Robert/Texas
Well-known member
I'm 91 and I still have my '28 roadster. I haven't worked on it for a while, but I take it for a drive every few months or so. My biggest problem is getting in and out of the thing.
How old is too old to work on Model A's???
- Thread starter Marshall V. Daut
- Start date
Keith True
Well-known member
My days of driving my A's are probably coming to an end anyway.For many years,maybe even thirty or so,I have had to drive with my left arm out the window.I cannot drive with my arm tucked in tight to me.The A is too tight.My arms do not hang straight,they look more like Magilla Gorilla walking around.I can't get my hands close enough together behind me to use one set of handcuffs.I need two.I'm not big,it's just that my shoulder sockets seem to have grown to fit the kind of work I've done all my life.
Osage Orange
Senior Member
I'm 77, been bedridden with some sort of nasty stuff for about two weeks now and the antibiotic I'm on has yet to win the day. Before this latest round I had taken out the transmission on my '29AA and sent it to be rebuilt. Now I'm waiting to get it back but wondering if I'll have the strength, stamina and common sense to re-install it. After reading this string, I've told myself to quit whining, eat my wheaties and don't be in a rush. Things will fall into place.
Ray in La Mesa
Well-known member
As our bodies age we figure out how to do stuff in different ways. It may take a bit longer but there is always another way to do it. Even if it involves the grand kids.
And what exactly are you doing with hand cuffs on??
German guy
Senior Member
Hmmmmm...I sort of assumed that ALL OF US are "OLD"! Can we get a show of hands from the under 70 crowd?
I stopped using my hand crank after adding a 6:1 head...but...on the up side...there always seems to be a group of 30 years olds around oggling the car and enthusiastically offering a push start. They even politely ask what part of the car they should touch to push it.
Where was this car when I was 30? There seems to be an endless supply of pretty 25-35 year old women asking if I will allow them to take selfies in front of the car. BUT....then they start with the questions about whether it has power steering and brakes......and what is that giant chromed stick in the middle of the floor....and I am cruelly reminded that we are not living in the same century.
I stopped using my hand crank after adding a 6:1 head...but...on the up side...there always seems to be a group of 30 years olds around oggling the car and enthusiastically offering a push start. They even politely ask what part of the car they should touch to push it.
Where was this car when I was 30? There seems to be an endless supply of pretty 25-35 year old women asking if I will allow them to take selfies in front of the car. BUT....then they start with the questions about whether it has power steering and brakes......and what is that giant chromed stick in the middle of the floor....and I am cruelly reminded that we are not living in the same century.
Marshall V. Daut
Well-known member
German guy - Just wait until one of those young vixens asks if you bought your Model A when it was new!!! THEN you'll really feel your age, no matter what it is...
Marshall
Marshall
JayJay
Well-known member
Our club went to a senior living center last weekend. One of the residents came up to me and asked what year my car was. I told her it was made in 1931. She proudly told me she was born in 1932, so I told her she was just a kid compared to my car. She got a kick out of that.
One of my wife’s and my friends just passed on earlier this year. She was born in 1927 and loved going for rides in our Model As.
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Keith True
Well-known member
Both my pickup and my mother in law were produced in June of 1930.A couple of years ago she moved in here to pass her last few days under hospice care.Thought she could last two days,even up to two weeks at the outside.Hospice gave up on her,they were doing their part but she wasn't doing hers.Now she's in an assisted living home,and my pickup is still in the cellar in the middle of a heart transplant.
Fullraceflathead
Well-known member
I'm 62 years old although I feel older as I have a bad lower back And a hiatal hernia But the fact that I can still get in and out of my 28 open cab pickup tells me I'm not dead yet!!!
Marshall V. Daut
Well-known member
Most of the readers here are old enough to have known people who DID buy a new Model A. If they owned a Model A in the 1950's and 1960's, they were probably approached by such people and told stories about buying their car new off the showroom floor and about their experiences with their Model A's. I got my first Model A in 1966, an early 1931 Coupe. In the three years I owned it, a dozen or so "old geezers" (or, so they seemed to me then!) must have told me about their new Model A's. I never tired of hearing these stories. I wonder when the last new Model A buyer passed from the scene?
