Will These Brackets Fit A 1914 Touring?

[schwabd1]

bracket1.jpg (16.48 KiB) Viewed 1235 times

bracket3.jpg (17.04 KiB) Viewed 1235 times

tbracket4.jpg (18.36 KiB) Viewed 1235 times

I bought these brackets from a member in my "T" club for a 1914 touring I bought that had the sheet metal but no wood frame or brackets. Will these brackets fit a '14 touring OK? From what I've seen online the bottom should have a 90 degree turn on them to screw to the main wood frame of the body. I have only been able to find one reference to a bracket with a bottom end as these, and it was just listed as a "body bracket" Are these just a different design from one of the manufacturers, or maybe different years? Also, is this the correct size "L" iron for a touring? Thanks for your help!

[Rich Eagle]

I believe the correct brackets have a bend at the bottom to screw to the wood.

[SurfCityGene]

David, Do you have TWO of the L irons?

I was told by Larry Smith that the L irons on my Torpedo are two long. They measure 9" from the top of the threads to the center line of the L. If your are shorter and you need these longer ones please let me know!
Gene 7one4488six013.

[Wayne Sheldon]

What I "know" about those "body top irons" is that I don't "know" hardly anything about them!
As a matter of semantics, they are "top irons" that go into the body, hence, "Body top irons" as opposed to "top sockets" which all too often are called "top irons" when those are in fact "sockets"!

The top irons can be tough to find proper matching pieces for many cars. While irons for model T Fords are quite common, most other cars of that era also used very similar body irons that can also be made to work in model Ts. Similar irons for other cars may be made heavier, or not. People with incomplete other cars often modify model T irons to work in their cars because the model T irons can be modified and once the car is finished cannot be positively identified as what they were. Bigger cars often had heavier irons, and those can be difficult to find matching pieces.

Model T Fords are no "piece of cake" either. Between 1913 and 1925, the basic layout of the irons changed between the two-man and one-man tops. However, different body builders used different irons even within the same years, in many years. The little bit that shows outside the upholstery may look the same? But the angles, locations, and mounting points of the hidden brackets varied a lot!
And that is where I know almost nothing about them.
I don't think anyone has ever tried to sort out which body suppliers used which style brackets when or where? I know that I have never seen anything truly definitive abut them.
Were any pieces interchangeable between touring cars and roadster? I don't know. I know for some years that roadster "L" irons were shorter than touring car "L" irons.
Depending upon how you count them? Some people seem to want to count the "L" irons integral with the top rest irons mounted inside the body to which they are attached? Other people seem to want to count them separately.
For two-man top cars, IF the top rest irons are counted as a single unit, the "L" iron and body mounting iron as a single piece, a touring car has three pairs of body irons. The roadster/runabouts have two pairs of irons.
Later one-man top cars, the top rest is done very differently, with the top rest iron sticking out through the body side, and no actual "L" iron.

Buried deep in the back of one of my small storage sheds is a wooden box with several various body top irons in it. Between the several I have and the bunch of them I have seen in bodies at swap meets and friend's homes, there must be a lot of variations in how and where they were bolted into the bodies.
I have heard that somewhere about 1920, the front seat "two-man" touring car bracket had a minor change in how the exposed outer part of that piece extended out from the body. I believe I heard the earlier ones had more of a "dip" than did the later ones? But I am not sure about that.

For my runabout, when I started putting it together, I figured that I would have to finagle something from my mismatched odd pieces. Then the body I got had all four top irons still in place, including some of the original hardware.
So I got lucky! Thank you Dan!

Hopefully, a few people that know more about these things than I do can chime in and share a bit of what they have learned over the years?

[schwabd1]

Bummer, out of 360 views I figured I'd run across someone that would know top irons backwards, forwards, inside out and backwards. Rich, the tops of my irons look identical to the ones you show. They just don't have the 90 degree turn at the bottom. they sure look like they were made that way and not cut off. Looking online at dozens of them almost all of them have the bottom as yours show, although there were a few that were squared off as the ones I have. Someone out there knows the answer! Gene, the ones I have are approx. 7 5/8" from the end of the threads to the center of the iron. The shorter arm extend about 3 5/8"from the end to the center of the iron. I have no idea what the length should be of the iron I need. I figured someone on here would have a '14 touring and could help me out! Wayne, thanks for sharing everything you don't know about top irons.......as you stated, hopefully someone with all the answers will eventually chime in. Is it Ray Wells that has built 100's of bodies? Does he do as late as '14, or does he stick to '09-'10? Anyone have a contact number for him? Supposedly some of the brackets I have came from a '14 runabout.