My Model T Ford Experience

Some Model T thoughts

The article below caused me to reminisce over the 1925 Model T truck (Known as a Model T-T) that my father found and purchased. I never knew how much he paid, but it was likely a few hundred dollars.

The truck was in OK shape. This was in the late 60’s early 70’s. We took it to a friend’s house that had a large space and removed the truck bed, that was a special shape known as a grain box. It had the bottom part of the box tapered to allow far grain to drain, and an opening on the back that would either allow a small opening to fill bags, or to remove completely to drain the grain into an elevator.

We painted all of the metal part of the truck with flat black for the frame, and a gloss black on the cab. We used a product called Rustolem to contain the rust that was covering some of the metal. We chose to paint the grain box a green color. We then put the truck back together and bolted the box to the frame.

Dad found a garage near our home in Lake City to store the machine. That was the first of the several places where the “T” lived over its life with us. We’d take it out and learned it peculiarities. 

The truck had the standard Model T transmission. That was controlled by two of the 3 floor pedals. The left pedal as the clutch as well as controlling low gear (Pressed the pedal to the floor) and then high gear, by taking your foot off the pedal. Clutched was more of less half way in between. Reverese was by pushing down the center pedal and the left pedal at the same time. It was more art than science to find the clutch point. Behind that was an second transmission, to give the truck more power. More ‘power’ meant more engine RPM’s but slow, slower or slowest turns to the rear axle but more torque to go up hills with a load.

That darn auxiliary transmission had us stumped for quite a bit. We just couldn’t seem to get the truck going with anything close to a smooth progression up to high gear. All of you who have used manual transmissions know of a ‘standard’ pattern like this:

R         2

1          3

That is what we kept trying, to very poor results. By some fluke, when I was trying to work up to speed (Speed mean blazing along at just short of 25 mph), I mis-shifted, and the truck liked the mistake!. Turned out the shift pattern was actually;

R         3

1          2

Surprise! That ended that mystery. Now Dad was very serious when he cautioned me that I should NEVER, get the auxiliary transmission out of gear (neutral) as that would disconnect the drive line brake of the truck (right most of the 3 pedals), and I would be in a spot of trouble. The transmission was not a modern synchro-mesh type where you could just force it into a gear. You had to manage the engine speed, use your foot to momentarily use pedal 1 to clutch (sortof, the clutch wasn’t a complete clutch but a way to loosen the bands of the T transmission, say 80% effective, less when cold),  change the engine speed to match what it would be in the gear you were moving to and gently, but firmly slide the transmission level into the next gear. You had to be pretty close on engine speed or you’d clash gears and oh no, be between gears and out of foot break usefulness. Just a bit scary. Now you did have the emergency brake that had a rod that went to the back axle, but it was only a bit effective and not as safe as being in gear and able to use the standard brake.

To start the truck, after pushing out from the garage, you put the aux. tranny into neutral. Put the spark advance level up to the top to retard the spark, (Left Lever on the steering column), and also put the throttle (Right Lever) up close to the top. There was a wire that controlled the choke. It was a long wire with a circle bent on the end that was fed through the radiator so the person starting the engine could pull on that to close the choke on the carburetor while you cranked it. The technique to start, was to pull the choke wire to fully choke the engine, pull a few quarter pulls on the crank to 1) pull some fuel into the cylinders, and 2) to splash some oil in the crankcase onto the cylinder walls to make the actual try to start crank a bit easier.

Cranking was always one handed, starting with the crank near the bottom, holding onto the crank with your thumb NOT around the crank. All of your fingers and thumb needed to be below the crank so that if the engine back fired (Tried to run backwards) when the crank was engaged, you didn’t break your thumb when the crank would spin backwards. It would (hopefully) just knock your whole had out of the way with out breaking any bones. Remember the spark advance lever? Failing to retard the level all the way would likely fire a cylinder before it reached past top center. Not good at all.

So the fates were smiling, and after a few sharp upward pulls on the crank, the engine fired. As soon as that first live cylinder fired, you rushed back to the cab, and advanced (not too fast) the spark and the throttle. If all was done perfectly, the engine may die anyway, but that short pop added just a smidgen to heat to the engine, and after the next try (or the one after that or…) you had the engine going on it’s own. You let it warm up a bit and off you could go.

What you'd do to shift was to wrap your left arm around the steering wheel, keeping the wheel straight with pressure from your arm. Have your left hand fingers on the throttle (Right Lever on the steering column) and your right hand on the shift lever that was mounted on the floor. To shift up to a higher gear, you'd simultaneously press the Hi-Lo clutch pedal part way down to the clutch point, pull the throttle lever up to cut RPM's at the same time you shifted up the transmission as you adjusted the throttle to match the gear speeds so the next higher gear would slip into place, allowing you to take your foot off the clutch, unwrap your left arm around the wheel and go back to steering with both hands with your right handed fingers reaching around to control the throttle lever.  

End of part one