W_Higgins

Usually only trucks had a spare on the running board. It's mostly a hand brake issue. On a centerdoor that's not a problem, as you enter behind the front seat. Other sedans (Fordor and Tudor) and coupes did have a drivers door, but they're not very practical. Omitting the drivers door on open cars might just be an economy thing, too, since it was kind of a pointless feature. A little bit of trivia -- Ford didn't call them "centerdoors", just "sedans". As standard production Model T's go, centerdoors are a pretty rare animal.

Neat. I like centerdoors -- have photos of the one my mothers family bought new. Ask the guy if his other two cars were sedans. I'll bet he's screwing up the terminology for open cars that lack a drivers door.

In the "centerdoor" section of Bruce McCalley's Model T Ford: The Car That Changed the World it looks like all year ranges have a single door in the center on each side, as with the red car above.

I think that photo is a good bit newer than the automobile pictured. That's an awfully nice road for the time period, and if you look at the close-ups a lot of that white paint is chipping off, particularly around the valve stem cover on the front wheel (and that wheel in general looks pretty beat). It's not likely that a car like that would have been in Japan so soon after the war if it were imported, but over here it seems to have been a common thing for people to take good solid unrestored cars and do things like slather a poorly prepped coat of white paint on them and put them back on the road in the early days of the hobby. I'm going to throw out there that this car might originally have been sold there, but that it was refurbed in the years leading up to the war. Maybe this is a photo from the 1920's or '30's after good roads were developed.

Yep, what Brain said. E10 is what you get if you buy ethanol. All the fuss right now is the talk of them coming out with E15. The E10 we have now is plenty enough to do damage on non-ethanol compatible pump and carb innards. Thanks for the offer of help with the column. I'm probably a good way from digging into that, but will keep that in mind when I do. Do you know of any common failure item in those that causes what mine is doing?

Ah, that makes sense -- explains the SS pieces, too. The link works now. Technically, I think convertible doors are compatible to sedans, but not quite the other way around. They'll fit, but I think convertible doors have an extra dovetail in the doorjamb that add a structural element, or some such. If you fit sedan doors to a convertible you have to find a way to add that. Us Walt-named Lincoln owners have to stick together.

How is this possible? Lincoln convertibles at this time only had two doors and the closed cars didn't have back doors that were rear hinging. In fact, I think all closed cars (with exception to coupes) had fixed window frames around the glass. Your Photobucket link just goes to their homepage.

Hi Dave. In your case I would start with the pump and go from there. All the overly defensive greenie-weenies will jump in and say, "ethanol has been around for years, blah blah blah", but there are still non-ethanol compatible pump and carb kits floating around out there. Five years ago, when ethanol was just becoming common here, I had a carb rebuilt by a very reputable carb shop. A couple of months later the owner complained about the performance. While test driving I mashed the pedal to the floor and it didn't come back up. After a hairy few seconds and reaching down to pull it back up, I got it back to the shop, pulled it apart, and found the accelerator pump plunger had swollen-up, yanked off, and bound in the pump well. Needless to say, they promptly sent me a free ethanol compatible replacement. Now I've got a '51 Ford in the shop that I bought a rebuilt pump for a couple of years ago and after a few months it started doing exactly what your car is doing. The rebuilt pump came from Mexico, so they're either using junk or it's old inventory that was on a shelf somewhere. Contact these people: Fuel Pump Rebuilding Kits - Then And Now Automotive Either buy a kit or just let them do the rebuild for you. They're very reasonable. That's a good place to start. If that doesn't do it, at least you narrowed it down and can go on confidently that the pump won't be an issue for a long time once the problem is fixed. A pin hole or other very small leak on the suction side can cause the problem you're having, but it's rare that it doesn't show liquid fuel on the floor once the car is running. Even if your whole line runs dry, a properly functioning pump will suck fuel up from the tank in pretty short order. No plans to sell the Toro. It was the last car my grandparents bought new. It's not something I would go out and buy on my own, but I have memories of a couple of trips in it, and such. It's pretty solid and low mileage. Needs a top and paint job again. Interior is pretty decent. It was parked several years ago because occasionally it would shoot a spark out the signal lever hole and I never got motivated to tear into the tilt-and-telescope column. Someday. It's on the list.

