[1923 Studebaker Tourer - Bosch Shock Absorbers]

Hi Simon, haven't heard from you. Did you find the mounts , thanks Mark.

[1923 Studebaker Tourer - Bosch Shock Absorbers]

Thanks, Simon, that would help to see the originals, also do you have two more for the back. On the original, it had Bosch in large letters and the two I have Bosch is in small letters. Is there a difference in age  

[1923 Studebaker Tourer - Bosch Shock Absorbers]

Thank you for that site but there is no information on what the mount between the shock to the rail.  On the back of the shock there is  two hex nuts locked together on a 1/2 inch threaded axel The shock would rotate when the move . I think there must be some mount to hold the two nuts and lock to the car ???? Thanks for the help ,Mark

[1923 Studebaker Tourer - Bosch Shock Absorbers]

Thank you for that site but there is no information on what the mount between the shock to the rail .  On the back of the shock there is  two hex nuts locked together on a 1/2 inch threaded axel The shock would rotate when the move . I think there must be some mount to hold the two nuts and lock to the car ???? Thanks for the help ,Mark

[1923 Studebaker Tourer - Bosch Shock Absorbers]

Hi all

Wondering if anyone with 1923 Studebaker EM Light tourer has knowledge of Bosch Magneto (USA) Shock Absorbers.  There were originally on our Australian Colonial, but were taken off by previous person.  We now have obtained some, we know these were an aftemarket extra, we are lucky to have photos of the car in the 20's which show these shock absorbers, given to us by the original family owners, so no doubt they were on.

 

Would appreciate any photos of brackets/mount, what it looks like and how there were mounted.   

 

Thank you, look forward to hearing from someone.

[Studebaker 1923 - Bosch Shock Absorbers]

Hi all

Wondering if anyone with 1923 Studebaker EM Light tourer has knowledge of Bosch Magneto (USA) Shock Absorbers.  There were originally on our Australian Colonial, but were taken off by previous person.  We now have obtained some, we know these were an aftemarket extra, we are lucky to have photos of the car in the 20's which show these shock absorbers, given to us by the original family owners, so no doubt they were on.

 

Would appreciate any photos of brackets/mount, what it looks like and how there were mounted.   

 

Thank you, look forward to hearing from someone.

[Early 1920s Studebaker ?]

Scott, 

 

Thanks, mate, can rely on your constructive comments!   You have to come and experience an Australian Summer sometime.  Yes earlier days in restoration, even displaying some Australian timber frame.  Spring was more comfortable than the milk crate that was there previously.

 

Mark

[Early 1920s Studebaker ?]

 

Bernie requested that we upload information on our dashboard. 

 

Reference  Book - The Studebaker Corporation of America (South Bend, Indiana, Detroit, Michigan Walkerville, Canada) Studebaker Light Six sales manual Open-Car Refinements - (Page Twelve ) - "The instruments are conventionally grouped on a walnut-finished steel instrument board reinforced with wood to prevent noise" 

 

As our car is an original  Canadian Cycle and Motor Agency, Queensland version of the Australian Colonial, which was originally exported from Studebaker Walkerville Canada as a CKD kit.  At the restoration beginning, on close inspection of our original dashboard, it  revealed behind the cowling timber patterning on the steel, together with the information within sales manual we were able to establish that our car dashboard matched the manual.  This also showed the technique which was used on cheaper cuts of timber by roll stencilling a more desired timber grain such as Burr Walnut.  We were in touch with a vintage piano restorer, who sourced the correct veneer, we then applied under the guidance of a retired Master French Polisher, to resurface and maintain its vintage look.  The original family owners of the car were also involved in eye matching to their memories of how it looked.    Two sides of this family say the car now looks just as it did when they drove around as a family.

Studebaker Manual - Page 12.pdf

[Early 1920s Studebaker ?]

On 8/27/2017 at 3:00 PM, oldcar said:

Hi Paul

You are not the only one that did not think it would be so easy. Remember that I have only owned the Studebaker since August 5th so I have a very long way to go. I am waiting to get the wheels back and painted so I can fit some new tyres. Only then I will be able to move it and start work on it seriously. First thing will be to see if I can free the motor without tearing it all apart. Before I can do this I have to repair the dog for the crank handle, to do this I will need top remove the timing case before I can do that I have to remove the radiator etc. I do not want to start on that until it is back on it's wheels.  This afternoon's project is to remove some if not all the accumulation of dirt and rubbish from the splash trays on either side of the motor, This for some unknown reason includes dozens of snail shells.

