A by the sea

Show plating, what a joke. You have to be very careful making sure the plater understands what you are trying to do. They will try their best to make the part look pretty, but you want correct fit too. You car is early so it would have been done with a dull nickel plate that would have been buffed. Today most shops use only bright nickel. The problem is the oxidizers cause the nickel to tarnish MUCH faster. Since you are not top coating with a chrome clear (chrome adds a clear blue hue). So you might want to talk about using a Watts or dull nickle plate that is then buffed to a bright nickel. Shops like Frankford Plating in Phila have 3 nickel tanks. The turn of the century bath, the dull (or Watts), and the bright nickel. Librandi's will tell you to go else where if you start asking questions about the process. He does not seem to want to deal with people that understand the process. He does not have a dull nickel tank and does not know the history of plating. Pauls will tell you lots of nice stuff on the phone and never do it to your parts. I spent $2000 there and they ruined some parts. Twice I sent them the parts and they still could not read the directions telling them that the 3 parts have to fit together for my top to work. From the people I have talked with it seems Pauls is very good at fixing their mistakes, so it appears that they make a lot of mistakes. They also could not chrome plate over dull nickel. Frankford plating is slow, but they seem to do good work. I have limited exposure to their final products. They were very open when I went to visit and toured me around the shop. They had a lot of parts where they were maintaining the proper shape and squareness of the parts. They were also the first shop that had 3 nickel tanks. There is a shop in GA that I talked to the owner at Hershey a couple of years ago. He would be another place I would try. He understood the concepts of dull nickel not tarnishing as fast and he could chrome plate dull nickel. The need for plating chrome over dull nickel is because some part were only polished on the front side. This is true on the Model A bumpers. The front was buffed and then the bumper was chrome plates. This resulted in the back side having the appearance of the back side of tin foil. Always remember that when someone says he got great plating from a shop his idea of great may not be your idea of great. Good Luck with your search.

Throw away buy new!!!!!!! I am sure you can find a replacement tank that does not need a repair. They made a lot of 1935 Olds so there is no excuse!! I would guess the stuff you plan on doing to the tank could cost almost as much as buying a good tank. Why are you screwing around with safety??? I can see the headlines, old car catches fire kills family. If you can not afford to fix it right then you can not afford the car.

Always remember that most shops want to make the parts pretty. Sometimes pretty and functional are not the same. For what it is worth. I spent $2000 with Pauls Chrome. They never read the directions and diagrams I sent so they could do a check to make sure the convertible parts I sent them worked while they did the job. All of my parts did not fit together or function, but they looked pretty. Pauls is used to redoing parts cause everyone I have talked to that had a problems found they were good at trying to fix what they broke. I was fortunate to have had extras that they could make closer to functional.

Imagine selling a boat only to have the state come knocking on your door with a $60,000 fine a year later. This actually happened to a friend in (we live in NJ). Lucky for him he got a signed receipt from the buyer. What happened was he sold it to a friend. That friend held it for a while and sold it. The next guy wanted cause he and his friend wanted to have a race through the woods towing a boat!!! (this is not a joke) So during the race the boat came off in a state forrest. They left it behind. The two owners never transferred the the title so the hull was still in my friends name. My friend was lucky he had proof that he sold the vehicle and to whom. The $60,000 fine for dumping in a state forrest got passed on to the next guy. He hated to do that to a friend, but he did not have the $60,000 laying around. The moral of the story. NEVER sell a car (or anything they could be traced back to you) without getting a signed receipt and checking the ID of the person. A side story... Way back we sold a Plymouth Horizon to a girl, it was you basic $200 car. Seems her other car got impounded when a friend got arrested in Philadelphia. About a year or so later we got notice the car was going to be sold at police auction. We could get the car released for like $800. I have always wondered how much the car sold for at auction.

First off a gravity feed system does not vapor lock. If you choose to believe that is the problem and chase solutions on this route then good luck. What is your symptoms? Most 'vapor lock' can be traced back to an electrical problem. You can also have too much heat from incorrect timing or fuel mixture. You can have additional problems from float and jet heights or even the shape of the jet tip. You can also have problems with junk settling on the outlet in the tank clogging it (you did not list your symptoms). Clogged vent in the tank cap. If you put a filter intended for a pressure system it may not flow enough. Some tubing fittings can be pushed in too far causing a severe reduction in fuel flow. If you have compression fittings check that the tube does not stick out too far. The problems could also be rooted in poor restoration practices. Lots of used parts causing timing/ fuel mix problems coupled with a poorly cleaned water jacket causing excessive heat. This could bring the temp of the carb to a boiling point of the fuel giving you issues. I deal with Model A's and guys love to claim the problem they can not figure out is vapor lock. The problem is only a few A's ever have a 'vapor lock' problem. The problem usually goes away when something else is fixed. The A vapor lock I fixed was a loose screw on the distributor movable point. A gravity feed system does not vapor lock because the bubbles just go up while the fuel goes down. Siphon some water and introduce some bubbles to prove it to yourself. You can even capture a large bubble in a loop and the water still flows. Good luck with your hunt.