Sounds more like it could be a weak check in the pump. Either way, when's the last time it was serviced? If the pump's your problem, I'd recommend rebuilding it rather than an electric pump. Aftermarket electric pumps aren't necessarily reliable, and rebuilding your mechanical pump is relatively cheap and will restore proper function without having to deal with all the new problems an electric pump can bring. I have a '67 Toronado, by the way. Haven't had a chance to do much of anything to it, but it's interesting to see another Toro owner out there.

Yeah man, but I'm still here to talk about it. 99.5% of that was around town. When I did drive on the freeway, it wasn't exceeding the limits of the car and included driving very defensively. Just watch out-out there. It's just like with motorcycles. Most of the time the people around you don't realize what kind of negative effect their (often) unnecessary actions can have (like cutting in front of you and slamming on their brakes). Things can start to close in really fast when things go wrong.

Well, you're really pushing the limits of your car. I applaud you for using it as much as you do. I drove my Model A as my sole daily driver for two years putting 20,000 miles on it and did a little freeway driving, but only during certain times of the day. There were certain bridges for which there was just no other practical option. It can be done, but you have to pick your battles wisely. I hope you don't have a plate glass windshield in that thing because someday some dope smoking moron is going to think he sees a giant talking banana standing in the middle of the freeway, slam on his 4-wheel antilock disc brakes with tires that have three times the tread contact you do, and the rule of two objects not being able to occupy the same space at the same time is going to be proven.

This is not surprising. I'm sure they have some good people working at the Dept. of Revenue, but I've yet to encounter them. They do, however, have some genuine doomkophs in their ranks. A couple of times now I have had some very minor problems with them (that they invented) that became a major undertaking to correct. When you do correct them with hard proof, you'll hear nothing back. No follow-up, no explanation, no nothing. They just drop off the map. When we screw up there are penalties and interest. When they screw up there's not so much as an apology -- just lots of lost hours fixing a problem that never was. Moral of the story -- have in writing, one way or another, proof of the permission they give you with someones name attached.

There just weren't many roads back when your car was built that would allow you to do what you want to do now, so manufacturers didn't build them to suit anymore than that purpose. You might be able to put in a modern core and get the temperature down, but then you run into a whole host of other problems -- you'll need bigger brakes, bigger tires, engine modifications that can take the sustained higher speeds, and the task of reengineering and rebuilding will never stop. Some people are into that. Most have a bottomless pit of cash to fund the experiment. If you don't want to get killed on the freeway, or at the very least get tickets for impeding the flow of traffic, you just have to choose your battles by picking roads that work. Enjoying the car for the purpose it was designed to fill is just part of the experience. Everybody else builds cars that somewhat look like what we drive and then call them "street rods".

I'm only replying to this because it might be relevant to the o.p.'s problem: Aren't you the guy that knocked out a main tooling down the freeway? If you're pushing your car at those speeds and it takes a 100 degree day for it to overheat, there's nothing wrong with your car. They were never designed to be run that hard beyond intermittent use, if even that. Buying a car 20 years newer is the answer to your problem.

A restrictive thermostat can cause it, too. Some are more restrictive than others. Your engine is still tight. Under what driving conditions does it overheat other than just being hot out? Have you done a flow test?

Have you done the flow test? If so and it passed, just take out the thermostat for kicks to see what effect it has on it. I've seen some of these modern ones that are pretty restrictive, but they're built for a different application as the modern cars they're for have higher flow pumps and larger reserve capacity with more efficient radiators. Also, check the impeller on your pump. The vanes could be deteriorated or just plain inefficient. There are "improved" pumps for early V-8 Fords on the market (notorious overheaters) and you'd be amazed at the difference in design from them compared to originals. It's a wonder they pumped any water at all. A combination of things could be contributing to the problem.

