Ford Model T - Overlander

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modernbeat

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My pal retired from racing a few years ago and sold the Rally SAAB. But he missed it so much he built a streetable replacement. This is a later Model 96. These late models have the radiator in front and a longer, more normal looking nose. This one has a rare cloth sunroof, and is the high performance Monte Carlo version. It's from 1966, where you could get either a 2-stroke or a 4-stroke, and it originally came with a 2-stroke, which was the only engine available in the Monte Carlo trim. But somewhere along the way the motor was swapped out for a killer V4 4-stroke with factory option air conditioning. That AC makes it much more friendly for Texas. This car is still on rally tires, and has some rally equipment, but it's really a street car.

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The motor we built for it.
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Snug like a bug in a rug.
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HotWheelsBurban

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Back to the Model T, did I mention that we hand grooved the tires for extra traction?
Here I'm teaching my pal how to cut the cross bars into the tread.
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And the finished products
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I think this should be in the pikes peak hill climb, or those beach races with prewar cars they do on the East Coast. The Race Of Gentlemen.... And since you are in the DFW, bring it to Lone Star Roundup show in Austin this April....
 

modernbeat

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And here I am, grooving tires at night for practice at the Pikes Peak Hillclimb. There were still dirt sections back then and we were running on Hoosier slicks. After testing a few patterns we ran one with a LOT of grooves inboard and only one traction bar on the outside edge. I ended up grooving 12 tires once and four tires twice. It gave me tennis elbow.

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I used to go to the Roundup. Back before it was the Roundup it was Elvis' Birthday hosted by the owner of Chuy's at their tiny corporate office. The first Roundup was '50s style, on a highschool football field in town. The next was in the park at the lake. Then they moved to the fairgrounds as it got huge. Since then I go every three years or so.

Here I am at the lake for the second Roundup in 2003. The Modern Beatnik.
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HotWheelsBurban

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And here I am, grooving tires at night for practice at the Pikes Peak Hillclimb. There were still dirt sections back then and we were running on Hoosier slicks. After testing a few patterns we ran one with a LOT of grooves inboard and only one traction bar on the outside edge. I ended up grooving 12 tires once and four tires twice. It gave me tennis elbow.

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I used to go to the Roundup. Back before it was the Roundup it was Elvis' Birthday hosted by the owner of Chuy's at their tiny corporate office. The first Roundup was '50s style, on a highschool football field in town. The next was in the park at the lake. Then they moved to the fairgrounds as it got huge. Since then I go every three years or so.

Here I am at the lake for the second Roundup in 2003. The Modern Beatnik.
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Cool! We have been to Roundup every year; we were at House Park that first year, towards the north end of the vendor row on the sideline. Next door to the guys tattooing in the little "canned ham" trailer. That year was warm, the next year started off cold and windy. Starting with the 2010 show, we're in the swap meet, second row inside, almost across from the bathrooms. Had swap meet spaces in '08 & '09, too, but when I got the corner spots I've kept them.
We also went to all 5 of the Bayou Roundups the Kontinentals had in Lafayette, Louisiana, from 2015-19. Great fun and worth a 5 hour drive!
 

Erik the Awful

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That's what happens when you have lots of engineers in the frozen north, can't get sunlight in the winter and can't get dark in the summer!
But they made a car that fit the needs of the Scandinavian market....
"It's so freaking cold here. I have an idea! Let's mount the radiator inside the car!"
 

modernbeat

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We're beginning to catch up to present day.

Mounted the coil. I chose one that did not require a ballast resistor to make the wiring easier.

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We made up a set of spark plug wires from vintage style wires and terminals. The boots I bought from the restoration shop were too hard and too small to fit on the coil. So I bought another set of Taylor boots to replace the crappy boots.

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The distributor is a sorta high-end air cooled VW distributor that has both vacuum and mechanical advance, and comes with a Pertronix built into it. As a backup I've got a rebuilt German made Bosch 009 with points and a condenser.