Do not change your points just because you think they need to be changed!!! You are wasting your money and causing more work. In fact I hope you saved your plugs as the ones that were changed were probably fine. Points have a wear block that wear block takes time to wear into the cam. So when you first put the points on the car the points will need to be adjusted frequently as they wear to the cam. Odds are the ones you are taking off have not finished wearing into the cam. The only reason to change the points are if the contacts are showing signs of problems. My brothers A is still using the points that came on the car in 1970. Mind you he can only run the 55 to 60 MPH and only gets 20+ MPG. Sounds like the problem you had with the car was fixed with the stuck needle on the float. Just check the car was timed properly Model A Ford Ignition Timing - Making It Right drive and have fun!

The oil sold by the retailers are sometimes just 90W with STP. The problem is STP is not really an oil. The oil weight standards have changed over the years. Some have taken the time to trace the changes to an equivalent modern oil. Here is the results. From Fordbarn.com Posted by Marco Tahtaras from c-67-169-142-220.client.comcast.net (67.169.142.220) on Sunday, October 31, 2004 at 1:28AM : In Reply to: Why not .... posted by Tony in MI from d47-69-234-198.try.wideopenwest.com (69.47.198.234) on Sunday, October 31, 2004 at 0:57AM : ...this covers the basics. Everything I've found indicates 600w was a mineral based gear oil, ISO 680. The following are the equivelents: Mobil: Mobilgear 636 BP: Energol GR-XP 680 Castrol: Castrol Alpha LS680 Shell: Omala 680 Texaco: Meropa 680

I have a set of 5 new Firestone Whitewall 19" tires for a 1930 or 1931 Model A Ford. These tires are wrapped in the original paper from when the were bought around 20 years ago (they are the modern reproduction tires). I am asking $550 for the set of 5 tires, which is more $300 less than what you would pay to buy them from a dealer. They are located near Atlantic City NJ and I would prefer pickup. If they do not sell local then I will consider shipping them. Thanks.

Hummm, You know this has been happening since day one at all the shows, right?? My family was vendor at the major NE shows from the seventies till 2 years ago. We have heard the stories and all shows have had problems. We had a pile of NOS 46 Ford chrome parts taken at Carlisle back in the early 80's. We were in our motor home when it happened. At Atlantic city (when they had a real flea market) we covered our booth with one large tarp with the pricey stuff in the middle. It was a in door restricted night time access show. The pricey stuff was gone the next morning. We have had stuff disappear through the times. It is the nature of people and the ease of theft at shows.

You really have to be sure your suspension is right. Radial tires tend to grip the road surface and follow defects on the road surface. If your car is loose then the change to radials may make the car handle MUCH worse. I learned this first hand with a mustang I had. Came with bias tires. First wet road day and I switched radials. Car was all over the road. By the next week I had new upper and lower control arms and other parts. Mustangs are notorious for having loose upper inner pivots since they were hard to grease. A secondary symptom is a pull when you break. The front end changes geometry when the weight changes. BTW, I am not telling you to not put radials on. I am just warning you that you may find other parts that need service.

Get the JS to be sure you have a real switch. The key end will be larger and clearly move in and out. There are some different styles and no books. A bit of common sense and mechanical aptitude will let you take them apart, replace the wire, rekey and reassemble. The top end needs to be carefully pried apart. You need to move or remove the crimps that hold the back cover in place. From there you can take apart the switch. I believe you can access the plunger that latches the switch. You can then slide the lock unit out. The dist end comes apart with a dremel and prying. You need to clear the bent over tabs holding in the centering disk. You are likely to find the wire bad where it would bend just before the dist. In any event you want a modern insulated wire rated for some heat and abrasion resistance. I have some aircraft fiberglass insulated wire I use cause I lucked onto it. Make everything work and put it back together. Keep in mind all the take apart points are hidden from view when in the car. So they do not have to be perfect. If you do not understand how a lock works or how to re-key. Do a google search. There are many tutorials on locksmithing. None of this is very hard to do. I did my first pop out back when I was a teenager.

