Neither robader (who posted these shots at the Cohort) nor I seem to be able to pin down the exact year of this Ford Model T, but we can be sure it’s now over 100 years old. And these T’s can still be readily repaired and overhauled; everything for them is still available. I doubt our grand kids will be saying the same thing about a 2010 Camry in 2110.
This T was built by one of Ford’s many foreign subsidiaries, The Ford Motor Co. of Canada. Needless to say, I’m not going to delve into the Model T story in any depth here; you all know it.
I am always fascinated in Ford’s early years. Just the other day, I found myself perusing the 1903 Ford brochure (oldcarbrochures has an excellent collection of early Ford brochures) and admiring his genius for building a car that was just inherently right, and better in just about every way than the competition. Ford’s cars from the very beginning were always relatively powerful and light. The Model T had superb performance in its early years, thanks to its 1200lb weight and 20 hp.
And almost from the beginning, Ford saw the possibilities of the benefits of scale. No, he couldn’t possibly have imagined the scale he would eventually achieve with T. But very early on, Ford was proclaiming in his brochures that by committing to an annual production of 25,000 cars, he could buy parts in volume and spread his overhead of a large base. And gratuitously saying that if they didn’t all sell, Ford would take the resulting loss. No worries on that account; Ford struggled to meet demand for some two decades before the T finally hit the wall.
Now that’s a hub cap.
And genuine wood.
And a genuine brass lamp, along with a brass radiator out front.
And a few other brass parts, like that wonderful squeeze-bulb horn. This is a car for the really long haul.
“I doubt our grand kids will be saying the same thing about a 2010 Camry in 2110.”
Given the steady advancement of 3D printing technology, its not out of the realm of possibility that they’d just be able to fabricate their own parts by then. I think the problem they’ll have is finding gasoline to power classic cars.
The problem will be with finicky electronics failing to work and replacements being unobtanium 30 years from now. There’s no way to 3-D those. I read something on here a month or so ago about it becoming hard to find certain Miata electronics in good working order – something about a component deteriorating with age. Hopefully some Miata fan can refresh my memory
But Steel age components for the Model T will never do that. Yes, they will rust, wear or break, but they won’t deteriorate internally.
Oh, you could run the Model T on any kind of liquid other that diesel or kerosene.
I read something on here a month or so ago about it becoming hard to find certain Miata electronics in good working order – something about a component deteriorating with age. Hopefully some Miata fan can refresh my memory
I have not seen that article, but capacitors certainly do age. While MTBF for solid state components is much longer than tubes, they do fail, and integrated circuits do go out of production. The F-35 has been in development for 20 years. While the plane is just coming into service now, many of the electronic components within it are now obsolete and going out of production, so DoD has had to budget extra money to stockpile obsolete parts while they are still available.
Stockpiling car electronics could be a good thing. Collect boards and modules at the pick-n-pull for future CCs, keep them inside safe from temperature extremes and moisture, index them for what cars they’ll work in. In the future, charge what the market will bear when they’re unobtainium. Could be a business in the long run.
I mentioned recently the airbag controller in my ’93 Miata is blinking at me. They say on the forum that it’s leaky electrolytic capacitors, which have leads and holes in the PCB, so they’re easily replaced by anyone handy with a soldering iron. Capacitors are generic components easily obtained. I’m an EE and a 50-year ham radio guy, so that’s actually fun for me. What’s hard is getting up behind the dash to get at the thing. Also they say it’s the same controller as a nineties Taurus, which is still pretty easy to find.
But the larger issue of unobtainium electronics is real and probably will make it hard to keep today’s cars on the road at 30 years and beyond. Modern electronics have incredibly tiny surface-mount components that are nearly impossible to replace without special equipment. They are extremely reliable for a typical service life, so they’re not built for component-level diagnosis and repair. Also they generally have special-purpose chips, not necessarily available in the marketplace.
For example look again at the Tesla 3 video we saw a few days ago. Those boards will be reliable for many, many years. But when something does fail, nobody’s going to have the documentation or tools to fix them. Working replacement boards from other cars will be the only answer.
You know, part of the reason old cars are so fixable is that everything broke pretty frequently. Modern components are so well made they don’t need to be fixable so much. If they were fixable they’d cost a whole lot more and they’d be bigger and less capable.
SMD components are the work of satan. I had new guitar pedals that gave up the ghost before with them after a few years, and they were straight throwaways when it happened(or I destroyed them attempting to fix), whereas a few of the older ones I acquired cheaply as “for fix or repair” status cost me 5 bucks in capacitors and a few minutes of time getting to work. Yes, they take up more space, but it tends not to effect external size in their case, or in the case of automotive modules, which are only as big as they are because the case acts as a heat sync for the ICs, otherwise they’re filled mostly with air.
