Got a question on 1915-1916 Firewall Drawing?

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VowellArt
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Got a question on 1915-1916 Firewall Drawing?

Post by VowellArt » Tue May 24, 2022 2:46 am

Can't figure out why this is bored into the engine side of the this firewall....what's it for? It is only 5/8's deep and it does intersect the mixture control rod that passes through that slant drilled hole. Is there some sort of vibration damper that fits inside to keep the rod from turning on it's own whilst the car is traveling? You can see it appears on the same centerline in the side view too, and the dimension on the side view is 5/8's, so it is that hole. The one below and to the left of the slant drilled hole is for the light switch for magneto headlights.

Does anybody know whether or not this hole is really there, I asked Steve Jelf (who kindly furnished me this drawing), and he didn't know nor is it on his firewall. I'm beginning to think that this is the last change as noted in the upper right corner "2-11-16 E.W.", because we know that the first 1915's had gas headlights and that changed sometime later in 1915, so the change made in 1916 has nothing to do with the headlight switch hole which is 7/8" and appears to the left of the Mixture Rod slant drilled hole. And since it doesn't appear on Steve's 1915 which has mag headlights, it must of been added later. I need to know when (which is early 1916 I suppose) and why, as in what the hell goes there?

The notation says "3/4 DRILL 5/8" DEEP IN FRONT SIDE OF DASH" (that's the engine side, this drawing view shows the interior side).

FirewallQuestion-2.jpg
I can't for the life of me guess what it's for.
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speedytinc
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Re: Got a question on 1915-1916 Firewall Drawing?

Post by speedytinc » Tue May 24, 2022 8:29 am

Does it provide the needed clearance for the lower part of the mixture rod to clear the wood?
Otherwise a dampener washer sounds like a good guess.

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Rich Eagle
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Re: Got a question on 1915-1916 Firewall Drawing?

Post by Rich Eagle » Tue May 24, 2022 2:39 pm

IF, the adjusting rod was changed to the later type (1917-1925) around the time (2-11-16) it might be that clearance was needed to install it. The brass knob is removable to install the early type.
AdjRod.jpg
That seem a logical reason for it to me.
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VowellArt
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Re: Got a question on 1915-1916 Firewall Drawing?

Post by VowellArt » Tue May 24, 2022 3:44 pm

Richard, this is a straight bored hole 5/8 deep with a 3/4 drill bit....it is located (as per the drawing)
FirewallQuestion-3.jpg
It appears about halfway up from the lower exit for the Mixture Rod hole and you can see from the portion of the side drawing, that it intersects with the slant drilled hole which is drilled at 21º....it is clearly not for clearance nor can you thread the fork end through it, so what it is for, I can't figure out. Other than possibly something suggested by "Speedytync.....Otherwise a dampener washer sounds like a good guess." But it doesn't appear to be deep enough for a washer, so is there some rubber plug that fits into that hole that would work as a "dampener"?

This obviously didn't appear on any of the 1915 cars (being a correction made in Feb of 1916), so if it showed up at all, it would be in 1916....is there anybody out there with a 1916 that has this hole in their firewall and if so, what goes there? Or is this one of those "Better Ideas" that Ford scrapped before it even made it to production.
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Re: Got a question on 1915-1916 Firewall Drawing?

Post by Rich Eagle » Tue May 24, 2022 6:14 pm

Martynn, you should know by now better than to ask me a question. I don't often have the answer but bring up several more questions.
I read the drawing as 3/8" deep rather than 5/8. I know that doesn't help any. :D
To add to your frustration, I found an October, 10th, 1916 drawing with a different configuration there. It is not clear but presents a later configuration.
Dwg10-10-16.jpg
Dwg10-10-16BW.jpg
Here is a March, 3rd, 1915 drawing. Although it is of the square dash before the cowl was added, it shows the angled holes on both sides of the dash. T
No doubt only one hole was drilled depending on Left or Right hand drive.
Dwg3-3-15.jpg
These were on thehenryford.org/collections-and-research site and can be viewed and zoomed in on. They aren't as clear as I would like.
Happy Puzzling.
Rich
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Re: Got a question on 1915-1916 Firewall Drawing?

