I have been looking at a Model T for sale that has a two speed rear end in it. Im not sure if I am spelling this name right,but I believe it is a "Ruxell" axle. How rare are these? Does it add alot more to the car price? are parts hard or easy to get? How much faster will it make the car go? Thanks for any help

Ruckstell's are under drives that acts like a second gear. It is not a over drive.

Jason, the Ruckstell mechanism is not rare. In fact it is a very common item and is even being currently produced in part or as a complete unit. Except for the actual cost of the unit which is around $16-1700 new it may or may not add to the cost of the car unless someone has a real appreciation for one as I do. Unless you plan to show the car for points, it will not devalue the car. The only time it will make the car "go faster" is up a steep hill that is too much of a grade for the standard Ford high speed. Then is when you will really appreciate it. I personally like it in city driving where you have to start off from an intersection up a steep hill or in heavy traffic where the speed is too slow for the Ford high speed and too fast for the Ford low speed. Unless the unit that is on the car now is worn out they are exceptionally reliable and benificial. Ken Swan

The above posts are both true. Except on lighter (open) cars is is common to go to a higher speed rato rearend (3:1). Because the rux gives you a second gear for the hills. This nets you a little more on the top end. I suspect 5-7 mph. This is not recommended on closed cars since they need to lower gears to handle the weight. While there are quite a few of them around, they are the most sought after accessory for the T. They are nice to drive.

Ollie

This story was posted at, of all places, eBay to put the bidder in the mood to buy the Ruckstell listed there. If you don't know about Ruckstell Two Speed Axles for Ford Cars, this pretty much covers it. I do not know the author, but his work deserves to be seen here...

D@mn weather, he thought as he loaded the last bag into the back seat of the Ford. He looked up at the sky and saw it was going to start raining again. For two weeks it had done nothing but rain. Two years ago it had been so dry you could take a leak and a pair of ducks would come and build a nest in it and then last summer it had rained just about right. He'd had a good crop for once and was able to get it all bindered and shocked before anything happened to ruin it and when they threshed it had turned out to be the best crop they'd had in the 17 years he and Frieda had been farming. He'd hauled grain all winter on the nice days when the horses wouldn't play out so bad from the cold. It was a lot of work for the horses and for him too, shoveling a wagonload of grain out of the granary and then hauling it all the way to town. Even with four horses on the wagon about the best he could do was 30 bushels. It took a whole day and by the time he'd had something to eat and let the horses rest for the trip home it was cold and dark on the way home. A couple days when it was sunny and nice he had taken Einar with him and they sat on the sides of the wagon box on the way home and played their fiddles, but most of the time he had to go alone and it was a cold, lonely trip on the way home. He wanted Einar to stay in school and at least finish eighth grade. A lot of the people put work before school but he wanted them to get an education. Especially Torvald was going to need to go to school. He was no farmer and never would be.

Herman had been looking at the new Ford trucks in town but they were a little too much money, even with the good crop they'd had last year. But then with a truck he could haul 50 bushel of wheat or 90 bushel of oats and make two trips a day. It wouldn't take too much gas, either. Probably wouldn't cost any more than feeding the horses. And if you got one of the new ones with the square cab on it, you'd be inside out of the weather instead of out in the cold on the wagon. He had bought a new Fordson tractor, it was almost $600 by the time they had figured in the freight and a couple extras he'd had them put on in town. Well, if they had a good crop this year he would be glad he bought it, it made the farming go so much easier and maybe he wouldn't have to have the girls out in the field this summer as much. Einar was coming 16 this summer and darn near a man. Then too, he'd bought this new Ford sedan last fall when the crop turned out so good and it seemed like there was going to be more money to go around than there was. It was over two hundred dollars more than the touring cars they had always had but it was enclosed and it made it so much nicer to have all that glass and the big doors that opened so wide instead of the isenglass side curtains that tore about the second time you unrolled them in the cold. They had put an exhaust heater in it when he bought it and it was so nice, especially for the girls and the babies. But it cost almost $700!! You could buy a roadster for about $350, it seemed like this was a lot of money for a Ford, even for a sedan. But Freida seemed like she'd been a little easier to get along with since then, too.

Well, the triplets were big enough to be out of diapers now and so that helped since she didn't have 40 or 50 diapers a week to wash. Then too, the girls were getting big enough to be some help around the house. It all helped. It did seem funny not to have a baby around the house. Maybe one of these nights he'd see what Freida thought about having a new one. There were only seven now, another baby wouldn't make much difference and it wouldn't be long--just a couple years- before Henry Herman, Clara Frieda and Ford Helferstout would be in school and she would be alone all day long. Einar had been looking at Tillie Sorgerson with big moon eyes every time they went to church and they were going to have to start keeping an eye on the two of them or he might be a grampa before he got to be a papa again. I'm getting old, Herman thought. Here I am worried about Einar doing exactly what I did when I was younger. "Well, life goes on," he thought, "and that's how it does it." "Better start keeping an eye on the girls, too," he thought. "Won't be long and they'll be looking to start running around nights with the neighborhood boys."

