The Restoration of a mobile steam car-final part

​​I think it's time to make a final article of the previous renovations we've made. It's more inspiring to write about current things than trying to remember what was done several years ago.

But back to the last memories of the work we made on our friend's 1900 Mobile.
As I told in the last post, the Mobile worked well at the first test runs and it was time for the owner of the car to come and see our work.
Sweden is a long country, I live just above the midpoint of Sweden, Tomas who owns the car lives in the southern most part of our country.
So for Tomas, this means 1120 km in a car to get up to us to test his Mobile. Now Tomas did not come alone, with him in the car there were also two gentlemen from Denmark, that was Per Nielsen and his friend Eugenio Lai. Per Nielsen is a famous name in the steam car context and his story of the visit to us in northern Sweden is possible to read in a number of the magazine "The Steam Car" probably in late 2014 or in any of the magazines published in 2015.
The boys had been driving all night and were really tired when they got out of the car on arrival at our house. But they were warriors and did not want to waste the visit by sleeping, they had come here to watch and maybe even get an opportunity to test drive the mobile themselves, saying “you can sleep when you are six feet under”...  Our work got a good reaction, our goal to do a good job and the ambition of using contemporary types of fittings as far as possible was appreciated and our visitors showed happy faces.
So we rolled out the Mobile from the workshop and started steaming up. When the boiler was up to pressure, Tomas got up and sat on the temporary seat (in the form of a plank). He had owned the car for more than 10 years, at last he would have to make a first test trip.
Tomas test run with his Mobile went well, he looked happy, despite the fact that he got his rest on the temporary seat, which was just an uncomfortable plank.
It went a little worse when Per tried to drive the car, if anyone wants to research this subject, I recommend reading the story Per wrote in the newspaper I mentioned above.
Although the test run was considered to be successful we realized that, if the the Mobile should be able to be driven any longer distance, it must be supplemented with preheating of the feed water. I have mentioned earlier that the original burner in the Mobile is very ineffective, the Locomobile we previously worked with had such a powerful burner that we never really experienced this problem. But here it became apparent that the cold feed water caused problems, thus the Mobile simply has to be supplemented with preheating of the feed water. We designed a spiral of copper that was placed on top of the boiler, a simple but effective design that we've seen in images of other steam vehicles.
After this Tomas took his steamer home, he has a very good transportation car, a converted Volvo with plenty of space on the platform.
Since this time, he has completed the body and the Mobile is today inspected and approved to travel on public roads. In fact, today this is Sweden's oldest car that can be driven in traffic.
I have visited him on several occasions to teach him how to handle his steam car. It's a lot to keep in mind when you have never come into contact with anything steam driven. On these occasions, the car behaved great and worked without complaint.
With this I finish the chapter "Previous Renovations", now the focus will be ongoing work.

Gunnar Modig