What have you found working on your A?

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The plate used as a choke in another thread got me to thinking about this. I'd hope to find something under the seat or in a tight spot from an owner from long ago, so far, nothing. I'd imagine some of you have found personal items, toys, money, letters or just a signature from someone who worked on or owned the vehicle before you. You could even mention some jerry rigged attempt for a repair. It's interesting to me at least.
 
I found a lot of sand toward the back of the curtain pan in my Roadster. Not sure if it is media sand or beach sand as my car was from Florida.
 
A couple of very dead mice in the Bustle behind the rear seat & the remains of a mouse nursery in the headliner!
 
Welding used instead of correct attachment methods, e.g., lug bolts welded to the hub instead of swaged, roller tracks welded to the backing plate instead of riveted.
 
I found this "Token" under the front seat...
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When stripping the paint off the door on my ccpu I found Ford Sales and Service with a partial address that is local,I could never verify where the bldg. was.
 
I had to have the Roadster hood fix the rear wood bow by a upholsterer master. He found this ticket rolled up inside the cloth rag.
 

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I found some political cards given out to entice a voter in 1932. Been there awhile it was a 1930 Tudor
They were from Nebraska
Lots of pennies, match books, even saw some green stamps ....how long have those been gone!!!
 
I bought the remains of a Model T coupe near Austin that had been in the creek for many years. Someone had chopped off the roof with an axe and when I took the body apart at the seams I found a 1938 nickle down between the body and the sub frame
 
Found a well used Case pocket knife down in the side of the body of a 25 T I bought when I was a kid. Think I still have it some where.
 
Apparently when some club members pulled the 30 coupe body off of the frame they found a squished dragonfly. The body had never been off the frame. So somehow it got mashed at the factory. I don't remember if they sealed it up and kept it with the car or replaced when they put the body back on.


Mike
 
I found these 20 years ago under the front carpet of the 1931 160B that I had just purchased
 

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Our Sport Coupe had been sitting ******* for a while. There was a nest of bumblebees in the seat and the radiator tank was full of mud - not sediment, actual mud. The previous owner's kids amused themselves by packing it in there.
 
Hallo,
when I got my roadster from California, I was the first to do all tin interiors wax sealing. Back at the bottom of the wheelhouse, I found a desert mouse that probably once had red fur.
 

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I have mentioned putting sawdust into the transmission - I found the ****** in the truck shown as my avatar filled thusly - and the gears much as shown in another thread.

Funny, the seller of the truck had another supposedly prize winning 31 Roadster which was his "Model A of note."

I still chalk it up to "knowing the cars." He took what he wanted from the truck and then flipped it in the best way he could. I ended up with an un-number stamped Allstate engine block - which then wouldn't have been nearly so notable - so it all evens out in the end.

Truth is - the ****** actually shifted and sounded pretty good! It took a rebuild using parts of two other transmissions to bring it back to the same level of utility - and even at that I had to experiment with STP and the so called "600W" oil available to me.

I do like the smell of that original ****** oil.

Joe K
 
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I pulled quite a bit of gravel out of the frame of my '42 Ford Sedan when I was first going through it, so the car must have spent some time on gravel roads. Based on a number of things, we believe the car was built during the last week of regular production before Ford switched to war production. Such cars were embargoed at the dealers and dribbled out to Drs., Nurses, etc. during the war. It spent most of its life in the Towe Museum and we don't know much about its early history. We've now concluded it has original paint on it that shows wear through to the oxide primer in places, but has some kind of clear coat on it. It has a splash of different color under the gas tank which we thought indicated a repaint, but apparently painters at the factory would clear their paint guns of the previous color by spraying it at that location before painting the next color. What a story these cars could tell...
 
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