OT - not quite a T, not quite an NRS, the 1908 Model ST

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Model T Ford Forum: Forum 2012: OT - not quite a T, not quite an NRS, the 1908 Model ST
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Rob Heyen - Nebraska on Monday, December 17, 2012 - 12:57 pm:

Pre Model Ts, 2 lever 2 pedal Ts, and the first Fords for export have been discussed in recent threads. Following are newspaper ads that show a transition between the NRS and Model T.

Attachments below show Ford ads announcing the new, light 20 hp touring from Ford. The drawings show a car that has Model T style radiator, body (touring and Town Car, on an NRS style chassis. The shift lever and steering wheel remain on the right, and the car has a Model S style cowl.

A print ad says these cars have a 97 inch wheelbase (between Model Ts 100 inch and Model NRS s 84 inch). The engine is listed as 20 hp, up from NRS 15 hp.

One ad even suggests interested buyers should wait until early 1908 to buy, because the cars will be priced and available. That ad also indicates the new car will be available in addition to the N/S and six cylinder (Model K).








Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Rob Heyen - Nebraska on Monday, December 17, 2012 - 01:09 pm:

Years ago the late Cecil Church researched and built a Model S touring car (incidentally, Mr. Church also owned our Model K at one point). The car was featured on the cover of the December 1976 Model T Times. The cars had a real "elegance, and the cowl would have added a degree of advanced styling had it been carried over to the 1908/09 Model T.





Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Wayne Sheldon, Grass Valley, CA on Monday, December 17, 2012 - 02:44 pm:

I would sure love to have that touring car! Who would I be kidding? I would surely love to have any NRS!
Rob, Thank you for sharing this with us!
Drive carefully, and enjoy the holidays! W2


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Rob Heyen - Nebraska on Monday, December 17, 2012 - 04:51 pm:

Wayne,

It's a beautiful car. Maybe we'll learn where it is now.

Happy Holidays,

Rob


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Dennis Seth - Ohio on Monday, December 17, 2012 - 05:48 pm:

Rob,

Thanks for the post on the early Fords. I enjoy learning about them. I don't consider these posts off topic just Pre-T or T-Grandparents


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Rick J. Gunter on Wednesday, December 19, 2012 - 05:52 pm:

I have always wondered if Cecil Church's 1907 Touring was an original car. Was it a re-created car with longer frame and a repo body? What did he start with? And, where is it now?


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Rob Heyen - Nebraska on Wednesday, December 19, 2012 - 08:41 pm:

Rick,

As I read the article (I know it's hard to read, my copy isn't much better) it looks like Cecil "built" the car from NRS parts, researching the original dimensions and building it accordingly. I believe the wheelbase is a few inches off from the 97 inches listed above (I think the cars listed in the Grand Central Palace are these same extended NRS chassis).

The other spec I'm confused about, if the cars listed at the Grand Palace are these same "hybrid ST" as Cecil Church built, the ad says 20 horsepower. The car pictured (and in ads) has the NRS radiator waterpump, and so I assume the same NRS engine. However, the "hybrid" is listed as 20 hp, and NRS engines are listed 15-18 hp. I wonder what Ford did if they "beefed" up the N engine?

377660344.723010.jpg


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Thomas Mullin on Thursday, December 20, 2012 - 12:59 am:

Rob,

Browsing around I discovered a 1908 Cadillac web site that indicated the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM) changed their formula for calculating horsepower in the 1907-08 time frame. The page said:

There were no changes in the Model G engine for 1908, but the advertised horsepower rating was increased from 20 to 25. This was due to the newly instituted ALAM horsepower formula, which gave the Model G a horsepower rating of 25.6.


The 1908 formula was:
HPALAM = Bore * Bore * Number of Cylinders / 2.5

Using the 20 figure above an equivalent formula for 1907 would have been:
HPALAM = Bore * Bore * Number of Cylinders / 3.2
Can this reverse engineered formula be verified?

So, it would appear the horsepower of the "ST" could be about 20 without changing the standard NRS engine at all.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Herb Iffrig on Thursday, December 20, 2012 - 08:31 am:

That sounds plausible Thomas, but would Henry Ford done anything in accordance with ALAM guidelines?

