Showing posts with label Model A. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Model A. Show all posts
Monday, June 02, 2025
Thursday, April 03, 2025
Thursday, June 06, 2024
It must have been great to be a Model T or Model A mechanic. I am watching "Vise Grip Garage" on Max (Hbo Max, Max +... whatever the hell it's going to be called 5 minutes from now) and the episode on the Detroit Model A is a quick lesson in simple engines 101
I am getting a kick out of the host, Derek ... he's a fun guy, and damn good at running patter while working on cars in the field, or in the garage.
I recommend the show, either on Max, or You Tube. But You Tube has a short video, and the ones on Max are 45 minutes, roughly.
Derek has some FUN sayings...
for example, he calls a sledgehammer (used for breaking loose brake drums) a Tonya Harding 3000.
he calls a rattle can paint job in an engine bay, or on the engine, a "Craigslist Rebuild"
he calls a cutting torch is a "gas axe"
I'm gonna do the right thing and pretend I didn't see that.
richer than Oprah Winfrey.
That's hotter than Shania Twain in the 90s
I can’t believe this but I guess I got to, I’m looking right at it!Holy Terry Labonte! (I love that one)
Hood Prop 300
Ice Cube Juice
Time for Cold Snacks (beer)
I wonder what Reba McEntire is doing right now?
I wonder what Reba McEntire is doing right now?
Terminator Broccoli (throttle body)
He makes up the most impressive descriptions for smells when discovering the stench of decades of dead animals and whatever in the trunk
"smells like a hot armpit of old dentures"
Smells like a cross between 87 octane, Pennzoil, a high school gym locker and Sasquatch.
Smells like a horse hoof dipped in gas station nacho cheese
Smells like a horse hoof dipped in gas station nacho cheese
Smells like a bowling shoe mouse house with a hint of green onion
Smells like a wet shoebox full of alligator feet and red onions
Smells like a potato sack full of cigar boxes and a lotta regret
Have you ever heard of the Model A engine timing pin? A simple great idea for easily finding TDC.
skip to minute 2:42
Thursday, November 19, 2020
Looks like there was a Model A club on on Edwards AFB at one time and its members had enough pull to set up a neat event on the flightline.
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/vintage-shots-from-days-gone-by.428585/page-6126#post-12949161
Chuck Yeager and the Model A so many of you have referred to, was posted 10 years ago
Sunday, May 17, 2020
Tuesday, February 04, 2020
Sunday, September 15, 2019
Lane Nelson, in Wahoo, Nebraska, has restored his great-grandfather’s original engine 1930 Ford Model A, fighting the state to get the Model A registered to drive on public roads because it was once erroneously listed as "junked."
The Model A was purchased in 1930 by Lane Nelson's great-grandfather from Swanson Ford in Ceresco, Nebraska, and driven in turn by his son, Lane's grandfather. Then, when Lane's father turned 16, he was given the opportunity to restore the family Ford and make it his own—but an accident put it out of commission.
Lane recently took charge of efforts to get the car back on the road, with no bigger plans than Sunday drives and the occasional participation in a parade.
Did it work? Not so much. A Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles official told Lane that once a vehicle has a "junk" title, it cannot thereafter be licensed and driven on public roads. The state claims that there are safety and consumer protection reasons. Lane argues that interested owners of old cars should be allowed to fix and drive whatever vehicle they have the expertise to work on.
Thinking outside the box, the resourceful Model A owner trailered the car to City Hall when Gov. Pete Ricketts was in his town for a meeting in February. On the car he posted an attention-grabbing sign: "Governor Please Grant This Car Clemency." But the answer has been the same: Forget about it.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a29023874/ford-model-a-classic-car-cant-register
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Fordmodelt/permalink/10162150521540548/
Tuesday, July 09, 2019
Coffee and donuts video, One of the best of these Barn Find Hunter videos of watching Tom Cotter wander through private junkyards and abandoned cars, with an amazing variety from tri power Olds, to 63 VW splitty vans, and VW bugs, to T birds, and Model As
This time he found a gold mine. A daughter shows Tom Cotter around her dad's junkyard, and garages, which have been sitting lost in time since the early 70s. Some of their family cars wound up here, and several cars that her dad scored, like a 53 Cadillac, Ford Victorias, Rancheros and station wagons, convertibles, that he parked in barns and garage stalls.
A must see video that explores a collection being sorted out and saved by family members, with the junk being sent to the scrap heaps, and the great stuff being saved.
Skip the first 12 minutes, though it's ok, it's wasting your time. Get right to the good stuff!
And the WONDERFUL shocking thing about it all? It's only 5 miles away from Hagerty headquarters in Traverse City Michigan! Why's that great? This collection can get extra love and attention from the people that care so damn much about cool old cars!
