Mike Walker asked me to give him some shots of the #2 leaf on the 1916 pointy leaf spring. John Regan found the documentation in the Benson Archives for this particular front spring. Thought I might as well post the photos here in case anyone else was interested in this particular iteration of Ford front springs.
In one of the shots you can see the one of the pointed leaves clearly. Mikes question involved asking what the #2 leaf on these looked like.
I'm not sure if this leaf is the same as the one used on tapered leaf springs or not. Looks to me like you could take a clipped leaf spring and modify it to look the same.
By the way, if anyone has one of these pointy leaved sets, I would be interested in getting hold of one. I discovered that the top two leaves on my set were broken while doing some front end work on my car in August. Slipped a couple of later clipped leaves in place for now.
Warren:
Here is a picture of the front spring on my son Johnny's 1916 Roadster.
Interesting. If I would have found one of those, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. I surely would have thought it was an aftermarket spring. But if it is in the archives, that makes it interesting. How about some more data?
Warren -- Thank you so much for posting the pictures here. I expect others might benefit from them as well.
If you get more than one response to your request for one of these springs, I'd be interested in one. A fellow in our club recently bought a '15 which has some pointy leaves in it, and I was going to trade him a correct tapered-leaf spring for it. I'd still be left with making or finding the other pointy leaves.
Thanks again for taking the time to take the pics and post them.
Mike.
John Regan found the documentation on these springs while researching them on his son Johnny's '16 roadster (pictured above). John has the dates during which these appeared but I believe it was somewhere between May & December of calendar '16 that these appeared. My car is an October '16 ('17 Model year) touring.
The theory is that you don't see these often because it was "common" knowledge that Ford went from tapered leaf to clipped leaf. Consequently I think a lot of these got tossed in the scrap heap while the restorer went looking for the "correct" tapered leaf spring.
If my memory serves me, John first posted a question about this oddball front spring when he and Johnny acquired the '16 roadster. I then sent him a message about the front spring on my '17 which I had disassembled and cleaned. In the process I found Ford script on a couple of the leaves and he then checked the archives on his next trip to Dearborn.
These were only used on front spring designs. There is not an equivalent design for the rear springs according to the info John discovered.
Here is what John said in that earlier post about the dates the spring was used:
Does your 1916 have the "pointy leaf" front spring that was only used in 1916? It should have been on your car according to the records but perhaps your car was restored and the the thing tossed since everybody thought it was an aftermarket spring. Turned out to be bona fide for cars from about Dec of 1915 through Sept of 1916 engineering wise and probably some of them still around in early 1917.
I believe that I have one of these springs in my stock, i always suspected that it was a replacement so never used it.
The early versions of these did NOT have Ford script on them either so that probably helped convince folks to toss them. Luckily the later ones (like Warren's) DID have the Ford script which is why Warren asked me to check it out. I looked and sure enough they were standard issue starting sometime in or after December of 1915 through at least Sept of 1916 when the DESIGN changed but of course Ford would have used them up so that is why Warren had one. Actually the credit for discovering the truth started with Warren's careful observance in noticing the Ford Script and immediately questioning the "common wisdom". It is just another case of where the archives agree with unrestored cars. Warren's car is pretty darn unmolested and the "wrong" spring turns out to be just as FORD documented it in the archives. This is what really makes a believer out of us who research the archives. There just never seems to be a discrepency. Ford as a man and as a company was just totally anal about documentation.
John, Ford Canada was no better in record keeping. They are not even sure about the last C prefixed serial number. Before closing down their archives a couple years ago they admit seeing a sales record of C-748039 but manufacture records show their final as C-748010 on July 31, 1927
steve