History How reliable were T model fords

That makes sense because I have often read/heard that horse shoe nails caused a lot of tire damages before the war.

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My grandfather , Ira ( born in1901), and his buddy, Elmer, drove this one in 1924 from Chicago to North Dakota and back, to work the wheat harvest.

 

model T's are very reliable, thats why they out sold everyone else in they're time. a guy i know from Iowa drives all over the lower 48 in winter, and has driven to alaska twice. he carries lots of parts, and knows his machine well, but its not unheard of for T's to go a long, long ways

 

What is a scuttle?

 

Cowl.

 

The fact they came with a tool kit that fit every nut and bolt of the car might tell you something about reliability.

 

lots of things came with a tool kit back then because folks had a mind to fix stuff instead of throwing it in the landfill and ordering a new one on amazon

 

I you used the tools for maintenance on a regular basis, you wouldn't need them often on the road.

 

Nope. The owner was expected to maintain it.
Tools were provided to do the maintenance
Service departments and repair shops were few and far between out in the country.
Mercedes Benz an BMW still come.with tool kits.

 

My grand mother’s Father owned the livery stable in Rockvale, Co. back in the 1800s. When the cars came around He was one of the first to get a modelT. My grandmother was driving it all over the place in 1910 or so.
I have a ton of pictures of her and her Model T. She maintained it and listening to her stories she told back in the 1960s the biggest problem she had was flats! I can’t remember how many flats she told me she had in what distance, but at 11 years of age, I asked” grandma, wouldn’t it have been easier to just walk? “ She laughed and told it probably would have been! But she did mention removing the pan, saving the oil and shimming the rods and putting it back together along the road. But I think she was on a long trip at that time. Possible when her and my grandpa moved to California in it, around 1915.

People brought their early cars to my Greatgrandfathers stable, for my grandma to work on! She was a special lady! There was a mix of horses and cars in that building for a while.









Bones

 

You got that right, the dirt roads that did exist had been traveled for many years by horse back & horse any buggy, it would be ridicules to thing there wasn't hundreds of thousands of horse shoe nails and shoes for that matter littering these od dirt roads and paths.

Until the road became maintained and paved the inner tube was in danger, heck I have even had big thorns puncture the inner tube on my tractor's front wheel. HRP

 

Supposedly my great great grandmother drove a T across Canada from Northern Alberta to Niagara Falls Ontario with 3 kids and whatever personal belongings they could fit.
This was after my great great grandfather didn’t come back from the war.


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Well I made this statement in jest. My father was born in 1909 the second oldest of eight kids who’s father died when he was twelve. They were dirt poor farmers. He used to tell me about when he was a kid working in the field how work would stop to watch a car drive down the road or plane fly overhead.

My fathers first car was a very well used Model T that he spent just as much time working on as driving. He told me stories of repouring Babbitt bearings, leather harness bearing repairs and attempts to fix anything with what they could find on the farm. I actually have an almost complete set of tools from that car including the jack that are priceless to me.

 

This is a hot rod site, so, the ones that have a SBC, Flathead, or hemi in them are pretty damn dependable..... AND FAST!!!

 

Debbie Downer

 

Hey Budge, if those little engines were so good, they'd still build em! Lol... original sucks! Hot rod it or customize it

 

0 800 number actually, that you call up from drivers seat on blue tooth.........now back to old cars.....

 

You can do that on your phone in your old car as well.

 

Just like an Elcamino

 

That’s cold!

 

Here's a picture I scanned from "Ford - 100 years in Canada" of a T doing a cross country trip before there was a TransCanada highway. I like it because it was shot just outside Lethbridge where I live. It looks the same except that it is now a paved road and is now a one-way, going the other direction.

 

My grandpa who died a few years back was almost 100. I asked him one time, what the most impressive invention he had seen in his lifetime.

His answer?

The spare tire.

 

I'd say that what served as roads that they traveled on had a lot to do with how long cars lasted as far as being drivable then. A 20 mile drive over to the "bigger town" might rival one of your buddy's 4x4 Mudding expeditions more often than not.
Probably the biggest wear issue was what they had or didn't have for air filters for the engines. As others said 20 or 30 K and you were do for a ring job and you had the rings replaced about every 20 or 30 K until the cylinders were so worn they wouldn't hold rings anymore. It was probably cheaper to go buy another car and go again than it was to pay someone to bore the block and replace the pistons and go though the engine. One reason we find a lot of T era cars sitting around with between 50 and 70K on the odometer. Few ever made it to 100K then.
Comparing a fully rebuilt stock Model T in use now to one back in the 20's or early early 30's is kind of a waste in a way because the engine can be rebuilt with more precision, many of the parts can be had with better materials and lubrication products have developed so much since then. That and the simple fact that even if you do a cross country road trip in one the roads aren't beating it up like they did then.
I remember my dad telling about swapping a sedan body to the car the family had in the mid 30's that had a touring body on it so my grandmother and his siblings could be warmer riding in the car in the winter. He said he paid 5.00 for the sedan body here in town from the wrecking yard. He and his buddy Lyle Browning had the body changed out in a couple of days.

 

PawPaw told us stories about pouring his own bearings.
I’ve made a lot of car parts but never my on internal engine parts. I guess a lot of folks used to pour their own babbit.
A car designed so simple a farmer with a small set of wrenches, pliers, and some common sense could keep running.

 

Ohhhhhhhh i see what ya did there. , they don't make 57 Chevys now either, I've got one of those too

 

That’s ok.
A 1950 mercury hasn’t been made since around 1950. (No counting the fiberglass)

 

Like many have mentioned, I've been told that tires were the major problem. That may be because people tried to run them as long as possible and the new replacement may have only been new to them.

As far as reliability, many people have pulled Model T's out of barns and got them running and driving in less than a day. You have to realize that most of the barn finds are already worn out, but they still run. I'd say they were very reliable.

 

How they saw it in 1932-

 

When work in the big city dried up in '30 or so; my mom's youngest sister bought an old Model T from a junkyard in Minneapolis for $5, paid a neighbor to fix a few things and drove it back down to the homeplace in near Otis, KS. I do miss the stories and with everybody gone,always wish I asked more, listened closer, and remembered better.

 

Amen Brother! Truer words were never spoken. I sure wish I had asked Grandad more questions about old Fords. He was a Ford man forever, it must be hereditary, I’m a Ford man, so it my oldest nephew. I just happen to love a certain V8 that I won’t mention on this wonderful thread.


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