Owned originally in Worcester, MA, this car was purchased from Paul A. Bourdon of Woodstock, VT, in
1950, and it’s participation in the Glidden Tour that year the first of many
long tours during the last half of the 20th Century.
This car has been driven on 3 Glidden Tours, many Steam Car Tours, and 4 “Trans-Con”
Tours, and has probably covered about 70,000 miles since 1950. Mr. Bourdon had
used portions of the bodies of two similar cars to make this one, but otherwise
the car was very much original when acquired, and it was used that way with
minor mechanical improvements for about 30,000 miles until 1974. In 1975-76 it
was greatly modified for long-distance touring, with changes including a steel
frame, a relocated pump box, deeper storage pockets beneath the floor boards, a
12-volt electrical system, and larger water and fuel tanks. About 1981,
hydraulic front wheel disc brakes, mostly from a Yamaha motorcycle, were added.
In 1997, the rear brakes were converted to Barrett hydraulics, and in 1998
water-cooling was added to these rear brakes. The wheels and rims are original.
A new Don Bourdon boiler was installed in 1998, when the boiler in the car
developed a leak in the shell near the bottom.
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