MTFCA Forum

Looks like I get to kick it off this month.

I'm plugging away at that decrepit mag coil ring. I just acquired a soldering iron that seems hot enough, so today I was separating coils.

The double coils are fastened together by a little bit of copper soldered across the two strips.

Unsoldering the little connecting strip.

A couple of connectors.

Some separated coils to unwind and clean.

The old insulation is way past due for replacement.

Steve,
I am happy to see you started the rebuild of your coil ring.
Just keep in mind: "It was broken, you can't brake it harder just make it work again".
Take your time and do it easy one step at the time.

Good luck.
Andre
Belgium

Adjusted the low band with a little help from my mechanic (7 year old nephew).

I cut the rubber stems off of a couple of tubes and installed Schrader 777 metal stems. It will be a slow process, but as I wear out tires I will install new tires and tubes with the correct stems until all of my wheels and tires have been swapped over.

I also blasted, primed and painted the spare tire carrier that I got from George House. Thanks again, George.

I patched up (soldering) the old radiator......no leaks! I like the look of the honeycomb so will leave it for now but I usually install a new radiator on every T I own in time.

Looking good Jeff. I like the looks of honeycombs too but never found a really good one.
Thanks for the update.
Rich

I didn't do much! A couple weeks ago I replaced the battery because mine wouldn't hold a charge even though the generator was charging 5 amps for about 60 miles, I got about one grunt on the starter.
This month I drove down to the Sinclair gas station to fill up the tank of my Dinosaur car with Dinosaur gas. It starts and runs good and I was looking forward to a tour today to learn about training Falcons. However, the tour was called off because they expect 113 degree temperatures and it is almost all uphill tour and the owner of the birds doesn't want to fly them when it is so hot.
Bummer.
We had the AC on all night and this morning at 6:30 I went out on the porch and the temperature was already 80 degrees.
Norm

Finished blasting my mag ring and a set of engine pans, and prepped everything for painting.

Jelf, why bother painting the mag ring iron? It is bathed in oil anyway. And should any of the paint ever peal off it could cause trouble. Mike

Like Norman I need to replace my battery. It is just past the 36 months! Adjusted the coils, wiped out the New Day, cleaned the Kingston and reset the float. Time to replace or service the New Day, getting worn.
Need to do a compression check, does not seem to be pulling fuel into the engine like it should. With the battery not working as it should, need to hand crank and she is getting cranky trying to start. I checked the fuel flow and that is not an issue and pretty sure it is not a vacuum leak, spray needle setting is in the normal range, not needing extra fuel to compensate for leaks. Might pull the carb back off and check main jet, could be partly plugged, but going back to spray needle, does not point that way.

Well! Good thing our Saturday tour was cancelled. Not only was it the hottest day on record, but a fire broke out and could have closed part of the route some of us might have taken. The only way around that route would be to take the interstate with 70 mph limit or go about 50 miles farther to go around the fire area!
Norm

Don't know if we will get the heat like you guys, but looks like that heat advisory is stretched up to the Salem Oregon and north area. Could make for some interesting weather the next few day up here, bloody hot during the day and fall weather at night.

...why bother painting the mag ring iron? It is bathed in oil anyway. And should any of the paint ever peal off it could cause trouble.

Good points. But I think the clear insulating varnish used for these things stays put. In any case, the ring will get some of that when the coils are sealed in place.

I think he was thinking you were going to paint before assembly. Most coated with insulating varnish and baked to dry after assembly.

Pulled the mock up engine to liberate some parts to use on another block.
.

The Eyre 11 Torpedo is getting closer. Striping is done. This is my dream car. Mark promised me a post-surgery ride. I can't wait.

Freshly rebuilt wheels installed:

Today my son took both our grandchildren for a ride in my 24 tourer, in their car safety seats. it was a spur of the moment thing, and I was not sure the car was registered. When I tried to check the rego on line, it would not accept the entry of the registration number on the plates, so I had to go to the service office in person to renew., only to find it was already registered, until 2022! It turns out the space I had put between the letters and numbers on the plate when entering the details on line was the problem.
My grandson had ridden before, when he was the same age as his sister now is. they really loved the experience.

Allan from down under.

Starting to prepare and power coating some parts for my 1914 speedster

I choosed british green racing color. Very dark green.

Nice disc wheels there, Mario - I have same on my Racer. Near as I could determine, they were manufactured by Motor Utilities Co. - they also manufactured bolt-on "peddler's" boxes for T runabouts.

Thank you Steve for the info, really appreciated. Your racer look awesome too. I will post tomorrow the painting discs and hood pictures.

I installed a light tension spring between my choke and mixture rods under the dash to try and reduce their rattling.

Getting Speedster Ready to Speed.

I got in a little magneto work today.

Coils with outer insulation peeled off.

