February 2025 Fairbanks-Morse Power and Concrete Pumping By Paul Harvey Wow! That says a lot about this little machine! But
what is it and what does it do? Good questions, so let’s look around a
bit and see what we can find. Hmmm! We have a cute little
Fairbanks-Morse engine belted to a F-M pump jack, running an apparent
hopper and pumping apparatus. Not sure if it is factory or shop made.
There is no identification. Fascinating! So, let’s take a journey to
really look at it! I think you will enjoy!
So why pump concrete? Well, pumping transfers concrete
to areas of the job that cannot be reached by the big mixer truck. Our
little rig has a 2-inch discharge hose, while modern concrete pumping
rigs have long and wide delivery pipes. All fascinating and intended to
make the job easier. Here, we have pumped concrete through a small pipe
for ease of placement, as contrasted to a modern rig.
So, what is concrete? Wow! It’s the second most common
building material in the world! It’s made from cement, water, and
aggregate stones. Better yet, cement is made from limestone and clay.
How fortunate that all these materials are fairly common in nature and
are essentially nontoxic. Just look around and you’ll see concrete
almost everywhere!
So now, I want to turn the reader’s attention to our
machine’s engine. Commonly known as the “salt block” due to its shape,
it is a Fairbanks-Morse model Z, style D, 1½ HP engine. Appearing in
1928, and with a 2¼-inch bore and 3¼-inch stroke, it ran at 1,500 RPM.
The valves are located in the block, which ushered in a new phase of
engine design. Single wheel on one side and pulley on the other running
at half speed. This arrangement made it very versatile for multiple
uses.
The photo below shows a factory parts diagram for the
engine. It’s really quite simple, accounting for the large market it
served. Note the auxiliary cooling water tank which our engine has. I
presume this tank was an aftermarket addition.
Moving on, we will now look at the pump jack driven by
the engine. Fairbanks-Morse actually made a myriad of pump jacks for
every possible use. As shown, our unit is fairly heavy duty for the
small engine. There was one reciprocating lever that could activate an
overhead beam, or could pump a well. Note how the jack is formed to
nestle around the well casing.
Finally, the entire unit is mounted on an attractive
four-wheel cart. A useful and attractive display. |
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