wayne sheldon

Ford I don't think ever used a 17 inch OD wooden rim. They did use a 17 inch Fordite (plastic/rubber composite) rim for a couple years. And a considerable number of after-market accessory steering wheels were offered and sold with 17 inch OD wooden rims. A lot of the accessory rims were fancier than this, however some were rather plain. In addition to Ford, many, dozens? Many dozens? Many other cars would have used that size wooden rims. Four spoke spiders were the most common from the beginning up to about 1930, so this could probably fit and work really well for a hundred different cars. I have rebuilt a number of odd steering wheels, including a bunch of accessory ones for model Ts, over the years. It is common for the four screw holes to not quite line up with a spider that is slightly different than what the rim was on originally. Often, that is not a problem. Usually, it is just a minor shifting of the angle required. A careful drill and glue a dowel small piece in place of the original hole, and re-drill and put the screws in the place required to fit the now spider. The usual four spoke spider usually fits close enough that it covers the dowels once all assembled, and everything looks as good as new. A very nice looking rim! It wants to be placed between hands and spider and be driven for thousands of miles! As for the letter "K"? Most steering wheels I have looked at didn't have such a mark. But I have noticed a few that did have something like that. I don't know what they were from or what they meant.

One is from Montana, one from California. Where are they now? Makes a huge difference to anyone interested in them.

Walt G, Now, THAT is funny!

Bloo, Believe it or not, I lived in Ferndale for about four years. We moved there to be closer to family (BIG mistake!). Then moved to Grass Valley to get away from that same family. Except for the family issues, I loved living in Ferndale! Hundreds of miles of the best antique automobile roads in the world within thirty miles of my door! Beautiful Victorian village. A few areas best to know to stay out of? Including parts of the "Lost Coast". Most of the people were fine, and an amazing amount of them rarely if ever drove faster than 50 mph! So driving slow even on the highways was considered normal. I often passed modern cars with my antiques, even on the freeway! Coastal Highway 1 actually turns inland and ends at Leggett several miles South of Benbow. North of Arcata and especially North of Crescent City, It is the 101 that runs alongside the ocean. Much of that is still two lane as I recall. The last past time I drove up that way, there was still no cell service for about half the distance from Ukiah into Scotia (just South of Fortuna) One time, my son and I had to take Bell Springs Road from about ten miles North of Laytonville clear into Garberville in the dead of night during a torrential downpour because a mud slide had closed the 101! Fortunately, I had my DeLorme book with me. But no cell service for most of it.

Thank you for all that ply33! Comparing old road atlases, maps, and guide books can be fun! And frustrating. Highways changed a lot back in the day, guide books were updated, sometimes annually. Main roads got traded around for a variety of reasons, sometimes for better routes. Sometimes for local political reasons. Major realignments occurred during the various "works projects" building better roads during the depression. And even more during the great highways projects of the 1950s and 1960s. During the 1970s, budgets got cut back, and many highways were left unfinished. One little town on Hwy 101 in Northern California that was one of the worst bottlenecks and most hated towns in the state (by the trucking industry!) wasn't bypassed until about ten years ago. I had driven through that little town literally hundreds of times myself! I actually cheered when I first drove by it on the new freeway section! And I love driving through (most) small towns.

