MTFCA Forum

Body making progress.
Parts taken to become a car.

What I did to my T today was hit the big mama of all potholes. It knocked off a headlight rim and broke out the glass. I reckon I'll be looking for a glass shop when I get to Michigan.

Father's Day here, and my son worked on the replacement generator for Henrietta. He has asked for input with his work in another post. This is a rebuild of a good patina matching unit for the old girl. New sealed bearings, undercut and machined commutator on a tested arnmature, new insulation on fieds leads and a new terminal wire soldered to the terrminal bolt, and all new brushes. Fortunately the insulation on the brush holder plate was undamaged and adjustment of the third brush will be easy.
All in all, not a bad day.

Allan from down under.

So far I've just been swearing at it.

Cleaned out the sediment bowl, fuel line, and fuel bowl after Wilma wouldn't start.
Then took her for a test drive to the pie iron cooking demonstration at the State Park.
No problems.

Had done the tie rod and spindle bushings in June, today I replaced the gears and driver in the steering gearbox from an old column I had. Much tighter now.

A minor thing but a huge improvement to drivability of my TT. I decided to purchase one of the Depot hack rear view mirrors from Langs to see if I could mount to my C cab and eliminate the clamp on mirrors that are nearly worthless. I had to drill and tap the bracket to reorientate the mounting 90 degrees but wow! I can actually see backing up and mirror does not vibrate to the point of making it useless. I was a little nervous drilling into my cab but it now looks like it’s always been there. Now for the other side.

Got the rear doors aligned buy tweeking the hinges for proper gap, and shimming the bed to remove a slight twist. The door mechanism is still hard to operate. Will work on that.

Replaced the wood in my coil box with plastic.
I felt dirty doing it. I know it's a slippery slope with these small deviations from original. Next thing you know I'll be contemplating a water pump... Or a fuel filter... What have I done?

Welcome to the group. The first step is realizing you have a problem.
If you feel the need to further stray, we'll talk you down.

Some things only your hairdresser knows! Here is a serious deviation, a distributor and 12 volts. I wouldn’t have done it if the magneto had not quit. It is also a Johnny Cash car with lots of spare parts.

Joe Reid wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 08, 2023 11:35 pm

Some things only your hairdresser knows! Here is a serious deviation, a distributor and 12 volts. I wouldn’t have done it if the magneto had not quit. It is also a Johnny Cash car with lots of spare parts.

Looks like a fun ride and a head turner!

Re-bushed the front spindles.

Stopped at a farm stand and by chance took the old girl to her native habitat... a no winter maintenance gravel road... I could have turned around but I just took it slow and let her suspension get some exercise.




It looks like this road is smooth but once I headed down hill it had plenty of erosion ditches to navigate. No time to take photos there.

Some static balancing of transmission partsflywheeldrive plate and brake drumslow speed drumreverse drum. All the mandrels where turned on the lathe. The flywheel used a cut transmission shaft and the rod is a .750 stainless steel precision ground rod from an old milk bottle filler. .750 id ball bearings with grease removed and light oil added. Used leveled jack stands to hold it. Ended up very sensitive to weight. I think I have about $12 in it.
Bryant

I had chased my ’15 for 20 years before I was able to buy it in an estate sale. I knew the provenance of the car from him, and also the guy before him who was still around early in the chase, who bought it 'way back when' from NJ Bell where it was in dusty storage at a depot corner with one of those salesmens boxes. Other than changing the salesman box into a real ‘turtle’ the car between the previous owners had less than 100 miles combined, and from the look of the tranny, Bell Tel had parked and locked this thing very early on in its life. That said, the side lamps and tail lamp looked like something owner #2 had laying around his acres and acres of ‘stuff’.

So…I get the car, the lights don’t bother me too much and then in the early days of T-bay there is a set of restored lamps, totally restored, for a ’15 it said. I hopped on it right away, a well-known T guy from New England had the same thought. Whatever I bid, he’d turn around and bid higher but he wasn’t auto bidding. So I chose ‘bid butler’ at a level max I knew anyone would give up before reaching. Shortly after, the lamps were mine and I proudly mounted them immediately.

Trouble eventually was, I didn’t know what a specific ’15 specific kero light set was supposed to be! I had been a black car guy for the first 20 years! Brass chimney tops…check. Brass ‘glass door bezel’…check. All the rest powder coated black…check. Reflector replated…check. Turns out the guy that lost the bidding was the real winner. The set of lamps eventually was learned to be pretty much ’25 or so. The rebuilder had BRASS PLATED the chimney cap and the glass bezel…the hinge pins were nails used as rivets…but what the heck,,,bought a repo set of chimney caps with the engravings and all was good appearance wise, right? Then along comes our buddy Art V and his well-researched and consensus agreed graphics. Hmmm. Chimneys now all wrong, reflector inserts now all wrong, font bowls now all wrong…and I didn’t care! Until the son decided to take over the stewardship of the ’15 at his place! He honkered down on that and really took a purist approach to a 95% complete and accurate low mileage Roadster and getting it to as close to 100% as he could. I in turn took on the secret project of making the side and tail lights ‘correct’. That did happen over the last year or so due to generosities, outright donations from great people and some of the whacky hard to find stuff being available to buy from guys all over the USA.

Side lights went on in April…but no picture. Taillight went on this past weekend…I get just as much fun puttering on the little things as I use to get driving the car!

