Peerless News Letter

Well here it is, the third week of June and I am just writing the June news letter. We have been busy pumping water and sand bagging. My stuff is all high and dry but those living in the low areas got flooded. We had 15 inches of rain in two days and it had rained everyday for 5 days before so the ground couldn't take anymore. I'm sure some of you saw on national TV the houses that got washed away when Lake Delton cut a new path to the Wisconsin River. This is a man made lake and the officials were sand bagging the dam to keep the water from going over it. But they built up the lake level so high it started going over the road and cutting a new path to the river. This is sand country and within an hour the road was gone and four houses went with it into the Wisconsin River, The lake completely drained in three hours. Lake Delton is a large resort area by the Wisconsin Dells but there won't be any boating there this summer. We had over a hundred roads closed from flooding, even the Interstates, many are still closed. Some of our rivers were 10 feet over high flood stage.

Back to Peerless. I have completed my research with the Hirschell-Spillman Company archives and have found nothing connecting them with Peerless in any way. The 1915 Peerless L head engines look like Herschell-Spillman and the 1916 series 1 Peerless V-8 is exactly the same as the Herschell-Spillman V-8 right down to the last nut and bolt. But there is nothing in there records that they ever sold engines to Peerless. They sent me a list of who they sold the V-8 to:  Abbott-Detroit, Murray, Commonwealth, Douglas, Madison, Monarch, and Northway. They manufactured more 4 and 6 cylinder engines than the V-8. It is hard to believe that Peerless would have tooled up for a brand new style 4 and 6 cylinder L head engine for 1915 when production for cars that year was so low. Then in the fall of 1915 dropping the 4 and 6 and producing only the V-8. I heard someplace that the Peerless engineers worked with Hirschell-Spillman in developing the V-8 engine, both companies came out with the same engine at the same time and maybe that's the reason why. Although Peerless only used the series one for about six months then came out with the series two that was completely redesigned. The outside of the engine looked the same but the valve mechanism and timing were completely different. The series one was not a well designed engine and had a vibration and balance problem. They solved most of this with the series two and continued to improve this engine design into the 20's. I wonder if the Hirschell-Spillman engine made the same improvements. If they did it would prove that they were working together on the V-8.

There will be a few Peerless cars a Pebble Beach this year; this should be good for some publicity on the great cars of Peerless. Allen Unrien is doing some research on the 1932 aluminum Peerless and has found that Peerless was working with the engineers of Alcoa Aluminum to develop this car. They are researching the Alcoa archives and hopefully they will find some more information on the development of it. It is too bad that the Peerless Corporation archives were lost, it makes researching the company very difficult. This is why there has never been an accurate history ever written about the Peerless Motor Car Company. I am slowly putting it together but still have many unanswered questions. If any of you have any information on Peerless please share it with me so I can make this history as complete as possible.

What do you think of the gas prices????  This is what competing in global economy is doing to us. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, no more middle class. I had best not get started talking politics; the last time I shot my mouth off I got elected Mayor on a write in. Enough!!!  You have to be careful of using gas with ethanol; it can attack gas tank sealers and destroy the soft parts in fuel pumps and carburetors. It will also percolate at a lower temperature than regular gas and cause vapor locks. I can still buy gas without ethanol but it is getting harder to find. I have found in my older engines some kerosene in the gas helps. But my high compression muscle cars ethanol just doesn't work at all. I get a product from Amsoil called octane booster that seems to work good with 92 octane regular gas. But even that is getting hard to find. It really limits where we go with our old cars and what will it be like in the future?  I have cut back on the number of tours and meets this year because of the gas prices and it appears others have done the same.

They are predicting rain for today and tomorrow so back to sand bagging.

Have a Peerless summer.

Richard H. Lichtfeld