Need help identifying center top bow brackets, early Model T Ford?

[Phaeton]

These look to me to be center top bow support brackets for touring car.  However I have not seen a set that look like these.  The part number appears to be T5145 B with a large B stamped below in the metal.  Any help is appreciated.   

[wayne sheldon]

Yes, they look like they are probably front seat touring car brackets for a "two-man" top of a style used from about 1913 through model year 1922 (in the USA, Canadian production switched to a one-man top in 1920).

Almost certainly they were from a model T Ford, however, it is possible to have been from some other car.

Part of the problem is that through most of those years, bodies were supplied by several outside body building companies. Ford Factory did not begin building bodies inhouse until 1917, and even then only made a few of them. Legend has it that Ford built everything "inhouse". But that simply is not true. Model Ts of the 1920s take an expert to tell some of the bodies inhouse from outsourced. The 1924 Coupe I used to have had a Fischer body on it.

By 1920, Ford was building about half of all model T bodies. (I am not that much of an expert!) In earlier years, there were about five different companies suppling most of the bodies for standard Ford production. Bodies were ordered in batches. So even within a single body builder, bits and pieces of bodies often varied from one batch to the next. That particular part, likely has nearly a dozen variations between different suppliers and different years or batches. Some variations will be minor, maybe less than an inch of length, or minor twist in the lower end. Other variations may be more extreme. The lower end of that bracket attaches by bolts in some bodies, and rivets in others (that one looks like it was rivets?). Some attached to metal in the seat, others attached to wood. Still a few angled way forward and twisted to attach to the inside doorpost!

Restorers often have to modify whatever they can find to fit whatever they have. I was lucky. My 1915 runabout (slightly different than the touring car bracket) had both of its original brackets still in place in the body when I got it!