Cushman engines

Cushman made engines long before they made scooters. They got into the scooter business in order to sell more engines. That seemed to work very well for them.

The first Cushman scooters were called "Autoglides" and they were powered by 1, 1.5, and 2 horsepower "Husky" engines. In 1938, the Husky got four horsepower. These engines had a vertical cylinder with a flat head and the spark plug on the front of the head. The head and block were cast iron. There was a detachable oil sump on the bottom and so they were called the "two-piece block Husky." It was a good engine in it's day and was fairly easy to repair.

In the mid 1940's Cushman dropped the Autoglide name and came out with the 50-series Cushmans, but they kept the 4 hp, 2-piece Husky.

About 1949* Cushman introduced a one-piece version of the Husky. The spark plug was moved to the center of the head. It came in 3.2, 4, 4.8, and 5 horsepower versions. Often, the horsepower rating depended more on regulations than actual power. Some states specified that you had to be 16 to ride a scooter with five or more horsepower.

About the middle of the run of 60-series scooters, Cushman introduce a new, more powerful, Husky. It was rated at 7.3 horsepower (5 in some states) and had a 2 7/8 bore. Because the cooling fins were different, it became known as the square-block Husky. By default, the earlier one-piece Husky became the "round block."

Early Cushman Eagles were often powered by round block engines with five horsepower, but the standard soon became a three-inch bore, 8 hp square block.

By 1960, Cushman had been sold to Outboard Marine Corperation, the company that made Johnson and Evinrude outboard motors. They set out to modernize the Eagle with an aluminum, overhead valve, nine horsepower engine with the cylinder tilted toward the front of the scooter. They called it the Super Husky, but it's usually referred to as "the OMC engine." The Eagles with these gleaming silver engines were called Silver Eagles. Some had electric starters.

Who knows where Cushman was heading. Was there to be a Golden Eagle? Was the two-speed transmission to be replaced with three or four gears? Unfortunately, scooter production ended in 1965.
Howard
*Dates are approximate, because Cushman didn't keep very good records.

Behind the badge

You can't always tell what kind of scooter you've found just by looking at the badge. Companies like Sears and Montgomery Ward have been selling scooters for many years, but I don't think they ever made one.

Sears puts names like Allstate on scooters made by other companies and sells them as if they were their own. They do this with almost everything they sell. I have an Allstate scooter that was made by Cushman. Puch, Vespa, and other European companies also supplied Sears with machines to be sold as Allstates. The Vespa version was the Allstate Cruisaire. One Allstate was a car made by Kaiser. Kaiser dealers sold them as the Henry J.

The Allstate name was used on several Cushman scooters. In the mid 50's, the Allstate Deluxe 811.40 was sold alongside the Allstate 811.30 which was an economy model with 3 horsepower, instead of the 4 horsepower as found in the DeLuxe.

The Allstate DeLuxe is sometimes identified as a Cushman 60-series Pacemaker with different sheet metal, but this is incorrect. It is a Cushman Highlander underneath it's Art Decco skin.
The Pacemaker had springs in the back, but the Allstate didn't and neither did the Highlander. None of the Allstate Cushmans had the two-speed transmission that was available on some Cushman models.

Beginning in 1957, Sears sold a rebadged model 722 Pacemaker, calling it a Jetsweep. Beginning with the 722, Pacemakers no longer had springs in the back.

Wards has always done the same. I have a small motorcycle called a Ward's Riverside that is a re-badgedBenelli from Italy. The Riverside name also was used on Japanese Mitsubishi scooters that were also sold as Silver Pigeons. I can't confire this, but I believe Wards also sold Italian Lambrettas with their own brand.

Even Cushman got into the act, selling a Vespa that was rebadged as a Cushman.
Howard

scooter meet preparations

The SECC spring meet begins in a couple of weeks. I don't see how I can get ready. The shop is so full of stuff I can't find room to work. One whole end is full of potted plants that I am stuck with until after the last frost. But that's another story.

I need to get the fuel leak fixed on the 60-series. It isn't much to look at but it has new tires and runs strong. That makes it a good scoot to ride.

The Eagle may be OK. I think the new spark plug fixed it's problems, but I have a spare carburetor waiting in the wings if it won't run right. That's another good scooter to ride. I like the electric starter and brakes on both wheels. It's a very comfortable machine.

I haven't decided which of the other scooters will make the trip. I need to take something that has been restored. One thing that will be on board is a three-wheeled bicycle, aka "granny cycle" that I plan to sell.

If the weather would cooperate, I could roll a couple of scooters out on the patio to make room to work. It would also be nice if we had some warm dry weather for test runs.

But somehow, things will fall into place and we will go to Cochran for an enjoyable meet.
Howard

windy place

I went down to my son's house today to take him a load of firewood. He has about 10 acres about 40 miles to the south. He lives in the middle of several hundred acres of open meadowland that lies right next to a steep mountain ridge. All the way down there, I didn't notice any wind, but about a quarter of a mile from his house, I saw leaves blowing across the road. By the time I pulled into the drive, it was blowing about 20 miles per hour with gusts over 30.