I have a bit of a problem connecting this highway 99 with the highway 99 that runs through most of California's Central Valley? However, I know that at some point in the middle of the last past century, they probably were all connected. When Interstate 5 was being built in the 1960s, it was run basically parallel to Highway 99 from deep in Southern California clear on up into Canada! Although some of it got moved around a bit, most of old Highway 99 in California still exists. Although it vanishes a considerable distance short of the Oregon border near Red Bluff California. At one time or another, I have driven almost every mile of California's current Highway 99. Nearly half of it in a model T. Again at one time or another, I have driven every mile of Highway 101 from the Southern terminus in Los Angeles into Portland Oregon. The parts from just outside Salinas California to beyond Eureka California I have driven hundreds of times! Also, at one time or another, I have driven every mile of Interstate 5 from San Diego up to where we turned off for Mount Rainier. Just thirty miles East down the foothills slope from me, Hwy 99 passes by Marysville CA. Ironically, I see it may have used to go through Marysville WA. Google Maps doesn't make it easy. I tried to see how much of it still exists as Hwy 99 through Oregon and Washington. I found several pieces here and there, but huge gaps where there was nothing showing "99". I imagine there are a lot of bits and pieces of what used to be Hwy 99 scattered through all three states! I wonder how much of it is marked as such? Thirty miles South of me, what was once known as the Lincoln Highway went through Auburn California. Parts of it later became known as Highway 40. Although somewhat unofficial, some of it is still marked as such. I also have trouble thinking of Hwy 99 as any sort of "coastal highway"? Most of it is roughly a hundred miles from the coast as the crow flies. By car? Most of Hwy 99 is nearly three hours from the ocean! (There just ain't no short way across that direction!) Most of Hwy 101 is around twenty to thirty miles inland from the ocean, and in places even it can take over an hour to reach the salty water! Although in some places it would be a five minute walk from your car. Hwy 1 is the real coastal highway. Parts of it are one and the same as parts of 101, and in areas where they split, Hwy 1 is closer to the ocean. Most of Hwy 1 is within a few miles. Actually, most of it? One can see the ocean from the highway if it isn't foggy. While today, it is Hwy 5 that most people really know and use? For decades, it was 99 and 101 that were the main North/South travel and transportation on this end of the continent. And Hwy 1 was the real "coastal route". So much history on those highways.

Pretty sure that is the Falcon Knight. 1927-28 as k31 says.

They are still around! Since I was mostly working on model Ts and early non-Fords, I had other suppliers I went to more often, because they concentrated on model As and V8 Fords. However, I bought things from them on several occasions thirty to fifty years ago! I think they were on Dell Avenue even then?

Yeah, I think you have bigger problems than just the rubber cord that did nothing more than look like something was there? My low mileage 1927 Paige 6-45 sedan has Weed Levelizers on it. They have steel cables between the Levelizers and the axles, front and rear. I have never had them apart, so I can't tell you what is supposed to be inside. My 1927 Paige 6-45 also has Weed bumpers front and rear, which were optional.

Must be an interesting story behind that Packard? And a hand crank in front? Frame and head lamp looks pretty messed up.

Louis Chevrolet and his brothers were serious racers, drivers, designers, and builders for many years. Both in Europe and the USA. Sad that they are sometimes remembered mostly for the Chevrolet automobile, for which they had only a brief flirtation thanks to William Durant. About the only similarity to the Chevrolet brothers with the automobile ended up being the name.

I clicked on the "unread threads" and it began to open up showing clean threads on the edge of the clutch plate----- My first thought------ "SUCCESS!" Congratulations!

It is about time you found this thread! A lot of great stuff here! And thank you for showing the Buick Bug photo.

