Your favorite Model A Story

[Tom Wesenberg]

I didn't own a Model A yet (other than just a running gear), but about 1980 my friend asked me to drive his 1928 Sport Coupe in the Anoka halloween parade. Anoka goes all out and hosts a huge parade. Anoka is known as the "Halloween Capital of the World". Just as the Model A entered Main street the points started acting up and the engine would miss several firings, then catch and let off a blast like a shotgun going off. Several of the women on the sidewalk would jump and scream. This continued for about a dozen loud blasts. I never laughed so hard, and thought this was great sport, until about the middle of the parade route the car finally died and wouldn't restart, so I had to push it to the side road. Oh well, it sure was fun while it lasted!

[gunmetal blue]

I was 15 years old when I bought my 1st model A 1929 town sedan murry body. 16 yaers old I bought a 1929 CC Pickup, 17 years I got 1929 tudor and 1930 tudor sedan. Everbody said your not going to drive them when your done with the are you. They would ask if I was going to make a hot rod out of them. It was great went to swap meets buy parts, then help this one person sale new parts and see guys and gals come up to me and ask for a part. Some times they didn't now what it was called, this was the fun part I would then hand them the part they needed. You now this kid is 15 and this person is 50 or 60..... Now Iam 54 bought my first AA truck 1929 AA CC Puckup. got five miles down the road from picking it up when this guy said nice truck were did you get that. It make Me feel good that even if your not driving it poeple notice a Model A or AA. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

[Dennis L Oberer]

Well I was working at Wards and going to college at UW GB and used the 30 Tudor for my transportation and Liz used the VW Beetle as she was working as an RN>

This was in 1967 ...in the winter.

I had parked the car behind the car lot behind downtown Montgomery Wards in Green Bay and went out after the store closed at 9 PM.

Not a lot of money back then so the battery was always nearly dead. I had no idea how the cutout nor generator really worked and the wiring was always in trouble.

So I hand cranked it to start it.

Anyway, it had snowed about 5 inches that night and after I crank started it it just sat there spinniing in its own ruts.

So I was alone and left it idleing with the spark lever way up and it was going chug, chug, chug, chug and I shifted it into reverse.

It was still spinning slowly on the rear driver side wheel and so I went back and pulled on the bumperette, then pushed, then pulled and the A caught traction and ran over my foot and my leg and there I was on the ground as the car ran over me. LIght car..it just bounced over me and kept going.

The driver door was open and it proceeded to putt putt putt down the lot and out into the street....headlights on, in reverse...with a mind of its own.

I scambled to my feet and ran after it and caught up just as it was about to enter the intersection of a busy street...in reverse...and going through a red light.

Lots of people watching...incredible looks on their faces as they saw this Green tudor idling down the street/ running backwards with the drivers door open and nobody in it.

There are about 5 other things that happened to me with that car. Once it nearly drove itself into the fox river when the streets were glare ice, once when it caught fire and I had to put out the fire on the firewall with handfulls of snow, once when the windshield wiper broke off in a snow storm some 150 miles from home, once when I had the hood off and was working on the engine and forgot and backed over the hood as it laid on the ground....and there were more.

I still have the car...it is all apart now waiting for re re reassembly.

Bought it the first time in 1965 fort $100 , sold it in 1969 for $1200, found it and bought it back in 1993 for $4500.

Dennis L Oberer
Green Bay WI

[Brentwood Bob]

Uncle Joe had no kids. This had to be the early 50's. Dad was his favorite nephew. When us kids got to go for a visit on weekends, it was usually just 2 of us kids that got to go at a time. I was not more than 2nd, or 3rd grade. We'd visit for a short time, then Joe would look at my dad and ask if we wanted to go for cracker jack. We'd go get in the model a coupe. I remember the gas gage bouncing a little, that always fascinated me. We'd go to the same little county store in Rialto. I think the car knew the way. There was room for us 4 to sit in the seat. This was joe's only car, I think.
Uncle Warren in Highland, had a jitney he built to run around Norton AFB in. He was a carpenter on base. He could make an wooden airplane propeller.
The jitney came home when he retired. Body behind the cowl was all home built of wood. Kinda like my Huckster is now. He never took us for cracker jack.
All men's business was conducted out in his shop.
They had a fire one time and the jitney burnt up, never to be seen again.

[Dennis L Oberer]

Hi

How I got the Tudor.....back....

I didnt actually track it down. I had no idea where it was. None. My wife saw me mooning over not having an A and in 1993 she said...Ok...spend up to $5000 and get yourself an A again and be done with it.

So I put an add in the local newspaper in the antique cars section....Wanted to Buy...Model A Ford. Call xxx xxxxx.

I had, in 10 days, over 20 responses to the phone number and one of them was this guy about 4 miles away that had an A tudor for sale. I was looking at a lot of them so I figured...hmmmm a tudor....well maybe.

