(NEW Update! 6/19/15) IN progress, ICM '13 Model T For

[Art Anderson]

Reworked the front crossmember, front of the frame rails (which are molded in as part of the fender assembly), and the lower corners of the radiator, to make it possible to mount the front crossmember without having to use the radiator until after the chassis and fenders get painted.

Added are the running board brackets with their truss rod braces, hand brake cross shaft & arms, and brake actuating pull rods.

Art

Edited June 19, 2015 by Art Anderson

[Eric Macleod]

Can you show us a shot of what you did with the front crossmember?

[Art Anderson]

Can you show us a shot of what you did with the front crossmember?

Sure!

For starters, the kit radiator has a tab in each lower corner of the radiator (designed to be hidden when assembled, this tab gets trapped between the ends of the crossmember and the frame rails). The problem becomes that you have to paint everything before installing the radiator and crossmember, which I didn't much care for--so I cut those tabs out, trimmed the curved area smooth--that won't show at final assembly. Then given the 1mm (.040") thickness of those tabs, it was a simple matter to glue in a pair of "fillers" of .040" Evergreen strip stock, and file to shape, to match the existing shapes on the fender unit.

If you look closely, those fillers are the little white bits, which took about 15 minutes or so to add:

Art

[Speedfreak]

Nice looking work Art!

[Art Anderson]

There's been some progress! The body shell (all individual panels of it) is assembled, and I have to say, I've NEVER seen a multi-piece body as precisely engineered and molded as the ICM '13 Model T Roadster--everything fit like a glove, once the sprue attachment points were dressed down (used a home-made sanding stick made with a piece of basswood with a bit of 400-grit sandpaper "flat glued" to it with CA glue), so nicely that no filler will be used anywhere (not that Ford leaded in any body seams on Model T's (they didn't!). Note that the firewall is not yet installed--see below for a bit of a surprise)

[Art Anderson]

OK, as 1908-late 1914 Model T's had a full width dashboard made from solid wood with cherry veneer on both sides, finished in a red cherry stain with varnish, I decided this one needed a real wooden dash as well. It's made from Midwest Products 1/32" (yeah, that thin!) Danish birch aircraft plywood, cut to match the shape and dimensions of the kit's styrene dash. There will be a half oval cutout as hinted by the penciled in curved shape, which is more accurate than the kit's styrene dashboard, which simply has a large rectangular opening (all my research into the real cars shows this shape).

This plywood dashboard will have its edges bound in thin, narrow Evergreen strips (which in the end will be BMF foiled and painted with Tamiya clear yellow to represent the brass trim on the real one), and have holes drilled for the steering column, all 8 ignition terminals (both into the individual coils--Model T had a coil for each plug--and the output terminals for the sparkplug leads. There will be a hole and bezels for the bulb horn line to its "trumpet", and a pair of notches to capture the windshield frame brackets.

[Foxer]

Sounds wonderful, Art! Love the wood dash...

[Ramfins59]

This is gonna be a "killer" model Art. We'll all be watching.

[Danno]

Great start.

[Art Anderson]

I spent a good bit of time this weekend making a real wood dashboard (A bit of explanation: Brass era Model T's had no metal "firewall", wood dashboard--for decades, stylists and body engineers used the term "dashboard" to denote what we models and most car nuts refer to as the "firewall").

On the real '08-late '14 Model T's, this dashboard was made from a solid wood filler block, with cherry veneer on both sides, which was then stained a dark red, before being varnished, the varnish back then not being water clear, but a golden amber color. Model T enthusiasts often refer to those early T's as "Red Board Cars".

I started with some Midwest Products 1/32" Danish aircraft plywood, which in this thickness is 3-ply, and as close to the thickness (in scale" as anything else available. I chose the plywood simply because even basswood (which can be had this thin) could have a tendency to warp, and in any event could be far too fragile to withstand all the cutting involved without splitting or breaking.

I used the ICM kit's dashboard as a pattern, drew around that with a very thin pencil (lightly so as to not permanently mark the wood), then cut it out with a razor saw, the wood clamped in my trusty miniature bench vise (hint: A layer of masking tape on each jaw surface allows tight clamping without any worry about marring the wood!). Simply by matching up the drawn pencil lines with the top edge of the vise allowed me to use the top of the vise as a guide for a razor saw--that meant only block sanding the edges to get them smooth.

The opening in the lower center was cut using my cordless Dremel with a 1/8" carbide cutter, and carefully using that to "carve away" the excess wood in this area--that oval shape at the upper left corner of this opening is the clearance hole for the steering column, made a bit extra wide in order to clear the hand throttle and spark advance shafts.

