‘Ajax,’ the Woodburning Steam Truck

By Tony Kowalczuk
Published on May 1, 1980
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PHOTOS: SUISLAW NEWS
Tony Kowalczuk has found an unconventional answer to the energy crunch: a steam truck.

Since the profit-raking oil companies are continuing to gouge us all while government persists with a head-in-the-sand attitude, we “plain folks” are going to have to find our own ways to cut loose from our dependence on fossil fuels. Now as you may know, steam power is a viable alternate source of energy — particularly for many rural applications — that engineers played around with at the beginning of this century.

However, steam research was pretty much abandoned when the automotive industry convinced us we couldn’t live (much less get around) without petroleum-fueled vehicles. But any do-it-yourselfer can put together an efficient, easy-to-fix, steam-powered car or steam truck like “Ajax” . . . after all, I did it, and I’m just a shade-tree mechanic!

Way back in the very first issue of MOTHER EARTH NEWS in 1970, “Mason” (of the Berkeley Tribe) suggested the conversion of internal combustion engines to steam power . . . and that article really started me thinking, especially since I’ve been in love with steam engines from childhood on. Unfortunately, the early steam-powered cars — such as the Doble, the White, and the Stanley — all burned kerosene or fuel oil in their boilers . . . achieving much less efficient “gas” mileage than does a modern internal combustion engine.

Free Fuel and Parts

I decided to see whether I could design a steam-powered truck that would run on an alternative fuel. At the time, I was homesteading in the Northwest, where there’s a ready supply of surplus firewood to be had for free . . . so I applied to the Bureau of Land Management for a license to gather the commercial logging companies’ leftovers.

Armed with an ample supply of timber to stoke a furnace, I began to scrounge around for spare parts . . . most of which I salvaged from Idaho junkyards. Ajax’s engine is an 1884 steam shovel motor, the large boiler is a 1847 model made in Oregon, and the pressure gauge was supplied by a surplus dealer in Boise. The cylinder oiler came from an auto graveyard in Eagle, Idaho . . . while the whistle and safety valve were discovered in a Billings, Montana trading post. Ajax’s body was originally a truck owned by the city of Emmett — where it had already done 25 years’ service hauling a water tank — before I bought it.

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