Our car has, as many of the Michigan Motor Car Company advertisements proclaim, Shortsville artillery wheels.  I’m still trying to figure out what makes them “artillery”. When I do, I’ll share it here.  Apparently the Shortsville Wheel Company was a fairly substantial business located Southeast of Rochester NY on the Flint River.  They made carriage wheels from about 1889 and then automobile wheels until they went out of business in 1918.

Update: In October of 2016, after attending the gigantic antique auto swapmeet at Hershey PA, we drove back home and stopped by SHORTSVILLE, NY, to see if we could find the site of the Shortsville Wheel factory.  We were disappointed that we could not find it, but the town is a snapshot of an earlier time. And I was not giving up.

Subsequently, I have scoured the internet trying to find early pictures or other notes regarding the factory.  What I found was interesting. I bought a vintage photographic  postcard on eBay that was postmarked 1910:

And then another postcard with an illustration of the factory complex from roughly the same time period.

I was not going to give up on finding the actual location of the buildings.  So, when we visited the East Coast in September of 2018, Janet & I drove through Shortsville once again, but with a bit more knowledge about what may be “just outside” of Shortsville. Locals had previously directed us to sites of the Papec Machine Co. and Empire Drill factories that were near central Shortsville, but had burned down many years ago and only vacant lots remained. So, I went on Google Earth to look at street views around Shortsville that would have a rail line  near a river / canal, as you can see in the illustrated postcard. Sure enough there was this building:

So, on July 11, 2018, Janet & I drove there.

We sneaked inside and took some photos of the collapsing building.

Almost the same photograph….. completely by accident.  Wow.

 

DETROIT DEMOUNTABLE RIMS —

While the brand of rims for the car was not touted in the advertising, the demountable rims themselves bear alignment clamps bearing the DETROIT brand.

And our car has this improved type of interchangeable tire & rim combination which is called a “demountable rim”.

So what’s the big deal and why should you care? There was no AAA to summon or a cell phone to make a call when you got a flat.  You and your passengers were on your own. And it was not “if you got a flat”, because you would. It was just a matter of time and distance traveled. The roads and highways were primitive. There was no such thing as an interstate highway. Paving was for Main Street and Broadway only – the rest of town was envious.  Gravel was great, but most roads were dirt and frequently mud. Horses have long legs and can step over obstacles. Cars………. not so much.  Hit a rock, a pothole, or a sharp something or other and you got a flat.

My paternal Grandfather told me a story several times about repairing flats on his Model T Ford seven times in one day — all within sight of Mt. Shasta in Northern California. The year was not 1912……. it was more like 1923. And the main road from California into Oregon was unpaved.

Modern cars have wheels that unbolt as a unit comprised of the tire and the rim and wheel on which the tire is mounted basically two parts. The rubber part and the metal part. Five or six bolts or nuts hold the wheel on the car. Your spare is the same size or slightly smaller and in your trunk or back hatch. You simply swap the wheel with the flat for the spare with air.

Antique cars were an outgrowth of the former horse and buggy carriage days. As such, they had light weight wooden wheels comprised of a central hub, spokes, felloes (the semi-circular wood at the outside edge of the wheel), and perhaps a steel or thin solid rubber tire.

The automobile age introduced pneumatic air filled tires with inner tubes. It was a much softer ride, but presented some additional issues — like flat tires.

In the early days, a flat tire was changed with the wheel and rim ON THE CAR. Jack it up. Take the tire & inner tube off the wheel. Patch the inner tube. Replace the tire & inner tube. Inflate the tire. Lower the jack.  The alternative was to have an entire spare wheel and tire strapped to the vehicle. Sort of like today. They were big and awkward. The process was different in that the entire wheel had to be removed and replaced with another wheel while the car was jacked up. Again like today, but here is where it gets significantly different. There is typically a single large nut that holds the wheel on the axle that has to be removed. Wheel removal like this requires a big wrench and sometimes considerable effort. Like a several foot long wench extension and standing & bouncing on the end. AND…. even if you DO get the nut off, the wheel may remain stuck on the axle.  Oh dear.  What to do now? You better have that tire patching kit or access to a blacksmith.

Demountable rims were a more reliable and less strenuous way to change a flat. Much like today’s multiple nuts or bolts wheel system, the demountable rim was held to the wheel by 5 or 6 bolts and clamps.  These were approximately the same size as today’s wheel bolts and required about the same effort.  What looks much different is that the tire and demountable rim combination resemble a giant donut or hula-hoop. The entire center is where the wooden wheel goes…… and the wheel stays on the car, when you change the flat. Just the rim and tire are removed and replaced.

In addition to having the modern improved “demountable rims”, the DETROIT DEMOUNTABLE RIMS had several other notable features, the most significant being a removable section of the rim itself.

The Detroit Demountable Rim company thought they had a real winner and pointed out all the benefits of their design in a company brochure that I acquired in my research. Click on the highlighted text to see and read the brochure.Detroit Demountable Rim Brochure

I’ve patched several of the inner tubes on our car, and I must say that although it is not as difficult as installing clincher tires on the wheels of our Model T Ford, even demountable rims are not “easy”.  They are perhaps — not as difficult. (Installing clincher tires will test your strength, test your patience and will typically turn the air blue.)

DISCOVERY OF A RARE DETROIT DEMOUNTABLE RIM TOOL

If you clicked on the words “Detroit Demountable Rim Brochure” 2 paragraphs above this line, then you may have looked at the following page.

This tool is placed over the raised studs on either side of the split in the rim and the bolt screwed down to spread the sides of the rim to make insertion of the swivel-lock cut-out section of the rim to be inserted.  I’ve changed the inner tubes on the car, so I know that the spreader tool is not strictly necessary, but it would hold things steady when inserting the cut-out section (the pin wheel thing directly below the valve stem in the photo above).

While researching our “Detroit Demountable Rims” back in 2018,  I Googled up a photo & reference to a tool owned by a fellow named DeFord in Washington state. I tried contacting him through the local Vintage Chevrolet Club of America, but got no response. But I kept periodically looking online. In May of 2019, I got a new hit while searching. This time a photo of the tool was on a Reddit post “whatisthisthing”. I contacted the fellow that posted the photo.

I will let Mike Florhaug explain where & how he found the tool.