There are two rows of 4 holes drilled in the center just above the engine opening. These are for the terminal connections of the ignition coil box (a Model T Ford used one coil per sparkplug--wires from the timer on the left lower front of the engine were loomed, and ran back along the inside of the right frame rail to the back side of the dashboard, where they went up and the individual wires brought through another hole (not yet drilled) then spread apart each wire to supply power to it's particular coil. The lower row of holes are for the individual terminals, again one for each plug, and a high tension, heavily insulated lead running from there to each plug.

The birch plywood color took some figuring out. Since the real wood is cherry, I found a Minwax stain marker in Cherry, and for a backup picked up a Red Oak stain marker, but that turned out to be not needed. As Ford used a red cherry stain, I experimented with some Tamiya Clear Red over the Minwax Cherry stain, but while the color looked OK, it just wasn't quite there. I found, at Michael's, a Prismatic ink marker, Crimson Red, which I ended up using on the bare wood after all the cutting, sanding and drilling, and followed that with two applications of the Cherry stain, which darkened in the grain, and gave the wood a pretty decent representation. To tone down the bright red even more, after I make the "brass" molding around the sides and top of the wood panel, and foil that, Tamiya Clear Yellow will get the call to turn the foiled styrene into brass as well as darkening the reddish brown stained surface.

[ningoth4]

Looking good!

Kevin

[Art Anderson]

After a couple of false starts (including the firewall attempt above, I decided it was time to shift disciplines from ruler and calipers to my vertical mill, and see how that would work on the thin plywood: Answer, perfectly!

So, I decided to mill the wooden dashboard from the same 1/32" plywood stock, using a couple of small dental burrs from my stash of those. In doing a new one, I also learned from further research that those Model T dashboards were rectangular, not the trapezoidal shape that ICM tooled the plastic dash, but not a problem--just reworked the front edges of the plastic bodywork so that a rectangular panel would fit.

The moldings around the outer edge are a blend of styrene rod stock and half round, set in a milled step around the edges of the panel (could not cut as deeply across the top and bottom edges, due to the outer veneer layers having their grain horizontally which would have meant the real possibility of splitting and breaking. After staining the wood, I added the styrene moldings, then foiled them.

I used Tamiya Clear Yellow, which gives the look of amber colored varnish on the wood, and a pretty convincing brass shade to the foil:

[Art Anderson]

Time for the transmission foot pedals (for those who don't know, Model T Ford transmission is a planetary unit, with contracting bands to control which gear --low and high, reverse, and unique to the Model T, a brake band--all very much like a GM Hydramatic without a torque converter!). It was operated by means of three foot pedals, one for low-high, one for reverse, and another for the rear wheel brakes). As these pedals necessarily extend up through the floorboards, that took some measuring, and a whole lotta "By guess and by God!" work!

The pedal arms were made from K&S 1/32" square brass bar stock, silver-soldered to bits of K&S 1/16" brass tubing, which was "sleeved over" 1/32" K&S brass rod inserted into drilled holes in the left side of the transmission housing. There was a whole lotta "by guess and by gosh" fitting, a bunch of bending, straightening, all of that! The foot pads should be integral with the pedal arms, but for my build(s), those will be gleaned from the ICM plastic kit (ICM kit has the pedal arms, but they don't even come close to mating up to the left side of the transmission housing!). So, on to the conversion work, OK?

View from the interior:

From the engine:

[cobraman]

I'll be watching. QQ

[Art Anderson]

The top (4 very nicely, precisely molded sections) and the seat (4 pcs) are assembled, so it was time for a progress picture. Here it is, with the wooden dashboard sitting in place (not glued in yet, so that chunk of basswood was called on to tilt the whole thing up so the dash would stay where it is).

The tires are white soft plastic--I'd prefer them to be a light buff color, but I can't find anything that will simply stain or tint them, and paint's out of the question--so white they will remain.

Art

[Ace-Garageguy]

The tires are white soft plastic--I'd prefer them to be a light buff color, but I can't find anything that will simply stain or tint them, and paint's out of the question--so white they will remain.

Fine looking work, as always.

Have you tried MarHyde or Duplicolor interior spray dyes for vinyl for your tires? It works very well on soft plastics, sinks in and leaves no surface grain whatsoever, and adheres almost unbelievably well if you pre-wash the surface with 70% iso (assuming the color you need is available).

[Art Anderson]

Fine looking work, as always.

Have you tried MarHyde or Duplicolor interior spray dyes for vinyl for your tires? It works very well on soft plastics, sinks in and leaves no surface grain whatsoever, and adheres almost unbelievably well if you pre-wash the surface with 70% iso (assuming the color you need is available).

I've wondered about spray dyes for PVC, just haven't gone and looked for any yet. Dunno if there's anything out there that would be as subtle a "buff" color as I want. Tires in the day of this T were natural latex rubber, and carbon black was just beginning to come into the rubber industry--so tires like these, while they photographed as starkly white (the primitive camera film emulsions of the day), more than likely "white" tires were a buff color, not unlike the latex rubber sidewalls on 10-speed bicycle tires of 40-45 years ago.