Unwinding and coiling. Much of the old insulation is falling off, but some stays put and has to be stripped.

A soak in Drano will get it off.

The old horse needed feed. So glad I have a farm truck for this " chore". Any work done with a T is not really work. A very enjoable morning and I just had to stop at an Amish bake sale on the way home. I needed some "oatmeal" cookies. The old horse and I are both happy. Lots of activity in the fields this time of year.

Good deal, Dallas! I like doing every day 'chores' with mt T also. It's usually pretty much a daily driver in 'the season'. It's been down all summer with this trans rebuild, though...... BUT.... Starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel on my trans rebuild... Balanced the triple gears, and mounted. Ready for the clutch plates!

Today I finished bathing the coil ribbons to remove the remaining old rotten insulation. Next will be straightening and pounding out the kinks.

More trans work......"inch by inch, step by step.... S L O W L Y I turn...."

Niagara Falls!!!

Lol! You got it!!

Checked the tank to remind myself if I left a full tank in it when I mothballed
the truck due to loose spokes. That was good, so I pulled the battery, cleaned
all the conections, washed and neutralized the acid on top, made my little "paste"
of baking soda around the base of the terminals to reduce corrosion, and reinstalled.
Put the charger back on it. Maybe give the crank a few pulls tomorrow ? The smoke
from the California and Oregon wildfires has socked us in like a heavy fog. I have
little interest in going out in the cloud, so I am not in any hurry. Smoke *may* disperse
later in the week, if I am to believe the weather people.

Took the T to grab some groceries. May not seem like a big deal but for a T which had been off the road for almost a decade... it represented both another T on the road and being comfortable enough to drive it around town.

Jeff, being careful, unroll the coil then put one end in a vice and stretch the copper about 4 to 6 inches. This make it very straight. You will need a board a little longer than the stretched copper and carefully lay the copper on a board and apply the heat resistant Mylar tape to both sides and then roll the insulated copper on a fixture. Remove from the fixture and rap with 3M glass cloth electrical tape. Don’t forget the insulators under the coil. I’m lucky enough to have a electric motor shop Near by that has a pressure vessel that coats the coil assemble.

I use a scotch bright and lacquer thinner to clean the ribbon once it is straight and don’t forget every other coil raps opposite.

Good for temp up to 500F.

Today I got started on straightening coil ribbons and pounding out the kinks.


I hadn't thought of insulating both sides of the ribbon, but my Kapton tape is only 1 mil so I expect doubling up will be OK.

With the rebuilt wheels all put back together and on the truck, I was ready
to go turn up some dust, and then the wildfires buried us in smoke and I lost
interest. And then the old dog decided we weren't done working on it. After
an easy test fire, I checked the radiator and confirmed it was still dry from
when I mothballed the truck in the summer of 2019 because of the loose spokes.
So, I shut it off and went to get some coolant while it cooled. When I got back
and filled it up, I had another easy start and let it get hot again, only to discover
the radiator neck had broken the solder seal and was jetting coolant out from
under the shell. Hmmm .....

The next day I decided to look a little deeper before taking it all apart to do
another run at the solder, by getting it warmed up again. This was a no-go. I might
get a chuff or jump, but it just would not go. So, now I had two things to fix. I chased
out power and that all checked, but a cleaning of the timer revealed a dead spring
behind the sweeper. I lucked out and The Ranch was open the next day, so I went
down and showed Tom. He handed me a fresh one and last night I installed it.
Nailed the diagnosis on the first swing. Tonight, at the suggestion of another T
guy, I jammed some wood blocking under the radiator stud assemblies to hold that
part together, while I removed the shell and shur-nuff, the solder line had somehow
cracked while the truck was just sitting there. Hmmm ....

Nevermind that, ... I cleaned up the neck area and laid in a more even bead of
solder, fired it up and let it get hot. The new seal held good. Looks like I'll finally
get to go driving tomorrow after a year and a half.

The temperature this morning was in the 40s, so I removed Betsy's air filter and installed her hot air pipe. I also installed the exhaust pipe shroud and duct that goes to my heater grate in the floor.

Tightening my coil ribbon stretcher with a turnbuckle an eighth of a turn at a time was mighty tedious, so today I remodeled it so I can just turn a wrench on the end.

I also took a "new" flywheel for my touring out of the molasses. It looks like it will clean up very nicely.

Took the old dog out on a shakedown run. Clocked about 200 miles. I tightened the wheels
once and developed an oil leak at the top of the transmission cover. Other than the oil leak,
it performed flawlessly.

The deep blue skies of fall are upon us. Soon this landscape will be all the greys of winter.
We get some of the best cloud formations here. Oddly, they were very similar in Afghanistan,
One more reason I live where I do. I can drive for hundreds of miles in any direction and never
see anything but this. No traffic and breathraking vistas at every bend in the road.
I stopped to get gas, but they said the pump was out of service.