JRA, I am certainly NOT a chemist! Chemistry (along with geology) was one of my weaker sciences. However, with my historic interests in photographs, I have read several articles on the subject. People have been looking for decades now for "the magic key" to convert old black and white photography into appropriate colors. With the advances in computer systems and programming, in the past twenty years, there was renewed interest in solving that issue. I think most people have realized that because of so many varied chemistries involved in the photographic processes, that a real such a magic key will never be found. I have no doubt that computer programs to translate into a fairly reasonable simulation will continue to improve. The problem is twofold. One, when we see old photographs on the internet today? We are not seeing the original picture. Even when we hold an original copy in our hands, it has suffered chemical degradation for nearly a century! Every single time a photograph is copied, scanned, transmitted, displayed? The representation is altered somewhat. The details in the gray scales have been changed in a dozen ways. The other huge issue is the original photograph itself! Forgetting all the various early type photo processes (tintypes et al)? Numerous types of glass plates, dozens of different film types were used. Each and every one of them reacting slightly differently to various lighting and color conditions! Such things as sepia toned versus true black and white gray scale might be obvious to us? But even simple gray scale varies greatly from one film type to the next! And after the film does its thing, the photo paper has other alternate reactions. I cannot recount the details. However, about a year ago I read an interesting short article that went into a fair amount of detail of how different colors reacted to different types of B&W film. A car painted red for instance? On one type of film would appear as pure black. On another type of film it would be a medium gray. On yet another film it might be a light gray. That red mixed with blue to paint a car maroon will make a maroon car different shades of gray. A yellow car could range anywhere from white to a medium gray. A medium dark green car can show up anywhere from off-white to near black. Couple all that with light conditions, and one gets an almost infinite number of combinations! No simple key can unlock more than a few of them. A good internet friend and early Ford researcher has been playing with colorization for a few years now. It has been very interesting to see some of the results from various programs he has tried. A few programs have failed miserably! Several efforts have come out very well. I have spent so many hundreds of hours studying original era photographs, that to me, I hardly even notice anymore whether I am looking at a B&W or a color photo! B&W just looks natural to me. I do have to admit. Although I usually look at era photographs for historic details and insights into life back then? When I see a well done colorized era photograph? The colorization does breath a bit of fresh air into the images.

Very impressive! I have been collecting since I was in school, somewhat over fifty years ago now. It does take time and dedication to organize that much literature and information. I don't have nearly so much pure reference material. However thousands of club magazines (AACA, HCCA, Model T Vintage Ford, and some others), fairly well organized and many issues going back to even before 1950. I also have a couple hundred books on the subjects of antique automobiles, movies, and related histories (most of which I can lay my hands on in a few minutes. However, that much pure reference material, and so well organized, is fantastic!

Note the Buick in your lower right hand corner. In a photo of about forty cars, only that one Buick is a really light color. Discussions about "proper" colors for vintage automobiles happen here often. Light and bright colors were simply NOT common generally before World War two was behind us. The Buick "White Streak" series was one of the most notable exceptions. One of the very few (yes there were a few others) major manufacturers to offer some cars in a near white color, for only a few years (roughly from memory about 1908 through 1910 or '11?). Most Buick models were not offered in white. As I recall, only the White Streak series cars at that time. A wonderful photo! Thank you for sharing it here.

Great stuff! Just more to a very interesting marque.

Graham Man, Have you ever seen a copy of the 78rpm record "The Graham Paige March"? It was released in 1928, with a musical work on one side, and what sounds like a commercial announcing Graham's taking on Paige and promising to continue in Paige's tradition of quality and design. About ten years ago, I found a couple sites on the internet that one could download it. Somewhere, in my over 2000 78s, I have an original copy.

Over thirty years ago, I bought a 1965 Ford 3/4 ton pickup. Low mileage, very nice condition, just a good old truck at the time. I drove it everyday for seventeen years and wore the thing out, replaced the engine once, and put more than a half million total miles on it. I hadn't had it a month when I discovered the thing could NOT use paraffin based oils. NO Pennzoil, NO Quaker State, several types of Sta-Lube and Valvoline were off limits! No matter how clean the engine was, no matter how fresh the oil was, any amount of paraffin based oil and the lifters would begin collapsing within a few miles. When I replaced the engine with an identical one, a fully cleaned and almost total rebuild? Same problem. Asphalt based (it is the type of crude oil), otherwise known as ash (as opposed to non-ash) oils, were never a problem in it. I suspect modern processing has changed this a lot in the past twenty years. For clarity, asphalt based oils leave a fine ash if a small amount is burned in a dish. Paraffin based oils burn clean (no ash) if burned in a dish. Paraffin based oils had slightly better lubricating properties, however tended to create a lot more sludge (waxy sludge). Asphalt based oils lubricated quite well and were more tolerant of poor maintenance practices. The two types of oil generally speaking should not have been mixed in those days. Although most people did not understand that, and commonly did mix them.