Monday, April 08, 2019
in small towns, there was a lot of freedom that comes from not having police around to keep you from having fun, and no CPS to keep you from doing it as a family
looks like a car converted to a truck for the WW2 gas rationing stamps.. as I can't figure out what else that could be at the back of the car, but on this side of the car of the far side of this model A
https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/old-gas-stations.75124/page-115#post-2337271
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
a company in the early 1930s realized that two small trucks with a loading capacity of 2.5 tons was cheaper than a five-ton truck and therefore, it was logical to weld two low-cost trucks together, resulting in the world’s only twin-engine, twin-grille Ford Model AA.
A bakery and flour dealer, Smeets needed an inexpensive hauler to move a five ton load. The only five-ton trucks on the market at that time far exceeded the company’s budget, but two less expensive trucks with lighter weight ratings fell within its budget, so why not make one heavy truck out of two lighter ones and combine the weight ratings to get what they wanted?
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2216000102000133/permalink/2293838474216295/
https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2014/06/24/two-two-trucks-trucks-in-in-one-one-the-the-konings-konings-siamese-siamese-twin-twin
https://conam.info/historie/fabrikanten-autos-en-motorfietsen/fabrikanten-beschrijvingen/551-konings-swalmen
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2216000102000133/permalink/2293838474216295/
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Monday, January 21, 2019
Dave McCoy tried to use his motorcycle as collateral in 1938 for a bank loan to pay for a tow rope at Mammoth Mountain ski resort, to replace the Model A tow ropes they were using.
When I wasn't in school, I'd take jobs on pig farms or picking fruit. I made my first pair of skis in high school shop class. After graduation, I hitchhiked back to Independence and got a job at Jim's Place, a restaurant where my mom was working. I waited tables, washed dishes, and cleaned up after it closed. That's where I met Roma -- she and her friends were cheerleaders who came in one day.
In 1936, when Dave McCoy arrived in the village of Bishop, Calif., about 50 miles southeast of Mammoth, he was already the image of the macho mountain man. Roma Carriere, then a 17-year-old bank clerk, recalls the way the stranger looked when he first came to town: "I would see him going down Main Street in the dead of winter with his shirt open and his skis tied along the side of his motorcycle.
He always wore a red bandanna over his hair. Sometimes he wore a black leather jacket. Oh, he was good-looking. I said to my sister, Frances, 'One day I'm going to get a date with that guy.'
She meant everything to me then. Still does. We've been married 67 years. Six children. Eighteen grandchildren. Twenty great-grandchildren.
Skiing was getting really popular, and some friends and I built portable rope tows. I wasn't thinking about business. I did it because it was fun.
I wanted to set up a rope tow on McGee Mountain, which was right on the highway and had good snowfall. I needed to buy parts, so I went to a bank and asked for a loan of $85, using my motorcycle as collateral. The bank manager turned me down, because he didn't think I looked responsible. But Roma was his secretary, and she said, "If you don't give him the loan, I'm quitting." She ended up quitting anyway after we got married.
I got a job as a hydrographer with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, measuring snow in the winter so they could predict how much water would be available in the spring and summer. Some days I would ski 50 miles for work.
With an eye for snow conditions, which he had developed on the hydrographer job, McCoy judged Mammoth to be a better ski site than McGee.
On weekends, we would set up rope tows and let people use them for free using a Model A Ford truck to power a portable rope tow, which they rigged on prime spots on McGee Mountain.
They would drive a Model A Ford truck to a likely slope, jack up the rear wheels and hook a length of half-inch rope around the rim of a wheel. Then they would climb the hill and attach the rope and a block and tackle to a tree. The setup would move the rope through a long, thin loop—and would pull the skiers up the hill after each run.
Among the friends who worked with McCoy on his early tow was Cortland T. Hill, an avid outdoorsman and skier and grandson of the Great Northern Railway baron, James J. Hill.
In the mid-'40s, McCoy installed a permanent tow on McGee.
I was still working for the water department; Roma and I barely had enough money for food. So one day I asked Roma to put out a cigarette box and get skiers to donate whatever they could. Until then, it had been a free ride. We made $15 that first day -- a lot of money for the time, about 50 cents a person.
The Forest Service asked for bids to develop Mammoth into a ski area. I took a piece of paper and drew three lines, which were for chairlifts. That was the business plan. They gave me a permit that let me put lifts wherever I wanted in a 40- or 50-mile area of the Eastern Sierras.
Severe weather and inaccessibility were problems that could have doomed the project. The road to Los Angeles was nothing but a dirt track that disappeared in the Sierra storms.
