An Appreciation for Aermotor
Steve Oswald of Wauzeka, Wisconsin, started working with gasoline engines at a tender age. “Being a farm boy, I was always around machinery, and I liked it,” he says. At age 8, he tore into a Briggs & Stratton 3hp engine, completely dismantling the engine and then reassembling it, returning it to running order. “I put it to good use on my bicycle,” he recalls. “I had a heck of a time getting it lined up, but once I did, it worked fine. It went pretty fast, too fast, really, for gravel roads.”
His next project was a 1936 unstyled John Deere Model B tractor given to him by a neighbor. “It wasn’t stuck,” he says, “so I cleaned the carburetor, put in new gear-lube, points, condenser, spark plugs, added tires and painted it.” Having caught the tractor-collecting fever, Steve gathered up 30 tractors, mostly John Deeres, over the next 10 years.
When calm days stilled the windmill used to pump water for the family’s dairy herd, they used a 1-1/2hp John Deere hit-and-miss engine to run the pump jack. “I remember my dad starting it every spring with the John Deere
