RED HOOK RESTORATIONS

Left Side With Ford Column	Chevy 490 Pitman Arm	Left Side With Chevy Column

This car was built by a Model T Expert in Kingston, New York in 1983 and we are happy to have it in our collection. Gus has been a source of Model T knowledge in the Hudson Valley for a lifetime, and continues to be an inspiration.

The body has been painted bright orange with black fenders and aprons. The tires are 4.50 X 21 Goodyears with wide whitewalls mounted on 1927 Model T wire wheels that are painted bright yellow. The frame has been dropped 4 inches front and rear, and with the steering lowered and the polished aluminum Torpedo hood, it has a real racy look. The engine, when we purchased the car, had a high compression aluminum cylinder head with an accessory Wilmo manifold and the original timer/coil ignition. The magnets on the magneto, along with the coil ring had been removed to gain that extra few horsepower needed for maximum speed. The car would 'fly' down the road at 40 MPH using the original timer/coil ignition.

The Frontenac overhead valve set-up was added by me Dec. 2000. It's a shoe-horn fit, since these heads were meant to be installed in the black Fords of the late teens and early twenties. I was lucky to have the Torpedo Hood, since it is two inches longer than the standard hood. To overcome the inefficiency of the original ignition system, we added a Bosch front plate distributor. This is an entirely new set-up using a standard Volkswagen distributor head. The difference in performance is incredible. Of all of the distributor conversions we have tried, this is clearly the easiest to install and has that factory look that the other distributors do not have. Since the new carburetor is almost 10" higher on the engine than the original was, we needed an electric fuel pump. We chose a 6 volt Airtex (very dependable).

The choice of carburetors is limited due to the need for a side draft set-up. If there was more room under the hood, we could have made an elbow intake manifold and installed any updraft carburetor. The first carburetor we tried was a 1 1/4" Zenith side-draft. It worked well, but lacked that early look. This May, we found a Rayfield 1 1/2" brass carburetor and have gone to great lengths to get it running. This carburetor is somewhat unique in that it has an accelerator pump that gives that extra shot of fuel when power is needed. We have had some difficulty adjusting the Rayfield and believe the problem is that there is just not enough displacement in the engine to consume all of the gasoline this carburetor delivers.

At the Hudson Auto Show, I found a 1 1/4" Stromberg MB1 Side-draft that was complete and in extremely good shape. This may be just the ticket. This carburetor delivers a sufficient amount of gas to keep this car running at 55 MPH with more throttle still available in reserve. It climbs hills with ease and has a nice throaty sound. We still must fashion a choke, since the 90 degree elbow with the choke will not fit under the hood.

The most recent improvement made was just finished in October, 2003. At the Hershey, PA car show this year, we found a steering column from a Chevy 490. We have read that these columns can be fit to a Model T Ford with ease and will provide much improved control at higher speeds. The outer skin of the column was removed, to keep the open appearance of the Model T columns. Since the mounting bracket from the Chevy column was mounted to a cross-member, we formed a stub of a cross-member from heavy angle iron and bolted it to the lower side of the frame. The pitman arm ball was rebuilt by Mark Golding and then reinstalled into the gear box. The only modification to the Ford column was to shorten the throttle control rod by 1 1/2" and to twist the drag link to accommodate the angle of the Chevy pitman arm.

The latest addition to the Speedster's accessories is a brand new set of demountable wire wheels from John McLaren These are newly manufactured and use Model T hubs from wood wheels rather than proprietary hubs. They drive beautifully and have a more period look than the wire wheels from 1927 with the balloon tires. We have mounted Firestone 30 X 3 1/2 clinchers to a new set of rims painted with Rustoleum Stainless Steel enamel. This very closely approximates the color of the original zinc plating found on Ford rims of the teens.

NEV-R-WEAR Bands	Steam Bent Bows	Links
The Collection	Frontenac Speedster	1908 Reo
Custom Speedster Bodies	Things I've found	Model T Technical Papers

Created: 1 July, 2000