Hi folks I am new to the Discussion and want to share my most recent find. It is what we all dream of in a barn find. It is a large steam chassis with a truck cab. There are no manufactures markings on the sheet metal; however the engine and rear end have Cruban cast in them. It looks to be the size of a bus chassis, but currently has a truck cab on it. We are working on the history.

The history I know so far is that the pervious owners Dad purchased it, in the late forties or early fifties. It sat behind their auto dealership until 1972 when it was move to the storage in the barn we removed it from last weekend.

The truck/chassis was disassembled before the pervious owner purchased it. There were parts in the upper and lower part of the barn. We found many of the parts, however several pieces are in very bad shape, but at least there is something for a pattern. The barn was in very bad shape also and we need to brace it up before we could even remove the truck.

The engine and boiler were moved home last weekend and I am headed up this weekend to pick up the truck. I will add more details in future posts on the details of the boiler, condenser and engine.

I am hoping that someone out there has some info that can shed some light on this.

I believe that you have a Brooks Steam Motor Co. bus chassis. The front wheels are identical as are several other features. A guess at the date would be about 1925 or a little later. There is a very colorful history about the Brooks Steam Car company. They were mainly into building commercial taxis. I think that you have the only Brooks bus chassis left in the world.

As promised, here is more info on the Cruban. The boiler is a fire tube design. It has a pre-heater vessel on the top. The large curved pipes connect the upper pre-heater chamber to the lower steam vessel. The boiler is approximately 28” in diameter. I have not had time research what the little curved pipes do, however that will happen soon.

This boiler matches patent number 1853183, patented by William Wenderhold, November 8th 1929. The patent can be seen at goggle patent. The link to it is [www.google.com] I have found in a couple of patents the Wenderhold and Carl Ubelmesser’s names together on them. Carl Uebelmesser worked at Cruban Machine and Steel Corp and designed the Empire steam car for Cruban.

Next up the engine. The engine is a 3 cylinder compound with piston valves. It is connected directly to the rear end and power is transmitted through a set of herringbone gear. The discussions I have had with others it appears that the valve gear is a combination of the Joy and the Marshall gears, mostly the latter. The engine is very complete. There is some damage to the valve gear, and the one cylinder must have had a water issue because there a welded repair to it and a new head made of brass. The manifold sitting on top doesn’t belong there it goes along the side and connects the exhaust ports for the front and rear of the cylinders.

Here are a couple more pictures of the engine. The first one is another one of the valve gear. You can see some of the damage to the valve gear in this picture. The second picture is of the herringbone gear that connects to the rear end. There is a patented engine mount that supports the front of the engine. I will get some pictures on Saturday and post them. Cruban Machine and Steel Works is cast into the cylinder casting and the aluminum valve mechanism case. If I get a chance tomorrow I will post some stuff on the condenser.

Is it possible Cruban did build a steam truck chassis? I have never seen a Brooks with Curban's name on it's parts. Has anyone else seen Cruban's name on parts used in building a Brooks steamer? Not be confused with the "CURRAN" steam commercial vehicle.(page 178 from the Floyd Clymer's Steam Car Edition Vol 1., or on page 79 of "Old Steam Cars" by John Bentley.). Curran's projected bus sketch did resembled the Brooks bus chassis. The Curran was the brain child of both Frank J. Curran and Charles R. Nebelmesser. Except for only the one running chassis that was built (which doesn't resemble the Brooks Bus chassis), for the lack of financing, the Curran steamer chassis never went into production. Source: "Old time Steam Cars" by John Bentley copyright 1953.

Very interesting engine, most three cylinder compounds I have read about have been used in high-speed torpedo boats. I’ve only found about five different engines of this type.
Their rod journals are not 120 degrees apart. The two lows are nominally 180 D to each other and 90D to the high.
Can you tell how these are arranged?
I designed a three cylinder compounded years ago with 120D journals.

[ourworld.cs.com]

Rolly

Rolly Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Very interesting engine, most three cylinder
> compounds I have read about have been used in
> high-speed torpedo boats. I’ve only found about
> five different engines of this type.
> Their rod journals are not 120 degrees apart. The
> two lows are nominally 180 D to each other and 90D
> to the high.
> Can you tell how these are arranged?
> I designed a three cylinder compounded years ago
> with 120D journals.
>
>

Rolly
This engine is built with what looks to be journals 120 degrees apart. I have not had time to get it into the shop and look it over closely, but it defiantly looks 120. I have attached a better shot that show this arrangement.

Mike
From the photos you posted it looks like the center cylinder is the high and the outside two are lows. The three valves look like Marshall gear to me.
Will the engine rotate and can you get the cylinder heads off. If so you can move the high to top dead center and measure the position of the other two pistons from the top, also the stroke.

Rolly

Another possible suspect might be the Delling Steam Coach which was described in some detail in "Automotive Industries" on December 29, 1928. The photos come from a Delling Motors Company flyer. The engine of the bus is described as "a three-cylinder horizontal one, with a bore of 4 1/4 in. and a stroke of 4 3/4 in. It is a double-acting engine and works on the uniflow principle... the piston valve at the end of the cylinder... is operated by means of a modified Walschaert valve gear... The three cranks of the engine are set at 120 deg." [There's a lot more description of the engine, boiler, etc., than I can transcribe right now.]

I might also note that the Curran Steam Bus designed by Frank J. Curran and Charles R. Nebelmesser - Charles R. Nebelmesser is the same guy as Charles R. Uebelmesser of Cruban (his name is often mis-spelled). I think I've seen another photo of the Curran bus prototype - I'll look for it.

Jim Merrick

Just wanted to give an update. We went back up this last weekend, search for more parts and pick-up the truck. Everything went well. I have included a few pictures of the unloading. It is always nice when equipment is at home, on the ground right side up and with nothing more broken.

The first step when we got home was to remove the left over’s from the raccoons that used the cab over the years as a home.

The last two nights I let my daughter loose with a spray bottle of penetrating oil and tonight we removed the cylinder heads so we could check the bore diameters.

The high pressure cylinder measure 5 1/4 and the low pressure cylinder measure 6 1/4. I measured these in a hurry so they could be off a little; the stroke was more difficult to measure. It looks to be around 6 ½.

All for now, I will get together some info on the condenser, steam turbine and rear end and post it soon.

A picture of a 1934 SMC 1.5t truck just for comparison. Advertised for sale 1943.

For your interest:
Here are some pictures of two variations of the Brooks steam bus.
Pic 1 has a V2 auxilliary engine.
Pic 3 V4 engine and boiler.