Hello Randy, A few years back (15?) I rebuilt a 1924 Steck Duo-Art
with a steamboat pump. My guess is that this is very similar to your
1920 Steinway with the same pump. My sister has the Steck in Chicago
but I am in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area so I am not near by to get
photos. If you would like more recollections from memory, please
contact me (contact info is below).
For the motor straps that suspend the motor, I believe we used scrap
leather about 1/4-inch thick from Tandy, doubled. The straps were
permanently connected on one side and had holes in them on the other
side, the holes were placed over pins, suspending the motor. I believe
the motor was suspended on three corners, the corners farthest from the
pulley area of the motor.
The pulley area was partially suspended by the drive belt and was
tightened by a belt connection to the bottom of the case. For the
leather portion that tightens the drive belt, a larger, thicker piece
was used, similar to what was probably used for drive belts. This was
attached to a threaded screw with a wing nut that serves to tighten
the drive belt, with the metal hardware insulated by under key felts.
For your information, the problems I had with rebuilding this steamboat
pump were mainly in the flap valves. We were unable to get the long
skinny valves over the slot openings to seal well. I finally filled
in the long slot holes and made them into more conventional flap valves
with larger round holes. It has continued to work well like this for
many years.
For the drive belts, we replaced the original leather belts with
conventional V-belts. I seem to recall four matched drive belts in one
area and one or two in another. I made sure the four matched V-belts
were from the same manufacturing lot to try to make sure all were
exactly alike.
The original 1924 electric motor mainly had problems with the start up
clutch. It was cleaned and worked over by a local motor manufacturer,
and continues to work well today. We did not have to do any major
motor rewinding.
Gary Rasmussen
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