Larry wanted to hold one more work party before he and Lorna left for a trip to California. The documentary crew, who are developing a feature for Public Television based on Orlando Ortega’s Llano Estacado Tour to Portales, were also present to capture some background footage. The work party attendees found out about the visit by the documentary crew that morning at the Vineyard breakfast, so no one had prepared to bring, wear, or say anything in anticipation of being filmed. This truly was as typical work day with its customary wide-range of projects.
On this day, Tin Lizzies president Dean had brought two exhaust manifolds to straighten. Over decades of heat and vibration, Model T’s typically suffer from misalignment of the manifold ports. In this case, approximately 1/8″ of sag on both of them. Using a section of I-beam salvaged from a previous Dean project, Larry had created a manifold straightening fixture that would allow users to heat the manifold and bend it back into alignment with the use of strategically located bolts and stops. The fixture worked great and it’s another example of a Larry designed and developed labor saving device!
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19Tom Miles was boring his re-babbitted rods and caps, while at the same time, Gerald (an experienced machinist, metal worker, and retired Sandia National Laboratories electrical engineer) was line boring the main bearings for Tom’s engine that had been poured earlier.
Paul brought the generator from his 1920 touring car that had failed during the Llano Estacado tour. With this generator repair and the recent re-soldering of a seam on his new Brassworks radiator, the Duncan’s touring car will be fine shape for the next tour to Los Alamos in August.
Skip Dunn brought his 1914 Model T touring car to work on his period shock absorber housings and the touring was also filmed by the documentary crew. We expect to see Skip and his rare nickel-plated touring as a prominent feature in the documentary.
Michael, Vernon, and Kirk were busy installing a windshield on “Buster”, Kirk’s newly acquired 1924 coupe. The windshield had just had new safety glass installed and a lot of adjustments were needed before they were able to get the windshield to fit properly to the body.
Mark removed the crankshaft, and later the camshaft, from his 1925 engine. Parts were cleaned the engine block (at the time of this article) has been dropped off at Empire Engines in Albuquerque to be cleaned, re-sleeved, and bored to accept standard-sized pistons. There wasn’t enough time to machine and install the hardened valve seats into the block before going to Empire, and Empire isn’t equipped to do this operation. To take advantage of the anticipated three weeks between work parties, the cylinders will be done first, then the block will return to Larry’s garage for the valve inserts and reaming of the valve guides and lifters – then back again to Empire for final surfacing and cleaning. When the block comes back, sometime in July, it will be ready for painting and assembly.