MisteR Tee
Ah, Nostalgia, it ain't what it used to be!
No longer wanted: Steel 26/27 Ford Model T coupe rear fenders.
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Does anyone know if Nick Butler used the same king pins on all his dropped tubes or did he upgrade as time went on?HTML Code:hopefully whoever has the front end had better be prepared for frequent rebuilds, assuming it's still got the Pop front spindles. He had to replace the king pins every year as they were too weedy
Hi stilltrying,
I think Nick used mostly Transit spindles for his axles as I have his axle jig and that is set up for them.The only one that I know of that used early Ford was Lionheart.
What are the spindles on yours?
Regards Paul.
MisteR Tee
Ah, Nostalgia, it ain't what it used to be!
No longer wanted: Steel 26/27 Ford Model T coupe rear fenders.
My Intro My website my cars
I haven't a clue what it is running, it's all brand new but was assembled over a long period of time so I would like to know in case of any issues in the future should they arise. As the T hasn't been finished there are a couple of bits and pieces that I need to know what goes where and how things should be set up, a few brackets that have nothing on them and a few brackets that I think are possibly missing (front as well as rear).
Is he ok with people ringing him up about old projects? especially about one that he may have had issues with when originally commissioned?
I would rather take a load of photo's and go and see him, then he could advise as to what the bits are for, if some bits need adding and what to use for covers etc.
Sorry for hijacking this post, perhaps I should start one soley for my questions on the T.
Post pics here, lots of people here will help,
MisteR Tee
Ah, Nostalgia, it ain't what it used to be!
No longer wanted: Steel 26/27 Ford Model T coupe rear fenders.
My Intro My website my cars
More to come on the history from Roger, possibly with pics, stay tooned, film at 11!
MisteR Tee
Ah, Nostalgia, it ain't what it used to be!
No longer wanted: Steel 26/27 Ford Model T coupe rear fenders.
My Intro My website my cars
Ok, here's Roger's email to me, just as received, laying out the history of his ownership of the car.
"I’ve just been looking at the `thread` and can fill in all the queries.
I bought it off Bob Hearson as a non runner with lots of small items missing mostly nuts and bolts even inside the engine, axle and trannie!! The tunnel ram was polished at that stage by, I think I’m right, Steve Dennish(?) when he was at Nicks. He told me that one night at the Happy Eater cruise on the A3.
The original engine was an overbored 283 to 301 that was used on the strip and had ultra high c/r and state of the art camel bump heads fully ported and polished with huge valves. When collecting my kids from 1st school one day in the T the motor sneezed at about 2000 rpm and a rod went through the side of the block. The rods looked like standard and unpolished 283 rods and after all that track time were past their sell by date. I collected a 327 from a guy ( forgotten the name) down Maidstone way and I think he had that 32 roadster with the 4.5 lt Daimler hemi in it which he was supposedly going to put on the street.
Sometime later I found a brand new in the wrapper GMC 4/71 at the Dorking Halls autojumble. It had rope seals so I went to Redhill bearings to see if they could provide modern seals and twin row bearings. Yes mate, how many do you want? Brill.
Nick Butler had done some articles in Hot Rod & Custom UK on how to fit a blower so I bought the necessary materials and as my neighbour was in charge of apprentices at a Crawley engineering firm he set them the task of machining all the bits to my drawings and dimensions.
They also made up a pair of double flanged front hubs to my spec for some wire wheels as the original 12 spokes were turning back to powder and after 2 repairs were past it. They used stainless steel as that was what the company specialised in! The London wheel company made up 5J rims and laced them with double butted spokes all being chrome plated. They complained that they broke lots of drills on the hubs but stuck to the quoted price of £112!! Unfortunately the spokes began breaking and they rebuilt them with thicker spokes all at no charge. Top Company.
I also had some s/s discs made up as the original NB chromed steel ones were looking sad and were warped. I had to play around with pad material in the Mini Cooper callipers to get the thing stopped.
The TH400 eventually gave up with all that power so I fitted another that I had lying around and that was fine. A 350 crate motor came my way (Hecho en Mexico) but was quite good until returning from the Guildford cruise late one night the sump struck a rock in the unmade lane outside the house. I had to keep the motor idling as I knew I would be unable to push on the gravel drive. I was p***d off with wrecking the sump as it was an original CalCustom ally with much thicker material than the modern Taiwan jobs.
I checked the big end bearings and every single one was a different size! So that’s what Made in Mexico means. The crank was ok which I polished then fitted the nearest to the average size bearings that I could get. Oil pressure was a little down but it ran sweet as anything.
I remember the f/g rad shell but the brass one was on by the time I had the car. It was built by a big coloured guy in Tunbridge Wells called Bryan & Son as a prototype for all the NB Ts but that was the only one he made to my knowledge. He rebuilt it at least twice as it leaked like sieve but in the end I used to mend it myself with a very small OxyAcc flame. The rad cap broke coming back from a Wheels day and the only one I could get was too high a pressure and the whole rad ballooned by the time we got home!
