Town Car Owners

[31 Woody]

Does anyone know what became of the pictured Town Car which has a set of MotorWheel wood wheels on it? I have a second photo of this car in an advertisement from a 1971 issue of The Restorer posted in a for sale ad. Price was $10,000 OBO by the way. It was listed as the “only one with wood wheels”. The owner was Robert Owen from Getzville, NY according to the ad.

I am curious what became of the wheels—are they still on this car or did the get sold? I figure the Town Car community is pretty small, so the car’s whereabouts are probably known. Thanks!

[jb-ob]

The car was sold without them. It was an estate sale, they might be out there somewhere but.....

[Brad in Germany]

Here is another photo of the TC with its wooden MotorWheels:


Those photos were taken in Dearborn in 1978. The next owner removed those wooden wheels and after restoring some parts of the car it looked like this:

So those wooden wheels are long gone and were not sold with the car. Since then, that Town Car has changed hands several times and undergone some more restoration and most recently was sold in an estate sale (as jb-ob mentioned above) at which time it looked like this:


The new owner has made further fine tuning to the car to bring it up to current RG&JS standards (which of course does not include the wooden wheels as seen in the 1978 photo of the car).

From what I remember, when those wooden MotorWheels were removed from the Town Car, they were sold to a collector in Arizona who restored them and installed them on his 1931 Station Wagon (which was used in my brother's wedding!). I understand that they are still on that Woody which I believe is now in California....... Is that by chance your Woody?

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Brad in Maryland




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[Bob Bidonde]

Those wood wheels look great on the Station Wagon. However, they can only about 1/2 the loading of the original welded spoke wheels. Only 1/2 of the wood spokes support the weight of car because wood spokes can only carry compression loading. So the all the spokes on the upper part of the wheel at any instant can only carry some torque. Also, there are no laterally canted spokes, so side loading capacity is considerably less than the welded spoke wheels afford. For touring, I would run the original welded spoke wheels, and run the wood wheels for show only.

[ronn]

although rare and prob valuable- I dont like them at all.

[31 Woody]

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Originally Posted by Brad in Germany

From what I remember, when those wooden MotorWheels were removed from the Town Car, they were sold to a collector in Arizona who restored them and installed them on his 1931 Station Wagon (which was used in my brother's wedding!). I understand that they are still on that Woody which I believe is now in Southern California....... Is that by chance your Woody?

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Brad in Maryland[/SIZE]
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Brad, the picture you posted is my Station Wagon. The wheels that you said were sold to a collector in Arizona sounds like it may be Joop/Sammy. I didn’t know if he ever did install the wheels, although they intended were to go on a 31 Station Wagon.

[rotorwrench]

Having had experience with wood main rotor blades on helicopters, I can safely say that a wheel made up of wood spokes can take all of the loads it was designed to take. The spokes are wedged and capped at the center hub and well doweled at the felloes. Wood is very flexible and hickory spokes are very strong. In this manner, they can take both compression and bending loads relatively well. They were used on a lot of trucks in that era as well.

One of my mechanical mentors was a pretty wild fellow in his youth, growing up in the 1930s & 40s. He wore out the hub and spokes on the old Harley he rode so he took a wood wheel off of an old Maxwell car and adapted it to hold a sprocket and a Harley axle. One of my uncles rode on the buddy seat with him as he rode across a bumpy cow pasture. My uncle was a bit worried about the wheel to start off with but by the end of the ride he had more worries about the operator than the wheel.He rode it like that until he traded it for another Harley that needed work some months later. The new owner rode off just happy to have a bike that ran good.

[jwmckenzie]

Originally Posted by Brad in Germany

[SIZE="4"]

From what I remember, when those wooden MotorWheels were removed from the Town Car, they were sold to a collector in Arizona who restored them and installed them on his 1931 Station Wagon (which was used in my brother's wedding!). I understand that they are still on that Woody which I believe is now in Southern California....... Is that by chance your Woody?


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Any chance you have a pic of the Woody from your Brother's wedding? Any idea who the owner was in AZ?