Story and photos by Mark Wing

Larry held a work party at his garage following the Tn’Vittles club breakfast at Mimi’s Cafe. Like all of Larry’s recent work parties, the event was well attended with a wide-range of projects. These included checking the source of a rod knock, headlight bucket restoration, generator rebuilding, main bearing fitting, and muffler restoration.

Don Mitchell had experienced a loud rod knock and brought his rod and cap for Larry to inspect. Unfortunately, both rod and cap were badly worn and need new babbitt.

Marilyn Duncan brought a 1927 headlight bucket that needed media blasting. The trim ring tabs had worn out on the original headlight bucket on their pickup truck, so a replacement was purchased on Ebay. The interior of the bucket was in generally good condition, with some minor rust. Marilyn used Larry’s blast cabinet to prepare the bucket for painting.

Kirk Peterson and Mark Dominguez continued rebuilding a generator. Once finished, the generator was mounted to Larry’s testing fixture to measure the output.

Frank Lewark continued his 1923 Model T engine rebuilding project. On this day, he was fitting and finishing main bearing caps.

Mark Wing brought two circa 1911-14 mufflers for disassembly and cleaning. The sheet metal was beyond repair, but the parts suppliers offer replacement sheet metal kits that include the three cylinders needed to replace the originals. Once taken apart, the cast iron muffler ends cleaned up nicely in Larry’s media blaster. Painting and reassembly are next.

Other projects included working on Larry’s recently acquired 1917 pickup truck to install correct fasteners. This is a vehicle that Larry has known his entire life, as his father had acquired it in the 1940’s. For a long time, it was used as a “take-apart car” for shows – put together with minimal and often incorrect fasteners for easy assembly. Now that this Model T is in New Mexico, the missing bolts and cotter pins needed to be replaced to make this a safe car for the road. Leonard, Paul, Jeff, and John were focused on this project. Especially difficult, was re-introducing the pan ear wood blocks and bolts to hold them in place. The team eventually triumphed!

Dave Ferro continued work on his 1927 speedster engine. On this day, Dave was fitting the rod caps to the new SCAT crankshaft.

Thank you Larry for a great work party!