Does any one know what happened to the patterns and core boxes from the new block made?
Didn't they end up at Highland plant storage area. There was a good article about the T100 project in the latest MTFCI T Times
Cheers Simon
They are in the engineering storage area at Ford Motor Company in Dearborn. They are likely to remain there indefinitely.
The Highland Park Plant is not Ford property.
Guy Zianivich advertises pretty regularly on the Ford Barn site (GZ). He was a major player in the T-100 project and I am certain could answer your questions.
I don't see Ford making reproduction blocks available anytime soon, but it would be nice....
Royce,
Ford still has many items stored at the Highland Park Plant. You're correct however, they no longer own it. They rent space there.
I was just thinking of trying to have some cast and since the patterns and cores are out there it would not hurt to ask.
I can put you in touch with the person at Ford who can tell you they are off limits for liability reasons and will remain so for the forseeable future.
You can contact Guy Zaninovich (note this is proper spelling of his name) and he will tell you the same answer.
Guy's email is mailto:motoringicons@hotmail.com
That is one of the wonderful things of this day and age, some lawyer thinking of ways to get rich off of some one else is labor. I never dreamed of the liabilities that some one could conger up on this one. It was just a thought since some one had spent the time making them, why leave them dormant!
Well,if there is liablity in regards to the new molds and what could be made from them,then what could they conjour up for something 100 years old made the same way???
Mack, Joe and Others,
It is lawyers, but not necessarily in the way you think
About 20 years ago a certain President was running for re-elections and part of his personal ‘platform’ was “National Tort Reform”. Nice word, the majority of the population would have to look it up in a dictionary and still would have no reason to. His opponents including a large group from the House called it crazy and trying to take away a basic inalienable right. Those House guys are mostly lawyers, so they must know what they are talking about and it became case closed. He lost anyway.
“Tort Law” is still one of those individual State Right things and differs in each State. In the basic form it says you get hurt due to a design defect, you find a lawyer, you demand a jury trial and a group of reasonable people/peers in a jury box will decide just how right you are and how wrong the other guy is and how much financial impact the bad boy must pay. For 48 of those states THERE IS NO TIME LIMIT on when a product that caused the hurt was made!
Ford is actually still on the hook on the Model T in those 48 States for ‘design defects’ that lead to injury. Just like today, Ford ‘should’ have offered anti-kickback devices for the stem winder, or some kind of mechanical lock when the babbit thrust washer explodes, or probably a few other things. Under the law if Ford didn’t want to go through that expense they could have supplied drawings of such devices and offered to sell at cost. Still doesn't get them off the hook because those reasonable people and not experts could still decide they didn't do it right. At a minimum Ford should have offered stickers and pamphlets to offset the “failure to Warn” provisions. This last one is used even today in an effort to keep those treble damages awards at bay in most product liability work arounds.
Ford of course does none of this. They claim that the Model T was last made in 1927, that the last record of mechanical parts supply is somewhere around 1941, that they offer no technical advice or service centers, that the life of a T was supposed to be no more than a horse, and gee…no one on staff is even still around that knows anything about how those things work anyway. This is not a defense at law…it’s a plea to that group of reasonable people in the jury box! The actual law says it doesn’t matter if it is a 2013 Focus, or a 1913 Ford, a design defect is a design defect.
Now, nobody worries about the T because these reasonable people are probably going to rationalize “The idiot should have known better that the technology is old”. No local lawyer would take your case anyway because he knows Ford would make him spend well beyond empty pockets and personal bankruptcy before he even got in front of a jury with Ford requests for this and for that in preparing their defense. Ford would spend millions just to leave that door permanently closed and not run the gauntlet in front of those reasonable people. In those 48 states mentioned there is nothing at law that prevents a suit at “Tort”, there is no statute of limitations (the other states have limits), and the judge cannot do a summary dismissal. The same rules that apply to a Focus still actually hold true for a T.
Quirky? Yes. Legal? Yes. So Fords best ongoing ‘defense’ is ‘we know nothing’ and ‘we don’t make a dime today off of it’. That group of reasonable people might find that reasonable. The selling of drawing prints is a completely different matter and the so-called license for re-manufacturers is probably actually worded that the meat on the bone is the use of the Ford name and that any potential liability related to that re-manufacturing part is transferred to the licensee. Empty words at law, but worth a try. At least it puts the other guy first in line and maybe there can be a summary dismissal in place from the little guy who only has meager insurance limits anyway.
So that is the real why those molds will never see the light of day. Amazing, but true.