From Farm To Meditation – Memoirs Of An Angel 03. The Model T Ford mechanics.

To find other posts in this series click Model T Ford. In this third post in the series, “From Farm To Meditation – Memoirs Of An Angel”, Bill continues his memoirs. He digresses to speak about his father’s car. Apologies to all who have no interest in cars. This does, however, display one of Bill’s lifelong characteristics in that, despite the fact that he was born a farm boy, he was always keen to have the latest technical innovations, whether it be in the form of telephone, radio, television or cars.

Model T Ford Spark Coils

But the Model T Ford had spark plugs just like all the other petrol driven engines and to get the twenty-odd thousand volts required to jump a spark across the tips of the spark plugs, the dashboard carried a little box holding four induction coils. They were very commonly known as ‘Ford Spark Coils’ and the developed a high voltage by being fed through what were called ‘trembler blades’ and these trembler blades operated platinum contacts which made and broke the circuit at a very rapid rate and these were inserted in the primaries of the induction coils and as they vibrated so a high voltage would be generated in the secondary of the coil and this high voltage was fed to the spark plugs so that the ignition system could operate.

Model T Ford Flywheel Magneto

The Model T Ford was a four cylinder motor car and there was one spark plug for each cylinder. On the end of the camshaft was a low tension distributor and this fed alternating voltage from the flywheel, ‘magneto’ shall we call it. The current generated there was fed in the proper order to each one of these s

park coils in its turn, and just to be sure that everybody adjusted things in order, the firing order of the engine was stamped on the intake manifold. And so fed the low voltage AC into each coil in turn according to the firing order recorded on the intake manifold.

Model T Ford Gearbox

The gearbox of the Model T Ford was quite different to the gearboxes used in other cars. It had a minimum of cog wheels, and it wasn’t operated with a hand shift lever, it was operated with foot pedals. The left hand pedal, when pushed right down engaged first gear and when it was released and traveled its full distance, top gear was engaged. So there was the Model T Ford with two gears, low gear and high gear. Then another pedal, a center pedal, operated the reverse mechanism, and by holding the left hand pedal in the neutral position and pressing on the reverse pedal, then the car went backwards.

And so ends this third installment of this fascinating series, From Farm To Meditation – Memoirs Of An Angel. Look out for the next post in this series.