Authors:
Historic Era: Era 7: The Emergence of Modern America (1890-1930)
Historic Theme:
Subject:
July/August 1989 | Volume 40, Issue 5
Authors:
Historic Era: Era 7: The Emergence of Modern America (1890-1930)
Historic Theme:
Subject:
July/August 1989 | Volume 40, Issue 5
Many, many authors have written about the Model T, but I’m privy to some information that this legion has ignored. My experience with Model T’s began in the Middle West in 1923 and continued on out to California. Like so many others, I drove only second- or third-hand models. Here are some of the things I learned.
No writer I know of has ever described the shimmy—at least, not the Model T shimmy. Technically a shimmy is a self-excited oscillation of the front wheels about their vertical pivots, and it resulted from worn kingpins and their bushings. The whole front end of the car shook back and forth, sometimes gently, more often violently. And it didn’t stop—not by itself. A hard right or left turn might just do the trick. But with a very loose front end the shimmy would return at the next chuckhole or all by itself from pure whimsy. As a last resort, you slowed down to a walk; the shimmy didn’t like going at a walk.
The jackknife occurred when the caster of the front wheels was out of whack. It was no problem when you went straight or made a mild turn, but in the midst of an average turn the front wheels would snap hard over to the limit, regardless of the car’s speed. If you still had your thumbs, you frantically fought the steering wheel back to straight, only to have the wheels snap on over hard in the opposite direction. This violent whipsawing would continue until you managed to brake down to a walk. I survived several of these episodes, and after managing to come to a full rightside-up stop, I would sit on the running board for a bit of meditation before continuing on my way.
On all the early T open cars, the gas gauge was under the front seat, and to check it, you had to stop, get out of the car, lift up the seat cushion, and unscrew the gas cap. The gauge consisted of a wooden ruler marked off in gallons instead of inches. You stuck it in the tank, then lifted it out for a reading. This seems a decidedly inconvenient arrangement, but there were some advantages that no other car of the day had: no troublesome vacuum tank or fuel pump was needed, as the gasoline went to the carburetor by gravity (the system never broke down except on long, steep hills); the readings were as reliable as your eyesight; the measuring sticks were plentiful and free.
The T’s “splash system” required no oil pump or filter. The flywheel simply flung the oil up to bathe the bands of the planetary transmission, and the excess flowed down a little tube to