I am to the point of having too much clearance on the spider gear hub to axle fit on our 1916 Stanley Mt. Wagon. At higher speeds with a neutral throttle, it can clatter pretty bad. I had seen an article recently about the steps taken on remachining the spider hub fit to the axle shafts. Can anyone please tell me where I had read this? Auburn Heights Heralds? The Steam Automobile Bulletin, The Steam Car, or where? I am a machinist so I can do it without the article, but I am sure that there were tips in the article that would help. Thank you.

I finished setting up the Mountain Wagon's rear axle yesterday and I installed it today. I ran it about 4 miles this afternoon. It is a vast improvement over what it was. The problem with it is that it had too much backlash in the spider gears. The rear axle/tires are the flywheels for the engine so the least backlash is the answer. I have always set the engine's gear and the axle's driven gear real close to eliminate any gear rattle at a neutral throttle position, but that wasn't enough. I still had a gear rattle. I set up the rear axle shafts in their bearings so that they turned freely without any drag. I had to shim behind the axle shaft's cone bearing to get the right bearing setting . No slack was left in the bearings either. The spider gears were set without any backlash in them but the axle half shafts were still able to be cranked in opposite directions by hand. With a 12 " wrench on the axle shaft, about a eight pound pull was necessary to overcome the drag of the spider gears turning in opposite directions. Running it down the road, they are now as quiet as a church mouse. I like it. :) Summer touring, here we come.

We drove the Mt. Wagon on a 96 mile tour through the country today. Through the tall forests, up and down through the mountain valleys, along the lakes and along the white water streams, we seen it all. The mountain wagon ran reliably and we were quite please with it. At speeds over 45 mph, it still had a little gear noise. Speeds below that, it was as quiet as it should be. We gave rides to members of the Northwest Steam Society. One trip we had 11 people in the Stanley. We would have had 12 on that load but I limited the people in the front seat to only us two large people so that I would have room to operate. We got about 40 miles to a filling of 80 gallons of water. Hopefully the water mileage will improve. Steaming along is what dreams are made of.