Easy as pie becomes hard as nails

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Model T Ford Forum: Forum 2012: Easy as pie becomes hard as nails
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Richard Gould on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - 05:16 pm:

I am sure we've all had this experience. Some small thing during a restoration doesn't appear to be worth a hill of beans becomes a nightmare taking hours and hours of labor and/or mountains of money. For me it was making up a repo brass windshield and making my own firewall. What's yours??


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Carl Sorenson-Lake Arrowhead,CA on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - 06:27 pm:

Mine is: I have a 1925 TT Closed Cab Dump Truck.......If I finish it and put the body up on the frame.....It will not fit in any garage I have.....So it sits in a Sea-Bin down at my work......25 miles from home....I know,,,make the garage door taller......Its a 2-Story house with one of the rooms above the garage....Carl


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ricks - Surf City on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - 06:31 pm:

Simple, Carl; dig out the floor...


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ricks - Surf City on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - 06:34 pm:

Oh, and haul the broken concrete over the to a cliff with your dumptruck.

Or, just leave it in your dumptruck so you don't have to dig out so much.

See there? Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. You do the perspiring..


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ken Kopsky, Lytle TX on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - 10:44 pm:

I run across small parts that need to be made all the time. Some sheet metal parts can be patterned and just folded and spot welded--Like the TT Closed Cab roof spar brackets. Others need dies for shaping. The simple little "cups" that hold the lower door bumpers on the TT took a couple of days to make the dies and about five minutes to make the parts.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Wayne Sheldon, Grass Valley, CA on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - 11:33 pm:

I had a TT years ago, and had to remove the tires to get it in and out of the garage. That, even after a slight modification to the garage door. It was a rented house, or I would have done what Ralph suggested. A rented concrete saw, probably through the bottom of the concrete. Dig down a little more and add new concrete in the bottom so vermin can't come in that way. Make a wood "drop-in" to go in front and behind the rear wheel to cover the trip hazard. I would do it if it were my truck and home. Water ingress could be a problem.
Or just nail a lean-to onto the side of the house.
Don't mind me. I'm only slightly crazy.
Drive carefully, and enjoy, W2


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Fred Dimock, Newfields NH, USA on Thursday, July 19, 2012 - 01:22 pm:

My 1919 hack missed fitting in the garage by about two inches.
The fix was easy. I removed a section of the facia, a section of the door frame, and took my sawzall to the header.

Then I added an extension to the top of the door and re-attached the facia with a few screws.
I tie a screwdriver on the steering wheel when the facia is in place so I remember to remove it before backing the car out of the garage. :-)


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Richard Gould on Thursday, July 19, 2012 - 02:07 pm:

I knew a guy who took a few inches off the bottom of the header and placed an I beam behind it resting on the top plates on the side walls. He bolted it together for strength. He raised the facia on the outside. It looked OK without modifying the garage door. One way to skin a cat.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Bob Coiro on Thursday, July 19, 2012 - 03:42 pm:

1.) Installing turn signals.
You'd think this would be a simple job of running wires. But running wires behind upholstery without removing it was a tedious chore, as was running wires without drilling holes. Then, I had to track down intermittent shorts.

2.) Carburetor was dripping gasoline.
Dismounting the carburetor was easy. Rebuilding the carburetor was easy. Bolting it back on was a bear. Wound up buying longer reach bolts and a crowfoot wrench to get the carburetor re-mounted.

3.) Steering column loosened.
On my 1915, access to the square nuts on the engine side of the firewall was blocked by the stamped, sheet-metal hood former. At first, it seemed removing the hood former made sense, but that turned out not to be the case. Blocked access or not, it was easier to get in there with a small wrench and cuss & swear my way through the job. I had briefly considered replacing the carriage bolts with slotted-head screws that I could turn from the driver's side of the firewall, but decided that would be too unoriginal. So, I went with bleeding knuckles and cuss-words.

4.) Bolts and nuts holding the engine pan were loose.
Access was difficult, but after a while, with the right kind of wrenches and approaching each nut from a different angle, the job eventually got done. Not quite as difficult as the loose steering column, but a whole lot dirtier. On a real hot day, drops of sweat falling onto one's eyeglass lenses is non-pleasure.

5.) The mysterious, non-firing spark plug.
This was a trouble-shooting job that involved the usual grounding out of each plug with a screwdriver, switching the plugs around to find whether one was defective (none were), checking the coils individually and switching them around to determine whether a coil was guilty (all were innocent), dismounting, cleaning and remounting the timer (which wasn't the problem either), checking each cable, wire & connection and cleaning & polishing all the terminals with a dremel, then tightening everything back up (which resulted in breaking off the top of the magneto terminal, which was followed by another generous application of cuss-words) and finally getting the engine to run smoothly again without ever having figured out what was wrong in the first place. That was an odd one.

6.) Replacing a broken choke pull-wire.
The aftermarket brass wires look nice, but the material is brittle and I went through two replacements trying to bend the 90-degree angle without breaking it. I gave up on that and went to the local hobby shop where I bought a radio-control model airplane clevis & rod. This, believe it or not, was long enough to reach from the carburetor to the front of the radiator with plenty of material to bend the round loop at the end. It works great and looks good, though it would look even better if it were brass instead of soft steel.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By William L Vanderburg on Thursday, July 19, 2012 - 03:49 pm:

Bob,

I used brass for the choke rod and it broke in no time. For the last two years, I've been using a bass piano string (Steel wrapped in copper) and it hasn't broken yet.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Herb Iffrig on Thursday, July 19, 2012 - 07:28 pm:

I used a powder coated steel coat hanger wire to make my choke wire for my '11. It is a goldish color and doesn't look too bad.

Herb


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