MTFCA Forum

I read somewhere, some time ago that when Henry Ford was being chauffeured in a 1915 T touring something caused it to flip throwing him out. Later forensic examination placed the blame on the above axle wishbone and it was redesigned to the 1918-1927 style. Can anyone post that story here ?

George

The story was repeated in Philip Van Dorn's book, Tin Lizzie

The actual story is from "Remembrances" of Joesph Galamb recorded in the 1950s by Ford archives so maybe a story after all.

He remembers date of 1914 when Henry was pitched from the T due to buckled front whees. So story is he made a new wishbone rod. He tells the new rod was like the Model A with under and over attachments and new spring perch. Henry only wanted just to change the rod to under I guess. The change did happen to under the axle wishbone in 1919 (TT first use April 14, 1919) .

Thats it Dan !.. Thank you !

That accident occurred just up the road from where I live. I believe some of the statements and timelines in the article are remembered incorrectly. The bottom line is that Henry wanted the stocks of "over-axle" wishbones and perches used up before making the switch to the "under-axle" version.

My '17 has an "over-axle" wishbone. I added a supplementary "under-axle" wishbone for safety sake. I know a number of people driving older T's with only over-axle wishbones. I doubt if it would be a problem unless you drove into soft sand or similar material at speed. Normal driving on pavement or good gravel should be OK.

Thank you Tim. You’ve added much to the story Dan revealed. I might do some bronze casting and ‘18-‘27 wishbone altering to make this safety feature again available…

George, it would be nice if the bronze clamps were available again - they work well.

My under-axle supplementary wishbone uses the bronze clamp I think you're referring to. The guy who used to make them also sold eyelets that appeared to be cut off the ends of stock under-wishbones. You could weld them to a piece of tubing then clamp the tube in the bronze clamp. It still took some finagling to get the eyelets to fit over the threaded ends of the perches with enough room to mount a castle nut and a cotter pin. I ground a cup into the eyelet and a taper onto the castle nut. Still working good 10000 + miles later.

In the first photo you can see the bronze clamp and the eyelets used to attach the auxiliary wishbone to the underside of the axle, which is upside-down in the photo. Next is a close-up of the eyelet showing how I ground a cone into it to accept a tapered castle nut.

Yes; that’s what I want to explore for production. Only I won’t use the ‘eyelets’ welded to pipe. I’ve cut off the ball end of the later plentiful wishbones and plugged them into the 3 pc bronze system. The only somewhat difficult process is grinding the 2 under axle pieces down from over 3/8” to a little under 1/4”. This enables the earlier perch nuts and cotter pins to be used. I feel this is an obligatory safety feature and consequently approved for a Stynoskie entrant.