Post by Wayne Sheldon » Tue May 24, 2022 8:22 pm

" because we know that the first 1915's had gas headlights and that changed sometime later in 1915,"

The ONLY 1915s that had gas headlamps were the 1914 style cars that continued in production for six months because of production problems with the new style open car bodies!
ALL 1915 style model Ts from the early center-door sedans and couplets by October of 1914, the first few production runabouts in December of 1914, and growing numbers of open cars through the first four months of 1915 had electric (magneto powered) headlamps!
Practically speaking, in the 1915 "MODEL" year, only the carryover 1914 STYLE cars left the factory with gas headlamps. These were produced in much greater numbers than were the 1915 STYLE cars through January of 1915. February through April of 1915 production shifted slowly at first, then faster later, producing more and more of the 1915 style cars and less and less of the 1914 style open cars.
Although era records do not really say much on the subject, there is little doubt that the 1914 style cars were sold simply as "NEW" cars and in effect were originally considered to be 1915 MODELS!
As soon as they became used cars (maybe three years of age?), that distinction was mostly very quickly forgotten.
After World War Two, nearly all those interim cars were considered to be 1914 model Ts. Early hobbyists relied almost entirely on "old-timer's" memories for their "history! That whole half year of model T mix-up was almost totally FORGOTTEN! Hundreds of hobbyists, NOT REALIZING that they had something SPECIAL?! CHANGED out the interim front fenders, the integral bracket sidelamps, and replaced the 1915 serial number engines in what they believed was correcting things that had been changed! When, in fact, what they had was often original and correct for their car!

As for era photos showing 1915 style model Ts with gas headlamps? There were hundreds of them! But they did not leave the factory that way. Although there IS evidence (I saw it, do not have a copy of it!) that the Ford factory did NOT approve? The truth is that not all the people were ready for electric lights! Gas lamps had been around for a hundred years, and oil lamps had been around for thousands of years! People were comfortable with them and used to using them! Those new-fangled electric things were dangerous and likely to kill you!
Ford dealers, in order to make a new car sale, for a small price, would often swap the new electric lamps for a set of gas lamps sitting on their shelf. It was a win/win/win for the dealer! He got rid of some out-of-style gas lamps, gained a new set of electric lamps that he would later sell, and pocketed a few extra dollars for his trouble. The new set of electric lamps would then be sold to a past customer that wanted to upgrade his old car, who traded in his old gas lamps, to be sold later to another customer that did not want to trust the new electric things. Every step of the way, the dealer pocketed a couple extra dollars. So yes, a lot of 1915s, and 1916s, as well as early black radiator cars did have gas headlamps! But they generally didn't leave the factory that way. (The only exception I have read of, was special military orders, apparently some in the military preferred the known reliability of gas headlamps.)


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Re: Got a question on 1915-1916 Firewall Drawing?

Post by Scott_Conger » Tue May 24, 2022 8:54 pm

Courtesy of Hap Tucker, 2/1/07:

On page 22 of Roger Gardner's "Ford Ahead - A History of the Colonial Motor Company Limited" [Ford agency in New Zealand] he shows a picture of a 1915 touring still in the shipping crate. The axles are still secured to the crate, two sides and the top of the crate have been removed exposing the car. It clearly has fork mounted headlamps. The car is right hand drive and shipped from Canada.

It is unreasonable to me, to say 1915 cars NEVER came with carbide lamps, when period photos, parts books and surviving Canadian built cars all have been occasionally found sporting headlight forks with electric lamps, and in some cases, carbide lamps. Again, they would be Canadian built cars, which typically had 4 doors on the touring. If it had 3 doors and was assembled in America, well then, I'd say "no dice"...it's a put-together

That reasoning that NONE came with carbide lamps would be like finding a hoard of Playboy magazines under a teenager boy's mattress and then saying there is no certainty that he looked at them. Ooooooookayyyyyy.

now I'll cease perpetuating the thread drift... :?
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Re: Got a question on 1915-1916 Firewall Drawing?

