We’re into Vintage Outboards

I’m Bruce Chadwick. I’m an AMSOIL dealer and I’m into antique outboard motors. I was always into the outboards with my father. And then after I got married and my son was born, we would go out from the time he was 6 years old.

I bought him a little British Seagull outboard, which we still have. And he would work on it on our patio. And overhaul it. And he got it running.

It grew from there. It was like, “Wow, he has an interest in this.” We’d get another motor and wow, that’s fun and oh, now it’s fixed and it runs. What are we going to do? Well, let’s go get another motor.

When you get these old motors, there’s no manual. It was a whole different world. And outboards were new. It was a novelty at that point.

For us, the fun is figuring out what did they have in mind? How do you start this thing? This is the 1929 Elto Speedster. They were nicknamed the Knuckle Buster.

When you bounce the knob off of the tank, it will spring back into motion rotating in the opposite direction. And if you don’t get your hand out in time, it will hit your hand very hard. And then once we get them running in our warehouse, we’ll put them on a boat. We’ll take them to a lake.

Most of these old engines, there’s no neutral, no reverse. So, you have to be prepared when you start it, you’re moving. It’s a lot of fun to use the motor for what it was designed to do. Whether it was fishing, skiing, or just sightseeing.

Like the old Evinrude story was that Mr. Evinrude wanted to take his wife for ice cream. Well, he couldn’t row his boat fast enough because the ice cream would melt. He said there had to be a better way.

And that’s how Mr. Evinrude came up with the original Evinrude rowboat motor. He had to get there faster because ice cream would melt. We kind of specialize in Martin outboards.

We’ve always been fascinated by their design and the fact that they weren’t made by an outboard manufacturer, but they were actually made by National Pressure Cooker Corporation. Which is interesting. It was a frying pan company who got into outboards by accident. We stumbled across the Antique Outboard Motor Club.

They’re a great group of people and it’s all about, let’s go play with the motors. You get to the meet and how soon can we get on the water? And you’ll have all these antique motors cruising across the lake and we’re cruising 100 miles with 70, 80-year-old engines. We even had a meet where we ended up rescuing a float plane that had a mishap on the lake.

Our opinion, modern engines all look very similar. They kind of look like toasters. They don’t have a lot of style to them. And motors from the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, they’re more generic looking.

They don’t have the fancy trim covers on them. Uh everything’s exposed. Ignition systems, flywheels. It’s all about function.

They weren’t trying to make them pretty. Some of the guys in the club tease me, “When are you going to get serious?” Because there’s guys in the club with hundreds of motors. We actually have motors on the wall. We have motors on the floor.

We have motors on rolling carts, on stands. We have three on the transom that we store for lack of space. We have some laying down in the boat. There’s motors on the patio at home.

There’s Sometimes there’s motors next to the TV. Total, 50, maybe 60. My wife would probably leave me if I had hundreds in the apartment. So.

I’m Bruce Chadwick. I’m an AMSOIL dealer and I’m into antique outboard motors.