Mark,
Heating in the front seat area is automatic in a right hand drive, the pedal slots are right on top of the exhaust pipe!

I never thought of that!

One more reason I live where I do. I can drive for hundreds of miles in any direction and never see anything but this. No traffic and breathraking vistas at every bend in the road.

That's one of the things I love here. Several years ago Ed Emerson and I were planning a tour and drove the route in his modern to get distances and make notes. In one fifty-mile stretch we passed other vehicles three times, and two of them were the same pickup twice. The only traffic that slowed us down on the tour had four feet. The rancher was worried about "those old trucks" scaring his cows.

Had a redo on customers steering box. When I original cleaned it up got the groove too long and was going over center. Brazed up the slot and used a straight burr/die grinder to recut. While I had everything apart took an extra 4:1 gear box with the short groove that I had and redid it so 5:1 gears would fit and work in it.

The battery in the Tudor would not charge so I put a new one in. I had made a box and covers from parts book photos guessing at the dimensions. I realized that after all that work we hardly ever see these. I opted to make the rear floorboard one piece over that area. That entailed crawling under the car to remove 3 screws. A better design would have been to make one half permanent and the other removable. However it would only be supported on 3 sides. The rear battery clamp has to be removed from underneath on the Tudor also. Just more tedious for an old guy. The battery had done well for 4 1/2 years. Not as good a value as my free Optima battery in the Speedster. (19 years and still working) I'm still too cheap to pay for one and wait for delivery.
Anyway I got to drive three T's yesterday. That's always a treat.
Rich

Richard, that looks great, well done!

After 31/2 years a friend came over and helped me, he connected the front wishbone and helped me install the radiator, i installed the the U&J carb and connected the gas line, i just need to tie up some wires and put water and oil in it make sure the battery is charged and take it for a spin to see what needs to be adjusted, it has a .280 cam (new) a Z head and this zoomy carb so it all needs to be checked out.

Rick

I’m working on rebuilding the top for my 25 touring. The Classtique kit should be here in the next week or so.

Nice work Jim. Those later bow assemblies are an interesting arrangement.
Rich

I removed my front axle to do a total rebuild. Everything is worn out. It looks like the car lost a front wheel at one time and the perch and spindle bolts on that side were ground down to the nuts. My car spent most of its life as a heavily loaded truck. I imagine that is why the wishbone has wear from the drag link. I'm planning to weld the worn notch and smooth it out. I need to build up the ball of the wishbone anyway by .035" to .040" to get back to 1 1/4". Does anyone know the thickness of the wishbone ball shims the vendors sell?

I just measured one and it measured 0.020" thick.

Drove mine to Church Sunday.

I shot paint yesterday. It will have plenty of time to cure, since the project just got more complicated. Thankfully, Snyder’s had the wood kit in stock and it’s shipping today.

With it all back together, I've been driving the wheels off it !

Ken Lefeber wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 03, 2020 4:22 pm

Adjusted the low band with a little help from my mechanic (7 year old nephew).Sam adjust low band 2.JPG

You got a nice helper there!

Steve, I noted with interest that you said your insulating tape for your magneto coils was only 1 mil thick. Then I checked the listing on the source and found 2 mil listed. What is a mil in the USA? We are used to referring to mm, the abbreviation for millimetre, 1000 of a metre. mil is closer to ml, which is a millilitre, 1000th of a litre. If your mil is our mm, that makes for a really thick tape, close to .040" I am guessing that someone has come up with a new measure name, and 1mil is 0.1mm.

While I have almost converted entirely to metrics in my brain, I still use thousandths of an inch for fine measurements. Somehow, 0.2mm does not compute as .010"

Allan from down under.

https://www.globalplasticsheeting.com/m ... and-inches

Allan, I hope this helps. It states 1 mil is equal to 1 thousandth of an inch or 0.001 inch

It is a way that they measure the thickness of plastic sheeting over here and a few other things.

David, thanks for the info. I Googled it later for myself, but yours is much clearer. We buy two thicknesses of plastic bags for our wool business. The thickness of the film is measured in Um, whatever those are.
It makes me wonder what kind of drongo would dream up a unit of measurement based on thousandths of an inch, and then christen it with a prefix based on the metric system. A millilitre is one thousandth of a litre, a millimetre a thousandth of a metre, a milligram a thousandth of a gram and then we have a mil which is a thousandth of an inch?, and is 0.0254mm ?????? And the mil bears no relationship to any metric measurement. To add to the confusion a millilitre is pronounced as a mill, and written as ml.

Allan from down under.