In Dec 1947 I was able to buy four Army surplus snow vehicles -- called Weasels -- at a San Diego auction, to get skiers in and out, and banked on the belief that many L.A. residents loved skiing as much as he did--enough to take a little time and trouble getting to the snow. "We'd load people into them, and others would hang on to ropes coming off the back, and we'd haul them over the snow to the tows. Everyone would be singing and laughing and having a good time."
McCoy also turned to coaching and produced some of the best U.S. racers of the 1950s and 1960s. In '49 he coached his first national champion, U.S. junior slalom titlist Charlotte Zumstein, and one of his star students, Jean Saubert, won two medals in the '64 Olympics. Saubert later said, "Dave was by far the best coach I ever had." In all, he sent 17 racers from Mammoth Mountain to Olympic or world-class competition—including his daughter, Penny, now 35, and his son, Pancho, now 39. McCoy himself might still be coaching, but in the late '60s and early '70s there was so much cheap politics in the U.S. Ski Team that he washed his hands of the whole operation.
in 1985, Sports Illustrated did an article, and at that time reported:
Mammoth Mountain has 23 chair lifts, four surface lifts, two gondolas, 54 miles of trails, huge lodges at two different base locations, a 170-room inn, a fleet of 26 grooming vehicles and countless dump trucks, snowmobiles, cars and snow-plows as well as some 1,400 winter employees.
Mammoth Mountain's location is key to it's success, from Los Angeles, it's 350 miles away, a six-or seven-hour drive on U.S. Route 395.
http://articles.latimes.com/1986-02-23/news/vw-11269_1_mammoth-mountain/2
https://www.inc.com/magazine/20081201/how-i-did-it-dave-mccoy-mammoth-mountain.html
https://www.si.com/vault/1985/02/25/627699/a-man-and-his-mountain
http://www.mammothlakes.us/travel/ski_history.shtml
http://www.fwsa.org/Awards/bios/WSH2006-Morning.pdf
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Georgia Tech Wramblin Wreck... pretty cool university 1930 Model A Ford rumble seat coupe for cheerleading and tailgating, the official mascot of the student body.
Dean of Student Affairs began a search for a new official symbol in 1960, specifically a classic pre-war Ford. Dull's search would entail newspaper ads, radio commercials, and other means to locate this vehicle. The search took him throughout the state and country, but no suitable vehicle was found until the autumn of 1960.
He spotted a polished 1930 Ford Model A outside of his apartment. How'd he miss that all year long? Well... that's a cool story.
The owner was Captain Ted J. Johnson, Atlanta's chief Delta Air Lines pilot, and he'd purchased the car from a junkyard in 1956 to restore the car as a father-son project. 2 years and over $1,800, plus spare parts from many different sources , extremely different considering the mahogany dash was from a parts dealer in Caracas, Venezuela and he used Convair 440 aluminum sheets to replace the flooring.
On the day the Dean of GT looked outside his out his apartment window, the father and son were in Atlanta competing against Tech at the track meet. Capt Johnson, wanting to see his son compete, took the Model A to Tech campus, parked it near Towers dormitory, and went to watch his son compete.
When Capt Johnson returned to his car, he found a note from the Dean under the windshield wiper, which asked to purchase the car for service as Georgia Tech's official mascot. Johnson, after great deliberation, agreed to take $1,000, but eventually returned the money in 1984 so that the car would be remembered as an official donation to Georgia Tech and the Alexander-Tharpe Fund.
The current color scheme was selected in 1974 by then athletic director and former head coach, who then loved the colors so much, he changed the football helmet and uniform color to match the new car paint scheme.
Pete George, GT alumni, was the manager of the Ford Mo Co Hapeville Plant in Atlanta, was responsible for Ford's restoration of the car that led to the Gold paint
In 1963 while playing a game at University Of Tennessee, Georgia Tech learned a lesson after UT assured them they had a safe place to stow the car. When they came for it before the game UT had painted the car and wheels Orange, wrote "Go Vols" in the paint! HA! It's even been stolen twice by the University of Georgia
In an strange real story, it turns out it was in a wreck, at 70 mph while being towed. The trailer it was on had a wheel snap off, and suddenly the truck, trailer, and model a were hooking a hard immediate right and ended up on their sides sliding down the road, thankfully not tumbling or rolling.
No one hurt, but, no insurance was covering the model A! It wasn't conceivable that it would be wrecked as it didn't drive off campus... didn't do anything but parades into football stadiums, for example.
