Starting up some history: Sherwood keeps classic cars at Ogden museum running
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No Comments [ Add Comment ]By CHARLES F. TRENTELMAN
Standard-Examiner staff
OGDEN -- The cool thing for Steve Sherwood is not that almost all of the antique classic cars in the Union Station museum run.
Although that is massively cool.
It is also not that Sherwood, one of several volunteer mechanics, gets to work on those cars, although that's very cool, too. The cars present unending opportunities to fiddle with ancient and really beautiful mechanical things.
No, the coolest thing is that Sherwood gets to drive the cars.
Out on the street, around town, to many admiring glances.
Tool down 25th Street in a 1932 Lincoln? Hit Washington Boulevard in a 1911 Knox? They're admiration magnets, no doubt about it.
Sometimes he worries he'll cause a wreck because other drivers are watching him, not the road. As long as they don't hit him, he's happy.
"My wife says this saves us a lot of money," Sherwood smiled. "I won't buy a new car."
Sherwood is retired, so he has plenty of time to hang around the cars, polish their nuts and bolts and twiddle with their grommets.
In addition to Sherwood, who does a lot of general maintenance, volunteers Mark Megahan, Mike Ericksen and Alex Jolin all have specialties, such as machine work, that come in handy to keep the cars well.
Sherwood starts each engine about once a week and lets it run in place. He has tubes to carry the exhaust outside.
Nine cars, donated to Ogden by the late Matt Browning when he sold the rest of his 65-car collection a decade ago, were in running condition when donated and are kept that way -- mostly it is general maintenance work.
Browning liked his cars to run and drove them all. He was a member of the Browning family, which used to own Browning Arms and numerous other businesses in and around Top of Utah, so money was never a problem.
Yes, they get lousy gas mileage. Cars with 12 and 16 cylinders slurp the stuff like soda through a straw. Sherwood said some have run out of gas just from moving around the museum lot.
Each has a unique set of fiddly things.
That 1911 Knox? "It runs, but I've only had it outside once." It does not run as smoothly as he would like, mostly because "it's been sitting so many years. I've cleaned it up."
Fine-tuning the Knox takes caution. "That's one where parts are no longer available, so it's very delicate."
The 1929 Pierce-Arrow in back "has been problematic," he said.
"It's the timing. The timing marks on the flywheel are in the wrong place." Timing marks set the firing of the spark plugs. If the timing marks are not in the right place, it's hard to tune the car.
Sherwood speculates that Browning had the engine worked on and someone put it back together wrong.
"I understand when Matt would drive in that it would overheat," he said, and bad timing would explain that.
But it is, he said, "such a beautiful car."
The 1930 Cadillac, a long, brown hunk of polished luxury, is the only one that currently troubles him.
It's one of the most valuable in the collection -- appraised for insurance purposes at half a million dollars -- but it doesn't start.
That puzzles Sherwood. "This car ran in the 1990s, so it should run," he said.
But "you step on the starter and it goes 'RRR! RRR! RRR!' and it sounds like it's not firing, but it is."
He lifted one side of the cowling covering the 16-cylinder engine, revealing the brilliantly polished and painted workings inside.
His best guess, he said, pointing to a round metal tube on the left side with a small glass globe at the bottom filled with gasoline, is that the fuel pump is not right.
The Caddy originally had a vacuum fuel pump that fed a reservoir that dripped gasoline to the engine by gravity. Someone put in an electrical pump, he said, and the pressure may be too high.
"We have a pressure regulator on it, but it may still be too high. Maybe the next step is to just get some of that high-test fuel they use for race cars," he said
Parts are not as big a problem as one might think. The museum is a member of several antique car associations where people buy and sell parts. Internet auctions also provide some help.
A surprising number of parts can be purchased new.
Tires for just about any car you care to name are still made, albeit at a price. Yes, $250 is a lot, but when your 1929 Lincoln needs new wheels, you don't quibble.
Other things take more work. When the leather link fan belt on the Knox fell apart, Sherwood got out his leather tools and made a new one. He bought a fan belt pulley for the Pierce-Arrow that turned out to be a $350 rusted lump of steel that had to be massively restored, but now it works.
Gasoline is not a problem. All the cars use regular, with a lead substitute added.
He does get questions about why the cars are all kept running, licensed, inspected, street-legal and ready to go.
Museums are usually about preserving stuff, but "I wouldn't have an old car unless I could drive it. What would be the point?"
Being in running condition increases their value, he said. It keeps their batteries charged, the engine innards oiled and the joints limber.
Keeping them running also pays tribute to Matt Browning. Sherwood remembers Browning driving the 1911 Knox around town, a fragile-looking refugee from the horse and buggy days, resplendent in gleaming brass polished bodywork.
Sherwood said someone asked Browning, "What would you do if that car broke? He said 'I'd fix it.' "
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