On Ebay there is this cabriolet top (not mine) and it is listed as Model A cabriolet. Now I am very familiar with Model A cabriolet parts and I know these are not Model A Ford, or Ford for that matter. The reason I ask is that I have a pair of landau irons like the ones in the photo and would like to know what they fit. I bought them early on in looking for Model A Ford slant slant window cabriolet parts thinking they were for my car, I know better now. Thanks, Kevin Unknown Cabriolet Top Parts

First off- How are you sure you have a fuel problem??? Very often the problem goes away with fixing the electrical system. If it is really the fuel system consider this. I would be more likely to replace the parts of the fuel system with new known parts. We had a 39 Ford that experienced a verified vapor lock. It was a 4th of july parade and we lost fuel to the carb. My father had put in a modern fuel filter between the pump and carb that compounded the problem. The problem had to do with the fuel pump not being able to pump through the expanded air space in the filter. The old rubber was not sealing well in the fuel pump. A new set of rubber and we never had the problem again. Look at what you have and were there is opportunity for a bubble to occur. Put modern new rubbers kits in where there are seals and diaphragms. If you have old rubber than the pump may not be able to pump through the problem. The little leak back at the inlet or outlet seal will not allow the pump to move enough fuel. Unless you have a gravity fuel system. Then you need to fix the clog or the electrical problem.

Rust is probably piled up at the valve. Blow back into the tank. This will clear the pile and then let the fuel drain out. Take off the valve and put a ball valve in. Put something you feel safe with in the tank and slosh. Drain rapidly, strain out junk and repeat. Put short piece of pipe in valve (usually a 1/4" copper fits). This will prevent the rust from falling into and clogging the valve, but will allow it to flow down into the filter. Be sure the original (no do not use any modern filters!) filter screens are in good shape on both the firewall and the carb. These filters will prevent most all the crude from getting to the carb. Remember, the original systems were designed to work with dirt and crud!!! Drive a lot! You should catch a lot of crud at first. Then you will notice the crud catching rate dropping off. Once the tank has self cleaned pull the pipe off the valve so you can use all the gas in the tank.

The columbia uses a standard Ford ring and pinion. Often a higher ratio is used like 4.11:1. It uses a planetary gear overdrive to do something like a 30% overdrive (not sure what the % is). I am pretty sure you use the same oil as a regular rear. BTW, the oil that is correct for the rear is still available in 5 gal buckets. A lot of the oil you can buy is just 90 wt with STP and that is not correct. You can get the correct answers from these guys: Columbia parts and info

Well the car is a slant window town sedan made in 1931. Ford was required to move the fuel shut off from inside the passenger compartment to the engine compartment to comply with some states laws. This made a change in the fire wall where it got a tear drop indent (known as the indented firewall). This was phased in during the 1931 production. This change made it such that Ford had to relocate the filter from the fire wall to the side of the carb. It is called a side bowl carb and tends to command a much better price than the regular carb. The change over was fairly early with it appearing before the introduction of the slant window cabriolet and the A400. There are some interesting variations that occurred. There were some regular firewalls that were restamped to be indented. Also some of the cabriolets and A400, which should have all had indented firewalls, were made with straight firewalls. That should be way more information then you ever wanted. For the record, I learned about this because I have a flat firewall slant window cabriolet. I did not believe it when I first saw it and had to look close at the welds.

A whole engine that is used and unknown inside is a crap shoot and priced accordingly. Once you get it apart you never know what you might find. At a minimum you will want to open the top and bottom end pull the caps, measure the cylinders and see what might be good. Personally I try to not spend much for a whole engine. Last one I bought was used as a pump and looked clean so I took a chance at $50. It needs a total rebuild, but it was not wore out and has never been bored. Depending on what is attached to the engine and how lucky a guy feels you may get up to $150 for a together engine. BTW, I only have 20 or 30 engines so I am not interested. The last 3 were given to me, 2 of them were just put in my drive way. Hope that helps some. Good luck.

I love these questions. First off, If you have $10,000 and I came to you and told you I have a great investment give me your money!! You would either kick me out the door or what to do a lot of research. Well here is a case where you need to do some research. It could be a copy done in 1950 or built up of 6 different cars. A decent complete woody with correct original parts and original good wood is worth every penny of $10,000 in an unrestored state. You need to learn how to identify the parts. This means spending some money on books and getting on the correct internet forum. For starters you will want the model A judging standards and I believe there is a woody book too. You will need to make a phone call to a guy that goes by the name swampy on fordbarn.com. With the upcoming economy you will need to take a good hard look at your wallet and what is happening to the antique car values (yes they will be dropping like a rock). If you feel you can not deal with the car please tell others about it. Woodys take a knowledgeable person to proper preserve them. Sitting in a barn is not too kind to the wood.

