Popular engine

There are hundreds of exhibitors and tens of thousands of items to peruse.

Still, Ted Pinkerton’s display was drawing a crowd.

The Allison V-1710 engine the Bippus resident has on display at this week’s Tri-State Gas Engine and Tractor Show was consistently surrounded by enthusiasts, many stopping to ask questions.

The most common: “When’s the next time you’re gonna run this?”

Pinkerton responded that he was going to put up a schedule. Before he got a chance to do so, he was asked the same question at least two more times.

“I just make noise and burn gas,” he joked.

Pinkerton has been coming to the Tri-State show since 1972, but this is his first trip with the Allison V-1710 and just the second time he has displayed the piece. (The first was earlier this year at the Maumee Valley Antique Steam & Gas Association show in Allen County.)

He picked up the engine — he got it from “an undisclosed museum” in Indiana — to do exactly what he’s doing this week. Given that the previous piece he had on his trailer was just a “junk tractor pull engine” and still drew a lot of buzz, he said he felt the Allison 1710 would be popular.

The engine is a V-12 with 1,500 horsepower. It was the right-hand engine for a Lockheed P-38 Lightning.

“This is a genuine World War II,” Pinkerton said. “This thing hadn’t been ran since 1944.

“Few people get to see one run up this close.”

Though the engine hasn’t required a lot of work, there was still a time when Pinkerton wasn’t sure he would get it running.

The biggest issue?

“The hard part was getting it so I could turn it,” said Pinkerton. “It hadn’t turned for so long.”

Pinkerton explained that it had been filled with cosmoline, a corrosion inhibitor. It was used heavily by the military to protect equipment from rust and corrosion.

To try to loosen it up, he soaked the cylinders with jet fuel. No luck.

He tried it with a starter. Nothing.

Then he had a friend hang on the propeller — it is cut down from a Douglas DC-3 for display purposes — while trying the starter. It moved, a little. But it was enough for him to know it would work.

“It’s virtually a new engine,” he said.

Pinkerton grew up on a farm in Bippus in northern Huntington County, learning to fly at a 2,500-foot grass runway about 4 miles from home. He built and flew model airplanes as a child.

“I’ve always liked this kind of stuff,” he said. “Of course we always had all kinds of machinery. I was driving tractors, working on stuff. I always had a fascination with airplanes.” 

He went to Purdue University and then  worked at Fort Wayne Air Service after college and started rebuilding North American P-51 Mustangs with a friend. They also raced the planes.

He spent about 40 years as a corporate pilot, flying Learjets, Challengers, Gulfstreams and the like.

“One thing just kind of led to another and here I am,” said Pinkerton.

His display is located on the south side of Abromson Drive a few hundred feet east of the restrooms.

And why display the Allison?

“Why not?” Pinkerton said.

“It’s better than sitting in a museum.”