My Experiences With
Model A Fords

My Model A Coupe

August 1965 rolled around. I was soon to be a senior in High School. What senior doesn't want his own car? Dad had a car, mom had a car, and we had two working Model A 2-door sedans. Of course, I didn't expect to get use of the fully restored one, but I couldn't talk dad into letting me use the other one very often either. But with enough wheedling, I finally talked him into letting me build up a coupe for my own use. School was only a couple of weeks away, and I really didn't want to have to ride the school bus for another year, so I wanted to throw one together fast.

Among the Model A's we had amassed by this time, we had three coupe bodies - two we had come by for free and the other had cost us $5. I decided the $5 one was the least hopeless. I quickly threw together a chassis and running gear - didn't bother to clean up and paint any of it, or do more than just make sure everything was in working order. Dad helped me get the body on and throw on a lousy quick coat of paint. We didn't have any very good engines, but we threw in the best we had and I had a car to drive to school that first day.

This picture is one of the coupes that I chose not to use. Behind it is the 4-door "Vicky."

When I started working on it, my coupe was a 1930 model. There are only a few differences between the 1930 and 1931 models: the fenders are a bit different, the radiator shell is different, and the instrument panel on the gas tank is different. We had better 1931 parts for all of these, so my coupe was a 1931 coupe when I finished with it. (The headlights are also a bit different, but that didn't matter because my headlights weren't Model A headlights.)

After just a couple of days, I noticed that the right rear side of the car was sagging badly. I looked up underneath, and sure enough the frame was broken in half. So it was back to riding the school bus.

We didn't have another good frame, but fortunately we had put the Model A bug into one of our neighbors. He had an extra frame leaning against his house, and I quickly bargained it away from him. We had to take everything apart again, and I begrudgingly agreed that we'd do a better job this time. We did a pretty thorough job on the running gear, and cleaned up and painted everything. When we finally got the car together several months later, it was a much better car than it had been the first time around.

If you look closely at my coupe, you'll quickly see why it would never win any prizes. The fenders never got more than a coating of primer on them. The body got paint, but it was just a single color instead of the 2-tone color scheme it should have had. And the paint job was not a good one - I never bothered to fill in all the little dents and do a first class paint job. Those headlights aren't Model A headlights - they're off a later Ford (but they're sealed beam and gave much better light than the Model A ones would have). I never had one of the classy ahoga horns, just a beep-beep horn off a later Ford. No chrome on those bumpers, just a quick coat of silver paint. Those are 16-inch wheels off a later car rather than the 19-inch wheels it should have (16-inch tires are much easier to come by and I thought they looked better). There's an electric wiper instead of a vacuum wiper (the generator couldn't handle the extra load - at night I could have lights or I could have a wiper, but I couldn't have both - if I turned on both, the engine promptly died). The seat had nice leather upholstery - far from standard - but otherwise there was no upholstery inside. I never did have any shock absorbers, so it was a bit of a rough-rider. I never had a good engine. The first two didn't last very long, the third one was pretty dependable, but it had a crack in the block that caused it to lose water and I was constantly refilling the radiator. But I loved that car, and I sure put a lot of miles on it.

This is the body I used for my coupe.

It took me a long time to get the hang of remembering to retard the spark before starting the engine. I went through several starter bendix springs before I learned. Fortunately, I always carried a crank and could start the engine after busting the starter. At least I never forgot to retard the spark before cranking (when dad was about 4, he started playing with the controls of their Model T one time when his mother was about to crank up the engine, and he caused her to break her arm by moving the spark back to normal). I also used to run out of gas a lot. I could usually only afford a dollar's worth (about 3 gallons) at a time. The gas guage was just a piece of cork on a wire (the instrument panel was mounted on the gas tank), and you could see the gas sloshing around behind the glass. I'd always wait until I couldn't see any gas sloshing around, and then figured to have about 20 miles worth left, but I often misjudged and ran out. So I always carried a gas can along with the extra water in the trunk.

In early 1966, I took a job at the Daily Missoulian stuffing papers. The Thursday and Sunday papers were too big for their old press to print in one run, so we stuffers had to put the pieces together. There were about 10 of us, and we each did 4500 papers each night. We had one run for the Thursday paper, so we started Thursday at midnight when the press began the second run. On Saturday nights, we had two sets to do - first putting the funnies into the classified ad section that was printed starting at 9:00, then put that into the main section starting at midnight. If the press didn't break down too often, we usually had an hour to kill before the midnight run, so a few of us would jump into the coupe to cruise the drag for awhile. One night, I remember that we managed to get six of us into the thing. Four of us were on the cramped seat (one on someone's lap), another was on the floor, and the sixth on the little ledge behind the seat.

This was the chassis I used the first time around.

When I'd get off work at 3:00 am, the streets of Missoula were always deserted and I'd have a chance to see what my Model A would do. It wouldn't do much. But I did manage to hit 60 mph going across the Higgins Avenue bridge one night (speed limit 25).

In the fall of 1966, I went off to Bozeman to start college. I wanted to take my Model A with me, but dad would have nothing to do with that. But in the spring, he did relent enough to let me take it back for the final week of classes. It still had the engine with the leaky block, so I had to stop and add water every 30 miles or so and had to add oil every 50 miles or so, but it made the 200 mile trip just fine (even made it over the continental divide). That was the longest trip I ever took it on.

At least I always knew that I'd have my coupe to drive whenever I visited home. During the summer of 1967, I worked for the post office and used it to get to all the various mail routes I carried (I think I did every single mail route at least once, and really got to know the town well). The next summer I worked for the Missoulian again, this time as a copy boy for the advertising department, and was all over town collecting ads.

Eventually, though, my little sister Ruthie got her driver's license and dad turned the coupe over to her. For her, he even had an engine rebuilt. After that I rarely got to drive it - Ruthie did not like me driving "her" coupe even though I still thought of it as mine. And I had even taught her how to drive the thing after dad gave up in frustration!