Touring Top mounting issue

[rainer]

Hello. My Lizzy is a Touring 1916 with "two men top"..

I have the problem that the screws holding the top fabric to the second bow (counting from front) do not hold well in the metal.I already tried to drill the hole in the brass washer a little bit wider and use a little bit thicker screw, but it still does not hold well. The screw comes out while driving.
Having a close look on the metal stand, the material appears very thin, so I do not really wonder about the above problem.

How thick is this oval metal end normally?

My plan is to drill up the hole and inserting a rivet-nut mit M3 thread. This is almost the same diameter the current brass crew has, but then it is a metal thread. Should be lots stronger. But this will also work only when I have enough metal remaining.

Suggestins are welcome.

Rainer

[Kerry]

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, the bow should go well into the up-right bow so the screw is going into wood, do an old carpentry trick to make a screw tight, fill the hole with thin wood sticks, back in the day matches would do the job. I don't know if you can even buy a box of matches these days.

[rainer]

Hi, Kerry.

What I can remember from my last repair try ...
The screw is very lose inside the hole (can change its angle by more than ±10 deg in any direction). So the hole in the wooden bow must be very big.
I also can remember that I could easily push a bent wire downwards through the hole without feeling any resistance. So either the bow is very short and ending above the hole, or it is so heavily rotten or worn out inside, that it fell apart. But the wood outside the tube is rock solid (so the bow is most probably a new one). Sadly I cannot say what the former owner did.

I see two options in fixing this:

• I drill the up the hole in metal tube to ø4.8mm and rivet in a M3 rivet nut.
  This will give a strong M3 thread fixed to the metal tube, while the wooden bow is more or less untouched and remains removable (because there is no wood below the hole yet). Actually the modification is almost invisible, you only see a thin flat ring (the front flange of the nut), and I can paint it black.
• I unlink the tube from body joint, turn it upside-down as far as possible, and then squeeze in an amount of Epoxy Resin mixed with thickener.
  This is like pudding then, will settle down (towards the wooden bow and into every gap) and harden. Then I have strong material behind the tube wall, but I am pretty sure the wood can never be removed again in the future when needed, except with brute force). Therefore I don't like that very much.

I think the best will be the first option and using a M3 countersunk head screw made of brass therefore. Then it has lot of thread to sit in. I also can add a drop of Loctite Screw Securing, so it will not loosen by vibrations. But for a riveting nut I need some strong steel around the hole. So I would like to know the approximate wall thickness.

Rainer

[Erik Johnson]

For the purists:

From the factory, the second top irons/sockets of a U.S. assembled 1916 Ford touring each have a single upholstery nail that goes through the top iron and into the wooden bow.

Below is a photo of the second bow of the original factory top of the "Rip Van Winkle" 1917 touring. The only difference between this 1917 factory top and an original 1916 factory top is the rear curtain - three rectangular lights vs a single tombstone light.

(I installed a new top on my dad's 1917 touring last year. I filled in the original upholstery nail holes in the top irons with round toothpicks and glue so the new upholstery nails would hold.)

[rainer]

Hi, Erik.

Because there is no wood behind the iron, this will nor work in my case. But thanks a lot for showing me. Meanwhile I decided to use a rivet nut M3, this is the best option.

Rainer