Carburetor Lamp

My Brother and I bought a bucket full of International Harvester Scout and Scout II parts for a price too good to say no. We only needed one or two of the parts in the bucket, but we purchased the whole bucket anyway with the plan to use some of the parts at a later date. While sorting through the parts to put them away I noticed that the two fuel pumps and the carburetor from an original Scout could become in a lamp with a little 3D printing.

We are always trying to find ways to purchase our projects and parts at good prices and to sell what we don't need to help finance our hobby of restoring old Scouts. The idea for this lamp project is to make something cool enough that we can sell it for a profit and thus aquire this bucket of parts for free. The additional cash will be used to buy other parts and supplies as needed in the future.

It has been a cold and wet winter so I decided to work on the lamp as I don't want to be outside working on the project Scout.

I realize that no one will likely duplicate this exact project so I am not going to share the .stl files in this Instructable, but in the case that I am wrong, please feel free to ask for them and I will gladly share them.

It probably cost me less than $20 to make this lamp only because I had most everything I needed onhand. I only needed to purchase the lamp sockets, the bolts to hold the fuel pumps to the bracket, and the LED bulbs. If you were buying all of the supplies including Carburetor and Fuel Pumps, then that might make this project cost prohibitive. A new carburetor is $200 and a fuel pump is $54 (X 2) of them.

For an exact reproduction of this lamp you will need the following:

Holley 847 Carburetor

2 each Original Scout or other old style fuel pumps with glass bowls. I saw some for Willy's available that would work with modifiying the 3D files

3D printer and filament

Wires

Switch - $3 from Sparkfun. I had one in my tool kit already. Their part number COM-09276 toggle switch.

Wire nuts

LED Bulbs - $3 each on Amazon (Grensk G40 Low Watt Edison Mini Globe LED Light)

Medium Light Socket - $2 each on Amazon (E26 ceramic std medium screw base socket)

Mod Podge Glue or similar

Iron powder

Nuts and bolts

Soldering iron and supplies

Power cord

Safety glasses

Respirator

Paint brushes

Rusting solution

Super Glue or 5 Minute Epoxy

Disclaimer and Safety Notification: If you attempt this or a similar project please note that I am not an electrician and anything I stated here as to wiring should be verified before copying me. When grinding out the aluminum housings or applying the iron powder to the project for rust effect, a repirator should be worn at all times.

First thing I did was to remove most of the unneccessary parts from inside of the carburetor and the fuel pumps. This task was a little harder than it sounds.

The carburetor was pretty straight forward; maybe because they are meant to be taken apart to rebuild them. It did have some frozen up parts, but that is to be expected on something that was previously used and at least 50 years old. I left only a few of the parts remaining inside the carb, but I left all of the exterior parts intact.

The fuel pumps proved to be much tougher to dismantle. They are not neccesarily meant to be rebuilt. The first hang-up was the pin that holds the plunger rod which operates the pump would not drive out with a hammer and punch. So what do you do to get it out? You put it in a vise and hit it harder right? The answer to that question is, "no you don't". I tried that and all it did was dent/crack the housing of the pump. So I enlisted my Brother's help for this task and we took a cut off wheel to those pump rods. We then took the middle section of the pump housing to the drill press and used large stepper bit to hollow out the body of the fuel pumps so that they can fit a light and socket inside. To do this we screwed the housings to a thick piece of wood to keep it from moving about as we drilled them out. Note that I threw out all of the gaskets to the fuel pumps as I thought they might just heat up and melt.

I now had two otherwise completely useless fuel pumps and a useless carburetor that I had to figure out how to turn into a lamp. Only then did I decide what the lamp should look like and I went with the obvious choice of old and rusty. Now that I had the theme I had to decide the dimesions of the base (6" x 6") and the connecting top bracket (3 5/16" x 2 1/2"). At first I was playing around with some pretty crazy swirling fuel air mixture ideas for the base, but in the end decided that I just wanted a simple design.

3D printed parts were designed in Tinkercad.

I am not going to go any deeper into the design part of this project as that gets too complicated and because this is a one-off custom build.

This was pretty quick to design once I got the swirling air mass base design idea out of my head (Wow! That was becoming a real time suck).

Total print time of the parts is around 16 hours if I recall correctly.

I wanted the lamp to be immediately noticeable as original Scout parts so I added the original Scout logo to the top of the upper bracket that hold the light housings (fuel pumps).

