Art Anderson

I can understand your feelings, but have you considered that ancient bit of advice that goes like this (my paraphrasing): "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach him (give him the means) to catch fish, and you feed him for a lifetime". Isn't that really what has happened here anyway? And, BTW, when last I read, what GM and Chrysler have gotten from the government are not handouts, but loans, and by definition, a loan is expected to be repaid, with interest. If this all is successful, and I will bet that it will be, then the government (and by definition, those of us who are taxpayers) will get that money back, with interest. On balance, I see this as having all manner of potential for a win-win situation, not some nebulous government giveaway. Art

One of the real problems with the American approach to capitalism, certainly in the years since Theodore Roosevelt (the legendary "Trust Buster" is that companies were allowed to become so large, so dominant, that their potential failure would have a massive impact on whole regions, indeed the entire US. We all saw this in the banking meltdown of last fall. I still vividly remember the demise of Studebaker, and their closing in South Bend in December 1963 in South Bend. While living at a distance of 110 miles from South Bend, I saw the effects, some of them very personal to my family, as several relatives were directly affected by that. Through the 1950's, South Bend Indiana industry was dominated by two very large (for the community at least) industries: Studebaker Corporation and Oliver Chilled Plow Company. Oliver sold out to Allis Chalmers, after producing everything from farm implements (chilled iron plows were their start, they ultimately built hundreds of thousands of high-end farm tractors in a complex just west of the Studebaker factories), and they just disappeared over a period of about 5 years. Studebaker, after struggling for years as the largest of the independent automakers, finally threw in the towel in December 1963, leaving thousands of workers, most of them in their mid-50's to near retirement, with no job, no prospects of a job, even no pensions (Pension plans back then were owned by the employer, no ERISA or Pension Guarrantee Corporation was there to protect them, pick up the pieces!). Where the rest of the US was basking in the renewed prosperity of the early 1960's, South Bend was basically in a depression. Numerous small suppliers to Studebaker were hurt, some to the point of simply going out of business altogether. While much is made of Michigan due to Detroit, and the assembly plants there, does anyone out there realize that it was/is Indiana that has the highest percentage of any state of its population dependent on auto industry jobs? Ever hear of Muncie, Anderson (once the home of GM Guidelamp), or Kokomo (no, there is no beach in Kokomo, regardless of what the Beach Boys sang about!)? Even Indianapolis? Cities such as Logansport, Frankfort, Warsaw; towns like Albion, Monticello, Delphi, Howe, Connersville, Columbus, and others all had major factories supplying Detroit, some still do. At last count, nearly a quarter million Hoosiers produce, or did until layoff, parts for the Big Three. What about them? Also, what about the industrial base in this country, in time of war? Oh I know, war is either obsolete, or will be resolved in short order by flinging a few nukes back and forth, but really now, is either of those concepts what may happen? By the 1960's, GM had achieved what Franklin Roosevelt feared--one company producing the majority of automobiles in the US (Roosevelt is alleged to have told the execs at GM that in his postwar years, he would see to it that GM, and other mega-companies would be broken up, to prevent their monopolizing, even dominating, the industries in which they operated, but we all know what happened--Roosevelt died in April 1945, and with him, the last vestige of serious trust-busting, IMO). In the Johnson Administration, a thinly veiled threat to break up General Motors into smaller, competing companies lead GM to meld their car makes into one, General Motors Assembly Division (GMAD), the various divisions suddenly becoming mere marketing organizations, which had the effect of making it nearly impossible for anyone to split off, say, Chevrolet from the rest of them. Decades of inbreeding of management types had its effects as well, of course. If it didn't originate at GM, it wasn't to be considered. We all want guarranteed employment (you, me, and the other guy too!), but the UAW (arguably the 4th member of the Big Four Automakers!) carried things to an extreme. Come 2008-2009, and GM, due as much to "Sweetheart Deals" made for geopolitical aims by succeeding administrations in Washington as it was from their getting ripe and rotting (Ray Kroc, founder and long time CEO of McDonalds spoke of "When you are green, you are growing, when you're ripe, you rot!"). Presidents, from Nixon to Ford, to Carter, to Reagan, to Bush I to Clinton, to Bush II, and likely even Obama have chosen to open the import doors to countries, based on either their friendship with the US, or their potential for such, with little regard for reciprocation of any kind. A $750 stimulus check from Washington is as likely to get spent at Walmart as anyplace else, and whose economy (beyond that of Bentonville Arkansas) is that likely to stimulate? I leave you all to answer that one, and it ain't West Undershirt here in the US folks. Oh yeah, for years there were protections: For years, as an example, the Japanese carmakers were prohibited from shipping completed Toyota or Isuzy pickups to the US--so how did they counter that? Simple, they shipped pickup cab-chassis to the US West Coast, and simply set up factories to stamp out, weld up pickup boxes in California etc. End run. Japanese cars imported into the US were as bad or worse than 1970's domestic cars, but at least Honda and Toyota were embarrassed enough to fix them when customers complained, and that points out a key shortcoming of the Big Three--"it ain't old till it's sold", and "you bought it, you deal with it" corporate attitudes prevailed in Detroit for decades, and to an extent, zone management of the Big Three still operates that way, even though times have changed. But still, it is the ordinary "man on the street" that has been affected by all this. Only time will tell if the incredible intervention in the US auto industry will be successful. IF the politicians keep their fat fingers out of things, get some real courage to not answer the phone calls from outraged dealers, will this all succeed. And, it is gonna take the serious dedication of auto execs of the Big Three to not just acknowlege the mistakes of the past, but also to make certain that they are not repeated ever again to turn the corner, and that includes Ford along with the new GM and the new Chrysler. I see this time as their last chance, period! Art

