On Saturday, March 15, 2025 Kevin hosted a gathering to get the above pictured 1927 Studebaker President ‘running.’ It was a much anticipated day by many, but noone was more excited than Kevin. He arranged to have 26 additional people plus our family in the garage that day. The ages in the garage ranged from middle schoolers to 85 years on this earth!
A little history on the Car:
The vehicle was stored in a barn in Darlington, WI. The woman who sold it to a friend of ours said it had been in the barn since she married her late husband in the early 1950s. Our friend Jason Ihm purchased it from her, brought it to our car show. There was a lot of debate on what the vehicle actually was because whoever did the transformation from President to ‘truck’ did such a great job. Eventually, Jason understood that Kevin was more interested in the vehicle and it never left Studebaker acres. We stored the car in the garage and used the bed of it as a dessert table for our car show for 3 years.
“Why…”. I asked Kevin. “Why, Not.” He replied
“Because everyone who works on projects like this wants to make something like this run again” Kevin
“Oh, so there wasn’t a conversation woth anyone about getting it started.” Jamie
“Nope.” Kevin
Preparation for the day began with a good cleanup of the main bay of the garage. Kevin rolled the car into place on vehicle dollys, set up workbenches and made sure we had elbow room for all the attendees.
The morning of, the guys moved the car off the dollys onto jack stands. the jack stands were positioned uner each axel to allow freedom to work on the wheels. The hood was removed and work can begin!
John Grissem jumped right in and started freeing the rear mechanical brakes. Dan Orloff removed the fuel tank to clean it out and give it a visual inspection. Dan found liquid gas still in the tank and zero rust on the interior of the tank. Kevins friend from the military, Tony, and his boys worked to remove the carburetor and the tappet cover. This allowed inspection of the valves and Tony and crew got the valves freed up.
At the same time, Matt Goebel was removing the vacuum fuel pump to find it was very clean inside. The cleanliness of the mechanical parts of the vehicle was quite suprising to all who have any experience with deserted vehicles. Kevin, Tom Haisma and Rich Pyka removed the oil pan and found a dead mouse. Surprisinglly, the only animal carcass that was actually found in the vehicle. The theory is that it made its way up the breather tube. The question is how long ago? 80 years? The vehicle has been sitting for at least 75!
Louie Brings sent his bore scope down the cylenders and visually inspected them. Much to everyone’s pleasure, they were, again, fairly clean.
With the oil pan off, the crank case looked like the car was shut off yesterday. Minimal sludge was found. (Photo below).
The Crank, Cam, Rods, and lower part of the cylinders all looked in very good shape. The spark plugs were removed and the engine was turned over by hand crank first to ensure all the moving pieces did, in fact, move. Then, a 6V starter was connected, and it cranked the engine over very slowly. Everyone agreed that hooking up 12 volts to the starter was a great idea. The engine cranked over at a great tempo with the 12 volts.
As they were cranking the engine over, oil was pumped through a pickup tube and Kevin inspected from the underside of the car and watch oil come out. A video of that was shared on social media.
Dan used Louie’s induction heater to remove the right front wheel and the other lug nuts that were put on the vehicle decades ago.
Tom and Kevin pulled apart the carburetor. Another visual inspection found a relatively clean interior. The commom problem with these particular carburetors is a weak pot metal bowl lid.
Once that was discovered, the upper half of the intake manifold was removed. There were discussions around fabricating a new modern intake for a down draft carburetor. Upon removing the half of the intake, a mouse nest was discovered packed into the exhaust manifold.
With all that the crew had discovered through the day, their motivation to dig further into the project was coming to a halt. They still had a battery and cables out, so Kevin tried putting power to the horn and got a little bit of an Ah-Oo-Ga! That got lots of grins and chuckles from everyone. There is a video of the horn posted to social media. The crowd started to clear. A few attendees lingered over the engine discussing what had been done through the day and the plan going forward.
Over the next few days, Tom came back to help Kevin get further on the engine. He gapped the points, installed new coil, checked for spark and ran new spark plug wires. Kevin cleaned the tappets and valve stems with diesel fuel and air pressure and let it drain out the bottom of the crank case to a big pan under the car.
After that, Kevin doused everything in oil to wash the diesel fuel out and wiped everything out of the crank case and reinstalled the oil pan.
“Everyone who came on Saturday had a hand in helping make all this happen and the Best Superviosor award goes to the Eldest of the crew, Ken Schulz.” – Kevin
Jon Kammer is a machinist from Appleton whom Kevin had done a project for. He is drawing up plans to fabricate an intake. We will be sure to publish updates as the project moves forward.
“Kevin and I would like to thank everyone for being willing participants and helping to keep history alive!” – Jamie