They raised the funds for bodywork by a Go Fund Me http://georgiasports.blogspot.com/2007/06/ramblin-wreckage-tech-students-crash.html
http://carzhunt.blogspot.com/2018/09/wild-hot-rod-weekend-jade-idol-pontiac.html
In 1953, the same year that this record was made, the Glee Club performed the song on CBS's Ed Sullivan Show. However, Mr. Sullivan insisted that the lyrics be bowdlerized to subsitute "heckuva" for the proper "helluva". It was also crooned (and strummed on a mandolin) by Gregory Peck in The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, and whistled by John Wayne in The High and Mighty,
Later this decade, the song would be sung by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Vice President Richard Nixon at the 1959 Kitchen Debate. Nixon did not know any Russian songs, but Khrushchev knew one American song - Ramblin' Wreck - having heard it on Ed Sullivan.
Lyrics:
I'm a Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech, and a hell of an engineer—
A helluva, helluva, helluva, helluva, hell of an engineer.
Like all the jolly good fellows, I drink my whiskey clear.
I'm a Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech and a hell of an engineer.
Oh! If I had a daughter, sir, I'd dress her in White and Gold,
And put her on the campus to cheer the brave and bold.
But if I had a son, sir, I'll tell you what he'd do—
He would yell, 'To hell with Georgia!' like his daddy used to do.
Oh, I wish I had a barrel of rum and sugar three thousand pounds,
A college bell to put it in and a clapper to stir it round.
I'd drink to all the good fellows who come from far and near.
I'm a ramblin', gamblin', hell of an engineer!
https://youtu.be/SnIH51niqCY if you want to listen to it.
https://www.news.gatech.edu/features/wreck-driver if you want to read about it's day to day with the student entrusted to drive and maintain it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramblin%27_Wreck
https://www.gtalumni.org/s/1481/alumni/17/magazine.aspx?sid=1481&gid=21&pgid=10514&cid=22239&ecid=22239&crid=0&calpgid=10516&calcid=23008
Several B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators and at least one F4U Corsair were designated the name Ramblin' Wreck during service in World War II.
I guarantee you never thought you'd learn about Krushschev singing a song from the Ed Sullivan show today. Man, that tops learning that Hendrix was murdered for the most astonishing true fact that has no place on a car blog.
and I never would have guessed that college mascot vehicles were a thing... now I've posted a couple of them https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/search/label/college%20tailgating%20vehicle
Thursday, October 25, 2018
Adam posted an interesting story on Facebook about his grandfather's model A being put on hold by too many old people, who died before getting much progress, and his Aunt who is finishing the restoration. Moral to the story, don't put it off
Mum bought it for Dad in January 1954 to use as second car in the Navy.
August of 1954, Hurricane Carol caused evacuation of Quonset Point Naval Air Station, North Kingstown, RI. Dad had to go out to sea with aircraft carrier.
Had to leave ‘28 behind to the elements. Spent next 40 years moving from barn to barn waiting.
My grandfather past away in 1998 so he was not able to see the restoration past the chassis. The restored chassis sat in a garage until recently when my Uncle Hugh started to finish the restoration. Unfortunately my Uncle Hugh passed away in June of 2017. My aunt is now making a point to get this finished is it is always what my uncle wanted
https://www.facebook.com/groups/197491484165115/permalink/325638874683708
Thursday, August 23, 2018
the Adirondack Model A Club has a Youth Program, and they have a help wanted sign up too! They are looking to help teach young people about the history of Model A Fords, hand tools, cost analysis, mechanical systems, basic mechanics, painting, simple welding, and forming a team
WANTED: Young men and women who are interested in the restoration of classic cars, specifically Model As
People between the ages of 13 and 18, enrolled in a local school, and willing to give up two Saturdays a month would be a perfect fit.
Come work on a project car for 6 hours per day, work and lunch and cleanup time. You will learn how to get dirty, form a team, work with hand tools, the history of the automobile, and how to work with metal and wood.
http://www.adirondackas.org/youth-program.html
https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2016/01/29/new-york-model-a-club-proves-that-kids-are-still-into-cars/
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Do you remember the Dick Flint roadster? The one that became famous for being a Hot Rod magazine cover car
He built that while working at So Cal Speed Shop for Alex Xydias... so, that explains his good taste in customizing it, and Hot Rod magazines knowing where to go to get it to be a feature and cover car.
He had finished it around 1947, and was racing it at El Mirage from 1948 (setting a speed record) to 1950 or 51. By 1961 his wife was unhappy with it taking up garage space, and it had to go (case in point, reminder to avoid getting married if you value your stuff)
A hot rodder doesn't change though, and in 1969 he found a damaged 1929 Model A Special Coupe, and put it in his garage for $400. It stayed in the garage for the next 30 years.
Now, tell me what sense it made for his wife to push the cool cover car out? It was just sold at auction for about $600,000, but all Dick was paid for it was $2500.
He set about hod rodding the '29 in 2001
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