Steffey Motor Literature

[happyclark]

Posting this early piece of literature I just found. I haven’t seen this one before. I think it’s a great resource for all to see.

 

[catfish]

Very nice!

 

[RichH]

Thanks for sharing

 

[New Mexico Brant]

Love that rear sprocket on the tandem. Many thanks for posting!

 

[New Mexico Brant]

Steffey as shown in 1904 Automobile Review:

 

[Fritz Katzenjammer]

There’s no carburetor or magneto visible on the engine of the tandem. That means we likely have a surface carb and trembler coil in the box in front of the motor, which was primitive even for that time.

The surface carb was literally a can, kept full fuel by a float, through which you drew the air for the motor. The fuel used was more volatile than gasoline, benzine I think, and so you hoped your intake air picked up enough fumes on the way through the can to create decent mixture. Some surface carbs were packed with cotton fibres to increase the surface area. A trembler coil was a battery operated ignition device which vibrated a magnetic core in a coil creating a continuous series of sparks.

So you hoped you got a strong enough mixture into your cylinder for your continuous series of sparks to ignite once it was compressed enough up against your mica insulated sparking plug. These motors only ran at a few hundred rpm, which explains the lack of a more drastic gear reduction before the rear wheel.

There are few survivors of “motorbikes” with these motors as the semi open can of fuel type of carburetor tends to spill onto the hot engine and burn the entire thing to the ground if the bike falls over.

Another early ignition system was the hot tube system. This is where you had a tube of platinum screwed into the head of the engine, the outside of the tube surrounded by a box into which you place a lit bunsen burner. This heated the tube to a glow, when this heat worked its way through into the combustion chamber it hopefully ignited your compressed fuel mixture. Trembler coils Were an improvement, and possibly less of a fire hazard.

 

[New Mexico Brant]

That means we likely have a surface carb and trembler coil in the box in front of the motor, which was primitive even for that time.

It is too bad @happyclark only post a few pages of many from the catalog, it would answer many questions about the Steffey in the early years. The partial pages above mention a spark coil "in neat case", assumingely placed next to the battery in said case. Partial page 9 mentions gasoline twice so we can likely assume it was the fuel of choice. The small cylinder gas tank looks too small to work as an effective surface carburetor. Sadly details of the carburetor are cut-off again on page 9. The later ones (1920's) use a Lukenheimer mixer as a carb. The early restored examples use the same mixer but I cannot comment on if these are correct.

As you mention, in the tandem set up looks different; possibly the larger squarish box is a surface/vapor carburetor?

@happyclark can you please post a few more pages or comment. Thank you!

 

[Fritz Katzenjammer]

Yea olde English sparking plug with mica insulation...

if you unscrew the brass collar at the top you end up with a zillion little mica wafers, never to be correctly assembled ever again.

Still more of the junk thats sitting about the place.

 

[New Mexico Brant]

Does anyone have access to The Automobile Review, April 15th, 1903 issue? It is to have another depiction of a full factory built example.

 

[New Mexico Brant]

Here is a water-cooled engine version Steffey first developed. The March 3, 1900 Scientific American Article mentions Steffey invented this motor attachment in San Diego, California.