Hagerty Video: Will this 1925 Ford Model T run after being neglected for years? | Will It Run?

Hagerty Video Transcript

– Hey, this is David and Jeff. And this is a Model T Ford. Or should I say T model? – No, model T Ford is good. I hate people that say T model. – A model. – That’s an A model. – A model. T model. (guy laughs) – I hate that. – Don’t you love it? – Yeah. – Hey. – She’s seen a little- – I’m stuck. – Seen a couple better days here. What do we have? Is a motor in here? – Cranks out front. – Ooh. Check that up. – I think the hood’s attached. It’s not. – Oh, it’s not. Okay. – Well, let’s leave it. – Maybe just take it off. You wanna just take it off? – We’ll take it off here.

What we got here. – I’m not 100% expert in model Ts but the starter is telling me, I think it’s a little bit later. – Yeah, ’cause ’09, they did not have starters for sure. – They did not. – Okay, so it’s a later model, which is cool. So what up to ’27?

So that narrows it down by two decades. – Yeah. – Yeah, so this has a starter. This car obviously also took a battery. – Okay. – Well, I think we can do is, I mean, we can run the block number and that should narrow it down to a year.

– Hey, I got good news here. The other starter. Rotates the motor over nice. – Yeah, it does. Still has a leather belt on it too. – Cool. Tell you what, you figure out by the numbers. I’m gonna pull this hood out of the way and find some tools. – All right.

Hey, that was easy. Not a lot on bolting in this one. So we’re looking at the Model T Ford Club of America. According to, it’s a November, 1925. It’s November now. That’s convenient. – It is. – Might be its lucky day. – Yeah, it might. – Here’s the plan. It’s been sitting here,

Well, I know it’s been sitting here for at least four years and I’m thinking it’s been sitting here a lot more years than that. But it’s seemingly all together. Motor turns over. I say we see if we make it run. – I agree. (objects scrape) – Crispy critters for these sparks plug wires, boy. They’re your favorite brand. – Of course. We’re another tractor. – I think we got a good shot at this one. – I think so too. I mean, we know these are low compression. – Yeah, this is about four to one.

– Four to one. – Yeah. – Yeah. – I mean, you probably could feel it when you were turning it over there. – Yeah. – Or not feeling it. This is pretty classic. Then old gale, I think. Well, this does have a distributor. Wow. – Isn’t this the handiest contraption? – Yeah, I saw that. It was laying on the running board. – I got this to work. – That’s a wrap. – That’s a wrap. You wanna see if she just kicks over first? You wanna just throw some power to the battery? Or you wanna just start taking plugs and- – Ooh, let’s pull the plugs out and, yeah, I like that.

But spin it then and see if we can make the starter work. That way we’ll know how much arm strength we’re gonna need for the rest of the day. – Okay. – I’m guessing that’s bigger than our normal plug wrench. – It is. – Those 15, 16ths then?

– Yeah, it looks like it’s that size. Shorties. The nice thing and also sometimes can be a drawback about working on vehicles like this, they’re so simple that they can actually confuse you. I have a very good friend right now redoing a model A

And he’s having a hard time ’cause it’s so easy. – Yeah, you over complicate it. – Yeah. – Okay. – Oh geez, that was like no pressure at all. (tools clink) – Hmm. – Hmm. Is that good sign or bad sign? – Oh. Well, we know it’s not seized, but- – No.

– I think somebody’s been in it. – Might be. Well, maybe they put some oil down her. – Oh, that’d be great. It’s running pretty rich. – Yeah. A little bit. – I’m not sure about that one. – Wanna stick with our deep creep method. Seems to be working.

– Yeah, I like that stuff. – Do you want the long straw still? – No, no. ‘Cause it’s right here. – Here, I got the last spark plug you installed. You want that one? – Yeah. What happened to the one that you did? – It’s in the box. – Okay. There’s a humongous combustion chamber. No wonder these have no compression. – Oh, yeah. Well, it’s literally, so they could run on anything. He didn’t have to have. – What was gas? What was gas when these were, what octane was gas? – Again, they would run on kerosene. That was not a joke.

– What are you doing, dude? – Thought I’d take the opportunity to clean up these plugs ’cause we don’t have any plugs from ’25. So we’ll see if we can make these, see if we can make these work. – Not carried at your local- – Revive them, yeah.

