More Model T memories

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.