1912Staver

Sometimes Canadian market cars from this period have larger diameter wheels than U.S. market cars / normaly stated specifications. Usually one inch larger is what I have seen. There is a good chance Australian / New Zealand cars and other export markets are similar. Many Canadian roads in the 1920's were quite primitive, the extra inch helped handle the situation.

The mount and drive gear looks a lot like the one on a early 1930's McCormick - Deering tractor I used to own. But they used their own { International Harvester } magneto's , not Bosch. My guess would be some sort of late 1920's / early 1930's tractor.

I can't remember the last time I saw an interesting car for sale in my area. There are interesting cars around here, but they never seem to show up on the market. Of course if they did my budget would perhaps extend to 25% of the purchase price. Ed you are in a rare place, you get paid to be involved in interesting cars. Some of us can't even afford cast off's any more. Retirement with a limited income in a very high cost of living area makes stamp collecting more attractive with each passing year. This year has been a disaster , rent on the place I was moving out of , and mortgage payments on the new place. I sold a ton of stuff { actually probably more like 8 - 10 tons } and all it did was make the rent easier to pay.

The only real advantage to doing a project yourself is that you then know the quality of work going in to it. Several times over the years I have seen cars bought by friends or years ago { 1994 was the last I was in the car trade } customers brought in that had had very poor quality " restoration " work. And just recently a friend still in the car trade showed me a set of photos of a recently done MGA that one of his customers had bought. Talk about crap work hiding under nice paint and interior. If you do it correctly yourself there will be no nasty surprises 3 or 4 years after the paint goes on.

Just had a look. I use a computer , not a phone and I still have a bit of a preference for the old classified format. When first scanning things at least. I did find the old way of seeing additional photos clumbersome {open in a seperate window } so on the whole a step forward. Great to hear you have taken this on Peter !

As at least one other member has stated, rare does not necessarily equal valuable. To me once you get below about 25 or so known survivors then rare is justified. But rare has real drawbacks, parts are usually non existent. And likely to remain that way unless you undertake producing needed parts yourself. I have ended up with a couple of quite rare cars myself. One is one of 6 built , a little known 1973 U.K. series Formula 3 car. A nice enough car but one that is little known even in vintage racing circles . The same company built 500 or so Formula Fords { Elden } so the company is well known, but small handfulls for other classes . The 6 F3's, about 10 Formula Super V's, 3 or 4 Sports racers, 2 or 3 Formula Atlantic's. And so on over quite a few years. The 1970's were Elden's strongest years. Two brothers formed the company, one a talented designer / engineer { Peter Hampsheir }, the other brother { Brian Hampsheir } handled the business side of things. A few other partners along the way plus sons of Brian and Peter are still involved with parts supply and car preperation. https://www.eldenracing.com/

It looks like a single cam to me as well. I think the exhaust valves would be in the same position as on a T head with the intakes more over the pistons. So sort of 1/2 T head , 1/2 overhead valve. Interesting design.

Man what a place !! The carriage house on the second one is better. But the brick house on 4 acres would be a dream come true. I just spent quite a bit more for a nice enough but not even remotely in the same league house on about the same sized piece of land. Why can't places like this be in Western Canada. Actually there are a handfull, no problem if you can swing a 8 - 10 million $ price tag. But for the other 99.5 % of us a house like this would be heaven on earth.

I think that very early car in your photo has both inlet and exhaust mechanicaly operated. It's hard to see , but I am pretty sure even that lower valve { exhaust ?} has a push rod. { I over E configuration ?

As long as the steering wheel spider is intact a decent wood worker can make a new rim. Most were wood from the factory. The hard rubber ones are a lot harder to repair / replace but yours does not look like one of those. They usually had a steel inner ring for strength which I do not see in your photo. Control levers are often castings . Brass is fairly easy to cast and shape, so a do it yourself job with some homework. Many were some sort of aluminium zinc alloy and corrode badly. I would just use brass, no one is going to know if it is not 100 % correct.

The cast ones alway look better than fabricated ones.

4 Cyl ? looks too short for the 6. The McLaughlin badge is quite desirable.

1956 Chevy I think.

Northern Manitoba cars won't be as good as one sitting in Arizona for example. But quite rust free compared to many areas of North America. Most British Columbia cars are a lot rustier , Ontario or points East even worse.