In theory, if there’s connection between here to here, right, they’re good. – Oh, feels pretty decent. – After squirting a little bit of our magic lubricant down the cylinders, I can get kind of a, and I turned it over probably, I don’t know, probably half a dozen times. – Right. – I can get in here.

I mean, I can see cylinder walls and they’re shiny. The top of the pistons are, you know, they’re a little dark, but the cylinder walls actually, from what I can see, they look pretty decent. – Okay. Cool. – So that might be a perk. Bells, you know, they look used,

But, they’re all moving. – Okay. What I can tell from this plug it’s not shorted, so, it’s not open, so at least this plug is good. This one will fire. I think when we put these back in, let’s put a little oil on the threads too. – Sure. (machine beeps) That one’s got some. Go look into that first one there, but I couldn’t, could just because in grease here, there’s a lot of- – Yeah.

Hard to make a good connection on it. – Yeah. The wires are- – Are good? – I think they will work. – Okay. – I’m not gonna say they’re good. – Yeah, they’re not broke. – No, they’re not broke. – Okay. Still curious to see how these coils work. – Well, cylinders look good. I think, next step, let’s see if starter kicks. – Starter kicks. We wanna try to hook the battery up then. I mean, we got a lot of voltage to run through it. Nothing else. – Oh, dude, you wanna put some oil on these before we put ’em in?

– Here’s one for you. – Thanks. – Here, I’ll take all them. Drop these things. They’re like gold. We don’t have anymore. All right, well, I’ll eat the rest of this peanut butter. – All right. – We didn’t get you lunch today, so. – Oh, okay. I’ll eat this grease. Let me put it back. Save it. There’s not much left in this can. – So this is like a pipe fit. – You think there’s a tapered. – There’s no crush washers and they don’t, it doesn’t go all the way down on the threads. I’m just not familiar with that. – It could be. – YouTube commenters of the world. – Yeah. (guy laughs) Yeah, no kidding.

It didn’t look like they were tapered. – It didn’t, but you know, I mean, they don’t go down all the way. – Maybe they didn’t drill all the way or tap ’em all the way through. – On the cylinder head? Yeah, it could be. I didn’t look- – Short taper.

– Yeah, could be. – All right. Now what we’re gonna do? How are we gonna check this coil? Just go for the gusto. (man laughs) – Yeah, yeah. You know, I say we just kind of, we get the battery to it. See if we got anything at the plug. – Okay.

All right, so this should be negative ground, positive ground. – This should be positive ground. – Lemme correct my statement. – Yeah, I believe- – Positive ground. Can I go right to the block anywhere? – I don’t see why not. – Well, I can go right here. – Yep.

I can sand it up too, if you want. – What? – I said I could hit it with some sand paper if you want. – Oh, yeah. I just don’t want it to fall off is what I’m after. All right, if I whack this against their feed line, right, it should do something. – It should kick over. – Okay, here we go. Here goes nothing Charlie. It’s a good sign. Ready? – Yes, it is. – I’ll do it a little more. The starter is good. – Yeah. – But with 12 volts out the hood, it’s spinning a whole lot quicker than that. – You’re hitting it with 12 volts? – Yeah. – Wow. Yeah, I would’ve thought it spun a little faster than that. – You know, unless this battery’s dead too, ’cause it’s possible.

– Seems to be a theme for the day. Right? – Yeah, so far. – Well, I’d really like it to spin a little quicker on that starter. – Clean the connection? – We better put a voltage, we better put the voltage reg or the volt meter on our battery.

But I wanna pull that off anyway. – It’s got 12 volts to it. It might be weak, but it’s got 12 volts. – Yeah, we take these three. – Let’s do those back. – The upper one. – Let’s do the back three and let’s look at it. Clean up those points

For that coil to try to function. Let this battery charge a little better. That should turn it over a whole lot faster that way. And then we’ll go towards fuel. Do we want to pull the carburetor right outta the gate? – Ah, because it’s a little one barrel Stromberg.

– Yeah, but it’s an updraft. – It is an updraft. – So how are you gonna get fuel in the hole, you know what I mean? I really don’t need to put this back on. – Well, I was thinking about, you know, we just put the gas tank up here.