Along these lines, one day as a teenager I was doing something (probably detrimental) to my coupe in our driveway. My father and I had just bought it the day before, so it was a new addition to the usual neighborhood vehicles. "Old Man Hendricks" took his daily s-l-o-w constitutionals around our neighborhood block, absent-mindedly passing through the alley by our driveway. In all the years I had been growing up in that house, he never said word-one to me, even if we happened to pass each other in the alley. On this day, however, as he walked by the Model A and me - he stopped dead in his tracks. He approached "us" and said: "That's a 1931 Model Standard Coupe." He didn't ASK; he TOLD me it was a 1931 Standard Coupe. He didn't even greet me. Just: "That's a 1931 Standard Coupe." I was in a state of shock that he even spoke to me for the first time, even more so that he convincingly identified my car, although he most likely didn't know what day of the week it was. He told me that as a young man, he used to sell new Model A's at the local Ford dealership downtown. He had once even sold a Deluxe Phaeton, which was a rare thing in freezing southeastern Iowa. He remembered that particular sale all these years later. Being a brand-new ignorant Model A owner, I didn't have a clue what a Deluxe Phaeton was. My Model A vocabulary up 'til then consisted of two words: Coupe and Sedan. The short sentence spoken by "Old Man Hendricks" was the only thing he ever said to me. Things went back to normal after that = no communication between us ever again. He had spoken his piece and moved on his way. His own special way.
Anyway, I recently did some mental mathematics and decided if he was a young salesman during the Model A era, he was probably born around the turn of the century, perhaps a year or two earlier. If that's the case, in 1966 when this momentous occasion took place, he would have been in his late 60's. What that means is, I am about a decade older NOW than "Old Man Hendricks" was THEN! Yikes!!! And we all considered him an ancient fossil long overdue for the grave. My, how our perspectives change as we age! I guess I am now the neighborhood old fossil with those "old cars" in the garage. But at least when I take walks, I go farther than around the block, sometimes 10 miles per constitutional! Hmmm...Maybe I'm NOT too old to keep working on antique cars after all! Just maybe.
Marshall
Along these lines, one day as a teenager I was doing something (probably detrimental) to my coupe in our driveway. My father and I had just bought it the day before, so it was a new addition to the usual neighborhood vehicles. "Old Man Hendricks" took his daily s-l-o-w constitutionals around our neighborhood block, absent-mindedly passing through the alley by our driveway. In all the years I had been growing up in that house, he never said word-one to me, even if we happened to pass each other in the alley. On this day, however, as he walked by the Model A and me - he stopped dead in his tracks. He approached "us" and said: "That's a 1931 Model Standard Coupe." He didn't ASK; he TOLD me it was a 1931 Standard Coupe. He didn't even greet me. Just: "That's a 1931 Standard Coupe." I was in a state of shock that he even spoke to me for the first time, even more so that he convincingly identified my car, although he most likely didn't know what day of the week it was. He told me that as a young man, he used to sell new Model A's at the local Ford dealership downtown. He had once even sold a Deluxe Phaeton, which was a rare thing in freezing southeastern Iowa. He remembered that particular sale all these years later. Being a brand-new ignorant Model A owner, I didn't have a clue what a Deluxe Phaeton was. My Model A vocabulary up 'til then consisted of two words: Coupe and Sedan. The short sentence spoken by "Old Man Hendricks" was the only thing he ever said to me. Things went back to normal after that = no communication between us ever again. He had spoken his piece and moved on his way. His own special way.
Anyway, I recently did some mental mathematics and decided if he was a young salesman during the Model A era, he was probably born around the turn of the century, perhaps a year or two earlier. If that's the case, in 1966 when this momentous occasion took place, he would have been in his late 60's. What that means is, I am about a decade older NOW than "Old Man Hendricks" was THEN! Yikes!!! And we all considered him an ancient fossil long overdue for the grave. My, how our perspectives change as we age! I guess I am now the neighborhood old fossil with those "old cars" in the garage. But at least when I take walks, I go farther than around the block, sometimes 10 miles per constitutional! Hmmm...Maybe I'm NOT too old to keep working on antique cars after all! Just maybe.
Marshall
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Marshall,
My Father graduated high school in 1930, in the middle of the Model A era.
I too bought my first Model A, a 1930 Coupe in 1966, and had it 'finished' by 1968. My Father was impressed not only did I take it apart but also re-assembled it !
His comment about my first restoration, "They never looked that good new".
A friend's father bought a Roadster new but after a year of fumbling around with side curtains in the rain, he traded it in on a Coupe.
Friends who are brass car collectors let me use their shop as they are impressed with my detail efforts. They do say that when I'd done, "it's still just a Ford'.