What's all that new about that? New car dealers have been selling cars via the internet for perhaps 15 years now, even eBay. Art

Last I read, Volkswagen is a publicly traded corporation, but with limits as to how large a portion of the outstanding shares can be owned by any one individual investor. The notion that VW is a state-owned company, I think, stems from how Volkswagen came to be, back in the late 1930's. Volkswagen (which translates exactly to "Peoples' Car" started up, under the auspices of the Hitler Regime, with a combination of government money, and the deposits of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Germans who wanted to buy this new car. However, before barely any civilian cars were produced, the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 by Hitler's Wehrmacht meant the end of civilian car production in Germany, save for a few high end Mercedes, Horch etc. cars built for the Nazi hierarchy. VW built primarily Kubelwagens (and a quantity of Schwimvagens--the amphibious version of the Kubelwagen--along with a number of Beetles for the duration, until bombing and the eventual British occupation of Wolfsburg in 1945. The British Army officer administering military goverment in Wolfsburg and the surrounding area put VW's workers back on the job, clearing away the debris of war, to build some VW Beetles for use as staff cars for the British Army of Occupation. Within months, VW was producing staff cars for the entire British Army, their production having been seen as a form of reparations for damage done to the UK during the Blitz, with civilian sales in Occupied West Germany beginning sometime in 1948 or 1949. As de-nazification proceeded in the first couple of years following the German surrender lead to fledgling German civilian authority, ultimately the government of West Germany, it was ultimately decided that given the public funds having been spent to start the company, coupled with hundreds of thousands of deposits for new cars having been made prior to hostilities, all that had to be honored. Eventually though, government ownership passed into private hands, with the constraints I mentioned above, and VW became pretty much just like any other corporation in Germany today. The only difference is, of course, that VW, unlike Daimler-Benz, Porsche, or BMW, isn't likely to ever be taken over by any other company, due to the bylaws of the company, which were set, I believe, by the former West German Parliament decades ago. It would be interesting to know, however, if the civilian deposits for new, 1939 VW Beetles that were put down by persons ultimately living in the postwar DDR (Deutshe Demokratishe Republik--German Democratic Republic) formed out of the Soviet Zone of Occupation were ever honored, once Germany was reunited after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Soviet Army occupation of East Germany. Art