Perhaps they were put there in an attempt to make L'escargot.

 

Bernie j.

We also found a surprise, a long-abandoned mouse/rat nest within the engine block, how they got through the water pump is a miracle, maybe that is why it was abandoned.

[Early 1920s Studebaker ?]

On 8/22/2017 at 8:54 AM, oldcar said:

Hello  Robert

Thank you for your interest, I now have discovered the wheel spanner that was hidden away in a box of other things in the rear of my car. I now have all the whels off and away being sand blasted and primer coated. I should get them back later this week when I can paint them and fit some new tires. My aim is to get the Studebaker going and drivable before I start doing anything else to it. Even then I shall NOT be stripping off the original paint or pulling it all apart. It distresses me to see nice original cars being destroyed by over enthusiastic people. 

One of the things that is missing is the ignition key. The combined Ignition and lighting switch is the original Briggs & Stratton unit. The Key that I am looking for is a number 39. If anyone has one I would be happy to pay to have a duplicate cut and posted to me. Meanwhile I will also talk with a local locksmith and see if they can cut one for me without destroying the lock.

 

Bernie j.

Hi Bernie,  Amazing for Rusty Relic, the original key was in the ignition.  Sorry not the number you are looking

[Early 1920s Studebaker ?]

On 8/16/2017 at 4:57 PM, oldcar said:

Here we go again, off and running.

Having attempted to push the Studebaker about alone and unaided, I decided that it really did need some better tires before It would roll easily.

That was at about 9.30 this morning. It is now four forty five. Lunch time was extended to watch a French horror movie on midday TV. That and the fact that I had to cut one tire off accounts for the time taken. The six wheels can now go off to my friendly sand blaster's in the morning

 

Bj.

Quote

Some photos of our wooden hickory wheels, Day 1 and after stripped and restored, used marine varnish to seal, 23inch rim with 33 inch outside tyre.

 

 

 

[Early 1920s Studebaker ?]

On 8/7/2017 at 11:19 PM, Gary_Ash said:

When Mark Bennett was describing to me his restoration work on his 1923 car, he said he had used a door from another car because the sheet metal was in better shape than the original.  However, he kept the original door handy to illustrate how Australian rules about "local manufacturing content" were implemented.  He said the door skins were probably shipped from Canada in a flat pack and attached to locally-made wooden frames.  As evidence of this, the original door was framed in Bunya pine, a tree that grows only in the Queensland part of Australia.  [You have to watch out when walking in a forest of Bunya pine trees because they can drop a 10-40 lb pine cone on you from 100 ft up!].  Cars shipped from Canada to Australia would have avoided some import taxes because both countries were part of the British Empire at that time. 

Hi Gary, Great to hear you love our car and we enjoyed our quick gathering, next visit will have to be longer.  Sorry, have to set the facts straight on this one.  The timber is Australian Silky Oak (they seed pods won't kill you when the drop...unlike much of our other fauna and wildlife).   Silky Oaks were vastly used in the 1920's to 1940's to make timber furniture, window sills, door frames etc, it was a cheaper timber to work with, similar grain to English Oak, but not as long.  You were correct that Queensland did have Silky Oak trees were readily available in the bush and throughout Queensland.  Some photos of front and back, with gold pinstripe. Similar to Bernie J's.

[Early 1920s Studebaker ?]

16 hours ago, Stude Light said:

Hey Mark,

Was the picture of the car in blue just a horrible mistake at a first color choice or some fancy primer or was it the primary car with the "rust bucket" as a second parts car?  If those are two different cars then which did the tag come from? And yes, that tag has led a hard life.

Best,

Scott

Mr Scott....You jovial jester about our unique Australian Colonials, but we Australians are also a unique breed, descendants of convict stock!   ......

 

 To answer your questions, the photos are one and the same car.  When we first saw in Feb 2011 at local swap meet, it was a "Rusty Relic", we decided against at the time.  Twelve months later in Feb 2012, we were told it was for sale again, after the people who had bought could not agree, one wanted to Hot Rod (thus the electric blue, it was painted), the other wanted to restore original, they did agree with each other to sell. Which is when we bought it, could not wait to get rid of "the blue''.  Luckily the original owner visited us after we bought and we discussed original colour, he noticed they had also taken off and replaced an original door, which we still had with its original pinstriping, so that answered that question and it was returned to its original Burgandy colour. (Yes colour with a "u"...lol).

 

Yes, this is its original ID Serial Plate Number.  Would have been great if they cast into brass plate, like the Canadian Cycle dash plate.  

