Story by Mark Wing; Photos by Mark Wing and Paul Duncan
The Saturday, January 6th, workday at Larry’s garage was the first club event of the new year. Club participants met Tin Lizzie member Tom Martus for the first time. Tom lives in Los Lunas, a community 45 minutes south of Larry’s garage. Tom owns a 1926 Model T pickup truck that he brought with him when he relocated from Chicago five years ago. This is a special truck that he acquired decades previously while he was still in high school. Tom recently got his truck running after long-term storage, but he’s looking forward to making cosmetic improvements and making it mechanically sound.
The primary focus of this workday was to fix the shimmy on Mark and Sharon Dominguez’s 1925 Tudor. The shimmy problem was especially noticeable on the recent Tin Lizzie tour to Durango, Colorado. This Tudor was formerly owned by Clarence and Lena Schritter, Sharon’s parents, so it has great familial and sentimental significance. Once on Larry’s car lift, the steering parts showed moderate wear to drag link bushings, kingpins, bronze spindle bushings, and wear to the axle upper kingpin holes. The threaded lower kingpin holes were still in good condition. There was nothing that stood out as drastically wrong, but with noticeable wear in multiple places, the result was the shimmy at certain predictable speeds and driving conditions. The car had anti-rattle springs on the drag link/steering arms indicating that wheel shimmy had been a problem for some time. In anticipation of front axle wear, Mark Wing had brought his Stevens front axle frame, reamers, and inserts. Mark Dominguez and Dave Ferro concentrated on replacing the spindle and draglink bushings while Mark Wing, Dario Iberra, and Kirk Peterson reamed the front axle to accept the Stevens front axle bushing inserts. Once these repairs were complete, and all worn bushings replaced, Mark D. reported that the Tudor ran very well on the drive home!
Larry also helped Kirk Peterson test 16 coils for resistance and inductance. These 16 coils had already been professionally restored with new capacitors and points. The goal was to find matching sets of coils for use in Kirk’s 1924 coupe “Buster”, now optimized for Montana 500 racing. The upcoming 2024 Montana 500 will be Kirk’s 3rd race, and he optimizes his coupe’s performance every year. One of our club’s younger members, Dario Iberra, was also listening to Larry’s instructions on how to measure Model T coil box variables and he reported that he learned a lot!
Mark Wing brought 4 driveshaft spools to replace the inner sleeves and to remove the ball bearing races for restoration. These driveshaft spools are part numbers T191 and T191-B, dating them to circa 1909 through 1912. Larry’s 20- ton hydraulic press was needed to push the old sleeves out as corrosion after over 100 years seemed to fuse the parts together. The press did the trick, and the sleeves were replaced with NOS Hyatt parts. Further restoration and dressing of the bearing surfaces will be done before final painting and assembly.
Larry, our 2024 Tin Lizzies President, had scheduled a board meeting in his “Big Barn” on this workday at noon. In addition to club officers, other club members were in attendance. Various issues were addressed at this meeting, but an important one was to identify a new monthly meeting place as we were losing access to the location where the club had been meeting since 2009. Although not finalized, a change of venue will likely occur for our March club meeting.
The workday at Larry’s garage was very productive with great participation. Thank you, Larry, for this fun and super productive workday!