Sorry, but I don't see it that way. Weenies roll over, play dead, let stuff just go by, regardless of feelings. I didn't attempt to browbeat my opinion into anyone's head, rather I chose to speak up, given Jim Haught's failure to think (publicly at least)that the individual he observed might well have had a disability (normally 20/20 visioned folks don't tend to gravitate to assistive magnifiers, from my 30yr experience in hobby retailing), and that rubs me very much the wrong way. We are supposedly living in a time when inclusiveness is becoming a cardinal rule, and I would think that general mindset is operative in this hobby as well? I hope so. But, apparently, by the rather curt tone of his column, the editor of that other magazine does not think so. I do think that I have laid out my argument pretty carefully, but apparently, in the opinion of numerous contributors to SA Magazine, I am in the wrong, and some of those I considered to be both friends, as well as talented modelers (which regardless of the resolution of this controversy, I still will!!!). As for "childish", isn't that a cheap shot? I think so. If standing up for persons in this hobby who may have visual difficulties is childish, immature (which is really what the epithet "childish" is used for by most people) then dang it, I am IMMATURE, not dry behind my ears. Never fear, I will be on this forum, as well as Spotlight Hobbies, as the administrators of these two forums aren't the object of my ire. But, in doing so, I will stand up for what I believe, certain principles that are indelibly stamped into my hide. I remain, Art Anderson (who is a 13 yr old, stuck in an old fart's body, wondering what the hell happened!)

Folks, Jim Haught's editorial (Starting Line in Scale Auto Magazne) this month is all about a contest judge that he observed using a magnifier visor in order to see more closely, the model cars he was judging. Haught's contention is tha this is somehow unfair. However, in no place, neither in the pages of Scale Auto, nor on their vast forums, in two long threads on the subject, does Jim Haught, by reason of his position speaking for Kalmbach Publishing Company, bother to acknowledge that the contest judge in question may well have needed such assistive technology in order to do what he was called upon to do. Apparently, Kalmbach Publishing, through Jim Haugt, believes that any evaluation of the results of the work on hobbyists in our field of endeavor can only be made by those possessed of perfection of body and capabilities thereof, which is in direct contradiction of United States Federal Law, specifically the Americans With Disabilities Act, or ADA, not to mention just plain common sense, and the inclusiveness we all like to say we believe in, at least to some degree. I've expressed my extreme displeasure, not only toward Jim Haught's ediitorial, but his continued "defense" of his position, and have put him, and Kalmbach on notice, in writing, that they no longer have any permission to publish anything whatsoever attributable to me in their publicatons. Am I wrong in my position? What say you all? Art

I did this conversion in 1990. For dimensions, I used the wheelbase difference between the standard 2-dr cab and the Crew Cab, with the 8' pickup box. Nowadays of course that info is harder to come buy, as the ready source back then was the then current dealer literature (note that while GM Truck started producing the "New" C-1500-C-2500 pickups for 1988, the other models based on this pickup did not change over until 1992--the squarish crew cab and Suburban bodies were carried over from 1987-91). Without the dealer info, it's still possible to determine the added length required. You can get it from a Suburban, in that the Subs of that era used the same rear doors as used on the Crew Cab. If you can get access to a 73-91 Suburban (Chevy or GMC, doesn't matter, they are exactly the same body), measure the length of rear (second) doors, that is the added length, the B-post being hidden inside the door line itself. The C-post, or back of cab structure is exactly the same unit as on a standard, 2-door pickup cab. For modeling purposes, you will need a second cab and interior tub of exactly the same manufacture as the base kit you start with--MPC, Revell, and Monogram each did Chevy/GMC pickups of that era, but EACH one is different in dimension and the particular company's interpretation of both proportions and contours, MPC's (Such as the FAll Guy Pickup) being far and away the most accurately done of the bunch, in order to get the extra, rear door area. The frame is stretched by exactly this same amount, the added length being in the area underneath the cab, in front of such kickup as there is in the frame rails for rear axle and spring clearances, and this is the easiest place to do it in any event. If working with the MPC series of kits (1981-83 Chevy and GMC pickups which were all 4WD single cabs, the Fall Guy (or simply the AMT/Ertl 1982 Chevy pickup) being the only one having a Fleetside bed (all other MPC 4wd Chevy/GMC kits were stepsides only). Simply take the second frame, splice into the first one, making sure you allow for the extra length. MPC's kits were very true to 1/25 scale, so either use .040" to the inch, or 1mm to the scale inch, as you prefer, both are accurate for 1/25 scale purposes. On the cab roof, don't forget the roof ribs. Those Crew Cabs had 5 raised ribs running front to back, they were about 2" wide, and approximately 1/2 inch tall, to reduce the tendency of the cab roof to "drum" with road vibrations and the wind. And, that is pretty much it, in a nutshell, a very easily done conversion. Art

