Recent content by Ian Curtis

I bought an explosion/explosive whistle on eBay and had a little trouble tracking down the bits to install it on my truck, so I thought I’d make a post here for the next person to find when they google it. I bought a Buell Explosion Whistle on eBay for around $100. I found a spark plug adapter...

Does anyone know/have measured the height of the CG of their Model A? Google doesn't seem to know. I found a thread from a couple years ago where some had measured the fore/aft location which agreed pretty well with rules of thumb, but not the height. I did find a Model T thread which had a...

My horn sounds fine when the engine is running, but sounds like a dying cow if the engine is off. It's loud, but not definitely not the right sound. Is this normal? I feel like I've heard other Model A horns with the engine off make a much more normal sound. I get 7.2ish volts on the voltmeter...

No, the head is cracked between 2 & 3. This was covered in a healthy layer of carbon when I pulled the head so I assume this happened sometime in the distant past. Okay, thanks! Does the pitting you get from detonation look different than this corrosion pitting? Or does it rarely get that far...

I pulled the head looking for the source of a large cloud of steam on my '29 pickup. I found a crack in the head, so nice to have some resolution there. But that's not what I'm asking about. While the head was off I noticed lots of pitting in the combustion chamber of #4. There is some pitting...

Well, all I can see is the deck, where I did not see anything. What I was theorizing (besides me being blind and not seeing a crack in the deck) is is there a potential crack between the water jacket and where the exhaust manifold mounts? That would be the only thing I could think I wouldn't be...

My Pickup got a bad case of the magic white smoke, which I take to mean I have coolant burning somewhere. I have never had the head off, so I figured this would be a good excuse to do that. Got it off, the gasket wasn't obviously blown and I could not see any cracks in the block or the head...

After a couple of month break, reassembled everything today (new spindle arms, new pitman arm) and took a short drive. Drove over some road surfaces that used to excite the death wobble, and no death wobble!

Yeah, I was wondering that too. Having experienced the death wobble clearly there is a bunch of play in the front end, but it isn’t obvious to me how a couple tenths in a few pivot points results in so much motion at the wheels! I’m guessing the play at the radius rods ends up being a big player...

@BrianH, yep looks like there is a cotter pin in that picture, I promise I removed it though before I attempted to remove the nut. @SpringerPete, good call on the wishbone. Looking at the Les Andrews book and reading on the fordbarn sounds like that is probably most of the deathwobble problem...

After putting up with some low speed front end wobble for several years, I figured it was time to do something about it. There was no detectable side to side motion on the wheels before I pulled everything apart, and the kingpins don't have any detectable wear or grooves. I've pulled apart...

I ended up buying an original switch from Bert's in Colorado. The top half of the new switch mates up just fine with the bottom half of the existing switch, and my headlights work again! Very important when it drizzles 9 out of 12 months of the year. I have also gotten very good at assembling...

Recently, my headlights stop working, so I disassembled the switch. It appears that the rotating bit in the top half of the switch has broken, so it's just floating in the switch casing. As such, there is no pressure holding the copper top half it against the copper in the bottom half, so it...

This is great! We've driven our Model A over mile high mountain passes, but you are waaay braver driving yours into NYC traffic. Did that once in a modern car, not for me. Best of luck! Love your blog by the way, stumbled onto it as a new Model A owner in 2014 and learned a lot.

I just don't get paying money to park in an otherwise free spot. We put 1000+ miles on the A per year (chump change compared to some of you!), and I'm happy to let anyone who asks in a parking lot sit in the seat and press the buttons, look at the engine, etc. We're our own rolling car show...