<--- Back to Schumacher Special Home Page

Restoration Updates

UPDATE 11/11/10 The best place to view the restoration project is this thread on Hamb. I have people periodically asking me for restoration updates. As stuff happens I'll try to update this page with pictures.

January 2010

December 2009

We have finally made some progress. The chassis has been painted in a non-metalic silver as it was originally. The sides of the chassis mate with the aluminum panels of the body so they needed to finished nicely. We've started the reassembly and hope to have the chassis on it's wheels in the next week or two. The engine builder John Cislak has promised me the engine by the spring At that point John will work with Dean Rymer on fitting the engine back into the chassis. Dean has been fabricating the intake and will also fabricate a stainless exhuast header and piple. Also, my dad finished restoring the E&J headlights. This ended up being quite a bit of work. He and I fought with the spring clips to reassemble them for hours. Eventually we gave up when my dad noticed that with a couple of new holes we could use machine screws to mount the inside mechanism instead of the stupid clips.

January 2009

I wish I could post an update with more progress and pictures but things are moving slow for a number of reasons. Right now the engine builder is porting the head and wanted the exhaust flange fabricated so he could do them together. So I dragged out the original header that was cut up to fit the Packard engine (that was installed in the 40s). If you look at the pictures below, you can see a very neat period detail which is the way they wrapped the steel header with aluminum and then machine screwed it on. In the pictures the exhaust is end-to-end shiny like it's chromed. My intentions had always been to fabricate the whole thing out of stainless. However, now that I've taken a close look at the original piece I'm thinking we'll build it the same way (but maybe use stainless instead of aluminum for the wrap). In the back of the pictures you can see the matching Winfields and the intake manifolds that are coming along pretty well.

July 2008

Things are moving slowly. While I was out visiting George Holman I took this picture of his Super Bearcat. These cars have super short wheelbases and fabricate bodies. They were factory road rockets. The engine builder John Cislik just finished fabricating new valves. I was able to acquire a matched set of four winfield carburators which cost a small fortune. Here is a picture of one of them. As mentioned in the March update below, Stutz Racing Guru George Holmans and his mechanic Dean were able to identify the 4 square base on the intake in the engine picture I have from the earl 1930s has being Winfield. I talked with Gus Schumacher Jr and this makes sense to him. His dad ran Winfields on all his race engines. On this special, the Winfields were replaced with Carters when the car was adapted for street use and the original consigner stopped paying.

March 2008

The chassis and all related components have been rebuilt and prepped for paint. This was finished a year ago and we just have not gotten to painting them. As the engine looks like it will be finished this summer I'm going to try to get the chassis painted. My dad and I visited George Holman's shop today and talked with his engine builder Dean who's fabricating the 4 carb intake from the lone engine shot we have from 1933 (sorry I can't show it as it's copywritten). One thing that we found out today was that Dean using a maginifying glass came to the conclusion the the carburators were originally Winfields. He showed us that the original intakes were 4 bolt square and that adapters were then made and placed on top for the Carters. This confirms with what Gus Jr. told me and makes sense for a couple of reasons. The first is that the Carters were not introduced until 1932 and the car was finished in 1930. The second is that after the original consigner dropped out and the car was adapted for street use , the more expensive and complex Winfields were replaced with the simple and cheaper Carters. This is really good news and not so good news. The good part is that the Winfields are really cool and Georege has a matching set of 4 that he's willing to sell me. The bad news is that they are expensive and I've got over 600.00 invested in 4 rebuilt matching Carters.

The second stop we made was at John Cislak's shop were the engine is being done. John is working with Dean and George who extensivly race Stutz and have a wealth of knowledge when it comes to beefing these engines up. You can see in the pictures below the pop up pistons. Compression has been increased from the original 5-1 to around 8.5-1. Packard steel rods replaced the original aluminum Stuts rods. We have been having a really hard time getting valves and it looks like John will be fabricating them himself.

Updated on November 11, 2010