We had modified a stock intake manifold to mount a downdraft carburetor and chose a reproduction dual runner exhaust manifold. We also ditched the finicky mounting spacers that the dual manifold came with and welded up a set of staggered mounting ears. All these pieces were Jet-Hot ceramic coated.

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The manifolds are usually held on with bolts. But we swapped those out for studs and nuts. Here are the studs with lock nuts to keep them from backing out if the mounting nuts are removed.

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The Model T brake kit I bought is well known for including ALL the parts necessary to install it. And, yes, they were very through. But the reservoir they included was the standard Wilwood plastic reservoir. And at the time I thought the reservoir would be mounted on the firewall, and I couldn't have that. So I bought one of these reproduction '40s English style reservoir.

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It came with the wrong size nipple. And the rubber hose it came with was pretty low quality. So I replaced the nipple with the right size and replaced the hose with brake fluid appropriate red hose.
We mounted the reservoir under the front seat and ran the hose through a hole in the floor to the master cylinder.

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We started working on the foot throttle. I bought this aftermarket throttle a couple years ago figuring it might be useful. Photo is cropped out of a photo from the seller where he laid out about fifty parts for sale.

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I disassembled the throttle to figure out how to use it, and decided to place it to the left of the floorboards. Though it's an odd position, it was the most natural place to put it as anywhere else is too hard to get to.

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We rough cut a slot, wider on the bottom and narrower at the top to accommodate the swing of the throttle lever. Shortened the rod and relocated the pedal to the middle.

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Finished the foot throttle looks like this. We'll clean up the slot and add a throttle cable later.

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Since we were adding a coolant temperature gauge sensor to the upper water neck I showed the drilled hole in it for a bung. I had the local radiator shop clean out the filings and braze in the bung and I screwed in the sensor.

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As the engine started coming together we were dissatisfied with the air cleaner we had originally made. It's a small K&N filter adapted to a hot-rod housing and an adapter for the Holley 1904 carb. I think this is the first I've mentioned the carb. We knew we wanted to use a downdraft carb. We considered a few different carbs including the VW Solex carbs, Ford Stromberg 94 or 97 carbs, but decided on the much more sophisticated Holley 1904. I chose one with a tiny venturi that was originally made for a 144ci Ford Falcon.

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I had been watching swap meets and ebay for some time looking for a better air cleaner. We figured that it would involve some fabrication, as all the good looking old filters were oil-bath or maze style filters and we wanted to use a replaceable element. I found this 1934 Plymouth air cleaner on Ebay. It was going to be too tall, but we had plans that would fix that.

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We cut the air cleaner apart and trial fit a few different diameter and height filters, and figured out how tall we could go under the hood.

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We kept part of the maze and used it to locate and seal the filter element.

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Funny story, we measured the interior space to find the best filter element to use. I had a half dozen on hand and some were the right diameter, but they were all too short. We were under a little bit of a time crunch to find the element as Craig, Jeff's Baja Racer Mechanic stepdad was in town helping with some of the fabrication on the filter housing and would be leaving soon. I searched the catalogs to find the filter I wanted and the only filter that was close was a hard to find Mahle/MANN filter. It's a hard to find filter. Wix didn't have a crossover and the major retailers said it would be about 60-90 days before the filter was available. In desperation I searched Ebay for one (and some spares). And wonder of wonders, there was an listing for one. I was just about to pull the trigger and buy it when I noticed it was located in Dallas. GREAT! I'll contact the seller and go pick it up the next day instead of shipping it so we would have it in time to finish the filter housing. When I went to contact the seller I saw it was JEFF! He was selling some oddball SAAB filters he didn't need and just so happened to have exactly the right part we needed stashed in the garage. I messaged him to give that element to Craig so he could finish the housing.

The element in the housing.

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And the final housing.

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That photo above also shows a brace from the intake manifold to the head that also provides a mount for the throttle cable and throttle return springs. That throttle linkage is trick, as there is a throttle cable from the foot throttle and a throttle rod from the steering wheel controls. They can be used in tandem.

We also made up a fuel line. It's metal from the carb to the firewall and down to the frame, where it transitions to rubber line.

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