24 Hours

[Bruce Lancaster]

On the hip joint...this is a commercial vehicle, not a car, so the hip joint needs to be black-painted carbon steel. Changing it out is going to hurt but really should be done.
On the metal fatigue...everything large on an A has been cycled a probably large but utterly unknowable numer of times! Even on a car built largely from its original parts, many things are exchanged, like connecting rods, and of course a great many A's are built up from parts from MANY cars. Some of your parts might have 100,000 miles on them, others might have served several times that on multiple vehicles and parts exchanges. A single trip is going to be an infinitesimal fraction of the history of almost any major part in the vehicle...anything in there MIGHT have been run to death and ready to break in half next time you back out of the garage, but it seems pretty unlikely. And it no longer has to endure pitted, crowned hardscrabble roads carrying 3 people and 11 hogs...modern life surely looks soft to most Model A's.
24 hours would still be within a reasonable oil change cycle.

Next...pilot relief tube, hole in roof for helicopter delivery of food, building a dry-break refueling connection onto tank for the refueling probe...

 

[msmaron]

Mark, I have several reasons.

1. I am bringing a pickup truckload of parts to Hershey. Afterwards I may need to drive straight through to Bozeman. The pickup truck has under 10,000 miles and it needs to last up tp 160,000 miles or so. Just wondered if it was adviseable, in regards to possible metal fatigue for the truck.

2. When I was a member of the MAFCA club in Milwaukee in the late 60's I thought that a group of guys drove their Model A's to Dallas non stop. It got me to thinking about driving long distances in an "A". I'll be 62 before the end of the year and am thinking about what I might like to do as future challenges.

3. My first two years in college I studied engineering. I made the honor roll in partying but ended up teaching science at various levels. Though I taught Chemistry and Physics for a while it was more on the theoretical side and not as much on the practical side. The Fordbarn is a great mix of experience, expertise and a source of Model A stories. As you can see we are getting answers in all three areas. My question is broad based but I hope to get some answers on metal fatigue. It interests me.

Mark, those are a couple reasons that I asked the questions.

Thanks.

Dean

Better than a couple and thanks for sharing that with us...

 

[2manycars]

In the period just after WW2, my uncle used to drive a model A from east Texas to NYC non stop. (well stop for gas). I think it was harder on my uncle than the car.

 

[modeleh]

In 1964 Ford rented a racetrack for a month and had a fleet of Mercury Comets run a durability test where they were run at speeds in excess of 100 mph, 24hrs/day to rack up 100,000miles. The cars had to carry their own spare parts in a plywood box where the back seat was. Out of 5 cars, I think 4 of them completed the challenge.
On the Model A side of things, you have to consider the engines that were used in stationary applications like compressors and light plants. Some of them would have been run for days at a time.
I think you may be reading too much into things with regards to metallurgic effects. As long as the equipment is operating within normal parameters with regards to cooling and oil pressures, it likely favors being run in constant use, rather than many heating and cooling cycles where the components are expanding and retracting at different rates.

 

[Bruce Lancaster]

A good engine is kind of steady-state; temperatures, pressures, etc. remain the same as it runs for long periods of time. Aside from loss of oil and contamination of oil, which is almost inevitable from combustion products and perhaps enhanced in an A by lack of PCV and thermostat, along with pretty open access without real filtering through filler.