Rusty Seagrave car

Janicholson

Well-known Member
This car was built as a gift of appreciation to the owner of Seagrave fire engine company. It is the only one. It is about 20 feet long and is in iron oxide patina. The engine is 531CID Seagrave V12 with 2 Plugs/cylinder flathead. Exhaust and intake in the valley. Taken today at the St. Cloud Pantowners Car show. (250 cars and hotrods) Jim
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Had a 39 Nash...only six cylinders but two plugs per cylinder. Probably the dumbest thing I did was trade it for a B Farmall. The 36 Nash with suicide doors on the back two was cool.
 
Yes, they have 2 distributors.

I saw a static display of a v12 American LeFrance fire truck engine. It had a mass of plug wires! Two distributors, 2 coils, 2 sets of plugs.

I think their purpose was redundancy, if one ignition failed it would still run.

Here's a picture of one, not the one I saw, but it shows the 2 distributors.
V12
 
I thnk maybe the '39 Nash might have been the first car with a column shift (3 on the tree). Correct me if I'm wrong on that.
 
When my father was on the local Fire Department, they had an American La France pumper/ engine. I thought it had twin mags instead of coil ignition. Also think it was a V12. I just remember it would pump a LOT of water! joe
 
I think they all had mags for realibity as if battery went dead the engine would keep on pumping. Those 2 big books I had at Winamac with them open to Ford also covers the fire engines of several different companys.
 
I worked on one with a V12 dual ignition. 4
six cylinder distributors. Switch had three
positions, you could run on front two
distributors, back two distributors, or all
four which would fire all the plugs. No it
was not easy to time. IIRC it held 32
gallons of coolant. The whole shop
reverberated when you ran it. Just two big
straight exhaust pipes.
 
I used to own a 47 Seagrave Fire Ladder truck, had the big V-12 engine, duel spark plugs etc. ON a good day it got 2-3 mpg on a bad day about 1.5. Couldn't afford to take it for a drive often, but when we did the kids loved it. 50 gal fuel tank, and when I went to car shows locally I would raise the bed section of the ladder and fly the US flag from the top, was a 65 ' straight stick aerial
 

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