Team Blog

We have set June 2008 as our target date to be finished with the restoration and begin driving the car for the summer. This will give us a year of touring and testing before we depart New York on June 9, 2009. Todate we are closing in on being finished. Its down to the small parts. We still need to make the fiber drive wheel for the magneto. The one we have is broken and age deterioated. A new one will give us the security we want to do this long drive. We are very grateful to Vern Campbell for restoring the Splitdorf mag. He did a beautiful job, and when we fire things up I’m sure we will have great spark.

Restoration of the Splitdorf coil box is nearly finished. Lud Gocek from Vintage Brass supplied us with some very nice parts to finish the box. Bill Ottemann researched and sent us the wiring diagram for this system. We are waiting to get the firewall back from the painter so we can install it, wire the system and finish the electrical system.

Typical problems with this kind of restoration have developed. The upholsterer called yesterday and informed me that he would not have the car finished before he left on vacation for two weeks. We had been promised it would be finished by April 15. It now looks like it will be May 20th or later. This delay adds complications to meeting our deadline.

We are still needing to retube the oiler on this car. It has a gear driven oil pump with oil lines to each cylinder, front and rear main and the clutch. The engine came without any oil lines so we will need to make new lines. Flaring, bending and fitting the brass tubing to do this will take some time and is an art. This challenge still awaits us in the next month.

Rick Britten has informed us that he is on schedule with restoring the brass. We already have the head lights and cowl lamps done and they are beautiful. Rick is finishing the hubcaps and tail light and promises to have them done by mid-April. He had previously finished the brass steering column. This will leave us with the horn and carbide generator for next year. When it comes to finished and coated brass there are none better than Rick. Thank you !

NEEDS: We are still in need of a luggage rack and trunk for the rear of the car. I haven’t taken measurements and gotten into the details yet but have wondered it there is a product out there on the reproduction market that might work. If anyone knows of sources please contact me and let me know. I did look into the Model A catalogue and there are some options there.

We also need to sew pennants for the drive. They are triangular banners that mount on sticks that attach to the car. The ones we want to make have a circle on them with the letters MBMC inside the circle. The initials stand for Maxwell Briscoe Motor Club. If anyone knows a sewing hobbist with an embroidery machine that could make these banners, please let us know. We need about 1/2 dozen.

Finally, we are in need of a trailer. We would prefer to get one donated so we can adapt it to our needs and splash the outside with sponsors logos and pictures of Alice. Any leads on trailers (24-28′) would be appreciated. We need something big enough to carry the car plus extra parts etc. Dragging it across the country and back will but some miles on it so it needs to be durable. We would be happy to promote a sponsors trailers all along the way if we could get one donated.