I think the reason for all of that wind is the ridge. It rises up at least a couple of thousand feet and forms a sort of dam that causes the prevailing westerlies to turn north. It is always windy there.

After we unloaded the wood, we went into the house and while we were sitting there, I thought I heard a low flying jet go over the house. You guessed it. It was a gust of wind.

They never have any problem with mosquitoes. The wind blows them away.
Howard

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Those old scooters in the barn

If you just happen to have an old scooter in the barn (shed, garage, basement, atic, yard), and it is just in the way and taking up space, you need to contact me. Not only will I haul it off for you, I pay ca$h money. I can find a useful part on the worst looking mangled mess of a rusty hulk scooter. A parts scooter with only one part won't make you rich, but it might make me very happy. I like Cushman, Vespa, Doodlebug, Whizzer, Mustang (the scooters, not the cars) Lambretta, Powell, Moto Rumi, Zundap, Allstate, and Fuji Rabbit (built by the same folks who make Subaru). Sometimes I even get interested in unidentified scooters.

You might even get my attention with a moped or minibike. I once bought a minibike with no engine, no tires, and no brakes!

I have no interest in dirt bikes or heavy Harleys.

Contact me on this site.
Howard

Zundapp Bella

I just hung a new picture in my shop. I found it in the garage where it has been since before the shop was built. I can't remember where I got it but it is an 8 X 10 of a Zundapp Bella motorscooter that was manufactured in Germany in 1957. It is red, as scooters often are, but there is nothing else ordinary about it. It is a strangely beautiful scooter.

I have only seen one real Zundapp Bella in my whole life, so I guess that makes it rare. I looked it up and it is said to have 198cc's and 12.4 horsepower. That's rather powerful for a motor scooter. It also has German engineering that makes it a solid, reliable scooter. Zundapp produced the Bella until 1964, and some less impressive scooters up until 1984.

Most shop pictures are pin-ups, but in my shops you see the Bella, a poster of NASCAR's Mark Martin, some old Cushman ads, and a copy of Winslow Homer's Breezing Up, which was painted by my mother. I have the usual license plates, and my De-Liar collection, so there isn't a lot of empty wall space in there anymore.
Howard

Almost, in Georgia

I guess it's almost spring in Georgia. We were down there this week. The buttercups are blooming and we saw a few yard sales. There is a also a purple tree down there that is blooming all over the place. My guess is that it's an ornimental plum.

Scooter Week, the spring meet of the southeastern cushman club, down in Cochran, Georgia is only weeks away. Sometimes Cochran is a town-sized flower garden when we go down for that meet. I think this will be my 11th spring meet and I've been to 10 SECC fall meets. That's 21 straight SECC meets since I joined the club. For more on Cochran and the Spring Meet, go to www.southeasterncushmanclub.com
Howard

Old house exploration

I guess I'll go dang near anywhere looking for old scooters and stuff, so when I got a chance to explorer an old house and several farm buildings, I took off. I'm not saying where this place is but it was a 101-year-old farm house that has not been inhabited for about 25 years. It was still furnished. There were a couple of sheds, two barns and an attic.

The first place I looked was in the kitchen where I saw an old Hoosier style kitchen cabinet and a wood butter churn. The churn was a square box mounted at a crazy angle. You just turned the crank and the buttermilk sloshed around until it made butter. It must have been 60 or 70 years old, but looked like it had not seen much use. In one corner there was a red ice chest. It was galvanized inside and had a metal tray. It probably said Coca Cola on it at one time, but it had been repainted.

There was a wooden soft drink cooler in another room. It was like the ones you saw in grocery stores before WWII. There was a round wringer type washing machine, a waterfall dresser, a chest of drawers and some tables and chairs. In a small room off the back porch there were about 50 mail order catalogs. Most were from Penney's and Sears. The one on top was from 1978, but deeper in the stack they looked older.

Antique stuff was in every room. The house had marble doorknobs, and there were old bottles and jars everywhere. I saw hand cranked gadgets that I couldn't even identify.

But I knew that any vintage motor scooters would be in the out buildings so I literally headed for the barn. Make that "barns," plural. The first one contained large bales of hay, and I wondered what might be hidden behind it. Over on the back wall I saw a Chevy hubcap, circa 1955, and a tractor light. There were old tools and horse tac hanging on the walls. The other barn contained more hay, but one room had two old horse-drawn mowing machines, and a disassembled farm wagon.
There was a horse drawn disk in another room. Bottles and jars were everywhere in the barns.
I saw shell-back lawn chairs, wash tubs, and iron stoves. There was another wringer washer in a shed behind the house. I saw a couple of old license plates.