I've found an even better "wire" for making trim like this. One of the drawbacks to bead wire is that it's ever so slightly "springy", and that can make it difficult to hold in place until CA glue sets up. However, Michael's and Hobby Lobby both sell Sterling Silver wire in a size that is just about perfect for that seat trim. Sterling Silver is quite soft, so it will bend and conform to just about any shape you need, and it doesn't try to spring back. Just secure it in place with gap-filling CA, and once that's set, buff it lightly to remove any tarnish, then clear coat it to keep it from further tarnishing. Art

One thing I forgot to add! Part of the problem with using Dremel tools on styrene is the "melting" action rather than simply cutting away excess plastic. Dremel tools all come with HS (High Speed) steel cutters. HSS cutters have very coarse teeth to them, and those teeth have to have a certain angle to them, or they simply won't work in metals, even in wood, which is what they were originally intended to do, without breaking away. Trouble is, styrene is VERY abrasive, believe it or not, and the rather blunt angles, or "rake" of the HSS cutter teeth makes the cutter tend to "slide" across the styrene surface, wearing the sharp edge away, starting almost immediately. Rubbing metal across styrene at even moderate speeds makes for a lot of heat buildup, very quickly, which will melt, rather than cut, styrene. One of the best-kept secrets from Dremel is their tungsten carbide cutters. Tungsten Carbide can be ground into a cutter with much steeper rake to the teeth, and MUCH sharper. Also, being extremely hard, Carbide does not wear noticeably against styrene, meaning that these carbide cutters really do cut, with far less heat, meaning a lot less melting. I've noticed in using them, that the only time these cutters seriously melt into styrene is if they get clogged with styrene waste, that rubs, melts the surrounding material, but is easily controlled at lower rpm's. A drawback might be the cost of the carbide cutters, but that is more than offset by the nearly unlimited life of them. I have one of the 1/8" cylindrical cutters, from Dremel, that is over 20yrs old, used hundreds of times over those years, and it's still just as sharp, cuts just as cleanly, as it did when it was new. Those run about $15 or so now, but if you look at fleamarket tool dealers, Harbor Freight and the like, sometimes you can find them for as little as $5 or so, still the same qualities. I couple mine with cordless Dremel's, won't use anything else against styrene any more. Art

Virtually all military staff cars, from the 40's on forward, were baseline 4dr sedans. Art

I made the AAM '71 Olds Delta 88 with its own chassis. Art

That hood is more than a bit too large for the Mattel VacUForm Machine, though. A '41 Chevy hood of any sort will be nearly as wide as the sheet of plastic the Mattel toy (I say toy, but those are a marvelous tool for modelers!), if not wider, and in any event, the depth of draw for the height of even a stock '41 Chevy pickup hood is so great, as to result in tissue-paper thin areas on the sides, given that Mattel's plastic (and the capabilities of the machine dictate this!) is barely even .020" thick. Vitually any snub-nose hood of this sort can be created using a styrene kit hood though! It does require shortening the stock hood, then stretching it for the added height, and making some pie cuts to get the much greater angle of taper from front to back, when looking at the hood from the top. I know that sounds difficult, but it's not, although it will require some measuring, some thought, and careful planning--but it can be done, with razor saw, needle files, a straight edge ruler graduated in metrics (one MM is equivalent to .040" or one inch in 25th scale, certainly close enough for our modeling purposes), and some .040" thick, fairly wide Evergreen strip styrene. Oh, and a bit of your favorite putty, and some gap filling CA glue. Art