 

Of course, we expected some cheek from you.

Mark and Lynne

[Early 1920s Studebaker ?]

Hi Bernie

We have been off forum, for a while.  Searching online came across Gary's photo which lead us back to forum, so sorry we missed the start.  We totally understand what you are going through as we have had this journey.  We bought our car back in 2012, we first saw in 2011 and loved but as you can see by photos, just a little rusty, only months later it had been attacked and we knew we had to rescue the more old thing. 

 

Now almost 6 years later, we have researched and learnt a lot and more than happy to talk with you.  Yes, we have emailed Scott many times over the years for his knowledge, as our Australian Studebakers are nothing like the American versions.  Scott often mentioned about the mismatch of parts, we started to email about our "Frankenbaker" restoration.  So welcome to the "Frankenbaker Family".    You certainly have had a much better start.  We are included our Serial Number:  1195889, how great you have the Rego sticker still on car.  We also were lucky to get have the maker plaque:  Canadian Cycle and Motor co, Creek Street, Brisbane.  This was invaluable when researching Studebakers in Australia. We are also lucky to have found original owner family and have a photo of family with car.  We also located the advertisement where Studebaker were on show at Brisbane Royal Show as well as the name of the distributors were car was sold through.    

 

With this research, we were able to finally identify as being a 1923 Australian Colonial Studebaker Tourer, built towards the end of the year.  We totally agree the ID plate stamper, needed some pressure, as you can see in photos our ID plate has had a hard life.   Australian National Library TROVE is also a great way to search old newspapers, just typing in Studebaker 1923 will give y ou an idea and then they are a varierty of search filters, particularly helpful to be able to filter down to Decade and then Year.   If you know a little of history of your car where it was originally from, amazing what you can find.

 

Hopefully you have joined the Historical Studebaker Register of Australia, newsletters are also interesting and informative  and annual member contact register a great way to be able to contact other Australian Studebaker owners.

 

This has been an interesting read and look forward to reading more thoroughly.  Thanks Scott and Gary for mentioning us, has brought back many memories of our early days of "what the heck is this" to now being an amazing beautiful and unique care.....welcome to our special Aussie Studie club.

 

Kind regards, Mark and Lynne Bennett

[VIN 1923]

 

Actually my 1923 EM Light Six Touring car has two body tags, one with all the patent dates from the Budd Company, who Studebaker worked with to build their steel bodies, and another with a body serial number. They are both located under the front seat on the right and left side of the car respectively. The true vehicle tracking number is the chassis serial number tag on the plate behind the left front wheel as mentioned in an earlier post. I found the manufacturing process tag in one of the doors when restoring the car which matches the serial number on the chassis tag and confirms how Studebaker tracked the car during the manufacturing process with this serial number. The only tracking information that I have found is tied to the chassis serial number of the car.

The engine block is stamped on the flat area above the starter with the engine serial number. 1920-1922 will be prefixed with an EJ and 1923-1924 will be prefixed with an EM. FYI – in mid-1923 the cylinder head was change from cast aluminum to cast iron with changes to the block, exhaust manifold, carb, etc. All EJs had the aluminum head and EMs produced up through about June of 1923 (S/N 1106001 and prior) had aluminum heads.

I concur that the parts manual does list some colors, as mentioned above, for the Light Six hoods but lists no colors for any other body parts. I have never seen a non-restored car in anything but black, so I’m not sure I’m buying that Light Sixes sold in the US were made in colors other than black. According to all other literature I have found, black is the only color that was offered on the Light Six. I will mention one exception and that is a friend’s car that was exported to Australia. That car had a deep maroon body BUT, and this is where it gets weird, while the chassis tag serial number matches 1924 Light Six production and the wheel base is 112” (matches Light Six) it has a Special Six body with rear hinged front doors, all wood framed doors and the little pad along the top of the doors. These are all Special Six traits. It also has a Special Six folding top, Special six hubs that take Special Six caps and Special Six wheels. The rest of the car is all Light Six….frame, engine, fenders, hood, etc. He has pictures from when the car was new which all these details can be seen along with pictures of the car before restoration showing the original body color so it wasn’t cobbled together later in life. I think Studebaker did a number of non-standard things on exports as the cars were shipped in pieces and final assembled at their destination. Maybe color was one of those special features.

The Light Six engine was a medium gray color with several black accessories. BTW, I have a few Light Six parts and knowthat car inside and out if you need any help with it.