I believe 90s and early 00s cars are probably the ultimate in having a car with “modern” tech, but with the potential long life serviceability, there were still a lot of full sized components in them. I’ve never been afraid of soldering irons or wiring work like many car enthusiasts who prefer carbs and points seem to be, and i say that as someone that does prefer cars from that era, but it’s not because I’m afraid of technology used after 1974.
The thing that bothers me most about modern/current cars are the CAN bus systems and integral security measures that come with them. They ironically make the car quicker to diagnose problems for a technician with the appropriate scanner… though if cars are so reliable why the need? and when modules/components in the network need replacement, as they will, you may be SOL in the long term.
I have to agree with you, about 1990-2000 cars , it was the electronic ignition and fuel injection that made them so reliable, as well as vastly improved quality of electrical components such as starter motors and alternators
It was also the time that rust was to a very large extend eliminated as the main reason to scrap a vehicle.
I am not afraid to diagnose and have a go at fixing electrical problems but the CAN Bus wiring and the multitude of controllers really try my patience. I do believe that these cars will be scrapped purely because of electrical problems.
Sometimes just getting the key fob sequence right to work with the cars security system takes a few hours of internet search.
The worst thing is it can be such a performance to take a battery off, so many things have to be reset unless you use an alternative power source.
There are hardly any 2005 plus cars I actually care about enough to want to fix when they are older.
Unless it is something spectacular there won’t be much of a cottage industry to provide owners with a solution.
I have considered a Maserati 3200 GT 1998-2002 but have been put off by the electrics, especially the throttle body potentiometers, not made to be fixed and they cost £2000 to replace . A TV cars show in the UK , Wheeler Dealers bought a cheap one to do up, it had the throttle body problem, but there is a chap who works from his house who opens them up, and repairs them, guaranteed for £400. Where would we be without men in sheds? but that was a Maserati, who would bother for ordinary cars
https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/maserati/3200gt-2000/?section=good
That settles it! Give me a ’68 Bug or Ghia with the swing axle and 12 volt electronics instead of Albert Klein’s ’63 model! Those things will run forever if the tinworm is starved out!
https://highmileclub.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/albert-klein-and-his-1-6-million-mile-beetle/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array
These are already allowing the creation of devices that can emulate the Nintendo NES and SNES at the hardware level rather than at the software level. I think electronics are going to be much less of an issue moving forward. FPGAs are still fairly pricey, but the price, like everything else with electronics, will likely drop over the next several years.
As it is right now, my Mazda B2600i has issues with capacitors leaking and destroying the ECU. For less than $200, you can send it to a company that replaces all the bad capacitors, and resolders everything. It runs great now that I’ve had that done.
How amazing to me that FPGAs should come up at CC! I’ve built my career on FPGAs, worked with them ever since the first one 30 years ago and even designed one once.
Yes it is tempting to think of replacing car electronic chips with programmable off-the-shelf chips, but the reverse engineering required would be gigantic. Those early video games that FPGAs emulate were based on standard chips that are well understood today. Today’s car electronics have custom chips that are only available to the manufacturer, so they can’t be duplicated. And the complexity is off the charts of course.
@Mike, don’t underestimate crazy hackers. A couple of cases in point.
Megasquirt. At this point there really aren’t many different engines that can’t be run by it. There are even plug and play versions for a number of vehicles, interestingly mainly the Miata and for those early cars it is actually more sophisticated that the original system. https://www.diyautotune.com/shop/mspro-efi-ems/mspnppro/mspnppro-ecus/
FORScan. Crazy Russian hackers reverse engineered almost every aspect of the factory OE scan tool, IDS, and then some. Yet other crazy hackers have created programs to compare the “as built” data from Ford’s website, which is intended for programing replacement modules. They found VINs for cars with different options and have figured out which digits do what.
For example many Fords have the turn signal that will flash 3 times if you tap it, but it can be disabled in IDS depending on what vehicle that module is installed in. Turns out that when the lighting module detects a momentary signal from the TS switch it looks at a digit in a line of code for how many times to flash. With IDS it is 0, 1, 2, or 3 (and that is user select-able in some cars). But since it is a hex digit and the computer is just going to count to that number you can set it to any value between 0 and F. For the power point time out, after shut down, Ford usually uses 2 values 0000 or 004B minutes but you can put anything between 0 and FFFF minutes with FORscan. Heated steering wheel not warm enough, or too hot?
What that means for repair-ability is that so many of these modules are universal and certain parts of the code make it work as intended in different vehicles. For example the Infotainment pieces and code are shared across many different vehicles so pretty much any Sync 3 can have its splash page switched between the Blue Oval, the Lincoln star, Galloping Pony, F-150, Raptor or Vignale (a Mondeo trim).
Other crazy hacker have cracked Toyota’s Hybrid system so you can get pretty much full factory scan tool functionality with a quality ELM327 dongle and app for your smart phone.