But there were no scooters. I guess you can't win them all. So why didn't I bring home all that other stuff? Well, the property is for sale and I guess I'd have to buy the whole farm to get any of the antiques. But if I had found a scooter, I might have made them an attractive offer on that.
Howard

flywheel removal

Things are a little rough out in my shop right now. I am working on an old washing machine engine and it is just not cooperating. It's a Maytag Multimotor built in 1947. It's a two-cycle, two cylinder, horizonally opposed, air cooled engine that puts out a whopping 5/8 of a horsepower. It also puts out a lot of smoke, as the fuel/oil mix is 16:1. Well, let's just say that it will smoke if I can ever get it running. The problem is that I have to remove the flywheel so that I can tune up the ignition. But flywheels don't come off easily. The directions say to remove the pully and replace the hex nut snuggly against the end of the crankshaft. Then it says to put a piece of wood on the nut and sock it with a hammer to loosen the flywheel. It sounds simple, but it won't work. I have soaked it in penetrating oil for a week and every few days I go out there and whack it with a hammer. It must be welded on. On the otherhand, maybe it hasn't been off for 58 years, or whenever it was last used to do laundry.

A lot of these old Maytag gasoline engines are lying around in barns and sheds. People used to buy a gas-powered washing machine because their house didn't have electricity. But then electricity became available and they converted the washing machine to an electric motor. That was better, because electric motors are no trouble to start, they are quiet, and they don't fill the room with smelly blue smoke. So a lot of these old engines don't have a lot of time on them.

It's true that some of them were put to work powering pumps and stuff, but most were simply tossed back in the barn and left there forever. That's good for people who collect stuff like that.

Did I just say that I collect Maytag engines? Well, I have two of them and neither one runs, but I guess you could call that a collection. The other one is a 1932 model with one cylinder and it puts out 3/4 of a horsepower. It's about twice the size of the one I'm working on. And the flywheel won't come off that one either.
Howard

Is this stuff upside down?

For some reason my posts seem to always come out on top. It might be best to scroll down to the bottom where you will find my very first post and then read them as you scroll back up.
Confusing, isn't it!

My scooters

Most of my scooters are Cushmans, but I have Vespa scooters as well. Even a couple of motorbikes have slipped in there with the scooters, but I have no interest in big, fast motorcycles. Here is a listing of my collection:

1947 Cushman model 52, restored in 1995. It's red and has a claxton horn on the handlebars. It has the 4 horsepower Husky engine.

1963 Cushman Super Silver Eagle. It's unrestored and is very close to original. The red paint had faded to orange and there is pitting on the chrome. The engine is the overhead valve, OMC aluminum engine with 9 horsepower and it has two speeds.

1961 Cushman Highlander, restored, black and yellow with a 5 horsepower engine. This is not the correct engine, but it looks the same. It came from a 1957 Cushman Pacemaker.

1953 Allstate DeLuxe model 811.40 manufactured for Sears by Cushman. This scooter was professionally restored. It is a flashy red with an Art Decco body, one speed with the one-piece
Husky engine.

1953 Cushman Pacemaker model 62. This scooter is also unrestored and the paint looks terrible, but it is a good solid scooter that runs well and will be restored someday. It has the 7.3 hp square block Husky engine and is rather fast.

1972 Vespa Rally 180. This is the larger Vespa, with four speeds and an 8.9 hp engine. It's in great original condition and the color is orange.

1974 Vespa 90, green, with a three speed. The engine is not very powerful, but with three gears it moves right along. It also looks good and the original paint is excellent.

My motor scooter connection and collection

I first became interested in motor scooters in Kentucky, shortly after World War II. I guess I was about 12 or 13 when I saw my first Cushman scooter. It was parked in front of the pool room. I know now that it was a 1946 Cushman model 54 with a two-speed transmission. It was blue, and had a windshield and a buddy seat. I was impressed.

A short time after that, the Western Auto Store started selling Doodlebugs. They were about 1.5 horsepower, and much smaller than the Cushman. A kid in our neighborhood had one and he let me ride it. I had never ridden anything with a motor. I was hooked.

Poverty kept me apart from motor scooters, but in the fall of 1948, we moved to Florida and scooters were everywhere. Most of them were big beautiful Cushmans. A friend of mine bought one second hand and we covered several counties on it. His was the single speed model 52 and sometimes on sandy country roads it would bog down with both of us on it. I would leap off the back and push until we got back on a firm surface, them leap back on and away we would go. The model 52 was newer than the one I saw in Kentucky. It had barrel springs in the front, but the engine was the same 4 horse power, two-piece block engine. On the level roads that were so common in Florida, it was enough power to carry us both at about 40 miles per hour. Sometimes it took a while to get going, but once we got opened up, it made good time.

Then we moved to Tennessee and I never had the chance to own a Cushman. Finally, at age 59, and approaching retirement, I got one. It was 1947 model 52, very similar to the one I had spent so much time on in Florida. My son helped me restore it and it was the beginning of what is now a nice collection of motor scooters.

scooterplace

I collect vintage motor scooters, so much of what you find here will be scooter related, but I may cover other subjects as well.