Video Transcription
Welcome gas pump collectors. We are back in the garage and in this video we are going to take a close look at the Tokai 850, the Tokai 950, and not only that but we’re going to show you the difference between a small Tokai 850 and a larger version model of the same.
Before I get into any details, I’m going to tell you a little bit about where I found these pumps and how I purchased them. This first one here was pulled out of service out of a Nebraska gas station many many years ago, put into a building and it was stored for about 40 years so it was out from the elements. Beautiful pump, great patina. It doesn’t have any rust. A lot of times they rust right here. But anyway, I was able to buy this pump from somebody that I know. He’s an antique dealer and my friend Todd over in Nebraska was able to get the mate to it.
This next one is the first 850 I ever purchased. This also came out of a garage but it was in California. It’s complete. This one here I bought from a collector. The story on this one here is this came from a family farm in Northern California. I recently purchased it. This person actually saw my YouTube videos. He reached out to me and wanted to know if I would buy an 850 pump and ended up driving up and picking it up. But it’s a very clean pump. It doesn’t have any rust. And there you have it. That’s just a quick overview. And now we’ll get into the details.
Okay, take a close look at all four of these gas pumps. Notice the two in the center are not as tall. They’re more petite around the waist than the two outer pumps. That’s because there were two different versions of the Tokai M850. There was the large version which is this guy and this one which is the small version. A lot of people do not know this. But when you have them side by side you can see the differences. Even the visigage is different. Look at this visigage how tall it is on the large 850 versus the small 850. Huge difference.
What I’m going to do is grab a tape measure and I’m going to show you a few of the differences and where the differences lie:
On the large 850, the skins are 48 inches tall which is 4 feet.
On the small version of the 850, the lower skin is 46 inches tall. So there’s a 2 inch difference between the small 850 and the large 850 on height.
62 inches on the large 850 around the waist.
56 inches on the small 850 Tokai.
These are rough measurements. But that gives you an idea. I want to point out that this is actually a Tokai 950 notan 850. It says 850 on the face. It is the same diameter dimension as a small 850. And the one characteristic of it that proves it’s a 950 is right here, this Visigage. This Visigage has a paddle wheel inside. See if you can see that. Versus a vertical spinner that the 850 uses. Also the casting is slightly different as you can see.
This is a nozzle right here. It’s an original Tokime 850. It’s known as a roller nozzle. This nozzle was designed specifically for a Tokime 850 or 950 gas pump. Solid brass. Check out the lever action on it. Well the reason they call this a roller nozzle is there is actually a roller. You can see it right there. That pushes on the other lever which opens the valve. It’s kind of a neat design. They don’t build stuff like this anymore. You got to remember all this stuff was built in America when we used to build things. Tokime is embossed in it.
By the way this is probably one of the most expensive nozzles to buy. If you were even able to find one you’d be lucky. I actually own two of these. They are just getting more and more difficult to find and more and more expensive to buy.
For anybody that was wondering these are original porcelain pump plates that are actually curved to match the contour of these skins. I mean they were made for a pump like this. Look how that fits. It’s an early Texaco pump plate. And so is this. This one’s a little rougher. But you can see how they fit the skins. It’s missing a screw there. It’s a little rotted. But these are nice. Great shelving on these. Very dusty from being in the garage. But these are beautiful pump plates. And they’re original.
In the next part of this video I’m actually going to remove the lower sheet metal on these pumps. Other than this one right here because the guts, believe it or not, somebody, somebody before I bought this pump gutted it. What I mean by gut is they took the internals, which would have looked like this. What a shame. Out of the pump. Thinking to make it light would be better. But for most of us heavy duty pump collectors we like to have this mechanical marvel stuff inside. I mean to see how this stuff was built back in the day it’s amazing.
I ended up purchasing this. A friend hauled it from Ohio to Iowa Gas so I could pick it up and bring it out here to California. So this pump here can be completed again. The other three are complete as far as I know. I’m going to go ahead and remove the skins for the first time. And we’ll get a look inside, see how they look. And maybe, maybe I will get one of these to actually function before the end of this video.
