So, some background. Scratched together my little modified T in the early nineties from whatever I could afford and parts nobody else wanted. A plastic '24 tub and a 21 stud from my friend Nervous Bob, sat on a narrowed A frame with a homemade X member. Some '39 axles and wide fives were set at 100" as I had a set of early T fenders I planned to fit, but they were sold off to fund the build. It was an itch that never went away, so over time I gathered all the parts to swap the plastic tub for steel and have another shot at fitting fenders. The Puch is also long gone to I don't know where. The roadster body as purchased. And some other T Touring panels that got mixed up in the mess. Except. I sold the modified as the windmill needed the funds. Many years elapsed. The summer of 2019, I busied myself having a go at knocking the collection of panels into some kind of shape. I measured up the wooden subframe of an original 24T roadster and had some 2mm steel folded into sections. I wanted 16G but the 2mm was free. Some things never change... Once a square subframe was built I used it to attach some of the less frilly edges to. It quickly became apparent that the panels were not all from the same tub - I'd managed to interchange the scuttle with a Touring body I once had and lost the door. That was careless. They were also very rough. Cracks, bullet holes, flattened, stretched, and generally trampled by elephants. Still - nothing much to lose except time and a mile of mig wire, I pressed on. To stiffen this floppy mess up, I looked at tubing out the tub. Considering we make a mile of 22mm diameter thin-wall annealed stainless at work every day that shouldn't be a problem? Trying to form it to make the curves around the back of the tub soon changed my mind, so I decided to give hammer forming a go. Forms were cut from hornbeam that just happens to turn up in some of the pallets at work - very handy - and some sections were created in 0.7mm zintec (free...) to add a little rigidity to the evolving structure. Gradually panels were created to replace the missing lower sections and attach the panel to the subframe. The missing nearside bun panel was beaten into a hollowed log to try and match the opposite side. Except. The trampled quarter was far too stretched for it to fit. Tappity tap. Cuttity cut. As the summer rolled on, the floppy panels gradually became less lacy, and the tub began to look like a complete body. Full of dents and ripples, but much more solid. Hmmm. Hmmmm.
A brief mockup that Christmas on an early A chassis left me wondering at what point I’d be old and wizened enough to fit within the confines of a T body and operate machinery. Limitations realised, spring approaching, and an anticipated costly visit from the millwright curtailed these thoughts. Until the lockdown occurred. With nowhere except work to go to, the millwrights abandoning the rotting windmill cap, I dragged the sorry mess of parts out from under the bedroom (a less than five foot high darkened cavern within the workshop created by numerous planning violations over the years), attached a few parts, and began planning a dropped X member to provide engine, wishbone, and pedal mounts. In the hope of finding a precious few thou to plant my feet without major surgery. The body was also flashed over with some tractor enamel to hide the worst of the repairs and stop the leaking roof allowing it to return to nature. Creating the dreadful Cream T pun.
The running gear was next in line for the decision making process. As in – what do I have that will cost me nothing to use? Turns out quite a bit. I used an A rear axle to position a ‘36 gearbox (one year only gears apparently but they look OK so far…) and attached an empty 8BA to work out where to put the engine mounts using some brackets that Bob has in stock and tells nobody about. Clear so far? Once the engine mounts were positioned, I swapped the flathead out for a four banger using a Clings adapter, and modified a B front engine mount to pick up on the V8 mounting points. This tomfoolery happened multiple times as everything I made or fitted had to be checked with each engine option. Steering box? Eight in, four out. Pedals? Same again. Front axle on a ‘34 wishbone. Need to make sure it misses both sumps. Cut-out in the firewall to miss cylinder heads? Hokey cokey commences. Obviously this also meant throwing the body back on and off the chassis. Every. Damn. Time. Why? Seemed like a good idea at the time. When it came time to register it here in the UK, a four banger in an A chassis made sense. Plus, I had more of them running at the time. Now there’s a heap of variously challenged flatheads beneath the bedroom, I’ll have to revisit that particular dilemma. Everything has to be done at least twice. Brake and clutch pedal positions roved around with abandoned attempts cast asunder. The dropped frankly utilitarian bolt-in cross members that I originally made to position everything were gradually eradicated by an X member that picked up on the original Model A rear engine mount holes, before swooping under the A centre cross member and reappearing as two long tapering legs picking up existing holes at the rear of the chassis. Amazed myself there. At its centre carrying the wishbone is a cast off piece of maybe '36 crossmember (?) that a friend dumped outside my garage eons ago. Yay! The centre X unbolts and springs out! Bonus... Started making some dropped floor pans to cover all this up. With the engine options covered, the A rear axle was swapped out for 1935 axle, rebuilt with a 3.25 diff and mounted 3.5” forward to shorten the wheelbase to 100”. The torque tube was shortened by Craig at RKE who builds the Rotoshim shock absorbers across the road from work. Twice – the lovely tubular ‘32 one we adapted to 6 spline refused to fit inside the double tapered outer I had shortened. I looked briefly at running wide fives again, but the axles gained a set of spindles and hydraulic brakes from a ‘42 pickup and the look evolved again to using the steels I’d had in the loft since they came off my old Fordor. And suddenly we’re rolling. So – obviously time to blow it all apart again.