The rear axle was early Olds with a spool (ex strip) which made for interesting manoeuvring sometimes. The rear was sprung on dual coil overs (4) but were rock hard as the moulded on rear fenders didn’t allow for any vertical movement. Ally had to wear a sports bra and duct tape to feel comfortable! The front was a curved drop tube with chromed pop spindles. The king pins would wear at an alarming rate but also the bearing holes in the axle wore out but not to the point of needing sleeving so I would plate the pins then lap the spindle bearings to them. It worked ok at mot time. I eventually changed the spindles to unchromed ones after NB showed me the effect of hydrogen embrittlement on chromed structural items. Scary.
I did a deal with the guy who rediscovered Revenge in a hay barn belonging to his employer as he wanted something loud , shiny and fast and Revenge wasn’t at the time. I’m surprised he didn’t kill himself in it as it was incredible quick off the line on its 4.11 gears but a bind if you wanted to go far.
Oh, I seem to have rambled on a bit, it’s the age you know. The photos aren’t digitized but I could try to scan them some time if anyone’s interested.
Hope this helps, Rog."
I think I know what the answer to his last statement is, don't I??
MisteR Tee
Ah, Nostalgia, it ain't what it used to be!
No longer wanted: Steel 26/27 Ford Model T coupe rear fenders.
My Intro My website my cars
iv,e just brought the head lights
18 'til I die
My Intro
MisteR Tee
Ah, Nostalgia, it ain't what it used to be!
No longer wanted: Steel 26/27 Ford Model T coupe rear fenders.
My Intro My website my cars
thats the guy who built my rad
You drive right past one every time you go to Heathrow Mo .
http://www.felthamradiators.co.uk/Radiators.html
On the same trading estate as Moss`s (MG). He recently re-cored my A rad, perfect job ...
I wish there was a good radiator repair shop near Oxford.
Great (hi)story on the T. I guess more older builds will be getting "updated" now that it's harder to build from scratch.
Sent from my Kitchen Table using a little box full of smoke and dangerous radio waves
Shine is Fine
Really, never knew that, thanks.
Following on from my posting of Roger's history of the car, Nick Butler got in touch with his part of the beginnings of it.
"I met Barry George as a result of showing Revenge for the first time at the Olympia Custom Car show. In fact "Mister B's T" as it was named initially was my first commission. I built the car at home in Bookham, Surrey in my 16 foot x 8 foot garage where I had built Revenge. Revenge was moved out into a rented garage to make way for a paying job as I'd left my job at Hawker
Siddeley to finish Revenge: I was penniless at the time.
The T had been started but Barry needed someone to finish it. The front axle was built by Alan Herridge and I was concerned about the Ford Pop spindles which were common hardware for some of the lighter drag racing cars that Alan worked on but not really that suitable for a road car carrying a Chevy engine. But Barry wanted to save money so he took the decision to keep them.
Yes, it had magnesium 12 spoke front wheels which I polished from rough castings. The fixed (to the body) rear fenders was Barry's idea as he was worried that fenders attached to the axle would blow away but actually by that time I had built Nykilodeon and Revenge & I had the design of the fender mountings worked out to be un-breakable. Also the fenders were a new design based on modified styling from the Revenge fenders and I went on to sell many fenders of a variety of similar styles and sizes.
The engine was already built and the tunnel ram with twin Holleys made the starting somewhat challenging especially on cold mornings. You basically only had one chance and if you missed it you had to leave it for half an hour before trying again. Mick Denyer had upholstered Revenge for me and he and I decided to set up the workshop at Richmond together in about 1977/78. By that time Geoff Heald who had bought Nykilodeon from me had sold the car to an Arab named Omar and wanted me to build a replacement car which turned out to be Andromeda & was the first car I built at Richmond.
Barry's car was ready to be upholstered and wired and Mick Denyer did the diamond buttoned interior in leather which from the pictures I've seen is still in the car. Not bad for over thirty years. The brass headed studs were a common way to finish traditional upholstery and Mick just automatically finished it that way, he later upholstered Andromeda.
The dashboard came from the same mould as the one first seen in Revenge
and used the instrument module from a Rover 3500. Same module as used in
Andromeda but that had a mahogany dash. When Roger Fulker bought the car it underwent quite a transformation with the supercharger which really brought it alive both visually and performance wise. Of course Roger went on to swop the car for Revenge and also owned Andromeda for a while before Ed Brown bought it.
I always think it's a shame when these "Old Timers" get broken up not because I built them but because there's so many parts available these
days that you have to ask the question, "Why?" Most of the parts will
never be used on a running car. It's definitely one of those "The sum of
the parts is more worthy of note than the value of the individual
components."
As a footnote Barry George once said that every single part on the car
had his initials stamped on it in case it ever got stolen.
Nick Butler. Auto Imagination."
It's interesting to note that quite a few of the cars that Nick has built have made their way back to him in later years for further work of one sort or another, Nykilodeon being one. I remember seeing it for sale in a car showroom on the outskirts of Oxford 20 years ago & it had a solid lift-off hard top & garish gold leaf lettering on the sides, which Nick told me he had carried out, at the wishes of the then owner, the aforementioned arab, Omar! That's another car that needs a history written about it!
MisteR Tee
Ah, Nostalgia, it ain't what it used to be!
No longer wanted: Steel 26/27 Ford Model T coupe rear fenders.
My Intro My website my cars
What a great story this is turning out to be I love reading the history of old cars like this Your boy will have a great start to his T paul