Repaired a broken horn bulb bracket. Langs says the soldered joint often breaks. Mine did. I saw no sense In resoldering so I did a mechanical repair with a 10 32 machine screw and a small copper washer using blue Loctote to hold things tight.

Finished the windshield bumpers.

Richard- the problem with those horn brackets is they are put together with soft solder. The only way to make them stay together- both on the horn tube and the body side bracket is to desolder them and then put them back together with silver solder.

Richard,
That brass looks great.
By the way, there is not a lot of thread engagement on some of those nuts, you may want to use longer bolts.

Thanks for the input. I considered silver solder but opted for a mechanical repair. I the other end comes apart, I'll go with silver solder because ther is no way to install a screw.

Your observation prompted me to use Loctitie.I think there is enuf thread engagement to hold things togther.

I know I've probably posted too much about my 1912 roadster but I am celebrating g a 20 year effort (on and off) to complete this restoration. Today I finished. Still have to bring the car to Ernie Romero next Spring for a top and waiting to meet with Russ Furstnow at Tulare for help with the speedometer. But for now it's done. Many thanks to all those that offered help and encouragement along the way. Too many names to list but accept a heartfelt thank you.

Magneto work on my 12 Roadster. One of the more tedious jobs on a Model T, IMHO, but you just gotta have a working mag!

Congratulations on your beautiful 12 Roadster, Richard. It looks fabulous and you must have quite a sense of accomplishment. You can't post too many photos of that beauty! Good luck with the top-I will be facing that part of the restoration in about a year.

Thank you Greg for your kind words. Let me know if I can be of any help on you restoration.

Painted this Friday. 18 touring it was a burned body sometime in its life.

Just made this one running.

Andre
Belgium

I broke the crankshaft in my 1915...
: ^ (

Here the running engine.

https://www.facebook.com/hans.devos.351 ... &ref=notif

Andre
Belgium

KWTownsend wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 17, 2023 11:13 pm

I broke the crankshaft in my 1915...

1915 broken crankshaft.jpg

: ^ (

I notice your pistons dont have the lubrication holes for the wrist pins.
Is it possible that the wrist pins got tight & caused the extra strain to break the crank?
I ask because I also broke my crank behind #1. The only issue I can point to is tight wrist pins.
Anybody experience the same?

John-
Broken cranks are a mystery. I think the #1 reason is a bent pan that contributes to metal fatigue. When I put this engine together the short block was done. I straightened the pan, put the transmission on and have had nearly 30 years of trouble free touring.

: ^ (

Replaced an aluminum timing gear with a bronze one to reduce engine noise.

Keith I'm hoping you can get another crankshaft ground to the sames specs as the broken one and not have to disturb your rods and mains much. Mabe just light fitting with Timesaver. Erik Barrett has a whole bunch of good crankshafts. I've has good luck using Carl Grindstaff in Redding to grind T crankshafts and axles to my specs.

We planned this about a week ago. I loaded up my neighbors and all their kids and grandkids in the TT and went for about 20 mile round trip for icecream. There were 19 of us enjoying a nice evening fall ride. The oil lights are not that bright in the back and even tho I have clip on LED flashers, I had my wife follow us home in the modern iron as it was really dark when we got home. After my visit with Steve Jelf this morning, it was a great end to a great day.

Did you get a chance to race the bishop?

I put 375 miles on my '27 Tudor touring the Salmon River country of Idaho. Had to adjust the low band but the car ran pretty good. Had lots of help from friends who got under the car to check things out.

[attachment=1

Very small but important. Bought two radiator shells and both were broke. Cut the rivets off one hood rod support bracket from the ripped shell #1 and welded it to a piece of stainless steel. Drilled four holes in shell #2 and plug welded through the brass to the steel underneath. Then connected the plug welds on top. All photos are shell #2.

We had EVOC training at a neighboring fire department yesterday. I drove the RPU to breakfast and then a 9 hr class and driving test. Best part of the day was there and back.

I drove both my 1924 cut-off touring (now a pickup) and my 1912 Flanders this morning. The trip in the Flanders was only about 5 miles, I'm still building confidence in the car. I did one of my normal 16 mile out-and-back trips in the T.

CudaMan wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 24, 2023 3:40 pm

I drove both my 1924 cut-off touring (now a pickup) and my 1912 Flanders this morning. The trip in the Flanders was only about 5 miles, I'm still building confidence in the car. I did one of my normal 16 mile out-and-back trips in the T.

I love the look of that 24'. I'm hoping to get something similar to that eventually.

Bryce I agree! This one I built for my dear friend and mentor Dr Gary Flandro, NASA Astrophysicist and the guy that came up with the Voyager 1 & 2 probes as an intern at Cal-Tech. This is a steel clad over solid oak and black walnut.Enjoy!

I haven't done squat! Prior commitment and promise to build a custom patio from 15 years ago! I wish my wife would learn to forget somethings!

I hear ya Hank. Looking great. 15 years ? I could only take it ten years before I had to build my wifes training building. No! Not for me but her dogs.

Two weeks ago I took my neighbor's son and his girlfriend for a parade ride they were attendants for the prom at our local catholic school. Jim

I got my broken crankshaft halfway out...

Installed data plate. Also, stamped the non-original, serial number plate and mounted on firewall.
Mounted terminal block on firewall and wired it and instrument panel.