Picked up a new champion blower the other day and plan on fixin it up. what i'd like to know is what is the original paint color there is'nt ant left to go by. Dated 1902.

I was going to say black but that's Buffalo, I don't know about Champion. I painted mine my shop colors not that it makes a difference.

Anyway, welcome aboard, glad to have ya. Knowledgeable answers are on the way I'm sure.

Frosty

I have an old Champion that was full of rust and grease. I cleaned it up, wire brushed to rust off of it and wiped it down with Boiled Linseed oil. It left a "Plum Brown" patina that reeks of antiquity. It goes with my wrinkles and grey hair.....

I have an old Champion that was full of rust and grease. I cleaned it up, wire brushed to rust off of it and wiped it down with Boiled Linseed oil. It left a "Plum Brown" patina that reeks of antiquity. It goes with my wrinkles and grey hair.....

Good GOSH MAN! Where do you have that blower mounted!?!?

NO. . . WAIT! Don't tell me I don't wanna KNOW!!!



Frosty

I have one and it is black. What other colour is there besides Forsty's shop coulors?:o

I saw a lavender 25# LG two weeks ago. He said EVERYBODY has a green hammer.

Frosty

Frosty, I have it mounted to the edge of a rivet forge, of course. I stand nearby as an accessory to this vision of loveliness.

And after I asked you NOT to tell me?

At least it isn't as bad as I'd envisioned, so . . . okay.

Frosty

Don't know about the color but you can find an interesting cut-away view of the Champion 400 Blower Patent 804860 at Google Patents.

BTW, my personal experience for maintenance is to NOT grease the lower ball bearings(shaft for the fan). Packing it with the thinnest lithium grease only made it drag. Once I got all the grease free it ran much smoother. Just let a ounce or two of lightweight motor oil sit in the in the bottom. The large cog will pick up enough from the worm gear to sufficiently oil everything else. You may want to un-screw the upper 4 grease cups and clean out the old "petrified" grease debris and lightly apply new grease. I know that helped performance on my Champion and it will now spin freely for about 2 and a half turns after cranking.

gloss cherry red is the color for the blower..the legs are gloss black

This is a new style for me been runnin an electric champion for couple years but not to happy with the performnce just can't get the heat where i want it. Have the original oil bath champion blower for my forge but the small worm gear at the bottom is shot and not havin any luck replacing that gear?? If anyone has an idea of where i can find replacment gears that would be awsom:D

Dual,

Do a search in the gallery for PhilsDrills and Champion. There is a picture of what he did.

Brian

I still have the original tripod legs on mine. After I discovered electric fans I quit cranking so there it has sat for thirty years.:(

I go with the idea of painting all of my equipment in the same colors. When you go to hammer-ins it makes it easier to see whose stuff is what when it comes time to pack up and leave. I painted my forge red and black(Krylon Crimson Red and High Heat Black) and paint the handles of my tongs, hammers, turning tools, etc. red. I have a Champion Blower on a Buffalo Forge. I have no clue what the original colors were, but generally think that they would have been the basic colors-black, red, green, blue-like the first cars.

I'm gonna say no paint at all. I've got two champ 400's and neither one has any evidence of paint at all, just decades of crud buildup on them and when I cleaned them I didn't see any shred of paint ever having been there. If they had been painted at the factory in Lancaster when they were made I think I would have found at least some trace somewhere in the tight places/ crevices but none was to be found. They were probably shipped as plain cast iron unfinished. I've seen plenty of these that other guys have and they all look the same, plain with no paint, just years of patina.
Seems to me if there was a color associated with them it would be known like the yelow and green of John Deere is so well known. The Champion Blower and Forge Company of Lancaster Pennsylvania put out an awful lot of iron over several decades and were a "household name" for all of that time. If there was paint we would know it, seems there wasn't.

I have seen two blowers that had a hint of red. I have never painted one red. I cleaned one down to bare iron and never found any red. Nor black for that matter. Just crud.

The one rebuilt/painted for the Champion museum was painted a flat black. Looks good, except it was fitted with hex nuts. They never had hex nuts. I would have thought the museum would have been a bit more fussy about a restored blower on display...............