– Yeah. – Just run it down. Just take the fuel pump off. – Yeah, yeah, yeah. – But I can pull it, you know, I can go through it real quick. Just make sure we’re not cutting ourselves short. – I think we do. (rock music)

– There’s more connections for us to clean though, honestly. – Yeah, I’m not surprised. – The bottom actually looks pretty good, but like these side terminals, they’re all corroded. These are kind of cool to clean up and have ’em. You see ’em- – Boxes? – Yeah, these are like gorgeous,

You know, cleaned up. – Oh, they’re, yeah, yeah. – Coat of fresh- – Coat of shellac on ’em, oil. – Yeah, I’ve seen ’em turned into like furniture. – Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. – Not like steam punks. You know, like clocks. – Okay, so here’s something I’m finding very ironic.

Hopefully I’m using that word correctly ’cause I usually get badgered for not, but this is a ’25. Do you notice that we’re doing electrical work? We’re cleaning electrical terminals. That’s really all we’re doing. – That’s all we’ve been doing here. – There’s numerous connections here. So when people think that,

“Oh, all that old stuff’s just mechanical.” Well it is, it’s mechanical connections for electricity. All right, as Jeff and I go through and kind of figure out whether the ignition is gonna be good or not, we’re also deconstructing in how it functions because we’re, well, we’re not electrical engineers nor Model T experts.

But here’s the way I’m understanding it. So the points on the coil are normally closed. You have power coming in here from the ignition switch that’s filling the coils because it has nowhere otherwhere to go ’cause you have a connection between these two. This is the feed from the distributor,

Which tells the coil when to fire. The coil fires by, there’s basically a little magnet right here. And so then the points, so when the distributor fires power here, the points open, that power then comes out, that’s being developed and stored within the coil, primary and secondary coil.

They go out this end and then right to the spark plug wires. That of course gives you the spark ’cause then it jumps the gap trying to get across and go somewhere. That’s how I understand it. The key is to make it do all that and just, well, get sparks to the plugs.

– I agree. – How it gets there at the end of the day can be magic as far as I’m concerned. But that’s how I’m understanding this from a mechanical device standpoint. I don’t wanna say simple, but it’s making sense. – I wouldn’t say simple either. This is (man laughs)

A little more than I thought we were gonna get into, but- – Yep. – This must have been a pain in the butt. – Oh yeah. I mean- – If you didn’t, you know, if it wasn’t, if you let one of these sit it. – I bet you this is a weekly function. – Tell us, David, how was it back in ’19. – Ooh, that hurts. Now I would be willing to bet this was a maintenance function you did on a Sunday afternoon every week. – Yeah. – Right. Getting ready for the next week.

Hey, make sure everything’s making connection or you did whatever some people do now and wait until it breaks and then figure out how to fix it. – Oh, I think that was part of their design as a press in fit. – Oh yeah, had to have been. Otherwise they’d be making-

– Yeah, they’d be rattling. – They’d be disconnecting every damn bump. Can you imagine Michigan roads? – Oh yeah. – There weren’t even roads when, paved roads. – That one is done. (machine hums) – Did you bring a hammer? – I didn’t think I was gonna need a hammer. I always need a hammer. (machine hums) – There it is. (machine hums) – You say, you know where that washer was too? – Yeah, I’ll get it. (machine hums)

– Yeah. (machine hums) No way. They made such slop in these. – I don’t know. – It’s 1920. – Yeah. Position stamping wasn’t a thing, was it? Oh, a single would be fine. – I’m just wondering if any of those are doubled up. And why was the reason. – Look like 50%.

I doubled it 50% right now. – Okay. – So the front tour doubled, the back tour not. (men laugh) Okay, now with everything put back together and clean, let’s see if we should, now for instance, that we understand how the system works a little better.

