How’s this for a cool photo? The last time I was up on The Speaker’s family farm, I took the time out to pull a few more bits of my late father-in-law’s Model T that he left to me.
Not for the sake of removing them and losing them, but to bring them back to the MBC where they’ll be refurbished, rebuilt or reconditioned (whichever they require) to be returned to the car to get it running again.
There’s lots that’s interesting about this process. The first is that you soon discover that Henry Ford was a truly lateral thinker. In a world before the widespread use of Bowden cables, the Model T’s spark advance and throttle position were both controlled by actuating rods, like a scaled-down version of the T’s braking actuators.
Makes me wonder, though, if the throttle and spark settings ever ‘wandered’ when that raucous old four-banger was sitting there, idling, bopping away like a puppy in a mosh-pit.
Sticking with the learning curve, the process of removing the carburettor also taught me even though there’s apparently plenty of room inside a Model T engine bay (especially with the bonnet and sides open) you can still manage to paint yourself in to a bit of a corner, if you don’t have the correct ratchet and extension.
I have also learned that I was wise not to throw all my old imperial spanners out all those years ago when even Aussie cars had gone metric. Then again, who’d be stupid enough to toss out any hand tools in the first place?
But the other thing I’ve learned is that my mother-in-law is more interested in the old T now that something is finally happening with it. Oh sure, she understood her husband’s fascination with the T and all things mechanical – that’s just who he was. But for a woman who apparently took little interest in the Lizzie until now, she’s constantly coming up with new bits of info and trivia for me as the new owner.
There’s been a constant stream of old Model T books come my way, and most recently, she dug up a fantastic photo of Gordon (my father-in-law) his brother and a third bloke, all sitting three abreast in the T and all grinning like split watermelons.
This was clearly taken a long time ago, so details of the event are sketchy at best. But I reckon it was probably the day the car arrived at its new home from nearby Urana (in southern NSW) about 50km – or half a day’s drive in a Lizzie – from the family farm.
My father-in-law was not a big bloke, but his brother (far right) was a decent size and the bloke in the middle also looks to be of average proportions. So how the hell did they all fit across a Model T. I mean, I get in the driver’s seat and she’s pretty well full. Beats me.
Take a close look at that gorgeous Ford twin-spinner in the background, too. Apparently that was the brother’s family wheels at the time, and I’d probably date the photo as being from the 1960s. And yeah, I know it looks older than that, but bear in mind that even back then, the Model T was no spring chicken and dates the whole scene all on its own.
Here’s the other spooky thing: Once I reinstate the headlights and the top half of the windscreen and blow the dust off, the Model T as it is right now won’t look very much different to how it does in the photo. And I reckon that’s absolutely brilliant! You can see why I can never restore it.
Even idling is better than idle
There’s a bloke near the MBC who messes around with old cars – middle-aged Holden Commodores, mainly – fixing them up, getting them running properly and then flogging them to mates and mates of mates who need a reliable, roomy set of wheels that won’t send the bank manager in to a spin.
Fair enough, and good on him. I’ve seen enough of his work to know that he does the basics properly and there’s nothing that rolls out of there that isn’t unroadworthy or even just plain janky.
Anyway, I spotted him the other day, trying to get a VY wagon on to his hoist. Except the wagon was having none of it, refusing to even look like firing up. Naturally, I offered to give him a push and between us, we got the front wheels over the hoist’s ramp and the VY in the air. At which point I left him to it.
A day later he spots me in the car park and wanders over to fess up about what was wrong with the wagon, a car he’d been trying to get running for days and days. And, in the end, the problem turned out to be one of those didn’t-see-that-coming yarns, and yet another reason why cars don’t like to sit around doing nothing.
Because he liberates these fine vehicles from carports and nature strips all over town, he has no real idea what the car has been up to or how long it’s been sitting there.
Which is usually fine because these earlier (pre-RattleTech) Holden V6s aren’t exactly tricky to get right. Fact is, if they have fuel, spark and compression, the bastards are more or less obliged to run. But not this one.
Old Mate spent those several days swapping out ignition bits and pieces, fitting new fuel pumps and generally preparing himself for the time when he’d had enough and the wagon was set on fire and rolled over a cliff. And still that V6 refused to even splutter.
Eventually, while it was on the hoist, he decides to drop the exhaust to make sure a wombat hadn’t crawled up there and died. With the zorst dropped from the headers back, he hit the car and away she went like it had never stopped.
So, determined to find the root cause, Old Mate goes digging further and eventually discovers that the catalytic converter is completely blocked solid with soot, oil, fuel and general crud. Flowing absolutely zero, it was.
In fact, it was bunged up sufficiently that it was probably the on-board computer that cried enough and refused to fire it up, rather than the physical blockage. But who knows for sure …? Either way, he was still doing the mechanic’s victory dance two days later.
