MTFCA Forum

When did Ford start to rivit the battery bracket to the frame rails on the cars with electric starters?

I have never seen the carrier riveted on a Canadian sourced chassis.
Allan from down under.

Hi,
My late 1926 coupe's battery bracket is riveted together but is bolted to the frame.
Vern

My '25 is riveted except for the ground bolt.

Just slightly off topic from your post. My battery bracket assembly was bolted together with 4 slotted countersunk screws and square nuts and lock washers on my '20 T. As it had been modified for a larger battery, I replaced with another bracket that was a riveted assembly with 4 countersunk headed rivets. My hunch is this was a running change to speed up the assembly of the bracket. My bracket was bolted to the frame rail and did have one hole relocated on frame rail to accept the enlarged bracket. Also, if you look closely at my picture you can see someone had sacrificed a ford script wrench to lengthen the bracket.

My '27 is the same as Original Smith's - or was until I removed it to weld in a piece of it's bottom that had rotted away. Maybe someday I'll get around to reriviting it, but it's a very low priority. (BTW: spel-check doesn't like the word reriviting).

I'm guessing it was late in production. I've had a couple of 1924's and those had the battery bracket bolted to the cars frame. The reason I asked was that in my bone pile I have a couple of lose brackets that still have the rivets in then that had been used to mount them on the car frame. Thanks to those who responded.

Original Smith wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 29, 2020 10:16 am

My '25 is riveted except for the ground bolt.

My '25 is the same way, riveted to the frame, except for a bolt where the ground strap goes.

John, reriviting is incorrect because rivit is what frogs say. The topic is about rivets.
Allan from down under.

larry, can you advise what diameter the rivets are that are used to attach the carrier to the frame? Our Canadian frames have 3 holes each side to enable the carrier to be mounted with the battery on the left or right side of the car, just as they have the holes for left or right hand drive steering brackets. All of these holes take a 3/8" bolt, which is larger than any other frame rivet.
If one stops to think, the battery carrier must be mounted so the battery is on the left side of the car to enable the exhaust system to be mounted on the right. So why the holes to allow it to be mounted wrongly? Besides the battery carrier and steering bracket holes, there was a set of handbrake quadrant holes also stamped in each rail. It is thought that all the rails were stamped with the holes while in the flat. they did not become left and right rails until they were pressed into their U shape. Hence, all rails are drilled for left or right hand drive, even if they can't be used.

Allan from down under.