My Father graduated high school in 1930, in the middle of the Model A era.
I too bought my first Model A, a 1930 Coupe in 1966, and had it 'finished' by 1968. My Father was impressed not only did I take it apart but also re-assembled it !
His comment about my first restoration, "They never looked that good new".
A friend's father bought a Roadster new but after a year of fumbling around with side curtains in the rain, he traded it in on a Coupe.
Friends who are brass car collectors let me use their shop as they are impressed with my detail efforts. They do say that when I'd done, "it's still just a Ford'.
Keith True
Well-known member
My grandfather bought a new 31 touring car.You did NOT use the word,phaeton to him.A filling station/repair shop a few hundred feet from his house sold some new Fords.They would buy three at a time,and they would get unloaded from the railcar a few hundred feet in the other direction.That siding was for the sawmill,and the forklift operator was paid per thousand board feet to load the cars,he didn't like unloading three cars for free.They were pretty much picked up by the running boards.My grandfathers friend bought a late 31 steeltop pickup new at the same time.About a year after that it got rear ended,and ruined the bed.A new bed was out of the question then,and they did find a like new narrow bed,so they put that on.While it looks original,the old boy pointed the curved line across the back of the cab where the wide bed had been pushed into it.His grandkids still have the truck today.
Marshall V. Daut
Well-known member
Keith -
Your grandfather must have been steeped in previous Model T experiences that he carried forward into the Model A era because "Touring" was what the four-passenger, front and back seat, Model T open body style was called for decades, never "Phaeton". When the Model A's came out, the official nomenclature for this body style became "Phaeton" and is referred to as such even in the 1927 advertising brochures and remained so for years afterwards, even into the early V-8 era. I'm sure, however, that people like Grandpa continued calling this Model A body style "Touring" and no one batted an eyelash. They knew what he meant. They probably called it that, too. Even today, you can call a Model A Phaeton a "Touring" and people will know what you mean. It's just a matter of semantics. It all comes out the same in the end,
But for Heaven's sake, Folks, please don't pronounce "Phaeton" as "Fee-ton", as a good friend of mine insists on doing because he knows it drives me crazy. It's a three-syllable word: "fay-eh-ton". Stay on my good side and pronounce this word properly.
Marshall,
1928 FEE-ton, 1931 Standard FEE-ton and 1931 Deluxe FEE-ton
Your grandfather must have been steeped in previous Model T experiences that he carried forward into the Model A era because "Touring" was what the four-passenger, front and back seat, Model T open body style was called for decades, never "Phaeton". When the Model A's came out, the official nomenclature for this body style became "Phaeton" and is referred to as such even in the 1927 advertising brochures and remained so for years afterwards, even into the early V-8 era. I'm sure, however, that people like Grandpa continued calling this Model A body style "Touring" and no one batted an eyelash. They knew what he meant. They probably called it that, too. Even today, you can call a Model A Phaeton a "Touring" and people will know what you mean. It's just a matter of semantics. It all comes out the same in the end,
But for Heaven's sake, Folks, please don't pronounce "Phaeton" as "Fee-ton", as a good friend of mine insists on doing because he knows it drives me crazy. It's a three-syllable word: "fay-eh-ton". Stay on my good side and pronounce this word properly.
Marshall,
1928 FEE-ton, 1931 Standard FEE-ton and 1931 Deluxe FEE-ton
Keith True
Well-known member
While I don't know if it is truly a French word or not,he wouldn't use that fancy French word.It wasn't the French part,it was the fancy part.Pontiac sold a Lee-Manz,and you can figure out how he pronounced the Grand Prix.He could twist up Mercury Marqui,and anything that said,Brougm.I don't even know how to spell those.He was really creative with Peugeot,and Citroen.I have a 28 Phaeton,and for years most people seemed to know what a Phaeton was,but in the last few years I have had to call it a touring car.
Marshall V. Daut
Well-known member
Good stuff, Keith. Thanks for sharing.
M.
M.
GreatLakes28
Junior Member
AGE!!!!! Has nothing to do with rebuilding, repair or driving a Model A....I just turned 78 and don't plan to stop working on my car anytime soon. And....I'm looking to buy another one, maybe a truck. And and and.....last year we drove 1,250 miles around Lake Michigan towing trailers with our camping gear. Age is just a number....KEEP WORKING ON YOUR CAR! If you plan on going to the Old Car Festival at Greenfield Village this September....I'll be there, '28 Tudor ...Dawn Grey....stop by!!!