Post by Wayne Sheldon » Tue May 24, 2022 11:45 pm

Canadian model Ts had FORK mounted headlamps in 1915, but they were still magneto powered ELECTRIC headlamps! Two different issues.
Sorry Scott C.


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Re: Got a question on 1915-1916 Firewall Drawing?

Post by Wayne Sheldon » Wed May 25, 2022 12:02 am

I very much appreciate Martynn Vs excellent drawings! His contributions to clarifying parts, assemblies, and even timelines for changes has added greatly to modern knowledge of our beloved model Ts. He has taken a great deal of little tidbits of information, old bad drawings, and details from dozens of photographs, and put them into his fine artwork for people to see and understand.
I don't know where this gas headlamp thing came from? I think Martynn V knows better. I didn't want that misunderstanding to creep in as it is an ongoing correction to old myths about the 1915 style/model Fords.

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Re: Got a question on 1915-1916 Firewall Drawing?

Post by Steve Jelf » Wed May 25, 2022 6:49 am

The reason my new firewall had no hole for the light switch is what Wayne mentioned. The firewalls are made without the hole because of the belief that the early 1915 model year T's didn't have electric lights. For cars with mag lights it's up to the end user to add the hole.
The inevitable often happens.
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Re: Got a question on 1915-1916 Firewall Drawing?

Post by VowellArt » Thu May 26, 2022 6:23 pm

Richard, looks like whatever E.W's. change he made back in Feb of 16, he erased from his Oct. 16 drawing (pretty sloppily too), was this drawing marked anywhere on it as "Obsolete"? Because he didn't put the hole for the mixture rod back in when he made that change. And yes that now fictional hole is drilled by a 3/4 drill 5/8 deep....he makes his "5" all the same way and everyone of his "3" have a round top, not flat....only the 5"s have that flat top. The other thing you've got to take into consideration is that Engineers and Draftsmen used pencil back then, not ink, like "Chicago House Illustrators" in their advertising department did. And graphite pencils then were a bit different from what we've got today (they typically used anything from 9B to 9H) and tend to smear (a lot, depending on their softness) and E.W. drew in a #2B (which was typically used for layout work and sketches, but if you wanted your lines to be dark, then a softer pencil allowed you to draw the line without needing to fortify it with more pressure or more strokes), not 2H, so the smear factor was much higher than it would've been today (even with a "dead rat"...trade talk for a bag filled with fine eraser crumbs that leaks through the weave of the bags cloth to keep pencil lines from smearing on your drawing, also known as a scumbag).

As for Gas Lights....well, I'm still working on those, need to find pictures and or drawings of their carbide generators and plumbing too.
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Re: Got a question on 1915-1916 Firewall Drawing?

Post by Scott_Conger » Thu May 26, 2022 11:18 pm

Wayne, when you posit the supposition that some dealers backdated electric headlamps for gas headlamps to make a sale, is that purely conjecture or is that documented somewhere as fact? If not, it is hardly any more worth considering than what I stated earlier that you are claiming as bunk.

It seems to me that either or both explanations can be considered plausible given the sheer volume of autos assembled and sold, against a policy of using every single part in inventory, whether considered current production or obsolete.

When 15 million of anything is assembled at locations all over the place, and then someone says an earlier part never made it onto a car of the next model year, I think the odds are firmly against that sort of declarative statement.
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Re: Got a question on 1915-1916 Firewall Drawing?

Post by Rich Eagle » Sat May 28, 2022 2:55 am

I'm an old draftsman too but not that old. I do still have some of this.
pounce.jpg
The details become "Curiouser and curiouser" don't they?
I do appreciate your efforts Martynn.
Thanks
Rich
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