I think this is the coolest design. These are chain driven. Not all of them are but this one is. You don’t see this very often. A chain instead of a belt drive. It just looks so mechanical.
A quick overview of this pump:
This is the electric motor of course.
It drives the pump through this shaft right here.
This is the pump.
The fluid comes up, goes into this chamber right here.
This is called an air separator.
An air separator eliminates cavitation.
Eliminates air.
The fuel flows out from the back side here and it goes up into this part right here.
This is known as the meter.
A lot of people callcalculators meters on calculating pumps. That drives me crazy. This is a meter. This measures the fuel flow and it drives a drive shaft, which you can see here. Let me focus in on that. drive shaft goes up and into the clock mech to show you how many gallons are delivered.
The red one, which came out of that California garage, is the smaller version Tokheim. It is actually belt driven. Unfortunately, it’s missing one pulley here, not a big deal. I’m sure I have pulleys out in my salvage yard. This, I put some vice grips on. It actually turns. This pump is not frozen. The same with the motor. The motor turns. This one could run. I don’t want to take the time to go and find the proper pulley and then find a belt. Not for this video, but I just want to give you guys a view of this because they were available on either belt drive or chain drive.
Another unique feature of this is it has its own meter, which is known as the volume meter. That’s a Tokheim trade name right there for these pumps. As you can see, it says volume meter right on the face. The other Tokheims I’ve had, 850s, most of them have this meter, which is very common. They use these all the way up through the 50s, like on their Tokheim 39s. It’s basically the same design. This one is definitely more unique. I’d like to get one of these four pumps running. This one would require a lot of mounting work. I actually got this one, this chain drive, to turn. It’s still kind of snug. It needs some more penetrating oil internally, and these may even need to come apart. So, no, we’re not going to make this one run, that’s for sure.
This one here is our best bet. Like I said, this came off of a family farm. It’s a California pump. It has beautiful original stained faces that were included with the pump. These particular faces came from Gas Pump Heaven. They look nice on it because he painted the pump. But I’d like to probably put the original ones back in and maybe do a little fading on the red paint, make it look a little older. But the inside, now I’ve cleaned this up. Did a little cleaning last night, and it actually didn’t have any rust at all compared to the pump unit like this from Ohio, which as you can see has rust. This thing is super clean. It freed up easily. And I’m going to not only make this thing spin and run, but I’m going to try to actually make it pump today.
This pump is roughly 85 years old. It’s been cleaned up. I serviced it, and we are going to fire this thing off and try to get it to pump some diesel fuel. First thing we want to do is reset our clock to zero gallons. And that is done by moving this lever right here. I will show you. Zero it out.
I don’t recommend this, but I hooked right into the main wiring without rewiring the pump. I’ve got the light switch working, which is right here. On, off. We have lights. I mounted a heavy light spotlight behind the visigage because the visigage glass is very stained. And you may not see much action there because of the staining. But to take that thing apart would be another whole day to get the sealant to dry, to get the bolts loose. I decided just for now to leave that alone.
We’ve got the Tokime roller nozzle. We have a two-gallon pail filled with dieselfuel. Never use gasoline. Gasoline, as you know, is extremely flammable. Diesel fuel is not as flammable. flammable. Diesel fuel is not as flammable, so it would be safer to use diesel fuel or maybe engine coolant or something like that if you’re trying to do something like this.
Okay, I’m going to plug in the electric motor to power and fire this thing off and try to pump some fuel right now. Oh, it’s a little tight still. There it goes. There it goes. And she’s alive. Let off the throttle. It should go into bypass now. You’ll hear it slow down. Wow, this thing really pumps great. Look at that. It’s a pressure and volume. The nozzle has a bit of a leak. Goes back into bypass. Open it up. Decent runner.
Well, let me tell you, that was very exciting to get this old pump running and pumping again. Not just running, but actually pumping, functioning fully. The chain is, yes, a little on the loose side, but if you look over here, it’s adjusted out the motor as far as it goes. But, you know, it worked fine. It started a little slow because it’s very old, but once it got rolling, it started to pump very rapidly.
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