We know these points should be making contact right now. So this piece and this piece should make contact. I should have resistance here and here. I do. Push this down and it goes away. It means that opens, so good. That’s one. – This one’s still gonna fight us. – Hmm. (machine hums) – Got nothing there. Nothing on that one. – Doesn’t look like it. – It might not be touching yet. All right, come on. (machine hums) (machine beeps) That’s exactly what it is. So that one, that one’s in, well- – So the points are open on that one right now? – Yeah. – Yeah. It’s not sitting up. – Not bent up. – Yeah. – So basically this one

Just bend that finger up a little bit. Right. And you can probably just take the top off. – Yep. – I’m gonna suggest that’s probably what this one’s doing. (machine beeps) Yep. Because remember they’re normally closed. (machine beeps) – Interesting, okay. – Now this one’s just making shit connection. – (indistinct). – Yeah, that one needs to be bent up too a little bit. – All right. – So the front, we got lucky. We’ve got one of ’em that’s, one of ’ems making, the rest of ’em are not. – I got one. – Think anybody notice that we just go in

All the way in on these and not necessarily know what we’re doing to start with. – What’s the idea? – That’s the fun. – Oh, that’s right. You can’t just strip it down. Sure, we can. We do it every time. I like that. All right, so let’s see if we have spark. – Hold on. – I got everything. – No, are you touching me? – Got everything kind of connected. Okay. See if we make this work. Here we go. That one’s moving. That one looks like it’s moving. Looks like one outta the four. One outta four is moving. – Yeah. – Okay. – Well shoulda been, I bet you this one maybe was getting spark. – The one I’m changing? This one? – Yeah. – That’s the one that was moving. – That was the one moving. – Try it again.

Yeah? – Yeah, hold on. Come on. – You’re really putting your trust in the insulation of that crack. – Oh, we got good spark on that one. – Oh, yeah. Nothing on that one. – Great. Here we go. Ready? – Yeah. Yeah. That one’s got, ’cause I saw this one move. – Yep, that one’s got it. Can we put this one back in and see if we can. – This one here’s got a lot of gap. – All right, we’re two for two. – Yeah. – See if we can get another one.

Oh, ready? – Go. (engine sputters) – Yep. That fixed it? – Yep. – Ready? – Go. – I can see that one’s not moving. – Yep. – Yeah, so you gotta have these close enough, right? So they actually pull down. That magnet’s gonna only have so much pull. All right, ready? – Go. (egine sputters) – Yep. – Sorry, I just saw some. – Cool. – All right,

We have spark. So that means our electrical connections here are all working good. – And that means we go after fuel. – Yep. Now make some fuel. Make some fuel happen. Pull the carb off and at least just see what’s inside. – Okay, now I’m getting excited. So I won’t lie to you.

This whole time I’ve been like, ugh. I’m like ugh. But now it’s like, okay. – Oh yeah. – Okay. – Trust me. – Now let’s make it burn. – I’m with you, 100%. – Now let’s make it burn. – Yeah, I’m with you 100%. – Okay, good. – I felt the same thing.

– I say we pull that. Let’s pull that out of there. I’m gonna keep our battery charged over here. ‘Cause it seems – Grab some wrenches. – Seems to be an issue for us. – Yeah, ’cause this. (machine hums) ‘Cause I like having the natural audio of

Wrenches and things. – Yeah, I agree. – I don’t think this is gonna be too bad. I think this is- – No. What’s it look like? – It’s not stuck. (machine hums) It’s all free, eh? (machine hums) Well, take it out in the light and outside and spray it off, I think. – Pull the bulb. – I think so.

Same thing, make sure the needle passengers are clean. – There’s nothing to that carb at all. – No. – Nope. – It’s got a plate on it. – Like I said, it’s got a float in it, right? – Had. – Ish. – Had, had kinda. – No, no. I feel it. – They’d be brass. – Yeah, they’d be brass. – I’ll grab my rag. I’ll just spray a little off, make sure it threads back in good. – We won’t be outta gaskets so good. – Well, it’s kinda good. – Look at that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a float that looks like a donut. – No? Yeah, they were called donut floats. – Really? (man laughs) – It is brass, isn’t it? – Yeah. No, yeah. – Yeah, it should be. – It looks fine. Nope. I’m gonna pull. Oh yeah, the needle’s stuck. – Yeah. I would think. – Want me to pull the jet? I might as well since we’re this far. – Yep.

