by Brian White
Spring has sprung, pollen is in the air and Carl is still worrying about salt on the roads. I have had a very productive and pleasant winter. As some of you know, I have been restoring a 1915 Pierce Arrow Limousine. I figured if a family could afford a ‘15 Pierce Arrow like the one I just restored, a son in that family could have had a nice Bearcat. What a life, both cars cost new more than the average home in 1915.
I ran into a problem on the Pierce Arrow, but it could happen on any old car. I was shooting to have the Pierce ready for the Concours at Hilton Head the first weekend in November. About three weeks before the show I started the car. Great relief to have it running after at least 40 years of being taken apart. The problem is it was smoking more than the old mosquito sprayers of our youth. I finished….well almost finished the restoration in time, but the smoking got worse. I tried all the old tricks and instead of helping it got to the point where oil was dripping out of the tail pipe. On one run driving it up and down the airstrip for one hour and fifteen minutes, it used three quarts of oil. I took it to Hilton Head, there will be no Mosquitos in Hilton Head this year and it won best in class.
When I got home I pulled the pan, made a windage tray that was missing and reassembled the pan. Thanks to Pat Craig he furnished all the dimensions and pictures from his pan. I was hoping the missing tray was the problem. That may of contributed but it didn’t seem to help. That’s when I decided to pull the cylinders and see why it loved so much oil. It’s always fun working over the freshly painted finished work. The cylinders are “T” head in pairs just like the early Stutz engine. The Pierce his a six cylinder instead of four on most Stutz’s. That gives you 50% more chance to screw up. The back pair on the Pierce are part of the way under the firewall. More fun.
Charlie my brother and I took a closet rod on each side and picked the cylinders with the rods and pistons in tack. A small chain on the intake and exhaust port studs wrapped around the closet rod worked perfect. We then cleaned and measured everything. The cylinders were standard and most likely used original pistons and rings. The car only shows 6068 miles. The piston has four quart inch rings and oil return holes below the third ring from the top. The rings were glazed so I ordered two one eighth inch compression rings for the top two ring slots. We ordered two new style oil control rings for the bottom two grooves.
A good friend of mine, some of you know him Ken Curtis, came over and helped me hone the cylinders and reinstall the works. After a week of working over quilts on fenders and making sure nothing touched anything it wasn’t suppose to, we were ready to fire it back up. When we started it up it was the longest 15 minutes I have ever stood there looking at an exhaust pipe but then the smoke disappeared. Finely the problem is solved.
There was a few things that I believe contributed to my oil problem. Some of the oil return holes under the third ring were stopped up, and the glazed surface of the rings. I also believe the original rings end gap was a little large. The two new compression rings installed with the end gap 180 degrees apart solved that problem along with new style oil rings.
I hope everyone of you get your cars out and take someone for a ride. We as a hobby need new members and one way to expose new members is to entertain them with the joys of riding though the back roads.
Happy touring,
