Olds Engines Catalog - Reliance Engineering Co., Lansing, Mich - reprint

Description

Olds Engines
(catalog), by the Reliance Engineering Company, Lansing, Michigan. Probably 1910s, because the company was first organized in 1916. 6 x 9 paperback, 40 pages. Reproduced by Nation Builder Books, Mebane, NC, September 2014.
Please note this is a new photocopied reproduction, NOT AN ORIGINAL. The accompanying pictures were scanned from a reproduction, not the original. Please note these copies are slightly shopworn.
The February 1916 issue of
Gas Review
magazine carried this notice:
A new gas engine firm has been organized in Lansing, Michigan, known as the Reliance Engineering Company. They have purchased the Seager Engine Works of the same city and will manufacture Olds engines and Reliance cream separators.
This business was started thirty-eight years ago by the Olds Brothers. They were almost, if not quite, the first, in the United States to engage in the business of making gas engines. There were many difficulties to contend with in the early days. The buying public knew nothing about gas engines and cared less. It was hard to build up a trade. And then there were engineering difficulties to contend with. There were no magnetos nor even make and break ignition. They depended upon the hot tube.
When the automobile began to be talked about, the Olds Engine Company began experimenting. That was sometime in the late eighties. They made quite a good little runabout as early as 1891 or 1892 and were thus one of the first in the automobile business. A few years later along about 1899 or 1902 they enjoyed a tremendous trade in Olds runabouts. About this time the Olds Brothers dissolved partnership and one founded the Olds Automobile Company, the other the Reo.
The original gas engine plant was taken over by the Seager Engine Works and continued to do business under that name for a number of years. Finally they got tied up with a contract with the Rumely Products Company under the terms of which the latter agreed to market their entire output. They discontinued their own sales organization and of course when Rumelys got in financial difficulties the Seager Engine Works found themselves also in trouble. It has taken several years to get "unscrambled" from Rumelys and Harris Brothers, but it has been at last accomplished by the reorganization of a new company.
This reproduced catalog includes drawings of the first building the Olds brothers used to begin building their engines, and the newer, sprawling facility contemporaneous with the issue of this catalog. There is a drawing and a table of dimensions for the Olds types 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, 5A, 6A, 7A, 8B, 10B, and 12B engines. Pages 4 through 13 provide laudatory details of the various components of Olds engines and how they are made, with many illustrations. The remainder of the catalog discusses the various engines, the Olds portable sawmill, the Olds hoist, and some other machinery. Pages 35 and 36 discuss and picture the Type G Olds engine.