Allen ; 0,004 = 0,1 mm

Take Care
Toon

Alan,

Um (not the proper U symbol but what you get on a computer) is micrometre or micrometer, or 1 x 10 to the minus 6th of a meter. More commonly known as a micron.

Participated as 1 of 19 T s from Austin & San Antonio club’s on a tour last Saturday. Posted pics and description on this Forum. No interest. Then serviced and washed a ‘26 tudor yesterday in preparation for a 3 Oct. Wedding getaway car.

Posted pics and description on this Forum. No interest.

A paucity of comments doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of interest or appreciation. Lots of folks look and like without comment.

Today was like Christmas with all the packages being delivered. I got my top kit and rear backrest from Classtique and the belt rail and hardware from Snyder’s. Surprisingly, there wasn’t much fitting involved with the belt rail. I did have to move two bolt holes and enlarge the rest. I also had to fabricate the rounded ends of the arm rests and then smooth out the transitions between the individual pieces. Other than that, the kit basically fits right out of the box. I also decided to give everything behind the upholstery and the under seat pan a coat of rusty metal primer and semi gloss enamel.

Do you have or will you be fabricating a cap piece for the rest of the rail to match the height of the little section in front of the top pivot brackets?

Mark,

Yes, I’ll be fabricating something for behind the top bracket, but I haven’t quite figured out what yet. The roadster I did before had a solid block that just dropped off at the tack rail. I might make something with more of a taper so I don’t have to build up so much with batting.

If you don't drive your T drive someone else's!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/U9CrFEVYsgg?rel=0

That was fun to see.
Thanks
Rich

Thanks! The car is listed on a world wide selling site. So between this one and the TT that went to France, I am still working on my 15 minutes of fame

Today I tackled the Holly with the missing float pin arm. Drilling and tapping (10-32) a hole allowed me to screw in a screw with a smashed end. I soldered it and then drilled and shaped it. One more piece made useable.
Rich

Hey Mark, kinda curious about your experience shipping a car to the EU... how did you ship it, what costs and paperwork were involved, etc.? We're contemplating going there on a semi-permanent basis (in our case, Italy ), and I'd rather take my car (that I know and love so well) rather than sell her and try to find something over there...

Richard, very nice repair, as the old man that got me started in this 57 years ago always said— make it look like it was done on purpose. You have succeeded. My hat is off to a lot of you guys. Thank you all for sharing your knowledge.

Susanne wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 27, 2020 7:12 pm

Hey Mark, kinda curious about your experience shipping a car to the EU... how did you ship it, what costs and paperwork were involved, etc.? We're contemplating going there on a semi-permanent basis (in our case, Italy ), and I'd rather take my car (that I know and love so well) rather than sell her and try to find something over there...

I only drove the TT for the person that was consigned to sell it after I rebuilding the rear end. As far as I know the buyer arranged the shipping.

Darn, well, thanks anyway!!

Thanks Bob. I thought about grinding the screw end flush but decided to leave evidence of the repair. It will remind me for future reference.

Saturday in the UK was a lovely autumn day. Tinkers Park was having an open day to display the vintage machinery housed there. A small railway, steam engines and rollers working and giving rides to members of the public. Seemed a good excuse to put in some more driving practice with my 1921 Manchester built TT. When I cranked it to leave I attracted quite an audience!

I unwrapped Betsy's side curtains and put them on the car today to stretch out.

My next problem was choke shafts. All mine are worn at the ends and bent up. Many years ago when I borrowed this lathe it came with an attachment I always wanted to try out. It had been used to cut the insulation on armature commutators. I adapted a Dremel disk and it worked pretty well the first try. I think I can improve on it. A better cutter and some oversized shaft should make it perfect.

Rich, you're slicker than snot on a door knob! good job!

My local T friend and I redid the valves in my T.

It had been running rough ever since I broke a valve head last year. I replaced some valves but didn’t get enough clearance

Number 1 was 55 pounds, number 2 was 25, Number 3 was 25 and number 4 was ZERO.

Unbelievably, the car ran and drove...warped the hell out of them. We had to sink the number three exhaust to get the seat to clean up enough that if it goes out again, it’ll have to have an insert cut into it

And before anyone says anything...there are no two piece intakes in it any more. I took them out too

Got back to straightening mag coil ribbons. A few down and a bunch to go.

Steve, see the coat and hat are now on and the operation has moved indoors. Must be a change in the weather!

Steve, looks like you are making progress. Just wondering if anyone has just wound with new round wire? I know it wouldn't be correct but it would work fine. Thank all of you for sharing!!!! jw

When I started the frame up restoration on our 1915 runabout in March of last year, I had a goal of getting it done on its 105th birthday on September 30th. Well, I missed that goal by about 6 months, so today I had to take it out for a spin a year later on its 106th birthday.

I wish I knew who that first happy owner was over a century ago.

Very nice!

Agree very nice one!