The early 28's are not really rare or more valuable unless they are particularly low numbers. The real value is in the body type and quality of restoration. You can already guess the guy probably did not do a very good job on correctness so you should next question the rest of the work. Take the car for a drive. An original, off the factory line, model A will run 55+ mph. Ford told the dealers to take the customer out and show them the car run 60 mph. So take the car for a drive. If it does not have shocks do not try to take it over 35 MPH on a bumpy road. You should be able to have a conversation at a normal level of speaking. You should be able to press on the brakes and know you are going to stop. At slower speeds all 4 wheels should lock up and the car stop in a straight line. A car properly restored to factory original (no modern gadgets required) will run over 60 MPH and stop with no problem. It will be comfortable to drive, you will not feel like you are pushing it. Once you establish what has not been restored back to original then you can figure out what it is going to cost you to make the car safe and reliable to drive. Then look at the final cost of buying a car ready to go and back off the value from there. You should have bought the Model A Judging Standards/ restoration Handbook by now and called up Bratton's, Snyders, and a few other houses for their catalogs. You will get a much larger A audience to your questions of you ask on fordbarn or ahooga.

Please do not take this the wrong way, but I have around the antique cars for many years and have done the math. If you are a poor then you are in the wrong hobby. You can expect to spend at least $8000 to get that car decent and safe to drive. More realistically you should expect to have closer to $20,000 into a restoration. The 36 is not a cheap year as it is desirable and tougher to find parts. You should spend some time with your wallet and a catalog to figure out if you can afford the car. The biggest mistake people make is assuming they can restore a car on the cheap. Usually the cars are not mechanically safe to drive and they get a less the good paint and interior. This then give the cars a bad name cause they putt putt along the highway when they should be running highway speeds. I also suggest you take time to learn about the cars systems. You are making a mistake in thinking hydraulic brakes are better or safer then the original 36 brakes. Actually, 36 was probably the best year for the brakes as they incorporate all the latest advances and do not use cables (in 37 cables came out are were a real problem). Of course the big problem with mechanical brakes today is the people that either do not have the money or are too cheap to properly restore the brakes back to original. They just slap in some old worn parts and find the brakes do not function well. In the end, your best move is to take all the money you would spend on this car and start putting in a special savings account. When you get to enough money to by a decent older restoration you will have probably saved yourself $5000 to $10,000 over buying and restoring the car you are looking at. The odds are VERY high that you will buy this car and never get near done before you run out of time and money. I have seen too many people do exactly what you want to do. Please do not just take my word for it. You can do the math yourself. It may not be the answer you want, but it is reality.

He needs restoration work done. He needs to add what level he is looking for, cheap and together to fine point Model A club. Body shops that do insurance work generally do not do restoration work. If they do, they do not do it well. He also has to be careful as there are many stories about guys waiting excessive times for the work to get done. Plus they pay huge amounts of money to have the work done. Often it is cheaper and just as good quality to buy the tools and do it yourself. Talk to local guys that do their own restoration work. Contact the guy who runs this website. He does restoration work and may be able to help. Autobody store in NJ There is also Hibernia restorations in NJ. Hibernia

I was going through my piles and found a very good (like new) condition brass with brown printing New Hope Automobile Show dash plaque dated August 17-18 1963. Included is a newspaper clipping about the show. Also including a less than perfect 1979 New Hope dash plaque. I hate doing this, but I really do not know what price to put on this so I am open to offers. Thanks, Kevin 68c@comcast.net

As stated they have no front and back, but they do need to be check for straightness. I have a web page showing some home made tools I made up. You can do and eyeball check on the center lines of all 4 holes, but you need a straight edge long enough. Straightening the Early Ford Front Axles There is a forum where you will find a higher density of Model A folks: Fordbarn Do not forget that your radius wishbone ball must be round and fit tight. If you have the rubber ball you should go back to original. A wishbone ball fix can be as easy as some washers beat to fit the round shape.

In 1931 Griggsby Grunow made a universal radio that just happened to be sized to fit the A. The Model 110 had a control head that attached to the steering column, speaker box, and two water tight boxes that you cut holes in the floors to install. One box held the radio and the other the batteries. The was a comment from a Ford exec that Ford considered offering a radio for 1931, but never did. For 1932 Ford offered a radio from the factory. It was the Grigsby Grunow model 111. It had a similar arrangement for the boxes, but used a motor generator to make the high voltages. One could be led to believe that the Grigsby Grunow model 110 would have been the factory Model A radio for 1931. In any event, the GG 110 would be a legitimate accessory for any 1931 model year car. I have two of the GG 110 radios that I stumbled upon by accident. I am likely to use the control head to run some type of modern radio.

I have a set of 5 new Firestone White Wall tires still wrapped in paper. They are the 5x19" for the 1930/ 31 Model A. They are currently selling for $150 from Coker and I understand the price is jumping up in 2 months. I am asking $130 ea for the set of 5 ($650 for the set). The catch, pick up only in Northfield, NJ. Thanks 68c@comcast.net