When you wanted to take the “T” for a ride there were a few
steps to take.
You would check the oil level in the engine by opening
(carefully) two stop cocks that were mounted in the engine oil pan. The lower
valve needed always to have oil come out when opened, the top one, if the level
was full, would give a little dribble. You could run if the top didn’t but we
didn’t like to. Best we figured to have the oil at the full mark.
You then grab onto a steel rod support of the grain box, and
swing down to open the fuel valve on the bottom of the gas tank, that was underneath
the seat. To fill the tank, you take the seat out and fill by way of the cap
opening on the tank.
You insert the key and turn it a quarter turn to allow the
battery voltage, (6 Volts) reach the timer that sends the juice to the set of 4
coils (one for each cylinder) under the dashboard, behind the key switch. The coils would buzz when
energized, creating a series of high voltage impulses each time the contacts on
the top opened and closed. When the coils loosened in the coil box, you’d lose
power on a cylinder, as it didn’t get a current for the spark plug. We used pop
sickle sticks to push the coils tighter to the contacts. Hey, it worked.
As an aside, and this may or may not be a tall tale, but I
knew my Dad, and he had a reputation to be a bit of a scoundrel so here is the
story. Dad had a minor beef with a fellow in high school, so he had a coil
ready to hook up to a battery. He attached a wire to each high voltage contact
on the coil. He grounded on wire in a puddle on the ground and had the other
wire grounded to the car body. When the target came near, Dad called him over,
noted when he was standing in the puddle, and leaned against the body and
reached out to the nose of his ‘friend’. That completed the circuit by a tender
route, and as the coil kept buzzing, the shocks also kept coming. Dad laughed
really hard whenever he told this story.
Ok, back to our ride. I explained the start up routine last
episode, so re-read that if you wish. We’ll take up after the engine was
running and warmed up a bit.
The steering wheel wasn’t connected to a shaft directly to
the front, it had a set of gears that actually fed the steering shaft. The gears
were right behind the wheel, and made it so a small turn of the steering wheel,
made a significant turn of the front wheels. All mechanical of course, no power
steering.
You’d press down part way on the Hi-Lo-Clutch pedal, and
slip the aux. tranny into first. You’d press down all the way on the pedal to
go into Low-Low and add some throttle, and a bit of spark advance and you be
underway, slowly. Let your foot all the way off the pedal, and with a bit of a
jerk, you’d be in High-Low speed. That would get you out of the area of the
garage, and close to a street. When you get to a road, you’d repeat the steps,
and move up through the aux gears but clutching, using your fingers wrapped
around the steering wheel to pull back the throttle, to slow the engine so you
could fit the non-synchronized gears into the next higher auf gear, to get up
to your top speed of around 25 mph. To
downshift, you’d need to pedal clutch (making sure you don’t accidently go into
low, speed up the engine to get the gears to align and fall into a lower gear.
You could, with practice feel the gears bouncing off of the gear you wanted to
get into and with a bit of throttle fine tuning you would get into the gear you
wanted. Sometimes the truck would lose momentum and you’d have to skip a gear
and work back to what you wanted to do. You never, NEVER wanted to stay out of
an aux gear as you then had no pedal brake. You still had the E-Brake lever but
you didn’t want to have to rely on that.
So, I even had your Mom learn this routine and she drove,
carefully in a low traffic, very level neighborhood. As there just could be more than a
few ways this could have gone bad, my Dad was not super pleased after hearing
how I impressed my girl with letting her drive the T. Anyway, she did pretty well,
but may not have been as comfortable as she let on to me.
During a Seafair season, the truck (and me) was chartered by
Farrell’s to run in the various community parades. I had a 6 person Dixieland
band in the back and several waiters charging around having fun with the parade
watchers. After one parade, to get everyone back to the start to get the cars
they came in, I had 16 people besides me in the truck. Do some math to get the
weight. I had people on the running boards, laying on the front fenders and the
grain box was full. Going uphill, with the group was the only time I needed to
use the Low-Low gear to go up a modest hill (you could walk faster), and I
watched the steam vent from the radiator cap pretty briskly. That was okay as
long as it didn’t last too long.
The coolant we used was more modern than was normal back in
the 1920’s. We had an anti-freeze mix as it raised the boiling point higher
that just water. The model T’s didn’t have a water pump. The water circulated
by gravity as the cooler water from the radiator, was heavier than hot water,
and this went form the bottom of the radiator, into the bottom of the engine, absorbed
heat, expanded and drifter towards the top of the engine and to the top hose
and into the top of the radiator. Simple.
We used the T as a truck, hauling stuff to the dump, helping
people move and other tasks that needed, well, a truck. After moving some
things from our house in Lake City, to my apartment in Bellevue, I took an ill-advised
shortcut across the evergreen floating bridge. Well the State Patrolman didn’t like
the 25 mph I was making and pulled me over at the end of the bridge. There was
a wide spot there. He came and talked to me, and directed me to take the next
exit off the bridge. He liked the truck and noted that I had a red brake light
so I was technically legal. I must have forgotten to mention that the
tail/brake light was a kerosene lamp that in no way indicated that I was
slowing down. My bad. Dad loved that story and laughed every time he told it.
I really enjoyed the model T, both for the fun it provided
and by sharing the adventures with my dad. I miss both.
