I've been a long time reader but this is my first post. This picture is of our 24 speedster that saw it's first car show last weekend. The body is all aluminum, does anyone have any suggestions? The aluminum hasn't been touched for many years. How hard would it be to polish it? Should I clear coat it to protect it?

Hi Kris...welcome !! Thas a purty kewl speedster. Any chance you could make the pic larger dimension to show off some of the detail ?? How rough is the aluminum ?? Vintage Airstream trailer website has lotsa good tips for polishing aluminum skins.

http://www.vintageairstream.com/Myrtle/polish1.html

I'm having troubles putting on the pictures, The first time I tried it said the picture had to be 200 kb. I resized it with windows photo gallery, and it came out that small. How do you put on a bigger picture?

I've never used Windows, so I don't know if that's the problem with your picture, but it's only 200 x 150. I get photos three or four times that size, under 200 KB, with Canon software. I'd expect your Kodak software has the same capability. But I've also had good results using some of the free resizng websites. Just google resize photos.

Ya...in windows photo gallery try changing only the pixel count in the pic. Perhaps your camera settings are too "fine" so there is a lot of color "data" gathered in at the time of the shot driving the sharpness of the pic up !! You can mitigate the condition by using photo gallery or changing the settings on the camera. I always take my pics on "superfine" making them "huge" in terms of data taken into the memory card. I have to "resize" when placing the pics on here. But I usually do not change the dimensions of the pic just the pixel count until I get down to just under 200kb.

I found I can check the pic just before upload by running my cursor over the pic and viewing the size in the little popup that appears when the cursor hovers over the icon. The following pic was 65kb when I checked it just before uploading. I had resized it from 1.25mb. Hope that helps...

W

In the original speedster era, bodies were generally painted. Whether aluminum or steel. I try to keep things as correct to era as I reasonably can. But that is me. This is your car. Make it reasonably safe by model T standards. Drive it carefully! And enjoy it. Model Ts are a serious illness and I have been afflicted as long as I can remember
Welcome. W2

Neat Car Kris...Can you post some bigger pictures ?

Kris, aluminum was used by Ford as early as 1909 in one of their touring body. Later some of the sedans had aluminum bodies. All were painted.

The aluminum is very soft not like the anodized we have today.
Rick
Aluminum Fordor

ok let's try this picture

It is well on it's way to being a really great looking speedster! What is the history of the car? Did you build it? Put it together?
Drive carefully, and enjoy, W2

the body came from a barn near my home, my father pieced everything else togethor years ago. it wasn't till this year that we actually got it running. it runs rough right now, not much power. i've learned alot on this forum and i'm still working on it.

Thanks for the info on polishing the aluminum, it looks like alot of work but, it sure would look good.