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A 1952 Seagrave V-12 B-900 was posted at No Reserve today on Bring-a-Trailer.com. Here’s the link: https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1952-seagrave-900/
Auction ends today at 4:25 EDT. The bid is currently $4100 with lots of interesting comments on the auction thread linked above.
Sold for $10,355 plus the 5% BaT auction fee. That’s only $0.66 per pound!
Question is: can the buyer haul it??
Not the Pierce V-12–this is the 906 cid Seagrave engine
Didn’t realize they had their own version. Thanks for the clarification George.
Seagrave bumped the Pierce 12 out to 531 cid, as I recall, as well as the completely different 906 cid engine in this ad. I don’t know the provenance of the 906 engine, but perhaps the Reverend Minnie or someone else can help us out.
The Seagrave motors in the “small” 12’s came in three sizes, the last………531 have different everything except a few small parts, thus a 531 has zero value to a Pierce car guy. The second generation small twelve has some different internals and not all interchange with the cars, so if you want to use fire truck parts, get an engine built before 1948. NOTE: Most early trucks were updated with later engines, thus MOST early trucks have engines from the 50’s installed. The 906 is HUGE and from the two I have actually seen running they make heat better than horsepower. They will pump all day long at 1800 rpm and that’s what they did best, they hardly move the truck down the road………40 mph was as fast as you would dare drive one. I have no clue who designed the 906………..but it looks like a huge industrial power plant type unit….which it is.
The 906 V-12 was a Seagrave design, and was designed as a fire service engine to replace a 1013 cu in. 6. It was first available in 1932. Originally 240 hp, later 268. These were used in the large Seagrave pumpers with big pumps primarily used in large cities. Road speed was probably a secondary consideration. The Pierce-Arrow 12 was adopted as the “small” V-12 around 1936.
Based on the number of discharges and size of the hard suctions in the photos, the pump on the engine in the ad was either 1000 or 1250 gpm, large for the time.
I was told a story, about these HUGE Seagraves V12 engines:
A fellow PAS member saw an ad in a local paper for: Seagraves V12 engine, complete w/starter, generator, etc. $500!
So naturally the PAS member called on the ad asked a few questions and said: OK, I’ll take it. The seller had the engine in the back of a truck, and the PAS buyer said he had a loading dock and a forklift if that would work. That indeed would work, and the truck arrived.
The PAS buyer opens the door to his loading dock and stops: here is a truck backed up to his loading dock with a V12 engine straped down to a pallet, in the back of the truck. BUT The engine on the pallet came up to the buyer’s eyes! it was HUGE. He hesitated, thought back and realized that the engine had NOT been miss-represented, that HE had assumed the seller didn’t know that it also was part-Pierce Arrow, and it was a ‘steal’ at $500.
So our fellow PAS member decided the joke was on him, and coughed up the $500, and bought the ‘novelty’ HUGE Seagraves engine. It’s a great show-piece. !
And a shameless poke at those who have NOT YET signed up to attend the 2019 PAS Annual Tour and Meet in June. You can see this monster Seagraves engine on one of our tours. !!
Time is running out for the block of reserved rooms ! Get a reservation at the Potawatomi Inn, you can cancel a week ahead of the starting date without penalty if you have to. But once the window of blocked rooms closes the room rate goes up about 50%-100% for our week of June 11-15th.
Greg Long