There is however a leap between the last picture which was April 2023 - and the "blow it all apart" statement which didn't happen till September... I probably did something to it, but progress was sporadic.
I picked the wettest week in October to get the body and panels blasted. Which meant rushing the body back home in the back of the van for some vague filler work before hurrying it back to the blasters just before the rain stopped... Not to hide any of the dents really; more to stop anyone needing a tetanus shot if they got too close. The blasters also primed and top coated everything in RAL 9001 apparently. My choice obviously, but mainly because they had it in stock… I’d blagged some floor space over at Craig’s workshop to store the rolling chassis whilst I prepped the panels, so decided it would be churlish not to continue the blag by assembling the freshly painted bits at his. Once it was back together, a trailer ride home (fingers crossed its last trip on a trailer…) saw the shiny white thing ensconced in the cramped workshop behind the mill waiting for things to drop on it from on high. The summer before this, I’d attempted to contact the company making the radiator. It had been five years so I hoped they were getting close by now. Unable to get an answer, I decided to try somebody else. I took them a drawing, and some scrap tanks in the back of the Coupe and they insisted they could make it. Even better if they could copy one I’d previously had made. So a trip back home, and I purloined the one from the Tourer and rushed back. Just like that one please. Dunno why I’d rushed. Time p-a-s-s-e-d. Whoosh. Christmas time, and with the car home, I decided it would be a good time to see how they were doing. Hadn’t started. A call a week later to say would I like to see it before it was painted. Excellent! Except. Oh. Beautifully made, but. Top tank absolutely nothing like the one I’d left to copy. The following week, Christmas Eve eve, another call to say they’d modified it and it was ready for collection. Oh. The misplaced neck had moved, but the main feature to copy was the scallop for fan clearance. There on the drawing, and there on the rad to copy. Missing entirely. A slow drive home in despair saw me pottering around Norwich when a call came to say they’d actually done it right this time. ‘Ray. Except. In my haste to sort the top tank, I’d failed to notice the errors with the bottom tank within the bubble wrap until I tried fitting it. The bottom outlet was angled for no reason whatsoever, the tank had been made square bottomed rather than shaped to fit the cross member like an A one, and the mounting flanges were an inch higher. Not what I hoped for it’s to be certain. A disappointingly expensive Christmas present to myself. Hey ho. Luckily, the new rad fitted OK-ish on the Tourer for now and the Tourer gave up its rad for the Cream T. More on that later...
Ah yes, influences. Let's have a little diversion. So there's Gabby Garrison's car. In fact, it's a later reproduction by the man himself of the car he built when he was in high school. Now owned by Zach Suhr. Who also suffers for his art by being too tall to sit comfortably... This pair had me going. The top car was Bob Estes' T. Pretty damn special with Warford box, Ruckstell axle, an overhead engine with a Wills St. Claire forged V8 crank. He topped 100 at Muroc with it, and once beat Clark Gable's Duesenberg in a race. He wouldn't sell it to him but built Clark a replica. The lower car, despite the similarity, is a different car - think the pictures turned up on the HAMB a while back. Sterling Garage, who by all accounts were in LA modifying what were then pretty new Model T's, produced a particular look building very low, full fendered '24/25 roadsters often with the back of the tub cut down. Somewhere around the start of this project, I had a fair exchange with a friend about colour choice. As a synopsis - would somebody have bothered changing the colour of their car if it was being built in the '30's? Even an early 20's T would have only been around 10 years old so chances are it'd be black... But, as a later build, assuming they did change the colour, what would they have chosen? We pondered national racing colours. British racing green, French blue, German silver, Italian - well, burgundy in the 20/30's. And America? White. White, eh? Hides the dents slightly better... Which lead me to my other favourite T. Duffy's Eliminator. White, fendered, and a later build. Which made me ponder my "what if?". What if Duffy had built his car pre-war? Or somebody else had started with an abandoned Sterling Garage car? How would it have evolved? Seeing my car outside on steels skewed the build from a faithful GOW job. I've yet to sit it back on a set of 19's to see how much it changes the look. Options, options.
