Double Kit " Model T "

[Danno]

Thank you Danno for the info on these cars . I'm always looking to learn more and don't get offended like some people might . As for my Model T , I guess I could call it an " Early Hot Rod " , kind of spiffed up a bit out on the shed !

You are more than welcome. Thanks for taking it as constructively as it was intended.

"Early hot rod," indeed! Quite spiffy for a 'Day Two' as some call them.

[Ace-Garageguy]

It's a really pretty little 'T', and well within the range of what someone who loved his car could have done to dress it up. I've got a couple of these boxed, and thanks to you, I think I'll build one stock for a change of pace. Thanks for the inspiration.

[bbowser]

Stock rocks! Really nice job.

[Art Anderson]

It looks good! As far as any problems, I can tell you for sure that no Model T ever offered white upholstery! And depending on the model year, I think the radiator shell and headlight buckets would have been nickel plated. But a nice model for sure! The wood plank bed floor is a nice touch.

No, Harry! Model T's came with brass radiators (1908 to sometime in 1916) and all brass acetylene headlights and all brass kerosene cowl lights and taillamp well into 1913 when black painted steel light casings replaced brass, leaving brass only for the rims of the lenses, and that went away by sometime in 1915. Sometime in 1916, the small, angular brass radiator and hood went away, in favor of a taller, wider radiator, contained in a stamped steel shell, painted black. This style radiator and hood continued through 1925, but got taller and wider in late 1922-early 1923, to the size and shape seen on the AMT '25 T kit.

Nickel plated radiator shells and headlamp bodies started in 1926, and continued through the end of Model T production in the US in June of 1927.

Just a historical note here: With Model T, there really weren't any "annual" updates or styling changes. Rather, the changes in lines, sheet metal shapes, transition from polished brass trim items to plain black all happened as those parts were developed, put into production. As "running changes", Model T Fords could be said to have followed something that Volkswagen used to advertise back in the late 50's and early 60's: Most any part from a "new" Model T would fit any earlier Model T, and for the most part, that was absolutely true.

Art

[Art Anderson]

1925 T's were black. front to back, top to bottom, almost every one of them "sprayed" in black lacquer. that said, there WERE special order cars in other colors....

the factory "sprayed" them with a rig that looked almost like a set of water pipes with holes in them, literally pouring lacquer on and letting it run off and be re-cycled through the rig again and again... lacquer dries fast and hard, and takes on a good shine with hand polishing. stripers would run pinstripes just beside the pressed-in body lines, so that washing and waxing wouldn't rub them off.

your T looks like a well-worn, well-loved family standby.....

Except, Ford didn't use lacquers on any cars until 1926, and the return of colors other than black on Model T's. At the outset of Model T production in the summer of 1908, Ford, just like every other automaker, used a long and laborious process of brush painting, starting with enamel primer that had to be let dry, and then wet-sanded smooth, over which colored enamel (Model T's came in pretty much any color EXCEPT black then, although black fenders, running boards and splash aprons ruled at Ford through the 1932 model year). was brushed, then set aside to dry. Now, anyone here who's in their 50's and older surely remembers the old "4-hour enamel paints" that were common well into the 1970's, which took upwards of 4 hours to dry to "tacky", and 24-36 hours to dry tack-free, and several weeks to dry hard. Essentially, those early colored enamels were little more than old-fashioned varnish, with pigment added. After the color dried, and was wet-sanded smooth, clear varnish was brushed on, at least a couple of coats, and then the bodies were set aside in large warehouses to allow the varnish to dry and harden thoroughly. Now, for a car company making fewer than a thousand cars a week, that was not nearly the problem that Ford faced by 1913, when their production soared past 350,000 cars for the year.

Ford Motor Company bought their hand tools from Stanley Tool Company back then, and given that chrome plating of steel objects hadn't yet been figured out (that happened at GM in the mid-1920's, and was first introduced on cars by Oldsmobile in 1928), Stanley used a black "japan" enamel that was baked on their hand tools, which gave a finish that while in hard use could chip or scratch, would not just peel and flake off, unlike the enamels then in use on car bodies. The official history of Stanley Tool Company shows that Ford was intrigued, Henry Ford tried to obtain the formula for that Japan enamel (Japan drier is a material well-known to artists who paint in oils--it's what makes artist oils dry reasonably quickly); but Stanley considered that formula to be a trade secret, so no deal. Ford Motor Company allegedly tried to buy out Stanley, but that company's directors refused to sell. Ultimately, Ford bought black Japan enamel through Stanley, and that is what they used through 1925 for the entire car, all metal parts.

Ford's method of applying Japan enamel was two-fold: Small parts, from iron castings such as engine blocks and heads, to springs, frames, front and rear axle assemblies, to fenders, hoods, splash aprons and radiator shells, even dashboards, was to dip them in Japan enamel, then run those parts through low-temperature infra-red light heated baking ovens, which produced a hard, baked enamel finish. With body shells (certainly open bodies such as roadsters and touring cars--which were the vast majority of Model T production until about 1926 or so) those bodies were assembled, and trimmed, with their black "artificial leather" upholstery, and then run down a paint line conveyor, where workers sprayed (or rather "squirted"!) black Japan enamel from pretty much ordinary garden hoses and nozzles. Below that line was a long trough, which captured the excess paint that ran and dripped off, from where it was drained, filtered, probably a bit more thinner added, and then it was recycled back through the painting process. The painted bodies then traveled through an even lower-temperature drying oven several hundred feet long, the temperature controlled to a level low enough so as not to damage the considerable wood framing from which those early car bodies were built (the only sheet metal pretty much was the body surface back then). This dried, but didn't really harden the enamel so it was not uncommon for a new Model T to be delivered by a dealer with areas of the paint soft enough to take a permanent fingerprint (a lesson which my 9yr old father learned to his dismay in the late summer of 1913!). Japan enamel could have been pigmented in any color, but in baking, lighter colors tended to darken, or "burn" just a little bit, so black it was--and strictly for mass-production reasons, no other.

Dupont developed the first sprayable lacquer in 1922, Duco. It was introduced on automobiles at GM in 1924. Ford went to lacquer for body colors starting in 1927, but retained Japan enamel for fenders and all sheet metal below the body sills though 1932.

Art

[1930fordpickup]

Nice Build and some nice Info for us all.