In many ways it is the long distances that prolonged these cars this long. Old farmers rarely parted with any mechanical objects. You just never knew when some part might be of use. All the farms in my family were the same, loads of cars , trucks , farm Eq. sitting at the edge of the yard close to the machinery shed. None of it was worth the time and trouble to even haul in to the area scrap yard, so it just sat for decades. By the later 1970's ,early 1980's most of my great uncles were retiring and few of my cousins wanted to take over the farms. So they were one by one sold out of the family and " cleaned up ". Unfortunately most vehicles in this state are not worth the trip to bring them back home. Lots of leg work to find them in the first place, and often difficult to determine who owns them to see if they might be for sale. Many of these farms don't have anyone living on them anymore, the owner often has retired and moved into whatever town is close by and just rents the land out to someone in the area who is still farming. Unless you need specific parts for a car you already have, buying any of these on spec is a high time input / low probility of success prospect. People often underestimate just how big the Canadian prairies are. Many , many square miles of farm fields , with old vehicles dotted here and there in a very hit or miss fashion. I am right on the fringes of a reasonably large city { Vancouver B.C. } and during my recent move I was trying to sell my more or less intact , but big project 1929 Model AA Ford flatdeck and 1918 McLaughlin 6-45 Special { also a big project , typical teens bad wood car } with tons of spare parts , and a car that was running and driving in the mid 1980's. The McLaughlin even has B.C. registration and vintage plates, but by the time you restored it you would be 1000 feet under water.. Very low asking prices and very motivated seller, almost no one even asked about them. I expect they will be yard art at the new place until my son has to deal with them some day.

Three D printing of the parts themselves seems a less than satisfactory solution in many cases. But 3 D printing of cores and patterns like Gary mentions seems like a great solution.

Congratulations ! I find Buick GS cars are often overlooked. But that bright yellow makes yours very hard to miss. I owned a very ordinary, dark blue 1969 GS 400 from the later 1980's until just last week. I miss it already. Retired, both space and money are getting to be more of a problem so something had to go. Looks like you have quite a fleet of Buick GS cars.

What's left of a Model T Ford. Hopefully the Packard survived in better condition. I don't see much worth salvaging on the Ford.

I now own 2 acres of very large rain forest trees. That has to be better than any phoney offset scheme. But I don't get any credit/ tax break or anything else for it. In fact the goverment would prefer I cut them all down and grow a crop that would probably do no more than get me a ag. tax break.

I used to have a Traveler as well , lots of fun ! Wife has a project convert , but since she bought her Mustang convert the MM has been on the back burner.

Unlike some old cars , most Model T stuff I encounter is obviously the veteran of lots of miles and hard use. At least almost all of it is available repro. But I get the feeling quite a bit of what is currently on the market is of somewhat lower quality than original Ford parts. The speedster version like I am slowly piecing together has two main advantages over a stock T. Number one is that I can locate the seat further back than on a stock T. I am just shy of 6 Ft. 2in. and really don't fit in a stock T with any sort of comfort. Number two is that a speedster can be quite a bit lighter than a stock T. Any weight shed is worthwhile when it comes to braking distances. Helps a bit with acceleration as well.

It would be interesting to hear the actual numbers of young people we are talking about rather than just percentages. Sooner or later all of our old cars have to end up in the hands of someone younger. Or else just sit until they are scrap metal. And it is good news that a percentage of Model T's are ending up in youthfull hands. My whole point was that it really depends on where you live if Model T ownership and driving is going to be a pleasurable experence. Many of us would like to have access to a quiet area for early car operation. But reality gets in the way of many of us in this regard. City life becomes a necessary evil for many of us who want to earn a living. Or in my case retirement in a semi rural area. In some ways the area is even worse than a lot of city areas. Long straight hilly roads where the pick up trucks are frequently traveling at at least twice the posted speed. Add in lots of tree cover for hidden driveways and blind intersections and it should be obvious that when accidents happen around here they are as often as not quite serious. Not much different than the situation bicycle riders face. I am sure that bike riding would be far more popular if riders did not have to gamble on the safe behaviour of motorists. Much the same applies to Model T driving. Anytime you get a mix of vehicles of vastly differing speed, manurability and stopping ability be they early automobiles, or bicycles. sooner or later there is going to be trouble. And 99% of the time the modern car driver walks away unscratched. The same is unfortunately not always true for the other person.

There used to be a extremely nice P + L in California. Well used in the 1980's on Horseless Carriage club events. It was shown in the Gazette on several occasions. A nice large series { 6 cyl ? ] pony tonneau from about 1910 if my memory is serving me well. Seems to me it went back to Europe . Anyone else remember it ?

If only it was that easy coming the other way. In my experence U.S. Customs go over the Export paperwork with a fine tooth comb. And thoroughly inspect the car itself. Canadian Customs are easy. They just want to collect the taxes and fees. The car itself is of little or no interest to them.

I certainly did not say they are horrible. They have a good deal of simple charm. But using one in anything but quite low volume, low speed traffic will probably not be a pleasurable experence. I personally have no idea of why a young person would buy one. Except perhaps a older friend or familly member has exposed the younger person to the world of Model T's. I have a 23 year old son myself. A Model T is about the last car either he or any of his friends want. I have a basket case 1914 T speedster that has at times been mocked up into something that looks like a more or less complete car. My son and his friends totally ignore it. A Skyline on the other hand would be a car any of them would latch on to except they are so blasted expensive. { most of them around here are the later 1980's - early 1990's versions } Also the right hand drive configuration of JDM cars is a pain in the butt that even a young person can recognise despite the towering reputation of Skylines in youth culture.