Apropos: Off-shore parts.
For the past two months I have been trying to straighten out a 1930 "Deluxe" (it never was!) Roadster that a local friend recently bought in town. It's an older "messtoration" that has just about every chromed accessory available slapped on it, but was unsafe to drive to the end of the block. 'Never fails - the more chromed goodies on a Model A, the worse the mechanical restoration. (Rainmaker Ron's Town Sedan excepted and maybe a few others dedicated to becoming an accessory-mobile) Just about anything mechanically and electrically that could be screwed up, was screwed up. Whoever did the "restoration" work on this car should be working at Taco Bell instead of with tools. Obviously, looks were more important to the former owner than building a safe Model A.
It's not just the unbelievably stupid and lazy things he did (or didn't do at all) that has complicated this project; this car is LOADED with crap and incorrect parts that must have come from Argentina and Taiwan in the 1970's and 1980's. Virtually nothing worked or fit the way it is supposed to. The pile of discarded parts is unbelievable, including a cracked cylinder head in the combustion chamber that had been welded by a first-day cross-eyed welding student with a learning disability. VERY sloppy and not even ground down!!!
The main reason I am posting this diatribe is not only to underscore my previous comments in this thread about poor quality parts from the past. I also want to inform the readers of a new one on me that that was driving me nuts - until this morning. As usual, the stumper was an electrical problem, my weakest area in repairing Model A's and T's. The car came to my friend with dual LED taillights that were on all the time, both as tail and brake lights. The main wiring harness was a rat's nest mess of wires that had been changed around on the switch head and "secured" to the terminals by painter's masking tape. (!) There were too many things wrong with this harness to keep it, so a new one was ordered and installed. Now the headlights and cowl lights came on as they are supposed to. But guess what?!? The taillights were STILL constantly on. Now I know why a previous owner had installed one of those sure-to-fail battery cable power cutoffs with the little serrated wheel = because instead of fixing the taillight situation, he simply drove the car that way and killed the power when he was done. Get the picture what I'm up against???
I followed Snyder's instructions for changing the LED taillights to operate from both lights on at the same time to the way it's supposed to be, meaning clipping the green wire inside the lights. That helped. Now only the left side brake light was still on. I changed stoplight switches - twice. The brake light (not the passenger's side) stayed on. I changed light switch bales. No improvement. When I disconnected one wire from the switch, the brake light went out. But against all expectations, the problem was not the switch. I tried a bunch of other things, but no luck. The one brake light remained on.
This morning I used a vise grips to pull the plunger in the brake light switch as far back as it would go and locked it there. The brake light went off!!! The floorboards and mat are still in place, so I used a flashlight from underneath the car to examine the back of the brake pedal rod's mushroom end. There wasn't one, only a rounded nub on a short end! That's why the stoplight was always on = the plunger went too far forward because there was no stop flange to keep it from doing so. This brake rod wasn't for a '30-31 Model A with the brake switch bolted to the center crossmember! I am guessing it's for a '28-29 with the stoplight switch mounted on the shift tower. Or maybe a tractor? Judging by the other parts thrown into the junk pile, I can only assume a former owner was buying his parts from Rick's or J.C. Whitney, including this obviously incorrect brake rod. I'll bet it was listed in the catalog as fitting a 1928-31 Model A. And the owner didn't recognize there was a problem or bother to fix it???
There. I feel better now after solving this nagging problem caused by a parts issue. I'll borrow my wife's cell phone camera and take a photo of the discarded junk or worn-out parts. I'll post this in a day or two for your viewing pleasure. That ought to make you feel better about the mess you are trying to bring back to life...
Marshall