– Oh yeah, right. Easier said than done. Oh, I don’t know. I don’t want to force that. – Can you, yeah, we can just spray through it. You don’t have to take it out though. – Yeah, it’s completely. (man coughs) – Right. – Blow- – Plugs working good too. – Make sure you blow in that inlet, right. This is coming out. – Yep. – Hmm, passage is clean. It is now anyway. I like it. Let’s give it a go. Let’s see what happens. Put 90 pounds of pressure to it and let it rip. Yeah, yeah. Okay, there we go. – That makes more sense here. Okay, she’s in there most of the way. – Okay. Ooh. – What’s our intake look like? It’s all right? – I think the intake’s pretty clean. – Yeah, it looks clean. Feel nothing in it. (man sniffs) – I can’t wrap my, (indistinct). – I don’t know. I think I’m just gonna, you want me to hook the choke back up? I think I’m just gonna operate that by hand. – Just by hand. – That’ll work. – So we’re gonna, I’m pumping up the bowl right now on the carburetor

Getting some gas into it. – The only thing it’s gonna do if it overflows, it’s gonna drain out the hole, right? – Yeah. – Which it probably will, but- – It could come out the throat. – Yeah. Right. – Oh, there is goes. – Yeah, okay. So we know we’re full. That’s all we’re after there. – Yep. – Okay, just tie that thing back to itself somehow. Okay, ready? And then from there, why don’t you operate the throttle since it’s on your side. – I can do that.

– I got the starter. I got starter over here. – I got the (indistinct). – Okay. Ready, Jeff? You tell me when. – I’m gonna choke it, I think. – Yep. – Go. – Okay, here we go. Oh, that was a fire, dude. Okay, here we go again. – Yeah. I think I- – You good? – Yeah, go. – Here we go. Ready? – Go. – Oh my gosh. All right, we’re close. – We’re close. – Ready? – Okay, here we go. – Man, it’s right there. It’s barking. They just won’t take, like, take and stay. – What have you been doing and what have I been doing that’s not making it run? – Right? So I’m spinning it like the bejesus over here with the starter. – Yeah.

– I mean it’s spinning like no other Model T ever spun. Does it have enough, can you feel and draw on the carburetor? You feeling suction when it turns over? You know what I mean? Ready? – Yeah. (engine sputters) – Oh yeah. – Okay. So then how about the squirt bottle

In behind her, squirt fuel into it? – I can do that. – Don’t rely on the carburetor to draw fuel, right? – Yeah. – In case whatever in that bowl is just not there. – I can do that. – Even if you gotta go from underneath it or something. I don’t know.

You might not be able to get it there with. – I think I can. Like, once you get that first kick, it’s not continuing. – Yep. – And you know, I don’t know how much could, you know, there was parts of this carb, but I could not get a part. This should still idle. – Right. – I’ll show you what’s happening. You ready for this?

Here’s 100% what’s happening. I hook up the starter, boom, right? I’m feeding power there to there. As soon as I disconnect it to stop the starter from spinning. – You’re killing the- – It stops running. – You’re killing the spark. – Because I’m unhooking the power. – Oh, good. – Vehicles like this, they’re so simple. They’re so simple. They’re so simple. – I think we’re in a different spot now. – A little bit. (engine roars) – All right, so I gotta confess. So here’s what happened. Okay, when we started, we wanted to just see if the starter worked, right. And to see if we had ignition. So what I did is I just jumpered off the bottom of the coil. ‘Cause I basically was concerned

That none of the rest of the stuff would function. Like the ignition switch and the starter button and so on and so forth, right. Take that out of the equation. Just want to get spark into the spark plugs. So we jumped it right to the starter. I ran power right to the starter.

So this whole time we’ve been, just spinning the daylights out of it. It’s firing because the exhaust is hot. – Yeah. – Right. We’re like, “Ah, we can’t get enough fuel to it. Can’t get enough fuel to it.” Because every time I took the power off the battery, it would stop spinning.

– And stop power- – Well, duh, because the starter would stop spinning, but then it would stop running as well because, well, the hot wire to the ignition was connected to the battery terminal I kept disconnecting. (man laughs) Right? – Yeah. – So now, well, you know,

I was standing over the top of this and it dawned on me that like that, “Aha, you fool.” – Yeah. – Why did you do that? – Yeah. – But we jumped ahead is all we did, right? – Yeah. – So now we just took, we stepped back

And just flat honestly connected it the way for- – It was intended. – Like Henry wanted it connected. – Yeah. – And now I think if you have some fuel running over there, you- – Which we do. – All right, you run the throttle.