D@mn rain, he started to say, and then stopped himself. "Never cuss the rain when you're a farmer." That's what his dad always said. Good advice. "Come on you kids, pile in, it's going to be a long ways home in this mud." Even as big as the new sedan was, it was still tight for the nine of them with all the groceries and packages.

The Ford man had talked to him about how much better the sedans were and how you were inside and warm and dry and out of the weather but he never talked about how much that sedan body weighed. The poor little Ford could hardly pull itself on the level ground in the mud on the high gear. He was worried about what it was going to be like going down through Norwegian coulee and then the mile back up through the big draw on the low pedal all the way. Once you dropped down the South hill and crossed the swale at the bottom there was never a spot where you weren't pulling up a grade. Sometimes it was less of a grade but it was always a grade. This new Ford wouldn't hardly pull it on the high gear when the road was dry, let alone in the mud. "I'll be glad if it will pull it on low pedal in this mud tonight, going to be a late one," he thought. Good thing Einar and Torvald and the girls are here to push, we might not be able to make it up out of Norwegian coulee or up the Jorgenson hill without them. The T was loaded about as heavy already as a T could get, what with he and Freida and Einar and Torvald and Rosalie & Mabel and the triplets. If those girls kept growing like they had the last year or two they were going to be bigger than Freida, Mabel was already as big as a horse and only 12 and Rosalie wasn't far behind her. Well, they all liked to eat and Freida liked to cook and bake, so the girls came by it pretty honestly. Freida had been tall and slim when he married her, but these girls were going to top 200 by the time they were out of eighth grade if they kept it up.

No wonder the Ford was having trouble pulling the load. They'd bought half of everything in town, too, had two boxes tied on the fenders and two fifty pound bags of chick starter strapped to the spare tire carrier on the back. Frieda had ordered some Buff Orpington baby chicks from Murray McMurray Hatchery in Iowa and that was part of the reason they'd gone to town even though it was raining. She wanted to see if they had come in to the depot. If they came in on Saturday the depot sent a postcard to tell you your chicks were in but then they sat in the depot until Monday because the mail didn't come until Monday in the afternoon. Then you didn't go get the chicks until Monday afternoon late and it was later by the time you got them home so they were three or four days old by the time you got them warm and fed and watered and she thought it hurt them too bad to be that old before they got feed and water. Herman knew she was right and he hated to lose any chicks, too, so they went to town to check. Thank goodness the chicks hadn't been there, but she was happy they'd gone to check at the depot. It seemed to him like the older the girls got the more things they needed from town. Freida and the girls and the triplets had shopped and shopped some more. He's been ready to go an hour before they finally showed up at the car. Einar was like him. Happy to just stay home and work and play his fiddle. Torvald was happy as long as he had a book. But those girls.......always wanting something from the store.