And, I still have the first of my Dremel Minimite Cordless units, and it's like the Energizer Bunny, keeps going, and going, and going, and going--AND, I've had it for 20yrs already! Frankly, around plastic or resin, I won't use anything but the cordless. Have a couple of the corded, 120V Dremels, but they seldom ever see the light of day. Art

To add to this, when I was at Playing Mantis (Johnny Lightning and Polar Lights) a person fairly well known in this hobby, whom I won't name (and it was NOT Okey) was shopping several JoHan tools around, including the '70 Olds Cutlass 442. Our company passed on them, and it appears that the others did as well. But, when model car kit mfrs struggle for every sale of even the most popular subjects, I doubt seriously that the majority of subjects JoHan produced back 40-50 years ago would generate their own upkeep. There was never a large market for model kits of Cadillacs or Ramblers back then, and likely most of those subjects wouldn't produce much excitement or revenue now. eBay and other auction sites aren't really a reliable indicator--generally if a model kit grabs a big winning bid, it's usually because a handful of bidders got into a "war" over it, not necessarily that thousands of people were salivating over it. Yet, one could make a small fortune producing those old JoHan kits again--provided they start with a large fortune. Art

I've always looked at primers this way: First, they make great "guide coats" when doing bodywork, and second, with automotive lacquers, primer serves me as a "shock proofing" coating, in that the solvents in primer (same as in the color coat), while penetrating and swelling the styrene surface (which if unchecked, causes crazing) evaporate very quickly due to the porous, flat finish nature of primer. This makes the primer a very good interface, as subsequent color coats go down on it, the solvents penetrate primarily the primer, and not the styrene substrate (best observed if one uses an airbrush, rather than the "fire hose spray" of a rattle can). That said, when I do body work on a model, and feel the need to use primer as a guide coat, for finding low spots and imperfections, I prefer to airbrush it ONLY on the areas where there is bodywork, NOT the entire body shell (Hey, I paid good money for all that surface detail, and if I added some myself, I worked hard to get it there, so why obliterate it with too much primer buildup?). My rule of thumb has always been, when using automotive lacquers, to use the color of primer that the actual manufacturer did, as finish colors were formulated to come out, in mass production, based partly on the color of primer they used at the time. With hobby paints, however, some pigments used in 1:1 cannot be used in paints for models, due to consumer safety laws, so go with whatever primer that works with the hobby paint in question. It's good to remember that while whites, and darker colors cover very well, but yellows and oranges lack the opaqueness, so the primer used can affect the final outcomes of these colors. Art

This one was done in 1:1, by Brooks Stevens, who did what styling work Kaiser Jeep needed during the years Jeep was owned by Kaiser Industries. Most don't know it, but the famed Jeep pickup and station wagon series which started in 1948, carrying through into the early 60's were designed by Stevens, who was a master of pulling things out of the hat for companies needing styling work done but on a limited budget. This "van" concept was right in step with what other carmakers were experimenting with, probably inspired by the Volkswagen Type 2 transporter series, but which moved into high gear when the Big Three created their own cab-forward compact pickups/vans in the mid-1960's (Ford Econoline, Corvair Rampside/Greenbriar and Chevy II Van, and the Dodge A100 series). The Jeep van styling concept was done off a real, long WB Forward Control Jeep truck cab and chassis, with the added bodywork done in fiberglas, with real glass windows (the windshield is stock FC Jeep, as is the front end sheet metal. As for outside mirrors, very few forward control commercial vehicles in this class had them as standard equipment--almost all of them had those mirrors added, as options, either on the assembly line, or at the dealership. When I saw the prototype at the Brooks Stevens Museum in 1979 (it was opened on a Saturday for the 1979 IPMS National Convention at Milwaukee), it struck me as being really rough--lots of ripples in the fiberglas panels added, and yeah, those mylar applique's denoting the door handles! How prolific was Brooks Stevens & Associates? Well, considering that the museum held examples of lots of non-automotive work (the engine hood/cover for the "classic" Lawnboy green lawnmower struck me, for example, as did the Wheel Horse Garden Tractor), along with other more mundane examples of the industrial designer's art. How cheaply could Brooks Stevens come up with something? There are pics, in the archives of the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, of his styling mockup of the Grand Turismo Hawk--Studebaker was so nearly flat broke, that Stevens did the "T-Bird" roof shapes for that one in heavy cardboard, and the total cost to Studebaker to come up with that car for production was only about $500,000 (other than the roof stamping, everything else came pretty much out of the Studebaker parts bins). Brooks Stevens of course, did the Studebaker SS concept car, which aped the Mercedes SSK sports cars of the late 1920's, and one of which was built for Studebaker in 1962 for display at the various auto shows around the country. When Studebaker declined to produce the car, Stevens & Associates simply took on a supply of Lark chassis, and laid up the bodies in fiberglas, and took the cars racing, as the first Excalibur SS's. The Museum had several wicked cool examples of Brooks Stevens' own racing Excaliburs. Even though Stevens himself was nowhere to be seen that Saturday in late July 1979, it was all too apparent that we were in the presence of a very talented and creative designer, and a rather eccentric one at that! Art