Or I can run the throttle. – No, I got throttle. – Okay. Okay, you got throttle. I got the advance. – Yep. – Okay. We’re on. We’re on. Here we go. (engine starts) Good? – Good. – Here we go. (engine sputters) – I’m gonna try to choke it. – Yeah, I was gonna say it needs some choke go. – Go. (engine sputters) Whoa. (engine sputters) – That’s what I’m talking about. Woo! Yes! – It ran. – It will run. It runs. It runs. – I think if I sit here and mess with the choke while we do that, we can get it to run a little bit longer. – I agree. I agree, but that’s exactly what it was.

– What are you standing around for? Man, always, always wants that little bit more, right? – Yeah. – That’s all right. I’m wanna stand back and watch it, hear it running anyway too. You good? – Yeah. – Oh heck, yeah. (engine idles) Dude, it runs good. – It’s running really good. (man laughs) – That’s sweet. Ah, dude, you can see every one of those just clacking and sparking. Look at ’em. – Oh yeah. – That’s cool. (engine idles) That’s a great running engine. – It is. You’re about to go outta fuel, but as long as we keep this pumping up. – Wow, right. (engine idles) – (indistinct) one more time. – Oh, come on. (engine idles) Hold on. – Here, I’ll run the, I can run the- – Sweet. Victory. – Congratulations. – Thank you. (guys laugh) Wow. Cool, now Ben wants to see it start up with the crank. – Yeah. (guys laugh) I’ll do it. I gotta make sure, yeah, we gotta make sure- – Yeah, fill that up.

– Yeah, ’cause it was really hard to judge if I was like, how much fuel I was giving her ’cause I can’t hear it. – No, right. – Oh, you know what happened? It came unplugged. That’s why. Can we fire it on the hand crank? Like this, right. – Open thumb. – Open thumb. Gotta engage it. (machine buzzes) Right? Like this? – Yeah. – Yeah. That’s the one to get you. – That’s the one. That’s the kickback. – Yeah, baby. (engine idles) – That’s impressive. (engine idles) – Well, it’s running a lot out too, but yeah. But yeah, you’re right. (engine idles) We’re here. (engine idles) Advance all that work. – Yeah. (engine idles) – Is it making a difference? It does, doesn’t it? – Oh yeah. – It’s all that’s working.

– Oh. – That’s awesome. Hey, this is good. – Yeah, that was good. – This is good. I wasn’t real optimistic when we rolled in. I mean, I was and wasn’t. It’s been in the garage. I know, it’s simple from that stand point. – Yeah, but looking at this.

– But looking at the shape of those wires. Just all the, I mean, wooden coils. – Yeah. – Right. Just an unknown for me. – Yeah, me too. – I honestly, I learned a ton. I didn’t realize how mechanical those coils were from that, thinking like an actual movement of mechanics. – Yeah.

– Four separate per cylinder. – Yep. – Tied together. It’s very unique and simple. – Yeah. – I’ll tell you what, I think it’s been a long time since there’s been exhaust from a car in this garage. – I think too. – I think Reggie would be pretty happy

That one of his cars is fired up in the garage. Not just outside. – Where it sat. – But where it sat. Where he had it covered with all kinds of stuff. – Yeah, ’cause you couldn’t see this car before. – No, there was stuff everywhere on it.

So, yeah, it’s, so that’s awesome. – Yeah, that’s cool. – I really think this is awesome. So I tell you what, if you are not excited as, if you’re not even half as excited as Jeff and I are right now, then I don’t know,

You might have to go ahead and have yourself checked. But hey, get out in the shop. Go get your work done. We’re proving that there’s projects like this laying around everywhere. – Absolutely. – Go look. See ya. Very cool. – Yeah, that was. Well, now, nothing’s gonna daunt me. Honestly- – You’re not afraid of anything. – Believe it or not, one of the first cars ever has been a little daunting on how it starts. – Yeah. – And from here on out. – It’s all downhill, man. – The sky’s the limit. – It’s easy.

– Yeah. – We can even throw, well, let’s not go far with computers. – Yeah.