New Old Project.

This story actually begins with the childhood of my Father. My Dad come from a fairly well-off working family in Exeter, CA. One of seven siblings, my Dad had told me a story of his Father owning the only automobile in Exeter when he was young. He told of Grandpa Tomlinson hauling hogs to market one day and then hauling the Mayor of Exeter in a parade the next.

I reckon this memory had a soft spot in my Father's heart, because sometime in the late 1960's he found a 1926 Ford Model T and bought it. The car had been cobbled together from a touring car body that had been chopped off behind the front seat, and an un-appropriate pickup bed welded to the back of the chopped off front body. I remember him telling me about the car having an aftermarket 3 speed transmission mounted behind the Model T appropriate 2-speed transmission. The car also had a 2-speed Ruxtel rear axle. You could split each of the two main transmission gears a total of 6 ways, making a total of 12 speeds.

I took the car to a parade in Sutter, CA in the early 1970's for a parade of some kind. We actually moved the car to the parade in an agricultural implement carrier. It was hanging under a big arch on chains. I have a photo somewhere....

That was the last I heard of the car for a very long time. My Father died in 1999 and I believe the car was given to my sister. My younger sister married into a family in Auburn, CA who owned and showed several Model T cars. The car was taken there and left for years. During that time several parts disappeared from the car, including the windshield and the Ruxtel 2-speed rear axle. my sister evidently gave the car to my Brother. At some point my Brother went to Auburn and picked up the car from the Boot Hill in Auburn. According to my Brother, he replaced the front body with a more appropriate Roadster front body and an appropriate pickup bed from a Roadster Pickup. The car now sits with semi-appropriate Roadster body work and wire spoke wheels that were evidently an option on 1926 Model Ts, as well as a new set of tires. When my Father bought the car, it also had an accessory water pump and an accessory distributor. These were not original equipment on the 1926 Model T. My Brother removed the water pump and distributor and replaced them with the original equipment Model T Ignition coils and the engine is cooled by a fan and convection as it was originally intended.

Today the car sits as a semi-appropriate representation of a 1926 Model T Roadster Pickup. It has been up on blocks and under a canvas for 3 or 4 years in my Brothers yard. Recently I had a conversation with my Brother on his birthday and he asked me if I had any interest in the car. I had at one point thought about trying to trade him out of it and fashioning a Speedster out of it. Anyway, I said I would like to have it. Long story short, my Son Blair and I took a trailer up and picked it up.

I now have the car in my shop. After some major cleaning out of the varmint waste and acorns, I got a pretty good look at what we were working with. The first step was to take a look at the Model T ignition and try to make some sense out of it. As the "buzz boxes" had been removed prior to my Dad's ownership, he had not taught me about them or how the worked. I did some searches on Google and found that literally anything you want to know about a Model T is on the internet. And, literally every part is also available, either reproduced or used. I popped the top off of the coil box and saw the tops of 4 wooden boxes containing nearly 100 year old electric technology. The boxes contain electric magnets that transform the 12 volt current from the battery to over 10,000 volts to spark the spark plugs. They do it by a set of points on the top of the boxes that make and break very fast causing the coil to amplify the current. I read where the child sound like a bee hive when you turn on the ignition. As the points had not operated in several years, I did not know what to expect. Actually when I hooked up the battery, the box in the number 2 position began to vibrate. I knew I had one coil working. I moved the other 3 into that position and 3 of them would buzz. One would not. I took the points off of the top of the box and cleaned them up with emery cloth. After re-installing them it buzzed! I cranked the engine very slowly and only the number 2 box would buzz. Something was wrong. I could put any one of the 4 boxes in that position and they would buzz, but the other positions would not work. I deduced that the problem must be with the ignition timer. The ignition timer is a device that lives at the front end of the camshaft. It basically grounds the ground leads from the coils in a sequence, somewhat like a distributor. I realized that the timer was only making contact with the number 2 wire and not the others. I took the timer off the engine and cleaned up the contacts. The timer on this car is a "New Day" timer that was an after market timer that did not require lubrication. It seems this was a much better timer than the original. It has a bronze "brush" in a rotor on top of a very small spring. The spring holds the brush tightly against the contacts in the timer cap. As the brush moves around the inside of the cap, it makes contact with the ground wires coming down from the coil boxes. Basically, turning on the ignition switch powers up the coil boxes, but they do not operate until the ground wires from the boxes are grounded by the timer. So, the coils are "hot" and the timer sets up the sequence "firing order" for the engine to run. After a couple of tries, I found that the spring under the contact brush was collapsed and not holding the brush against the contacts in the timer cap. I ordered a couple of them on the internet, but they would take about a week to get them. When I first looked at the rotor, I could not figure out how to remove the pin that keeps the brush in the rotor. I found an article on the internet showing me how to do it. I removed the brush from the rotor and verified the spring was broken. I took apart a ball point pen and cut down the spring, and installed it behind the brush. After putting it all back together, I turned the key on and slowly turned the crank. Each of the four spark plugs lit up in sequence. The ignition was working. I am not yet sure about the timing, but the story is that it was running until it was parked. Hoping for the best!

The next step will be to try to start the motor. The next issue is fuel. On first inspection of the car, I saw that the tank had been completely drained and the fuel petcock was turned off. I opened up the fuel filter and there was a small amount of bad gasoline in the bowl. There was not bad gas anywhere else. Not in the tank, nor the fuel line down to the carb. I will flush some gas through the tank to remove any scale or crap that may be in there. I will clean the filter, replace the fuel hose from the petcock to the carburetor and add some fresh gasoline. I am hoping there was not gasoline left in the carb and it will function as expected. As the car has a starter, I will not have to crank the engine and risk injury. My hopes are that with a bit of gasoline and luck, the car will spring to life.

More to come!