The Fords were out in force yesterday at the Santa Clara Valley Model T Ford Club's annual speedster run and lowland tour. The speedsters were all cars built before 1928 and nearly all were Model T based. One rich guy showed up in his 25 Bugatti that supposedly had won the British Grand Prix at some point. The touring cars were mostly Model T's and Model A's. Saw a couple really nice roadster pickups! Basically a Model T that is a convertible two seater pickup truck.

Anyway I drove my Dad's 1910 Model T on the tour. It was my first significant time behind the wheel and I put about 100 miles on it. First of all to those that don't know the controls on a Model T... they are counter-intuitive at times. First of all you control the throttle with your hand and the shifting of gears "mostly" with your feet. The clutch pedal is where it should be, but when you come up behind someone at a light you'd better remember that the clutch pedal when fully pressed in puts you right into 1st gear. To get it to stop you need to push the clutch in half-way to get it into "neutral." Once the light turns green you give it some throttle with your right hand, it's kind of like a big brass turn signal switch, and also push in the clutch pedal all the way to the floor. It makes some noise and you are beginning to move! Once you start winding it out in low gear and are probably going like 9 miles an hour, you back off the throttle and let the clutch pedal out. That puts the car in high gear and you're ready to go. Ease some more throttle and with your left hand pull the brass lever on the left side of the steering wheel a bit to manually advance the spark. Top speed is probably about 45 and cruised nicely at about 35.

Anyway the amazing thing to me was the amount of smiles that old brass T can force out of people. There is no way a brand new Ferrari would even get 10% of the looks, pointing, waving and smiling that the old tin lizzie brought out.

Here's a pic of the T. The top was down for yesterday's tour.

 

Sounds great! I went to the Concourse show in Sacramento yesterday. There were quite a few fords and several old model-T trucks. One was driving around all day with 4 "keystone cops" and a prisoner. They were honking their horn and blown their whistles! You gotta luv the old trucks. Jag

 

What Fun! Next time you have a day like that planned let the rest of us know so we can join in!

Me, I want to be the prisoner - with a band around my head and eye holes cut.

 

That is one nice T...

Jon

 

Clint, this was the first year that I had attended this event. I was not sure what to expect. But now that I have experienced it I will def bring it up next year.