1947 Doodlebug Clinton Motor and Parts

[pem]

Need all sheet metal, floorboards, seat etc. plus Clinton motor model#710ASLB(kick start) or B&S motor model #NP. Also any original paperwork, manuals, photos,etc.

Thanks

Dick

[Jerry Wieland]

Call Cliff at 715-235-2618. He might be able to help. He has some parts and has done a few of them and also makes a few repop parts for them.

Jerry

[pem]

Call Cliff at 715-235-2618. He might be able to help. He has some parts and has done a few of them and also makes a few repop parts for them.

Jerry

Thanks for your help Jerry. I will give him a call.

Dick

[pem]

Jerry, I called the number and it was disconnected. Thanks anyway.

Dick

[Scooter Guy]

I'm a scooter nut whose "specialty" is the Doodle Bug Scooter...

Assuming you want to restore one correctly:

First, which engine do you actually need? There were several Doodle Bug models made (A,B,C,D, and E "super") and only the model B used the Clinton engine. Does your serial number tag have a "B" at the end of the model or type line, such as G1046B ? If it does, then you have a model B frame that used a Clinton engine. If not, you need the Briggs & Stratton NP engine. The engine mounting bases on the frames are different between Clinton and Briggs powered scooters (along with several other things) so it does matter which is which.

Just FYI on the Clinton engine: 700A is the basic model, S means kickstart, L means lighting coil, and B means Beam Scooter model (company that manufactured the scooter). The 710ASLB was a very early Clinton engine done in Clinton, Michigan (not Iowa) and have some differences between them and the later models. Clinton engine general parts are not terribly hard to find, but what is impossible to find are cranks and lighting coils they used on the 710ASLB. Everything else is pretty much out there. They do use a unique base and a kick starter, but those are being reproduced.

The guy to talk to about Clinton Doodle Bug scooter engines is Dennis Daily in Gig Harbor, Washington. He rebuilds them for folks and is the ONLY person with some of the parts on hand these engines need...believe me, I've looked everywhere. Dennis has done two for me and they're both exceptional. He just sold the complete, restored, Clinton powered model B Doodle Bug he most recently did for himself...the buyer was the Barber Motorsports Museum...it's on display in their gift shop on the way in and out of the museum.

All parts, manual copies, and loads of good advice are available from Don Jackson at Yesterday's Rides Metalworks in Newberg, OR. He has a website with lots of information, diagrams, production info, parts, etc. Even when you buy the parts off of a handful of other people, 99% of the time Don actually is the one that manufactures them and they're just reselling his stuff. His stuff isn't cheap, but it's easier and often less expensive to just buy them directly from him. There are, however, a handful of folks that have decided to reproduce their own stuff anyway. Check out wcdoodlebug.com for info about them and the Doodle Bug Club of America along with the Doodle Bug Reunion that is held each September in Webster City, Iowa where the scooters were built.

Don does, by the way, reproduce most of the engine parts for both Clinton and Briggs also, so it's just about possible to build one of these engines with all new parts from Yesterdays Rides. I would highly recommend calling Don up. See doodlebugsyrmw.com

[pem]

Hey Scooter Guy, thanks for all the info. My Doodlebug is the Clinton model with Ser#16794, Model#24-5501B and Type-G1046B. I have come to find out it is pretty rare and
getting a used Clinton motor will be next to impossible but I will try. Thanks for all the contact info some of which I had already found such as Yesterday's Rides Metalworks.
I was out riding a couple weeks ago on our local gravel roads and came across a pile of scrap metal laying next to the side of the road and just couldn't pass by without having a look. There under old washers and dryers and old go cart frames and old bicycles was laying the Doodlebug. It had the wheels, tires, handlebars, controls, fender and drive train/brake but was missing the seat, floorboard and all sheet metal. It had a B&S 5S motor that was seized up. I managed to get the motor apart but destroyed the piston and connecting rod in the process. Parts for that motor are available so it will hopefully have that motor till I find the correct one. Everything is pretty rusty but all is salvageable. This will be my winter project and I'm in no great hurry to finish it. I'm gonna go back to the junk pile and see if the motor or anything else is still there.

For some reason the frame is in two pieces held together by a welded on pipe(?) which the rear of the frame tubes slide into the front frame. About right in the middle. Kinda weird but it must have worked. Did the Doodlebug have a problem with broken frames? I haven't taken it apart yet to see if it was broken or sawed in half.

Again thanks for all your help,

Dick

[Scooter Guy]

Dick-

You do indeed have a factory Clinton powered scooter. The "G" on the serial tag indicates it was originally sold as a "Hiawatha" scooter at a Gambles store. That's a heck of a roadside junkpile find!

Yep, real 710ASLB engines are very difficult to find. Apparently only 700-1000 Clinton powered Doodle Bugs were built, meaning that only that many real 710ASLB engines were ever actually done by Clinton. There are no real serial number or production records, but all of the research that I've done over the years has indicated that Beam probably never actually made it to the so-called production number of 40,000 total scooters, with 1,000 of those being Clinton powered. I think that on the high side, there were probably in the mid to high 30,000 range built and that the number with Clinton engines was actually probably on the lower end of the range, closer to roughly 700 total, though I can't find any concrete evidence to support that either. See, they were made from the spring of 1946 through the fall of 1948, so roughly 2 1/2 years. That would mean that it would have been about 913 days of production and that they would have had to build almost 44 complete scooters EVERYDAY for the entire 2 1/2 year period, or about 2 scooters per hour. I'd call that possible, but unlikely, in order to end up with 40,000 scooters. But, that doesn't jive with the told-and-retold story that they were built in 4 "lots" of 10,000 scooters each, nor does it jive with the fact that scooter production was always a "side business" for Beam Manufacturing, which actually built washing machines.

The sheet metal is almost always missing completely, often except the front fender. The front fenders are frequently found in tact because the only way to get them off in one piece was to remove the handlebars and the entire front fork, which slides out of the bottom of the steering head tube, as I'm sure you can tell. Most often, kids were riding these things and the sheet metal was the first stuff to go and the first stuff to get banged up.

Your frame being in two pieces is interesting. The factory apparently "never" did a two piece frame on a production scooter, but you never know. I'd really like to see a picture of it, if you would be willing to post one or send me one by PM or email. That said, there is always the possibility your scooter was some kind of one-off experimental machine. There has been a "skunk works" Clinton engine found on a Doodle Bug that was an experimental unit done by Clinton that has overhead valves! No problems with broken frames, but what happened a lot was that kids would run them into stuff and bend the front end up, often causing the front fender to hit the frame on turns. Some scooters show this easily, others it's harder to find. I've actually had my frames taken apart and rebuild on Don Jackson's frame jig to get them back to factory specs...they were all bent up.

[Scooter Guy]

There is actually a restored Clinton 710 ASLB that has been running on Ebay, if you're still looking. Not cheap, but it's done and ready to go. Also on Ebay lately has been a fluid drive clutch for a Doodle Bug, which is the one that would have been used on a Clinton. I am not the seller of either item, just passing the info along.

[pem]

There is actually a restored Clinton 710 ASLB that has been running on Ebay, if you're still looking. Not cheap, but it's done and ready to go. Also on Ebay lately has been a fluid drive clutch for a Doodle Bug, which is the one that would have been used on a Clinton. I am not the seller of either item, just passing the info along.

I saw the Ebay listings too. Thanks for the heads up though. At this time I'm just going to sit on my frame and most likely try to sell it at Baraboo next year. Or not!

later