Monday 11 November 2019

The Gin Runner comes to life...

Almost a year of short T breaks, 10 minutes here, 1/2 an hour there.. fitting new valves, cleaning up and freeing off all of the pedals and linkages and getting the radiator re-cored. Fitting a modified Model A manifold and the SU carb I used on my old Indian with a 90 degree adapter, fitting a Texas T distributer (kindly lent by my mate Shaun).
Four weeks ago I pulled the T out of the barn, jacked up the back wheel ( to let it spin and free the transmission off) pulled the choke on  cranked the motor over twice to prime, switched on the ignition and second crank she fired and kept running :) A few adjustments here and there later I was driving around the paddock. The motor feels crisp and responsive and its driving in all 3 gears.
There's a still a bit to do tidying up the body tub and the emergency brakes to sort out but with the road wheels and tyres on it should be roadworthy in the new year. It needs some fettling, the SU and inlet manifold needs modified to clear the bonnet, the ignition feed cable tidied etc. but, it is finally a runner! :)






Saturday 8 December 2018

Progress report

After a long.. very long time in storage both outside and now in the barn at our farm, the '26 T is slowly getting pulled apart cleaned up and put back together.

A big step forward in 2017 was the purchase of an original 1926 front half of a 4 door tour tub, which was shipped over from Model T Haven in Kansas ..

I loosely fitted it to the chassis, and bolted the cut down steering column in to see how it looked, my daughter Rosie trying it for size..
The original Pig n Ford racer had a cut down steering shaft and control rods, so after pulling it, and a replacement column apart and doing a lot of cleaning up I managed to make one straights column out of the parts .. i still have to make up a couple of column supports , one at dashboard level and one similar to the drawing to brace it and the firewall off the chassis




Next on the list of jobs was to free off what at first glance was a couple of sticky valves but I soon realised that the valves were very corroded in the port area so ordered a new set from Neil Tuckett.
In the meantime I pulled the front timer off and swapped in the neat little unit that came with the new Texas Truefire kit that will go on once the cylinder head is back on. The cylinder head had two rusted in spark plugs that snapped off when I tried to get them out. After a lot of heat, drilling, swearing and eventually cleaning up with a 1/2" NPT tap the head was ready for a new set of spark plugs.








Monday 10 June 2013

90 miles apart

The T is parked up at my shop, so I get to do a bit at the weekends, last weekend I started to pull the steering apart and moved the firewall back 27" to make room for the second motor and a coupling.






Heading southeast to my day job, ive been working on the front engine, its cleaning up nicely, thanks to it being packed full of grease before it was put in storage.

with the motor and hogshead turned upside down I could mark the cut line for the rear of the sump. I will need to weld in a front face to the oil pan. The two motors will be braced together using two 8"x1/4" plates running either side of the two sumps.

Monday 27 May 2013