I went over to his house and it was in the garage with 4 flat tires. But the color had changed and it now had twin side mounts and different upholstery but the rain gutters looked very familiar...as did the firewall.....

So I looked at it and when I pulled up the rear seat bottom there was a restoring manual in there and my name and address from 1968 was on the flyleaf.

I looked it over more carefully and sure enough it was the my first car I had ever owned...the A from 1965.

So I kept my big mouth shut...dickerered him down from $6500 to $4500, bought it, and put it on a flat bed trailer and here it is. Seems that the last owner had bought it, restored it, changed the color, added twin sidemounts, new wrong mohair upholstery for an early 30 tudor, and gave it to his wife as a surprise birthday present. She hated it from that moment on, wouldnt ride in it.

He had something wrong with the transmission (bad bearings I think) and it kept jumping out of gear in high. So just let it sit for about 4 years until I came along.

Engine was pretty tired by that time, drive line worn out. So I have disassembled it and it awaits last restoration and reassembly in 2011 and 2012. It goes to one of the grandsons when I am gone.

A lot of guys say...geez I wish I had my first car. Well I do....

Dennis L Oberer
Green Bay WI

[LukeDahlinger]

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Originally Posted by Tom Wesenberg

I didn't own a Model A yet (other than just a running gear), but about 1980 my friend asked me to drive his 1928 Sport Coupe in the Anoka halloween parade. Anoka goes all out and hosts a huge parade. Anoka is known as the "Halloween Capital of the World". Just as the Model A entered Main street the points started acting up and the engine would miss several firings, then catch and let off a blast like a shotgun going off. Several of the women on the sidewalk would jump and scream. This continued for about a dozen loud blasts. I never laughed so hard, and thought this was great sport, until about the middle of the parade route the car finally died and wouldn't restart, so I had to push it to the side road. Oh well, it sure was fun while it lasted!

That's funny!

[Louis]

I bought my 1st car a 1931 A model coupe in 1954, i was 16 and had my learners lic. the guy down the road had it for sale for $60, i traded him an old 22 rifle for a $20 down payment and was going to pay the other $40 in payments.
Like Milo above i would hide three guys in the rumble seat and one guy under tht passenger,s legg's up frount and sneak in the drive inn, the carb. leak'ed so bad that i would put an empty bean can under it while we watched the movie then pour it back in the tank [did not know about the shut off valve].
I also use to drive up and down the road i lived on and move the spark advance up and down while doing about 40-50 mph and make it backfire a lot, people would come out of their house and watch me [as they laughed].
i really was hard on that car, but it never quit on me.
But all good thing's gotta end, about two mo's. later i had to let the coupe go back as i could not keep up the payment's,
[the $40 that i owed on it ].

[Keith True]

Dennis,I still have my first car(the A) too.It is on it's third body and third frame,every time I redo it I improve it a little.It was given to me by my uncle in 1968 when I was 12.It started as a 31 DeLuxe coupe,but it was the family car,truck,and tractor.It had the rumble removed and a steel box installed that was made in Amesbury Mass.within sight of the Lebaron Bonney building.It was registered as a truck during the war and they got a better gas ration.He parked it in the shed in 1954 when he went off to college.It was used so hard the box sides bulged out,beat the rumble lip completely off the car,and bulged the fenders outward.I put a pickup cab and bed on it,and ran it for a while.It had been used as a tractor too,and the frame was kinked up in a number of places.A few years later I changed the frame and ran it some more.Then the guy the cab originally belonged to said he would like it back,it was given to him by his grandfather but when he came home from school one day his dad had sold it on him for beer money.The attorney that bought it sold it to me.I did it over,painted it,LB interior,all new glass,it was done and in use.I wanted a RPU and he offered to buy me a new body for his old cab.While I had it apart yet again I decided to use a better frame,gear it up a little,go to cast drums,just generally improve it.I doubt I will redo it again though.The original kinked up frame had NO numbers.Clean on the top,they just ain't there.The car did come from Canada.The frame under it now has no numbers either.No rust on the top and no sign there were ever any numbers.That may be one of the frames I got from a guy that brought a bunch from Canada.The middle frame I used had numbers,it is a late 31 and I am planning on using it under another pickup this winter.

[LukeDahlinger]

My uncle kept his Model A over at my grandfather's shop since he never drove it and really didn't have much interest in it. It sat for a few years and once I turned 14 my grandfather & I got it running again and I drove around the property hauling brush or trash cans out to the road etc.

The grandparents went out of town for a couple weeks so me & my stepbrother decided to do some modifications out of sheer boredom. Took an old muffler, cut the muffler part off, used a piece of stop sign pole we 'borrowed' from the end of our road to make a straight pipe.

The neighbor had a sort of rudimentary mud bog on his property so we took the truck over there and made some pretty good passes thru the mud.

