'17 Ford restoration project
Typical Ford, a '17 and needs work already. I also keep swearing not to buy black cars, but they keep following me home. Here we see the Ford in it's natural environment (on a flatdeck).
All kidding aside, I'm thrilled to add this to the fleet. It's a '17 Ford Model T, and about as different as you can get from a modern car aside from a true horseless carriage which is out of the budget.
Henry wasn't big on features and needed to keep MSRP down to a palatable $360USD, so there's no starter (other than a crank), no battery, generator, water pump, gauges of any sort, seatbelts, signals, taillights, wheel brakes, or any of that nonsense. The drivers door is just a stamped dummy door line and doesn't open (on US-built cars) as the handbrake / transmission lever is in the way anyways. It does have factory kerosene lamps in case your magneto should surge and fry your headlight bulbs. I haven't found any evidence of options being available in this year though, so by InRich standards, it is indeed fully loaded.
There are three pedals inside, none of which do what you expect. The left is Low/High/Clutch, the middle is reverse, and the right controls a cotton band which tightens around a drum in the transmission and serves as the only 'brake' on the car. The throttle control lives on the steering wheel opposite the manual spark advance control. Henry was thoughtful enough to include a in-cab adjustable carb mixture control as well, so the driver has on-the-fly tuning capability to wring out most of the 20 horsepower this savage 2.9L 4 cylinder can offer thanks to it's 4.5:1 compression ratio (not a typo).
The ownership history that came with the car goes back to the early 30s, but there's no evidence of which mod-crazy car guy tricked the car out with the best aftermarket accessories of the day including the coveted Boyce Moto-Meter rad cap (not pictured). Oh, you've got 20" chrome rims? That's cute, this rolls on 21" wood aftermarket demountables. Maybe TireBob can hook me up with some new 21x4.00-4.50 rubber without the ~95 year old split rims killing too many tire techs in the process. Also not factory correct is the aftermarket hand operated horn, which I assume would make a sweet Ahoooga sound, if it wasn't suffering from being as old as the car.
With the lack of options, a set of tires and fixing the horn should be all that stands between me and a successful out of province inspection and being able to throw Alberta tin on it for a couple months. Any Beyonders know a guy? Preferably mobile and well-versed enough in vintage to know and accept that 90% of the items on the list will be N/A.
The car runs and moves, but is currently dragging in low gear even in neutral which I understand is normal for Ts that have been sitting. I'll change the oil, reline the cotton bands in the transmission that serve to enable high/low gear and apply the brake, and maybe try to remagnetize the magneto as the PO had the coils ghetto-rigged to a battery in the back. If I can get it running/driving well enough to pass inspection and serve in my upcoming wedding, it gets to live until its 100th birthday this summer before getting torn apart and restored. If not, it comes apart now to go through it and make it right.
I know much of Beyond is more 'Tesla Model S' than 'Ford Model T', but if there's interest in a car born before most of Beyond's grandparents were a twinkle in their great-grandparents eyes, I can document the work involved in getting it running and/or restoring it.
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Originally Posted by rage2