So for high volume or special interest vehicles solutions are likely to exist. Low volume cars, particularly with no enthusiast following, aren’t likely to have solutions.
The thing with something like megasquirt is I doubt it will pass emissions inspection where they hook up to an OBD II port, in the context of late model cars with bus systems. Really with full freedom I’d just rip all that crap out of a 2018 car after the warranty expires, rewire it stem to stern with olde tyme wiring and find a different computer that runs the engine and transmission if applicable, and nothing more. Nothing communicates with each other. But I suspect doing such a thing would trip alarm bells come the biannual emissions checkup, even if the actual tailpipe emissions are unaltered.
@ Matt, you are correct that MegaSquirt isn’t currently able to pass an OBD-II emissions test even if you could tune it to pass a sniffer test. However for most states there is an age where testing is no longer needed. In my state the sniffer and dyno will be going away shortly thanks to the use of OBD-II testing. I’m wondering however how much longer they will continue testing. There is a rolling 25yr exemption on the back end and on the front end 2008 is the newest vehicle tested and they are tested every other year. So they number of cars testing is dropping rapidly and at some point they are going to have to say it isn’t worth testing only 4 or 5 model years worth of vehicles. The test stations are already operating at a fraction of the business they used to.
However my main point was don’t underestimate the ability of a determined hacker to create something, if they can figure out as something as complex as a engine management system a computer the other computers, that have nothing to do with the OBD-II testing will be easy. The car I just purchased has 40, yes 4 0 computer modules in it.
Never underestimate the hackers for sure. That Megasquirt is impressive. I was wondering about generic replacement engine computers, and that’s encouraging. Like XR7Matt said, just rip the non-functional system out and replace it with the generic.
Emission tests can be a problem. Here in Oregon the rules are defined by model year, not age, and everything 1996 on is tested through the OBD port. I’m sure Megasquirt wouldn’t qualify. Maybe by the time electronic unobtanium becomes a major impediment to keeping classic cars on the road, an exception can be made.
As for electric cars like this Tesla I was talking about, I’m pretty confident that generic motor controllers and battery systems will be possible given enough effort. Probably in fact using FPGAs.
@Mike, I would expect at some point emissions testing will go away in all but the states that derive large profits from it. Up here in WA the contracts for the 3rd party tester give the vast majority of the money to the 3rd party, so no net income to the state. The shrinking number of cars that get tested also means that the company that contracts to do the testing is seeing its profits drop. Don’t know when the current contract ends but I can’t believe there will be many bidders next round.
Walkerville has a significant place in Canada’s automotive history. Ford of Canada was founded there in 1904. And probably Canada’s most successful car maker, the McLaughlin Motor Car Company were bought out by General Motors Canada while shortly thereafter expanding production to Walkerville.
At one time, McLaughlin had the largest car plant in the British commonwealth, located in Oshawa. Oshawa of course becoming the main location of GM Canada.
It is stunning to think of the volume of car makers that came and went during this era.
Nice example. Many lay people assume that all Model T’s were painted “in any color you want, as long as it is black” as famously proclaimed by Henry himself. But up until 1914 you could get your T in gray, green, blue, or red.
I always preferred the colorful early models to the drab black later ones.
The Gilmore offers classes in driving a Model T. A few years ago, I ran into Aaron65 and his dad at the Gilmore when they were taking the T class.
Mooched a ride in one of the Gilmore’s Ts during their truck show last year. The engine is bolted directly to the frame, so the vibration was close to that of someone under the car using a jackhammer on the underside of the floor.
Steve, my dad once took me out in his ’24 T coupe and got it going at top speed (about 45 mph).
I’ve never heard such roaring, clanking, banging, and rattling, EVER. One got the feeling of driving a newer car at over 100 mph, only rougher and noisier.
Electronic problems with cars are already an issue.
I drove my 97 Grand Cherokee for two weeks in the dead of winter with no heat because it had electronic climate control and it took me that long to find another control head for it on eBay. One of the reasons I decided to scrap it when it started having other electrical problems. The garage figured it was the body computer and I couldn’t find one of those after several weeks.
A couple of good places to look are car-part.com and partsmarket.com. I’ve used both. car-part just gives you listings and the email/phone for the yards that list the parts. partsmarket is a store front that then forwards it on to the yard you pick to fulfill. partsmarket has a 180 day warranty that they also handle. Yet another option is Row52.com. Its main function is as a place for self serve yards like Pick-n-Pull to list the vehicles, but not parts they have. However they also have a place for parts pullers to offer their services and people to request parts.
I had a look at Fords from the pre T era recently including a Quadracycle though I think that one is a replica, very interesting cars (pics are on the cohort) Henry certainly had a hit with his T model it was the first world car and built all over the planet and rebadged by a lot of other outfits in Australia, locally someone has a T speedster I see occasionally out and about.
