I thought that I would send this out for the people who could not attend the March meeting. If you open the attachment, you can see the progress on Al's projects. The old Merc is coming along quite well and has a coat of variprime which is a self etching primer. It sounds like he is going to put the wheels back on it soon, remove it from the roll over machine, and put it on the back burner for awhile. On the left side of the picture, you can see part of a Model T engine and the crankshaft. It is a 1924 engine. Just think, it is about 80 years old. He is rebuilding this engine because it came with provisions for a starter. It should be a lot easier than having to crank it every time he wants to take his T for a spin.
Did you know that you can start a Model T without a starter. I found this out by accident back in the 1960's. My brother bought an old pieced together Model T for about $50. We were fooling around with the engine because it didn't always want to start. We didn't know what we were doing. (we thought that we did). Anyway we moved something around by the engine and it started running by itself. We jumped back in amazement. We finally figured out that if you cranked it a little with the switch off and any one of the cylinders happened to be in the right spot and under compression, when you turned the switch back on and moved the spark lever, (which would fire the spark plug) the engine would start. We were easily entertained and we would crank the engine a little, hop in the car, turn on the switch, move the spark lever and fairly often it would start and we would go for a ride. My mother always told us how she drove through the muddy country roads in a Model T. We talked her into trying out the T. She hadn't driven a car in many years and she forgot how everything worked. She started moving forward and then didn't know how to stop it. Luckily she turned it in one direction and proceeded to go in circles in our yard all the while screaming for us to stop it. We let her make a round or two and waved to her on the way by before we rescued her. I still have to laugh when I think about it.
The April meeting will be held at Randy's garage. I will send out the directions to his place before the next meeting.
Paul