Scott

smrdeza@lentel.com

266735.attach

 

Hi, We are the Australian owners of the Studebaker, Scott mentioned.  Our studebaker was purchased from Creek Street, Brisbane branch of the Canadian Cycle Motor Company.  The original owner lived in a country town about 2 hours west of Brisbane, which is where the car has spent 3/4's of its life.  The gentleman was a local builder and after a few years of owning the car, took the back off to make it into a "ute" (utility), but like all great Australian farmers, you don't throw anything away and it was placed in one of the sheds on the farm.  The car was sold to another local family and when this family was clearning out the shed many years later,threw parts of the Studbeaker itno the local dump, but again the interesting thing is how all the car parts made their way back to the farm, he obviously went to reclaim his treasures.  The car was well used but stilll 90% complete, th next owners used for a while before parking in up, the weather certainly did its trick and was a rusty relic, when we became the third owners.  

 

We put an ad in local papers trying to find more informaiton and one of the original family membrs got in contact and said they had a photo of his Mum sitting on the running board as they is how she went to school, we later found out the 2nd owner was family friend and their daughter went in same car. so we have good first hand knowledge of how the car looked years before.  As the car was so rusty, we were trying to establish the colour and they said they it was avery dark maroon nearly black, we then realised that we had the door which he had previously rescued from the dump, as it matched the pinstripe in the black and white photo and he confirmed that was the original door.

 

Again we were not convinced totally but when we began sanding back the built up paint on the wooden timber wheels the base coat, did match the door, so then we had the colour computer scanned and paint was made up for restoration.  In the black and white you can see where the pin stripe was, we have not done the pin stripe feature yet or the extra padded handpiece on the top of the door, which is shown on the original door. 

 

Orginally the cars came to Australia as flat packs (no timber) and then the Canadian Cycle Motor company used local Australian Silky oak for building the frames, before putting rest of the car together.  The origina ID plate was on the chassis, it was in bad state but numbers could still be read, numbers on the block this is an EM 1923 special six body.  Studebakers are not commonly found in Australia as a whole, and early vintage cars are rarer stilll.  Before we had the black and white photo, Scott (Mr Studebaker) called it the "Frankenstudie", so thank goodness for the photo to validate its originaltiy.  It has suicide doors and also is an origianl right hand driver for our Australian roads. 

 

Have uploaded photo of the door which clearly shows original deep red/maroon colour.    this is at base of Scott's original post.

[VIN 1923]

Actually my 1923 EM Light Six Touring car has two body tags, one with all the patent dates from the Budd Company, who Studebaker worked with to build their steel bodies, and another with a body serial number. They are both located under the front seat on the right and left side of the car respectively. The true vehicle tracking number is the chassis serial number tag on the plate behind the left front wheel as mentioned in an earlier post. I found the manufacturing process tag in one of the doors when restoring the car which matches the serial number on the chassis tag and confirms how Studebaker tracked the car during the manufacturing process with this serial number. The only tracking information that I have found is tied to the chassis serial number of the car.

The engine block is stamped on the flat area above the starter with the engine serial number. 1920-1922 will be prefixed with an EJ and 1923-1924 will be prefixed with an EM. FYI – in mid-1923 the cylinder head was change from cast aluminum to cast iron with changes to the block, exhaust manifold, carb, etc. All EJs had the aluminum head and EMs produced up through about June of 1923 (S/N 1106001 and prior) had aluminum heads.

I concur that the parts manual does list some colors, as mentioned above, for the Light Six hoods but lists no colors for any other body parts. I have never seen a non-restored car in anything but black, so I’m not sure I’m buying that Light Sixes sold in the US were made in colors other than black. According to all other literature I have found, black is the only color that was offered on the Light Six. I will mention one exception and that is a friend’s car that was exported to Australia. That car had a deep maroon body BUT, and this is where it gets weird, while the chassis tag serial number matches 1924 Light Six production and the wheel base is 112” (matches Light Six) it has a Special Six body with rear hinged front doors, all wood framed doors and the little pad along the top of the doors. These are all Special Six traits. It also has a Special Six folding top, Special six hubs that take Special Six caps and Special Six wheels. The rest of the car is all Light Six….frame, engine, fenders, hood, etc. He has pictures from when the car was new which all these details can be seen along with pictures of the car before restoration showing the original body color so it wasn’t cobbled together later in life. I think Studebaker did a number of non-standard things on exports as the cars were shipped in pieces and final assembled at their destination. Maybe color was one of those special features.

The Light Six engine was a medium gray color with several black accessories. BTW, I have a few Light Six parts and knowthat car inside and out if you need any help with it.

Scott

smrdeza@lentel.com

266735.attach