Good advice Matt! I was thinking of adding that these middle middle middlemen are the reason one can find statements in places like Craigslist and FB Marketplace to the effect that "I do not need help selling this car!" Sometimes they try for an agreement with the real seller? Sometimes they just harvest the information and no cost advertise to a wider audience hoping to find a buyer before the real seller does hoping to make a thousand or two for no real effort or expense. Unfortunately, it is usually potential buyers that often get hurt by it if anything goes wrong.

Good books to go through! A lot of interesting reading in those. I never collected as many era books and manuals as I would have liked to. Too many things I wanted and not enough resources, money and space. I did pick up several years ago, they are mostly safely packed away now. I used to read them often, just to paint a picture of how times and knowledge have changed over the century. So many things we take for granted, knowing what came later and how technology works. People over a hundred years ago just did not know those things! These books were published to educate the people using the new technologies, to understand them and how to keep things working as designed. Now we tend to read them to understand the rapidly changing times going on back then. Thank you for taking the time to find and share this.

I have seen a Locomobile and I believe years ago a Chalmers with working air starters. I don't know if it was a factory option or not. However I also know a 1911/'12 Pierce Arrow roadster that has a working air starter. That has been "said" to be original to the car, but I don't know that for certain. When the car was re-restored about fifteen years ago, the air starter was meticulously restored to working condition. Unfortunately, the car has been driven very little since then. Sure is a beautiful restoration though! I have seen two Cartercars up close with the remains of their original Prestolite starters. Neither starter was complete and both owners said they were not planning to ever connect them for safety reasons. History is loaded with developments who's "time had come" and although one inventor got most of the recognition? Two or more inventors were working on very similar designs at roughly the same time. Automotive history practically begins that way! Benz and Daimler were both working on very similar cars only about a hundred miles apart in 1895. Neither knew of the other until after the cars were running the following year. Evidence indicated that Carl Benz beat Gottlieb Daimler by mere months, and therefore got most of the historic credit! Similar occurrences plagued Alexander Graham Bell. And Edison and Tesla worked on many electrical developments at nearly the same time. Edison got better credit due to his better record keeping and publicity at the time. That others were working on a practical electrical starter and generator system for automobiles does not surprise me. I am a bit surprised that there were that many of them. Thank you all! Discussions like this can inspire others to read up on such subjects. And can even years later be found on internet searches and provide a starting point for more people in the future to learn from.

Where it is located is somewhat important? Parting out? Contact information?

Peter R, Thank you for posting that excellent article! One thing not said in it, is that legend has it the man that was Henry Leland's friend, was Byron Carter of Cartercar fame. I don't know what the source of the article was? Perhaps that detail was left out as some historians doubt the Byron Carter connection. Although the incident is known to be true, and that was the cause of Byron Carter's untimely death, there is some doubt about the timing of Byron Carter's death and Henry Leland's decision to solve the starting problem. While such incidents were not really common, they weren't exactly uncommon either. Perhaps Henry Leland knew more than one person that died in such a manner.

I don't really follow the CCCA too much. Although I like a lot of the cars, their major focus is a bit newer than my favorite eras. I know that for a longtime, the smaller Cadillacs of the late 1930s and early 1940s, were not accepted as full Classics, Just as the smaller Packards those same years were not. I had heard a rumor recently that the CCCA had expanded their list to include all Cadillacs of those years. I don't know about the postwar to 1948 Cadillacs, and I don't know if they are considering expanding the Packards as well? Drawing those lines, as I have explained in many previous threads, is not difficult? IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to draw such lines and make everybody happy! Some people are going to be unhappy because you didn't include them and their car. As many others will be unhappy because you included too many other cars! I sure like that 1918 Cadillac!