…had a hit with his T model it was the first world car and built all over the planet
Reportedly, at one point over half the cars in service in the world were Model Ts. I read a book, written in the 20s by a man who made an around the world trip. Among his stops were the temples at Angkor Wat in what is now Cambodia. The area was so undeveloped that there was no pier for the steamer that brought him up river and across the lake to tie up to. He transferred to a small boat to get to land. And what met him when he landed in this jungle? A Model T.
According to this site
http://www.mtfca.com/encyclo/sernos.htm
The engine number is also the serial number of the car. Looking at the serial number it says this would have been made in May of 1911
That shiny brass thing on the running board of the drivers side is the Carbide Generator for the headlights. Early lamps were gas powered before they switched over to electric lights
Whenever I see one of these first automobiles, it hits me how the basics haven’t really changed from the very beginning. I mean, the overwhelming majority of vehicles have all shared the same characteristics: four wheels/tires, steering wheel turning the front wheels, powered drivetrain (both ICE and EV), transmission, foot brake/accelerator, windshield, external illumination, electrical system, etc. Yeah, there have certainly been variations and vast improvements in all of these systems, but the basic architecture has remained constant.
Although he wasn’t the first to hit that sweet-spot of components, Henry Ford’s mass production assembly line certainly cemented the combination that exists to this day.
What throws you on the truly vintage cars is all that stuff you take for granted as being automatic on a pre-WWII car (say, 1940) is completely manual 20-30 years earlier. Things like spark advance, starting, sometimes the placement of the throttle, etc. are quite different. Everything pretty much got standardized by 1928 (when the Model A was introduced, thus removing the last big exception in cars), and was definitely standardized by ten years later.
I ran thru this experience the years I had the 1929 Indian. Motorcycles, if anything, were technologically 10 years behind cars (at least), and what you had to go thru to get the bike started usually left onlookers completely boggled. And, to boot, I was dealing with a total loss oil system – Indian didn’t adopt a recirculating oil system until 1932 – with a hand pump that had to be used at 45mph or faster.
I agree with you on this. I also feel that with the crossovers and SUVs of the modern era, we are just getting back to basics. Every time I turn around a so called automobile pundit is decrying the rise of the crossover or SUV because it is killing the sedan off.
But in reality, we are just going back to the roots of the car. The first cars were modified carriages that dumped the horse for an engine. Like horse pulled buggies, these cars sat high up to deal with the roads of the day(or lack of them). The Model T was designed to be a go anywhere car. It was not until the 1930’s that cars started sitting lower due to improved roads
I think the prime example of that is the spark plug. Other than materials and longevity compared to earlier versions, there’s not a whole lot of difference between a modern plug and one 75-80 years old.
I like to point out that a photographic negative from the Civil War or 1910 can be re-printed as long as you have the chemicals and equipment to do so. Having had two computers crash on me (one without backup) I highly doubt that images from the era were living in will be as readily available 100 to 200 years from now (of course I could be completely wrong). The Ford Model T sums that up.
Here’s the earliest family-with-cars photo I have, of some of my mom’s relatives at their farm near Paw Paw, Michigan. Anybody know what year/flavor of Model T this might be?
I am not convinced that the car in your photo is a Model T. The upper tank on the T radiator stood taller than this. A little online noodling makes me think your picture shows the precursor to the T, the 1907-08 Model S. Does anyone have a better idea?
You are correct
It is a 1907-1908 Ford Model S with the Roadster package( has that tiny back seat)
Is that a right-hand driven US model T? Or is the photo reversed?
Yes. Many American cars were right hand drive in the early years of the automobile. It appears that the Model T was Ford’s first LHD car.
Thanks, Leon. This era of automobile is outside of my normal car guy scope. Wonder if The Henry Ford has a Model S yet on site?
Thanks for weighing in, JPC. You have a good eye. Just the kind of input I needed.
BTW, that is a superb photograph.
Hey, thanks, Paul. Means a lot from someone with ten thousand car shots under his belt. I’m glad to have ended up with it after 100+ years. You just know the kid and his dog took this car for a noisy whirl when dad was out for the afternoon.
Also that house looks to have gas lights in it (or at least on the porch) as this house is on a farm that probably did not see electricity until the Rural Electrification endeavor of the 1930’s, there was probably a special shed that sat far away from the barn and other structures that housed a carbide generator that supplied the gas for the lighting and possibly other appliances.
I have seen the occasional Model T out and about, but not one of these early ones with all the brass. Everyone remembers that the T was simple and cheap, but it is not well enough understood that in its early years it was one of the best cars you could buy. Think about it, what other design from before 1910 could have still been commercially viable by 1925?
Apparently there was some discrepancy about what defined an American car 100 years ago too. The VIN tag declares that it is a Canadian Ford made in Ontario. The brass radiator says that it is a Ford made in USA.