Art

[bobthehobbyguy]

Nice work so far. Firewall is great. Looking forward to more.

[Art Anderson]

Just added two small details to the right side of the engine: The oil petcocks. The top one was to check the oil level for overfilling--you opened that, and if oil ran out, too much oil--so open the bottom one, drain a bit out until oil stops coming out of the top one. However, if you opened the bottom petcock, and no oil came out--better add oil!

These were made from .032" brass rod stock, silver-soldered together, then carved to shape with a very small needle file. The thumbscrew was made by squeezing the annealed brass with a good pair of needle-nose pliers, aided by using a regular set of pliers on top of those--SQUEEZE.

[DaveM]

Wow! just WOW! Never knew about the veneered dashes on these . I did know about the pedals, and a few years after one of our chats on PSAB I think it was, where you explained how to drive a T, I actually got to try one out. It was a "bucket list" event for me. I have crawled under a couple of later cars, a 1926, and a "Multi Year Mutt" that has 1923 and later parts. The earlier brass ones are a mystery to me. I am having a lot of fun watching this build and learning a lot of neat facts that will never help me in the "real world" I am watching this thread closely. This is going to be an awesome build. I may actually have to break down and buy one of these kits.

[Eric Macleod]

Interestingly for our 1:1 restoration of an 11 T Torpedo, no tires other than black are available right now. So..the real one is getting black tires front and rear!

[Ramfins59]

Art, you're knowledge and experience in automotive history and mechanics is impressing us all. Great work as usual.

[Eric Macleod]

As an aside...if anyone wants to learn how to drive a REAL Model T, there is a Model T driving school offered at the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, Michigan were one can actually drive a Model T Ford. And no, we are not talking about "resto-rods" with Chevy drivetrains. They are real 100% Ford Model T's.

I too must compliment Art for a good representation of what these cars are all about. Having owned these things and driven them since I was 8 years old, it is nice to see others gain appreciation for the cars.

It is also REALLY nice to get past some of the myths too...particularly the ridiculous notion of boxes being custom made to Henry Ford's specification in order to be cut down into floorboards.

Back to the model, Art, how are you going to handle the on/off of the body to get around those beautifully made pedals? As a suggestion (and one I will use myself) is to take more of your plywood (which by the way is the correct material used on the real cars. They do not use solid wood) and piece it into the toe-board area. I can get some 1:1 photos of this area on a real car if it would help. That's how the 1:1 cars do it.

[Art Anderson]

As an aside...if anyone wants to learn how to drive a REAL Model T, there is a Model T driving school offered at the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, Michigan were one can actually drive a Model T Ford. And no, we are not talking about "resto-rods" with Chevy drivetrains. They are real 100% Ford Model T's.

I too must compliment Art for a good representation of what these cars are all about. Having owned these things and driven them since I was 8 years old, it is nice to see others gain appreciation for the cars.

It is also REALLY nice to get past some of the myths too...particularly the ridiculous notion of boxes being custom made to Henry Ford's specification in order to be cut down into floorboards.

Back to the model, Art, how are you going to handle the on/off of the body to get around those beautifully made pedals? As a suggestion (and one I will use myself) is to take more of your plywood (which by the way is the correct material used on the real cars. They do not use solid wood) and piece it into the toe-board area. I can get some 1:1 photos of this area on a real car if it would help. That's how the 1:1 cars do it.

Eric, I thought about making a real wood toeboard, but it would have been a bit problematic, given that in the kit construction, the toe board is a structural member in a multi-piece body. So, I simply modified the slotted plate in that to a reasonably correct spacing for the pedals--they fit right through the slots, and I'll add the foot pads once the engine and body are installed (before installing the dashboard). I did that with a '27 T Tudor Sedan about 15 years ago, worked great.

Art

[Art Anderson]

I finally decided to try artist's ink to color the tires. After studying the ink markers at a college bookstore next to the University campus, I settled on Chartpak's large artist's ink markers, Light Sand for the sidewalls, and Warm Grey for the tread areas (those light colored tire treads picked up street dirt very quickly!), and on the white soft plastic material it worked great after some practice (I mounted the tires on the painted and detailed wheels first, then used some Testors soft plastic pipettes (used normally for adding thinner to paint, or droplets of color for color mixing), and simply rotated those against the marker to get as uniform a shade as possible.

The wheels are drilled to accept bits of 1/32" brass rod stock, which I rounded off, then polished before installing, to represent the rather long brass valve stem covers. After installing those, a bit of Tamiya TS-13 was brushed on, to keep them from tarnishing.