My uncle has a genuine 1911 Stanley Steamer, I worked on it for about a year repacking all the seals and shafts. It was pretty cool to drive around but also very scary. Stanley's run 500 psi boiler pressure, 125 psi fuel pressure (unleaded gasoline) all with in a few feet of the driver. They fuel is vaporized by running through tubes in the burner, so now you have 125 psi fuel being heated! It had about a 25-30 mile range, and carried 30 gallons of water. Fuel mileage was in the 5 to 6 miles per gallon range, and heat up time was about 40 minutes. It would run about as fast as you wanted and had plenty of power to keep up with traffic. To stop and refuel at the station, you had to shut off the main burners and drive a few miles to be sure they were out, then shut off the pilot light and drive a few more miles. It wasn't a good idea to pull into a fuel station with fires still going! Once fueled, you had to find a close parking lot away from the fuel station and relight the pilot, then once under way, you hope the fuel jets were still hot enough to vaporize the fuel and not flood the burner with raw gasoline. On top of all that, you have to run super expensive oil to keep the valves and pistons lubed.