Here, finally, was the bottom of Norwegian coulee. The mud was deeper here and the splash from the road had all but covered the headlights. Herman was glad they had stopped at the top of the draw and put the chains on. Herman kicked the T down to low pedal and made a good run for the place where water was coming over the road. Both ears down, the T giving it everything it had, they hit it like a fat girl heading for the donuts on the midnight smorgasboard lunch at The Annual Norwegian Sheepherders Ball. Herman had been crossing here for twenty years and knew there was a good gravel bottom once you dug down through the mud a little. They almost made it across. He kept his foot mashed down on the low pedal til the engine d@mn near died before he let up to let it catch its breath. The engine slobbered a little and then speeded up and he mashed the low pedal down again. He could feel the low band chatter on his left foot as the Ford tried as hard as it could to pull itself out of the mud hole but it couldn't budge itself. There was too much gravel in the bottom to let it spin and he knew if he kept trying it would burn out the low band and then Freida would have to get out so he and Einar could take the floor boards out and take up the low band before they could try again. She would be darned unhappy if she had to get out in the mud and stand there while he took up the band or even worse had to pull the inspection cover and put in a new band. He had one under the seat with new lining in it but even with the quick change ears it was a bugger to do in the barn at home let alone by lantern light in the middle of a mud hole. The boys got out without being told and splashed around to the back of the T and set their backs. He wound it up and gave the low band a quick stab with his left foot. If he could get it to spin and not kill the engine it would be all right. Stuck tighter than a nickel in a preacher's pocket!! "Got D@mn Ford!!!" he cursed. "Got D@mn Ford, Got D@mn Ford," the triplets chorused in unison. Freida sat and stared straight ahead and didn't say a word but he knew what she was thinking. She didn't have to say it. She had been there when the Ford man had told them about the new Ruckstell rearends that gave a Ford FOUR SPEEDS INSTEAD OF TWO. "Pull any hill without going to low pedal," that's what the Ford man had said. "Take on any mud hole or any hill and never power out with a Ruckstell." "Just shift it in low and go!" But it was another sixty-two dollars and forty cents on top of the cost of the Ford and the sedan was already over two hundred more than the touring so he had said they would get along fine without it. The Ford man should have told him it wouldn't have power enough to pull itself with that heavy sedan body and all those kids and Freida loaded in it. Freida had said they should get it. He had said he would try the Ford without it and if he thought they needed it he would get it later. He didn't say it to Freida, but he'd thought, "I'll keep that forty dollars toward a new Ford truck, I don't need a Ruckstell." Now, he said to himself, "D@mn!!! I should have got that Ruckstell!!" Here they sat. If he had to get Freida out in the mud and have her push and get her dress all dirty and her and the girls in mud up to their knees there would never be a new baby in their house again. He'd be sleeping in the barn the rest of his life. "D@mn, I wish I'd have bought that Ruckstell," he said to himself again. To the girls he said, "Get out and help your brothers push." They both gave him a look that would have cowed a lesser man but they knew better to argue with Herman when he was in a mood like this one. The girls slogged their way around the back. "Torvald!!!!!!" he yelled "Come drive while I push." Knowing Torvald, he wasn't pushing much anyway. Torvald came around the side, dripping mud and water. He was 13 and learning how to drive anyway and Herman knew he could push a lot harder than Torvald. If they could just get out of this one mud hole they would make it on home. A lot of it would be low pedal but they would make it. At least the sedan had a door on that side instead of like the touring car where Freida had to get out to let him out. Godamighty, she'd be mad if she had to get out to let him out here. "Now just wind it up a little and then push as hard as you can on the low pedal, don't let it slip the bands, let it kill the engine." "I'll be right here pushing on the door." "OK, NOW!!!!" Herman yelled. "PUSH!!!" It moved. Torvald stomped as hard as he could on the low pedal. The wheels spun about a turn and a half and got traction and killed the engine. Herman reached in the door and started it again. "AGAIN!!!" he yelled. Torvald reached up and pulled the throttle all the way down and stretched his leg as far as he could to mash the low pedal down. They all pushed!!!! And away it went! Torvald and Freida hanging on for dear life and Henry Herman, Ford Helferstout and Clara Freida yelling at the top of their lungs, "Got D@mn Ford, Got D@mn Ford, Got D@mn Ford!!!" When you're three years old everything is fun. Herman was running after them as fast as he could and yelling to Torvald to let off the low pedal but Torvald was so excited and surprised that the Ford was still running wide open and was slogging up the hill through the mud full throttle. It was slewing all over the muddy road like a fresh worm on a fish hook and Tovald was so busy trying to keep it on the road he couldn't find the presence of mind to shut it off or idle it down or let off the low pedal and there wasn't a chance in Hell Herman could catch him running uphill in the mud. Finally Herman just stood in the road and yelled, "Let your d@mn foot up, Torvald!!" They must have been 500 feet up the hill before Freida calmed down enough to reach over and turn off the key.

Herman & Einar and the girls slogged their way up the hill. Nobody had much to say. The girls were a muddy mess, their good town coats soaked with the spray from the wheels when the Ford took off, their shoes ruined for anything but work shoes now and their hair and faces covered in thick brown mud. Einar looked like a cat had dragged him in off the manure pile and Herman's boots were soaked and his feet were wet, even though he had missed most of the spray that the kids got from being in the back of the car. "It'll cost me more to buy them new coats and shoes than the Ruckstell would have cost and we'd have been home an hour ago." Thank God the low band was still holding and they should be able to get home on the low pedal even though his left leg would be numb from holding it down by the time they got there. There was still the rest of this long grade to pull and the Jorgenson hill and then the last mile to the farm, but at least they should make it with out having to walk home, or worse yet; sit and wait half the night for Einar or Herman to walk to the neighbors and get a team of horses to come and pull them out.

"I'll have the Ruckstell in before we go to town again," he thought, "And by D@mn, I'll never have another Ford without one." "And if I get a Ford truck this fall I'll have one in it, too." "I should have listened to Freida."

It was a long, quiet ride home except for the triplets who yelled "Got D@mn Ford," as loud as they could and then collapsed in giggles no matter how many times Freida told them to quit it. Herman never said a word. Having been married to Freida for 17 years, he knew when it was time to keep his mouth shut and this was d@mn sure one of those times.

That is a great story, Dan. Some 60 yars ago I occasionally drove my old Ford on roads like that and and in weather like that. Mine didn't have a Ruckstell either. I usually got myself out, only once I had to find a farmer to get me out with his tractor. Charged me 50 cents.

Thanks for getting it on the Forum.