Recast of the AAM kit. Art

It's the real thing. Industrial designer Brooks Stevens came up with this concept, a station wagon, but we think of it as a van, as a proposal for Kaiser-Jeep, based on the FC series Forward Control pickups. I toured Brooks Stevens' museum in Suburban Milwaukee right at 30 years ago, and IIRC, this vehicle was on display there. Art

Making wheels from scratch almost requires a lathe, in order to turn the round components (the rim and whatever center disc it may have. Making wire wheels from scratch will take more time and space than will work here, but generally those are done on a lathe, turning rim and hub, as well as creating a lacing jig, and then a vertical mill with a 90-degree (to the horizontal) indexing unit, in order to space the holes for the spokes evenly around the circumference. If you mean making your own wheels, using existing wheels and combining the parts from one with another to get the style you want, that's a matter mostly of cutting apart the wheels you want components from, then gluing the desired parts together into a wheel of your choice. Art

Andy, Now this one I gotta have!!!!!!!!! Keep us posted as to availability. Art

Foxer, Yup, it will get painted. The real engine was made in iron and steel, just about the only brass showing would have been the carburetion. I have no clue as to what color Knox might have used on their automotive engines, although I have seen any number of pics of Knox water-cooled single cyl marine engines, and those seem all to have been done in an industrial equipment medium green. For this one, I am thinking a dark green, as that color will bring out the details still, but not be so bright as to be a focus of attention, as it's to be slung underneath the frame, in the middle of the chassis itself. In short, I want people to view the whole car, not call their attention specifically to any one assembly or part. Art

This thing now looks like an engine, the only major external component yet to be done is the exhaust pipe and muffler, but that will have to wait until I get the chassis built, which will start this coming week. Added since the last updates are the carburetor, which looks pretty strange, because it's very primitive. While the venturi principles were well-known to those early automobile engineers and inventors, numerous now-obscure makes used other means of getting a fuel-air mixture into the engine. One of the simplest designs was the one I did for the Knox: A "cotton-wick" carburetor. Simply described, this was a large tube (on the real Knox of which I have a pic, this was an all brass component) so brass rod stock got the call. Inside this intake tube was a fairly long braided cotton wick, not unlike the flat wicks used in "coal oil" (kerosene) lamps in people's homes. Gasoline was dribbled by gravity onto the wick. Air was drawn into this tube through a couple of rows of fairly small holes along the top side on the intake stroke, the velocity of the inrushing air being sufficient to evaporate the white gasoline of the day. This was, on the Knox, admitted into the cylinder by means of an "atmospheric" valve, which had a fairly soft spring, allowing the intake stroke of the engine to simply "suck" open this valve. With the fairly low rpm range of this and other, similar one cylinder motors, this was more than sufficient to add the fuel-air mixture to the cylinder on demand. Also added are the cooling fan (the only "commercial" part on the engine, this was given up by the Ertl Collectibles 1902 Knox delivery truck that is the inspiration for this project), and the driving wheel for the fan, which will connect to the fan by means of a wide, flat belt. The wheel itsef (or pulley if you will) is a slice of 5/8" Evergreen styrene round tubing, indexed and drilled on the mill, with a hub turned from clear acrylic, which also was indexed and drilled. The spokes are some Contrails styrene rod stock (Contrails was an English aftermarket company), and it still needs the front bearing and mount, but that can't be added until the engine gets its final assembly. Art

