Rusty challenge

Dusty Howell wanted to add an upright engine to his collection.

And he wanted to add a diesel engine.

The 1937 Fairbanks Morse that was sitting in a yard in Geneva hit both of those requirements.

The fact that it was old and rusty was just a bonus.

“I like old and rusty,” said Howell, a 37-year-old rural Portland resident who has the engine on display this week during the Tri-State Antique Engine and Tractor Show at Jay County Fairgrounds.

The 120-horsepower engine, a two-stroke diesel model 32E, came off of an oil-pumping station on a pipeline, he said as he relayed its history. It served there for 32 years.

Then it went to Coolspring, Pennsylvania, to an owner it had been forced onto — he had to take it if he wanted another piece of machinery he was hoping to buy. The engine sat there, about 10 miles northwest of gopher-famous Punxsutawney, for about 20 years.

Then Scott Hirschy of Geneva bought it. Another 20 years went by.

“And then he made me a deal that I couldn’t resist and I bought it,” said Howell.

How good was the deal?

“Well,” Howell said, hesitating for a few seconds before continuing, “it was good enough that I couldn’t tell him no.”

Beyond the quality of the deal, the machine hit several of Howell’s weak spots.

“It was big,” he said, stopping for a moment again

“And it was really rusty.”

Hirschy had every intention of fixing it up, Howell explained, but some early struggles pushed the project to the side.

“So it just sat there in his yard where they unloaded it,” added Howell, who started attended the Tri-State show with his father, Steve, and grandfather, Floyd, as a toddler. “It just kind of looked sad and lonely there. I’m a sucker for sad and lonely.”

Just after those words came out of his mouth, a Tri-State attendee strolled up to Howell and asked where the engine came from.

West Virginia, Howell responded, sharing the location of the oil pipeline.

“I’m from West Virginia,” responded Vince Wright.

“There’s always somebody coming and asking about it,” Howell said.

What about the engine caught Wright’s eye?

Nothing really.

It was his ears that drew him over.

“You don’t hear another one like it, I guess maybe because it’s a two-cylinder and its pipes are so long it makes a different sound,” said Wright of Speedway, West Virginia, less than 10 miles north of the Virginia border and just east of Interstate 77.

Though it doesn’t draw as large of a crowd as it did the first year Howell had it on display — and smaller this year with overall show numbers down because of the coronavirus pandemic — the engine still has a dozen or so spectators gathered around most of the time that Howell has it running each evening.

“The first year, man, it was like moths to a flame because nobody had ever seen it before,” Howell said. “It was new, and everybody was kind of crowded around it.”

Wright, a retired water and wastewater treatment plant worker, first attended in 2018 and missed last year because of a death in the family. He brought his grandma’s 1927 Maytag engine to display this year.

As he stood by watching the 1937 Fairbanks Morse, Howell did one of the other things that tend to draw attention.

“It throttles down to almost nothing and then picks right back up,” said Wright, observing as it sent steam sputtering from its pipes as it got back up to speed again.

It’s the engine’s cooling system that creates that eye-catching visual in unison with the sound of the engine chugging its way back up to speed.

Along with the engine that’s sitting on a trailer just a short stroll east of the 4-H barns at Jay County Fairgrounds is a barrel full of water. It is pumped up from the bottom and then pours out of two pipes at the top.

“Typically you would think … you would take it from the top down because gravity works better,” said Howell. “Well … just because we do it that way now doesn’t mean somebody didn’t do it the wrong way the first time.”

He explained that while the engine was in the oil field it likely would have run off of stream water.

To get the 1937 Fairbanks Morse running after more than 40 years sitting idle took some work. Howell’s purchase came about two weeks before the 2015 Tri-State show, and he spent a good portion of the time in between fixing it up.

“I spent two weeks turning my hands into just meat,” he said, adding that he was able to find a manual for the engine online. “Just beat on it, beat on it, beat on it. It wasn’t in that bad of shape, but it just took a lot in two weeks.”

His wife, Jamie, who refers to the engine as her wedding present to Dusty, was away for a few days visiting her sister for a wedding shower at the time.

“So I had a half a week all by myself with nothing to do,” Howell said. “So I spent long nights and got it going.”

There were some challenges.

The flywheel was “just a little stuck.” Some parts were severely rusted.

But, Howell said, he started with the “most breakable stuff” and was able to get everything loosened up. And he got it running for the first time at the 2015 Tri-State show.

“Basically the reason I do what I do is I like beating my head up against a brick wall,” he said. “I like a challenge.”