Herb


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Rob Heyen - Nebraska on Thursday, December 20, 2012 - 09:12 am:

Thomas,

Anything is possible. In the ad I posted directly above, the "ST" (I've created a new alphabet Ford :-)), it he picture says "1908 Model Four Cylinders, Twenty-four Horsepower", on what appears to be the lengthened N/S chassis with S roadster style cowl and NRS radiator mounted waterpump.

Sooooooo, what was it?

Rob


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By George_Cherry Hill NJ on Thursday, December 20, 2012 - 09:38 am:

Tom has the answer...it is as simple as that, but I'd have to pull out some books to do more.

Basically pre-WW1 the idea of a 'standard' was what any 'house' decided to define it as. Thus came the proverb, "Figures don't lie, but liars can figure' (only kidding). Screw threads, gear tooth profiles, how to calculate center distance and back lash.

In the world of 'it's mine and it is proprietary' people would go to great lengths to smoke the competition with smoke and mirrors and yes, actually be dastardly enough that trying to reverse engineer one of their original gears WOULD cause a clearance crash and a clash using 'other' conventional wisdom in the reverse engineering process- in order to be assured there would NOT be a clash problem ALL gears in the train would have to be replaced with someone elses 'thinking'...bolts and screws would tear threads 'unless' you used the exact original thread root diameter and it you had a super engine lathe boy could you come up with some dandy threads that would take others months to figure out.

Horsepower, although reduced to a plug-n-play today with supposed definition at a HP and torque definition coexisting...wasn't always that way.

Way back when, you could almost define your own definition and make a stated claim for how big was your 'horse' meaning were you using a thorobred or a Belgian in a sense.

Liars poker was driving everyone nuts, and in short order there became generally 7 or 8 ways to define HP where you could then claim, "based on the studies of..." in order to have some credibility in the 'how calculated'and still have guerilla marketing by picking the one of the 8 that put you in best light or put you on a different basis than another who picked their sweet spot based on a favorable point in a different one of the 8 possibilities.

ALAM came along as a way of embracing the Seldon Patent, yet at the same time provide some cohesiveness and credibility and some standard sourcing guidelines for these automobile 'assemblers'. A gear would be a gear more common formula of construction......a screw thread a common screw thread. After all if you're a car built in a small plant in Massachusetts and used in Texas with a breakdown...why need to wait for a freight train to bring in the part? So it went...they actually fought and fought over this one and the only thing that really changed it was WW1 when 'stuff' STILL didn't go together and now it was 4000 miles away!

There are actually two generally accepted ways to look at HP after the auto world had the first foothold. There was the divide by 2.5 as shown by Tom Mullen above and even that was a flub, because the real number was 2.4 (and still legal to use) but they settled on 2.5 as on a slide rule that turns into a multiply by 0.4 which is an easy number to see.

The other formula was bore squared times stroke times RPM point.....all divided by a flubber nubber number of the makers choosing. The flubber number was one derived at what you believed your energy conversion efficiency to be. Got it? What a har-har eh? Basic math says...claim or 'fiddle' to get a lower har-har number and your HP goes up, changing nothing else! Eventually the challengers all agreed that a fair comparison on this second method would be to use a plug number for the denominator of 7200.

Today we can't function without looking at a standards book of national and global standards. WW1 proved the foibles and yet America still didn't really change even though 'real 'standards' as we know them were worked on over the next 10 years. It took WW2 and the 'enough is enough' view to finally stabilize 'most' of industrial America.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Thomas Mullin on Thursday, December 20, 2012 - 03:20 pm:

A great read on the ALAM, the Selden Patent and Ford Motor Company's fight against the monopoly is {Monopoly on Wheels} by William Greenleaf, Wayne State Press, 1961.

When Ford finally won and the trust was dissolved, the Mechanical Branch which was developing common standards for all members to use was folded into the, at that time, not too technical Society of Automotive Engineers. Most if not all of the early SAE standards were developed by the ALAM. The ALAM also established a patent sharing pool so that members would all use each others patents on a usually no fee basis.

During the course of the lawsuit, the Selden side made two "Chinese copies" of the vehicle contained in the patent. Ford made a copy of the Lenoir patent vehicle to show that Selden was not first with a practical automobile. It was reported the Ford-Lenoir vehicle performed much better than the Selden ones. Trent, have you seen any drawings or such for the Ford-Lenoir?


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