Another Shorpy photograph. It shows a car with a pulley attached to the RH rear wheel, driving a ???

http://www.shorpy.com/node/11536?size=_original

Dane,

Thanks for posting. The driver/power plant operator looks like she is waiting for her partner to say "ok -- go."

Doing a lot of long hard pulling on the flat belt while using only the single wheel would cause a lot of wear on the spider gears. But for occasional use it gives you a portable 20 horse power engine that could run the large circular saw, the corn mill, or anything else that had a flat pulley. And a lot of the tools were powered by a flat pulley.

Below is a 1972 photo from the Greenfield Village from page 35 Mar-Apr 1973 "Vintage Ford" used by permission. In the photo they are "shelling corn." It shows the type that used both rear wheels to power the attachment. That could run for hours each day, and days on end as long as it was kept filled with oil, gas, and water. But most of those Ts were primarily driven and used as a power source as a secondary job. If they were going to be used "full time" the engine would normally be pulled from the car and mounted in a permanent stand.



Respectfully submitted,

Hap l9l5 cut off

And a small version of the original which is located at: http://www.shorpy.com/node/11536?size=_original



Appears to me to be a 1923 - 1924 as it has the slant windshield but does not have the equal length door hinges typical of the USA late 1924 and 1925 cars.

Respectfully submitted,

Hap l9l5 cut off

Whatever it's driving is relatively low to the ground judging by the way the belt is situated. Either a saw rig or a silo filler is my guess. Neat photo.

With someone in the seat my guess would be an operation that goes both ways.

here are acouple of links with a roadster pickup running a corn sheller I also run a cord saw & a plate mill with it.http://youtu.be/4emWk2W17_o ,http://youtu.be/4glRlFqW3MM

I have a pully like that. It clamps to the spokes.
I guess I need a corn sheller!

Herb

With her sitting in the car to run the controls it could be that they are using it for temporary power to start a tractor or hit and miss engine by running the belt from the T to the belt pulley on the tractor or engine. The belt is running pretty low to the ground for most things.

Warren, I know you're a farmer but I do have to ask, what would they be putting in a silo that time of year and where would they have got anything to put in it? Man, that country looks tough, doesn't it?

One of the reasons to use just one side for power was that it doubles the pulley speed over using both wheels and lets the engine run slower while still turning the machinery fast enough to work right. Seed cleaners (Fanning mills), corn shellers, small feed grinders, bone cutters etc., don't take a lot of power as many of them were hand crank to begin with. They just need something to keep them turning fairly fast.

My Dad would use his model T to run a feed grinder.
That was to grind corn and oats together for cow feed. Also used it to pump water when there had not been enough wind in recent days.
he said folks always told him running of one wheel with the other on the ground would eventually cause the differential to sieze up so he'd have to lift both wheels.
Eventually that is exactly what happened.
When i was a kid in the 40's we would often see cars in town with a pulley on one rear wheel.
There would be so few days that we didn't get enough wind to pump water for the cattle that some farmers never bothered to get a stationary engine to run the pump on those days so they just used the car or truck to run the pump for a couple of hours.
Later we had a John Deere and McCormick-Deering engine to pump water with. On that farm there were many days that we didn't have enough wind to keep water in the cistern for the house and 50 head of cattle. .

Yesterday I stumbled on the movie “Good-bye, My Lady” from 1956. This was a movie about a boy and his dog, starring Walter Brennan. The part that I liked was Walter Brennan’s model t running gear belted to a saw rig. He was supposed to be cutting up firewood but usually the saw was running and Brennan was sleeping on the porch. When someone drove up he would jump up and get busy.

I would imagine that when you set up to use a T for power you'd need to give some thought to the diameter of the pullys you use. It seems matching power and speed to your needs could be easily accomplised in this manner. Different sized pullys on each end could give quite varied results.

I've seen that movie Lance. As I remember, he was running the belt from the rim without a tire. The switch panel was mounted to the steering column.

Some machinery requires a specific rpm. That's when you bring out your tachometer.

http://www.mtfca.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?tpc=50893&post=139358

John, yes you remember correctly. I did notice that the drive pulley on the saw was very small. I wondered if it could power it. He did saw some wood with it and the T sounded great! Very good movie.