Interest in outboards propelled him into collecting

One in an occasional series

Bob Grubb's father was a machinist who loved boating and fishing. In 1940, he bought one of the first Mercury outboard motors. The next year, he bought another to sell to a friend. By 1946, he had become a Mercury dealer, running the business from the basement of the family home in Spring City, Chester County. For many years, he hauled new motors home from a Philadelphia distributor in the back of the family Nash.

On the side, he repaired and serviced lawn mowers, and Grubb can remember removing the wheels, as a mere lad of 4 or 5, so the blades could be sharpened. By 13, he was helping his father fix outboards. By nature and nurture, he had an aptitude for things mechanical, a fondness for machinery. In 1976, he took over the enterprise.

Today, Grubb's Marine is defunct, and Grubb, 68, is retired, but his passion for outboard motors, especially vintage models from the early 20th century, remains robust.

In the basement of his ranch house near Pottstown, he keeps about 100 examples. At a lake cottage in Schuylkill County, there are scores of others. He estimates that his collection numbers nearly 300, placing him in the top tier of outboard aficionados, in the quantity and quality of his antique treasures.

"People who grew up with outboard motors - and remember great times with the family boating, fishing, or waterskiing - develop a certain attachment to them," Grubb says. "They represent being able to get out on the water and have fun."

Grubb is interested in all kinds of motors, especially the best examples of a brand, rare motors, and motors with unusual pedigrees and mechanical features. He pursues the smallest motors and the biggest motors and is attracted particularly to early outboard rowboat motors.

In his basement workshop and gallery, the motors are mounted on stands, sawhorses, and planks, and some are suspended from the ceiling by hooks. The collection ranges from a Waterman made in 1907 to a Japanese trolling motor made in the early 1980s that Grubb describes as "a weed-whacker with a propeller."

Specimens manufactured by the Big Three - Evinrude, Johnson, and Mercury - are copiously represented, but there are also plenty of odd and obscure makes and brands, such as Scott-Atwater, Lockwood, Caille, Martin, Champion, Thor, Sea King, Wizard, Waterman, Motorgo, Gray, and Ferro.

Most of Grubb's motors are two-stroke - they run on a mixture of oil and gasoline - but there is a vast array of cylinder combinations and driveshaft configurations. Grubb is especially fond of the primitive motors, usually featuring a single, forward-pointing cylinder and spark plug, which is ignited by grasping a knob and yanking a top-mounted flywheel.

"I'm proud of them all, and they're all unique," Grubb says. "They all have some reason for being here."

One of Grubb's favorites is a 1920 Amphion, which was manufactured in Milwaukee. The two-cylinder, four-horsepower engine has a horizontal crankshaft that powers the brass propeller through a clutch and two sets of gears. It is one of only 10 known to exist.

Another noteworthy engine is an Elto, the first four-cylinder outboard. It was made in 1928 by Ole Evinrude after he sold his company and name. Compelled to devise a new brand, he came up with Elto - an acronym for Evinrude Light Twin Outboard.

One of the prettiest pieces, from a sculptural standpoint, and oddest pieces, from a mechanical standpoint, is a Clarke Troller made in 1939 in Detroit. Its diminutive size and polished aluminum body give it the appearance of an overgrown milk shake blender.

"It's an exercise in reinventing the wheel," Grubb says of this marvelous example of compact engineering. The guts of the motor - the cylinder and spark plug - are underwater and drive the propeller directly, with no intervening gears. The device is ingenious, but because the combustion chamber was designed to be submerged, the motor tended to run cold, and achieving the proper fuel mixture for smooth operation was devilishly difficult, Grubb says.

Grubb's collection includes several jet-drive and air-drive motors (think Everglades swamp boat), as well as elongated motors that extend on a slant from a boat's transom to the water and drive propellers at the end of a straight shaft.

"Simplicity itself," Grubb says admiringly.

The earliest outboards, dating from the late 19th century, were of this straight-shaft design, and hosts of clever inventors fashioned different versions, which were powered at first by electric motors, then by gasoline engines.

Grubb became interested in vintage outboards after a customer alerted him to the growing demand for old parts among collectors. He attended his first "wet meet" at a lake in North Jersey in 1969 and through a chap he met there soon acquired three restorable relics.

Today, he is a loyal member of the Antique Outboard Motor Club, which boasts about 3,000 members in 14 countries. He attends about 12 meets a year within 200 miles of his home. Last summer, he and his wife, Louisa, journeyed to Tomahawk, Wis., for the 100th anniversary of Evinrude.

Grubb has amassed most of his outboards through purchases and swaps with other collectors. He has a Web site (MercGuy.com), where he peddles parts and displays some of his prize motors in a "virtual museum."

Disinclined to wax philosophical, he offers no eloquent rationale for his infatuation. For Grubb, the essential thrill is finding a rare specimen, researching its provenance and history, and restoring it to the condition it was when it came out of the box.

"I have an affinity for making an engine perform as it should," Grubb says. "Making a motor run well, whether it's going fast or slow, is satisfying."

In beholding an outboard, he is moved more by complicated mechanics than sleek aesthetics. The sound of a motor - its distinctive "exhaust note" - is more appealing to him than its style or conformation.

Grubb is proud that most of his engines are in working order and that he uses them regularly on one of his two boats. He keeps a spreadsheet that records when each engine was last operated and how it behaved.

"They are things you can use and take a boat ride with," Grubb says of his motors. "They're not just sitting on a shelf. It's not like a coin collection that someone keeps under lock and key."

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