Once printed I had to try to get the 3D printed parts to look as if they belonged paired up with the old and rusted parts. For this I went with a technique that I have used on a number of other past projects. I have some pictures of the process from when I made some spurs in this Instructable: https://www.instructables.com/Shadow-Box-Grandpas-Spurs/

To get the rust effect I take the part that I want to add rust to and I cover it in "Mod Podge" craft glue with a paint brush. I have done the exact same thing using "XTC3D" glue, a product from SmoothOn, with equally good results. After brushing and before the glue sets up I completely cover the glue area in iron powder from ArtMolds. With the iron powder applied in a thick coat I then let it sit long enough for the glue to dry.

Once fully dried I tapped off the part removing the excess iron powder. Sometime I use a little low pressure compressed air if there are a lot of nooks and crannies to clear. I put the unused iron powder back into the bag for later use on another project. It is now time to spray the part with a rusting solution made of a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, vinegar, and table salt. I let that dry fully and then spray it again with another coat of this rusting solution. Usually I spray the end result with two coats of urethane spray to seal it, but I did not like the look of it for this project. So I took a chisle and distressed my 3D print in a few spots and added some more glue and iron powder around these distressed areas and in a few other spots and then sprayed with the entire part with the rust accelerator again. I was much happier with the look I got that time around. It gave it more depth.

The rusting solution I use is made with roughly 1 part white vinegar to 5 parts hydrogen peroxide, and a little bit of table salt added. My batch is small and not measured exactly. I put the solution into a small spray bottle and labeled it as "rust spray". The formula works well and rusting begins immediately upon spraying the iron. It is almost fully rusted by the time it dries. Especially after two sprayings.

I did see somewhere before a suggestion from someone to pre-spray your project with full strength vinegar and let that fully dry prior to spraying with the mentioned rusting formula. Supposedly this helps the rust spray to work even better though I have not ever tried this nor have I seen the need to do this step.

One other thing to note is it is wise to clear the tube and the spray head before storing your solution for a long time as the sprayer tends to clog up if you don't do this.

I had to do a little bit of grinding with a dremel tool equiped equiped with a sanding drum attachment to get a better fit for the ceramic sockets. I ran the wires up through the channel of the bracket arm that housed the plunger arm. I should also note that I added some 5 minute epoxy to the part of the plunger arm reminents remaining after we cut them off with a cut off wheel. This was just to hold them in place and not really neccessary.

I centered the light socket inside of the fuel pump housing and held it centered in place with a three spots of JB Metal Weld between the housing and the socket. I ran the wires through the center bracket that holds the light housings and bolted the light housings to the 3D printed bracket.

It is now time wire nut the two white wires from each light socket together with a white dropper wire that will run to the switch (or one side of the power cord) and same is done for the black wires. We will wire these to the rest of the light circuit when attaching the top of the carb to the lower half and base.

I really wanted to make the throttle linkage be the on/off switch and this too was accomplished by 3D printing some custom designed parts. I designed some printed parts to create a flat platform inside of the float bowl to mount the switch housing to. I super glued all of these parts together as seen in the first photo above.

I soldered two wires to the toggle switch and then drilled a hole through the fuel bowl of the carb to pass wires through from the switch (seen in photo 3 above). I pulled the power cord up through the base and into the carb and then bolted the lower half of the carb to the base.

Now put the bracket with the light housings onto the top of the carb which is still seperated from the bottom of the carb and base parts at this time.

Some of this may be easier with an assistant especially if your wires are not long. If no help available you can lay it over on its side to connect the wires together. Now wire nut one of the wires from the power cord to one side of the switch, then wire nut the other side of the power cord to the black wires and lastly wire nut the white wires to the other side of the switch.

Fit the wires inside of the carb and bolt the top of the carb to the lower half.

After making sure that everything functioned as it should I drilled through the collar of the bracket and into the top of the carb housing at the back of the lamp. I tapped threads into the holes and added a set screw to make sure that if someone picks up the lamp by the top bracket housing that the bottom does not separate from the top. Notes to this can be seen in the last photo above. NOTE: The top bracket is also Epoxy'd to the top of the carb where they connect.

I bought a piece of black self adhesive felt and cut it to fit the bottom of the lamp base so that the base does not scratch a desk surface.

The chosen bulbs give a low glowing light. More of a desk top light output rather than a light up the whole room illumination. I am very pleased with the results and have had some positive feedback from others.

I really enjoyed this project and may try my hand at additional scrap metal artwork in the future. Our plan is to sell this lamp to an enthusiast for an office, autoshop, or mancave and put proceeds towards bringing another Scout II back to life.

Dimensions & Details:

12" wide

6" deep

10" high

8.4 Pounds

110V

As stated at the start of this Instructable I do not see that this project will be recreated by anyone, but if it is I will be happy to supply the 3D files to you upon request.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

All the best to you.