That's doesn't reduce pressure, though, that reduces flow. That only works under the condition where you reduce flow to the point it is less than that which the carburetor can take, but still enough to operate, so the float is open. If flow is greater than that, the float closes, and the pump goes to bypass, pressure will be just as high regardless of whether that washer is in there or not. That would be when going slow, sitting at idle, or the engine not running. To achieve that it is basically not self-regulating anymore, it's just always having the float open, which isn't possible under all circumstances. Vapor lock is a more rare condition than it gets credit for, particularly with a gravity system. Do you live in the mountains? When you talk about climbing a long grade and having it die, you do know that you have to back off the throttle once in awhile so manifold vacuum will rise, let the vacuum can take a slurp to replenish itself, and continue on?

In that case, what temp range is it? If it's just a standard inline thermostat like used in modern cars (not a thermostatic shutter), that's a "tunable" component.

I'm not trying to be an idiot here, but is it supposed to have a thermostat? Lots of cars at the time still didn't. Some people add them to their Model A's, but for whatever reason I never could make mine work with one. On hot days I'd overheat. After a summer of fighting with it, I finally removed it and never had another problem in 20,000 miles, much of that 90+ degree summer days in the south. Also, did you do a flow test on your radiator? You can only clean it to a certain extent in place. Flow test would be taking off the lower hose, holding your hand over it, filling to the top, removing your hand, and it should dump its entire contents in about three seconds if it's clear.

Yup. I see.

Cool. Did you update it?

I'm pretty sure they're wood. The whole reason I thought to go find the photo was I remember the seller telling me they were wood when I was staring at the car thinking they were steel. When I kneeled down for a closer look you could see it through the chips and crazed paint. If you zoom way in on that sidemount shot look at the profile of the spoke just beyond the pinstripe. It comes to a sharp point. When they started making steel wheels in the likeness of heavy artillery wheels they rounded that part of the spoke so there wouldn't be a stress riser and because it probably made them easier to manufacture.

James is right. Every time I've had someone come in with a vacuum tank car altered, it's always been easier to restore proper function than to make work something that just wasn't meant to be. One time there was a '27 Chevy with an electric pump crammed inside the vacuum can -- kinked lines, poor electrical connections, with upholstery foam stuffed all around it -- if that had leaked and made a spark, that was a bomb waiting to go off. Just recently there was a '27 Chevy truck where the guts were taken out of the can and an electric pump added underneath. I was baffled by the long hose added to the can vent that emptied below the engine. Turns out they were using the pump to fill the can and toggling it manually while driving. Scary. I've discarded so many failed electric pumps and have yet to see an aftermarket unit that's at least as reliable as a properly rebuilt mechanical or vacuum pump. My big beef (that's more a concern on mechanical pump cars) is nobody installs a safety switch and if a line fails -- especially if during a fire -- you're sitting there hosing fuel on the fire until you figure out what's going on.

The 1936 Packard V-12 shown below at Hershey in 2010 had wood wheels and it is a pretty nifty unrestored example. H.F. duPont purchased new a Cadillac (I can't remember the exact year, but want to say it was a V-16) and he specified wood wheels at a time well after they were no longer popular. There are letters of his correspondence with GM complaining of wheel problems when the car was still new. A car that big just wasn't meant for wheels like that: In this photo with the sidemount you can just barely see the spokes. I might have more photos saved elsewhere. At the time I took these it was difficult getting decent shots as so many people were swarming around it.

They make a simple keyed switch to fit in the dash of Model A's to replace the more complex "pop-out" set-up. It comes with a larger retaining nut and is more well suited to the purpose than most of what you can find in general aftermarket products. That might be worth looking into. Searching Bratton's online catalog would probably give you a quick answer. There should be an illustration or photo.