In general we thrashed it pretty hard during those 2 weeks. the day before they were supposed to be back in town, we washed it up real good and even armor-alled the tires. No one suspected anything until my grandfather went to move it one day. When we got home from school that day we got the 400 questions about "why in hell you'd cut the muffler off" and "why is it the cleanest that I've ever seen it, not to mention there's 1/2 tank of gas missing" Busted big time. Knowing we were caught red handed, we showed him the video we made (old school VHS camcorder) he was enjoying the film too much to be mad anymore.

[BILL WILLIAMSON]

Chief, (my dad) would short out those dang spark plug strips, 'til he had it running on 1 cylinder, then lauugh as he killed it!

[Tom Wesenberg]

Originally Posted by BILL WILLIAMSON

Chief, (my dad) would short out those dang spark plug strips, 'til he had it running on 1 cylinder, then lauugh as he killed it!

I've heard a couple stories of guys doing that. It just doesn't seem possible. One of the worst shocks I ever got was when I was 12 and standing on damp ground by the well pit and accidentally touched the spark plug on my running 1950 Studebaker. It actually locked my hand in place and I couldn't jerk free for several seconds. I've been shocked several times by 110 volts, but the only other shock that came close to the Studebaker was when I was 16 and accidentally touch the high voltage of the picture tube of the TV set I was working on. That one locked me on for a while also. The noise I let out gave my mom quite a fright!

[kenparker]

One of my fondest memories of owning and operating repairing and restoring any of my Model A’s came just a few months after I bought my first one, Miss Tillie, a 1928 Closed Cab Pickup and is also a special memory of my dad. It was late fall of 1970 and my parents had come to visit us in our new home for the first time.

A couple of points about my dad before we continue the rest of the story. Dad was a no nonsense fellow and did not have a lot of use for things like hobbies. A save your money for an emergency or retirement kind of guy. Also he did not like long sentences, but what he did say was always right and to the point. He also was a Sunday School teacher and knew the Bible backwards and forward.

Saturday morning after breakfast I was in the carport doing something to Tillie and dad walks out of the house and says not a word, but starts to examine the little truck. In his classic stance of hands clasp behind his back and the stern look on his face he walks all the way around the truck looking but not touching. He looked at fenders, glass, radiator, engine (the hood was up), headlights, steering, tires, examining every detail. I knew to keep quiet when he was studying. It took several minutes and I just stepped back and watched – puzzled at what he was thinking. After what seemed like and eternity he stopped, looked at me and quoted from the Bible – a verse about King David. “When David was a child he played as a child, but when David became a Man he put away his childish things.” He then turned away and walked back into the house and not another word was ever said about my Model A.

Until three years later he offers his garage as a storage place for my Model A as we were moving and had no place to keep her until new arrangements could be made.

Dad has been gone for 30 years now, but that weekend in Shreveport, La still has great memories of Tillie, my father and his wisdom. I still have Tillie and “play” with all my model A’s.

[Clem Clement]

My new Father-in-law came to visit us in Boston. We had a new baby he wanted to spoil and a new Model A. He refused to ride in the A. He said he had spent his entire life working hard so he did not have to ride in old cars. Gramma jumped in and loved to ride with me in any of the old cars I had around. Both were right in their decision and I dearly miss them.

Just before Christmas my adult cousins came for a visit. Both commented on how comfortable a Model A was. I think so too.
clem

[Chris Haynes]

Back in the early '60's I drove my garage fresh roadster back to the base in Port Hueneme, CA. We had stopped at a traffic lite in Oxnard and the pedestrians in the crosswalk all stopped to look at the car. The lite turned green but i couldn't move because of the people looking at the car. An Oxnard cop, who hadn't got serviced the nite before, came by a screamed at me to get moving and get out of town or he was gonna cite me for being an "Attractive Nuisance".

[Tom Endy]

As a teen in the early 50's I had a friend who had a very nice original 28 Coupe. One day three of us skinny kids were jammed in the cab and were rolling down the road at about 45 mph. We crossed over a very rough set of railroad tracks. The rear of the car bounced up lifting the back wheels off the ground momentarily. The driver kept his foot down on the gas pedal which allowed the engine rpm and the wheels to speed up. When the back wheels reconnected with the ground the differential ring gear cleaned off the teeth on the pinion.

We came to a rolling stop on the other side of the tracks. At first we thought the clutch had gone out as we could not move in any gear. When we later determined the problem we went to a junk yard and bought an entire rear end that was complete from the U-joint back to the rubber tires for $15.

The moral to this story is that any time you go over speed bumps or railroad tracks, in a Model A Ford, take your foot off the gas.

Tom Endy

[Clem Clement]

My first car, A 40 Merc 4 door convertable sleeps in another man's garage. I call it from time to time, but I don't ever expect to own it again. I do dream...
clem