will have an opening in one end where the flashlight head will get epoxied in place. Before that happens I'll drill three holes in the bottom of the pot and through the bottom lid of the can so that three brass bolts can hold the can to the inside bottom of the pot... and be kept there forever more with washers and nylocks inside the can. The brass bolt heads will triangulate against lettering on the bottom of the pot saying "Portugal". I will have the only Portuguese copper headlight of all the kids on my block! How about that, eh?

For the lens I'll tap into my years of doing stained glass work and make a disc combining stained and clear glass with the pieces held together with copper foil and solder. In the center the glass will be clear with clear "rays" shooting out into a field of blue glass in a sunburst pattern. More art deco is good. More copper is good. More more is gooder. It will help winter morph into spring, it will.
So that's what's up in the bear's den.
SB

dirtyoldcruiser,
Thanks for your kind words, sir. The weather has been unseasonably mild with many days of Indian summer at a time when we are expecting the ax of winter to have already fallen. Usually there is snow on the ground by now and for halloween there were many years (most) when my kids were bundled up in snow pants and pack boots stomping through snow drifts to go trick or treating. I'm a little old for it, but I can still move like a ghost and love gobblin sweets & treats. Chocolate & peanut butter is good. If an old guy in a bear outfit shows up at your door, be kind, be generous... do feed the bear!
SB

Annie,
You are a dear and yes I will accept your very kind offer with much gratitude. You probably do not look at all like Santa Claus, but the day when the carburetor arrives will be Christmas for me and I will hum a Christmas carol to you as I unwrap it. I have been a good boy this year, I might add. Smile. I just told Aaniimoosh the wonder dog about the carburetor for her bike (I just work here) and she's smiling, too. Moosh says hi & I'm waggin' me tail.
SB