Geez! From the Keystone Kops silent flicks to the present day, hundreds of movies were made starring cars. Some that come to mind from days farther back than mentioned above: Topper Front Page (cops and robbers flick--the bank robbers drove an Auburn sedan, the city cops had a Cord 810, and the FBI--believe it or not!--drove a Duesenberg Model J Berline!) The Yellow Rolls Royce Goldfinger (Who can forget Auric Goldfinger's Rolls Royce Phantom II Sedanca, Mr. Solo's '65 Lincoln Continental, Odd Job's 65 Ranchero -- can a Falcon Ranchero REALLY haul a crushed and cubed 4dr unibody Lincoln? -- and of course, 007's Aston Martin DB5GT with all those cool toys? Cars figured strongly in movies such as The Untouchables (both in the B&W 1960 flick, and the 1980's remake), the various Batman movies, Corvette Summer, Hot Rods to Hell, to name a few. And on TV, remember "My Mother The Car", 77 Sunset Strip, Dragnet, Mannix, and many more. Art

Ford used 6:00-16 wheels and tires from 1935-48, on all passenger cars and light trucks. Ford didn't really produce a 3/4 ton pickup until the start of the F-series in 1948, however, concentrating, as did Chevy, Dodge and Studebaker on the 1/2 ton variety, but with 1-ton express pickups based on the larger truck chassis of the times, starting with the Model AA in 1928. There was never any difference in tire widths between front and rear in those years either--the tires and wheels were identical front and rear. The "wide five" wheel and brake drum started in 1936, as a mechanical brake setup, and was converted, in its last year (1939) to hydraulic brakes. The "wide five" setup went away with the end of the 1939 model year, Ford joining the rest of the industry with conventional disc wheels for 1940. While the wide-five lug pattern is cool, most of us forget that this arrangement put a lot of stress on the brake drum--it's pretty hard to find a car with that setup (and I include VW Beetles in that!) without warped or bent brake drums, due to the stresses placed on the drums themselves from hard turns, and the road shocks from chuckholes and such. It's only nowadays, in more modern times, that Ford wide-fives are seen on street rods, mostly for the look. Back in the 40's through the 60's. anyone building a rod out of a Ford (what else back then?) went to the junkyard, dug out a set of '40-'48 Ford juice brakes, and installed those, along with compatible wheels. Simply put, the Ford brakes introduced for 1940 were the best around at that time, more than enough swept area for any fairly lightweight hot rod, and completely free from being stressed by the placement of the wheel lugs, as those were mounted on a very solid forged wheel hub, the brake drum being completely independent of that hub. Art

David, What you see in pics that looks like a pair of quarter-elliptic rear springs, mounted transversely, actually is the tradtional Ford transverse semi-elliptic leaf spring. Here's a pic of a TT, set up as a semi-tractor unit, that I took at the Centennial T Party at the Wayne County IN Fairgrounds in July 2008. While this pic doesn't really show it, the leaf spring does arch up into the top of the arch of the rear crossmember, but does have a few overload spring leaves clamped in, at the outer reaches of the crossmember, as this truck is considerably heavier than standard. Those extra leaves are, in effect, quarter-elliptics. Frankly, that rear crossmember would not have taken the stress of being open, and empty in the middle, of full quarter-elliptic springs, without cracking and breaking. Also worthy of note is the worm drive rear axle, which was used on TT Trucks from their beginning in 1917, and continued in use without change, on 1928 to midyear 1929 Model AA trucks. In addition, what were parking brake drums on ordinary Model T's (merely cast iron shoes against a pressed steel drums (Rocky Mountain Brakes with their friction linings, were mounted inside the stock rear drums, but were aftermarket) were fitted into larger drums on the TT, and supplemented the standard single brake band inside the Model T transmission. Art