Store versus sell
I’ve noted many times that farms are great places to find old vehicles because farmers have a particular approach to car ownership. A permanent one. Which is, when the old one stops working, they wheel it into a corner of the machinery shed, go to town and buy a brand-new one.
I used to think this behaviour was based on the size and quality of the wool cheque that year, but now I realise it’s also because farmers are just like anybody else: They hate selling cars. Why? Mainly because it’s a hiding to nowhere, and that’s largely down to the dickheads the process seems to attract.
Posing as potential buyers, these clowns seem committed to wasting the seller’s time, either through idiotic requests for details (not to mention, ‘is this still available’) or simply not showing up at the agreed inspection time.
How do I know? Because I’ve had a car up for sale online for a few weeks now, and I’m staggered at the dickhead/genuine-buyer ratio. And guess which camp is ahead on numbers?
I’ve so far been contacted by half a dozen blokes, none of whom have picked up a phone to chat, instead relying on the anonymity (and laziness) of online questions.
Three of the six have offered me swaps for cars I really don’t want to know about (I’m sure the advert said ‘sale’ not ‘swap’) but in each case I’ve politely declined the generous offer of ex-skidders with non-engineered mods and dubious paint jobs.
The other three, meanwhile, have contacted me, arranged a time to meet, and then not shown up. Now, I understand that it’s apparently quite common for your grandmother to cark it on a fairly regularly basis, but wouldn’t you think maybe a brief message to me to apologise for the no-show would be too much to ask? Sure, the grieving process is a bitch, but since Granny has now put her cue in the rack three times this month, maybe you should be learning to cope with it a bit better.
The other thing all three of these arse-clowns has in common is that their opening gambit was, ‘Would you take my low-ball offer that is almost $10 grand less than you were asking?’
To which my reply is consistently, er, no, but I wouldn’t accept any offer until you’ve come and had a look at the car in person. I mean, who the hell offers to buy a car they haven’t stood in front of? Clearly, of course, they’re just tyring their luck, but with me, that luck just ran out.
Which is not to say I’ve been difficult to get on with. One of the three wanted more photos, another even wanted a video of the car running, which I produced. In fact, he was so taken with the video, he arranged to meet me next day. And, of course, never did. Food poisoning, apparently. Probably the curried egg sandwiches at Gran’s wake.
I now have a much better understanding of adverts worded along the lines of ‘No lowballers’, ‘Won’t respond to: Is this still available’ and ‘No time wasters’. And I know for sure why farmers never sell anything.
Unidentified Fat Object
It’s finally happened. I’ve been unable to identify a make and model I saw in traffic. Even once I’d got close enough to clock the badge, I was still none the wiser. About all I can tell you is that it was a Chinese SUV. (Perhaps that’s all any of us really need to know.) And this, from a bloke who, as a tiny little kid, could tell a Holden from a Ford from a Valiant from about three kliks out.
So what’s happened here? Well, my optometrist will tell you that there’s nothing wrong with my eyesight. Even at my age, I have the long vision (if not the trust of my government) to be a fighter pilot. Nor is it the case that I’ve suddenly gone off the whole car-chasing thing: I’m still in the habit of changing lanes to get a better look at anything interesting in traffic.
Nope, what’s happened is that modern cars have become so utterly, boringly, cookie-cutter, sterile and charmless, that the world’s biggest car-perv (that’d be me) can’t even pick them apart these days, In fact, in this most recent case I’m talking about, I couldn’t even narrow it down to a couple of possible makes and models.
Not only that, but it’s going to get worse. In the next 12 months, according to those who count such things, there’s likely to be no less than a dozen new Chinese brands hitting Aussie showrooms. They will largely be EVs and hybrids but, worse than that, the vast majority of them will be SUVs.
You probably already know Great Wall, LDV, BYD and MG as Chinese carmakers, but get ready for Aion, Geely, IM Motors, Jaecoo, Leapmotor, Skywell, Xpeng, Zeekr, JAC and my new favourite onomatopoeia, GAC.
In an already crowded market (Australia has more brands on sale than most countries, despite our minnow status in the car-buying world) it’s pretty reasonable to suggest that these newcomers are not all gonna make it. Which means consumers taking the plunge in to one of these new brands will be taking a real punt on the long-term viability and retained value of their purchase.
Not only that, but if they’re anything like me, their problems will be just starting as they struggle to identify their own car from the sea of lookalikes at the airport car park. Maybe car ownership will just devolve in to the ultimate car-sharing program where you simply jump in the first SUV you come to and drive it to the next destination where you’ll park it in a queue and start all over again.
My tasting platter
Big cheers to those who’ve already contacted me to rectify the gaps in my classic-car knowledge. I’ve been offered all sorts of car to sample, and I’ll be getting to them as soon as I can. Meantime, if you have a car on my hit-list in last month’s mag, get in touch through the magazine and let’s see if we can’t educate me and entertain you.