Wow! Those first photos had me wondering but the end product shows some oustanding work. When seeing a project of this magnitude, a friend of mine would say "you gotta want it pretty bad"! Nice job!
So where were we? With inspiration from Sterling Garage T's, Duffy's Eliminator, my old Modified, but most importantly what bits are in stock, after five years the little cream T was coming together. 2024 arrived. With some parts of it now a century old, I decided it would be a good idea to get it on the road. With the big lumps bolted together, it was time to start making the whole thing look more complete for an inspection and apply for a registration. The steering box was a frankenstein F1/Model A construction with the column shortened, re-tapered and keywayed by Craig to fit my old string bound BB truck steering wheel. Bob came through and rebuilt the box, adding a seal, and for once I remembered to put oil in it... I'd fitted T fender irons to the A chassis to mount the front wings. Headlights were made by fitting A buckets to some T headlight brackets from the scrap pile. I decided to have a go at tig welding, using a cast out welder that only worked with scratch start. As luck would have it, we were bending some 60.3mm stainless tube at work. Even luckier a length was accidentally bent at 45° so I disposed of it ethically. This was cut into a taper and then cobbled to a stainless header plate more by luck than judgement. Next time. Next time it'll look better... After crowing about how good Rotoshim shocks are I couldn't really fit anything else. Fronts had to be moved slightly aft to avoid the T headlight brackets. Hey ho, see how it goes. I'd planned to fit a complete interior from an early T, but a new (!) pair of buckets spotted at a classic car show made for a far quicker and comfier solution that showed off all my repairs for good or bad. Spoiler: mainly bad. With it looking more complete, photos were taken, the VHRA sent me a dating letter, application made to the DVLA and a sense of foreboding draped over me. How long would this all take? An inspection date duly rolled round at the end of March. Not too bad, but would they be happy with a still unfinished non-running collection of parts? Inspection took all of ten minutes. A few weeks later, the registration document arrived in the post.
Registration in hand at the start of April meant it was time to pick up the pace and get this contraption road ready before considering the drive to Wales in June for the VHRA races at Pendine. With 90% of the build done, there was only 90% left to do. I'd already booked a week off in March that work subsequently cancelled, but eventually I managed to take four days of at the end of April. Evening tinkering became full days for a week and over the bank holiday weekend. By the end of my holiday, brakes were plumbed, starter rebuilt, exhaust made, bonnet catches devised, wiring run, and lights mounted. And an endless stream of little just jobs that took up whole days. One bit of fun was my third attempt at a throttle pedal. A couple of dilemmas to overcome obviously. Pinning the hood down placed the carb too close to the throttle linkage which was resolved by getting Craig to mill the manifold flange down by 4mm. Also, somehow the engine had ended up 1/4" further forward which put the water pump too close to the rad. I rebuilt a pump with the impeller pushed further on to the shaft which puts the fanbelt slightly out of line but it doesn't seem to care too much. One problem that couldn't really be resolved is that the borrowed radiator was built for a '27 body, and a later A front crossmember with the dropped radiator pads. The fit of the hood is something I'm going to have to live with until I get another rad made or modified. Boo. Hiss. As the engine I'd mocked the build around wasn't actually a runner - it came time to bite the bullet and steal the engine from the Coupe. With less than a month to Pendine, this didn't leave too much time if a completely unknown mess of parts would actually enjoy functioning together. Or even function individually. Or whether I'd have to beg another day off and reverse the engine swap? I finally found out what it was like to drive. All the recent monsoon rains and floods in the UK have occurred because I disabled a perfectly adequate, comfortable, closed car, abandoned it in the drive, blocking the entrance to the garage, meaning the new roadster is now outside getting used to the rain. Starting as it means to go on. A couple of club members helped with the brake bleeding and I finally made a trip out in the rain. A little bit of fettling, and I nipped out to a local bike meet in a thunderstorm mid-week too. And it feels like it's gonna be OK... I'm possibly wizened enough to drive it after all. Let the shakedown commence!
Beautiful car. I love these start/stop builds. Mine project stalls occasionally, and I feel better about it when I see others.
All well and good though - how does it handle and does it run? Y'know what? Really well. Very surefooted, planted, and comfortable to sit in.
Fantastic. Ready for a summer full of fun! This photo looks like Wolverine was helping with the bodywork
Excellent execution of your project, and stories & pictures. love a " quick and easy build", just like they do on TV shows - Ha!
Well done sir! Love me a full fendered roadster. Projects made from whatever is laying around seem to be the most fun for me....
Dude that's awesome! I don't know why more people don't build T's with fenders. they look so cool! and the creamy white is perfect. Right on!
Well written, friend! Looks more fun than a barrel of herring! Spencer has plenty of leg room in Gabby’s Gow.
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