Passenger Bus Chassis (330-B) Chassis Repair and Dissassembly

August 17th, 2019 was our second club workday for the 1931 Passenger Bus chassis.

Mike and Larry concentrated on repairing the cracks and fabricating metal repairs to the cross members. Originally we thought about replacing the damaged cross members, however we believed we could make the repairs and to also fortify the 3rd member cross member to prevent any further damage. This bus will be placed into service and the thought was to reinforce this critical area.

The day started out with repairing the 5th cross member. It appeared that at one time the 5th cross member was used to either pull the bus or pull something with a hook and chain. This bent the cross member. (Note the chassis is flipped upside down)

Checking the fit of the spare tire carrier - all is good.

Next Mike and Larry focused on the 3rd cross member. As you can see it had a rough life with several attempted repairs (and not very good ones at that!).

Repairing the 3rd cross member and of course it started to rain, so we made a make-shift cover from an old tarp.

 Norman and Randall (and a little help from Grier) tackled the front axle assembly.

Bob and Grier (with some oversight by Don) tackled disassembly of one of the two 4 speed transmissions that we have. Hopefully from two transmissions we can rebuild one good transmission.

Randall took the mission of disassembling the brake cross shaft. The bushing need to be replaced and restored.

Next we attempted to remove the rear wheels to begin the disassembly of the rear end. We weren't too successful in this endeavor. We were able to get one wheel off before Randall broke our 1/2 inch drive breaker bar. Our thinking now is that we need a 3/4 inch breaker bar! This work will have to be accomplished at our next workday scheduled for Sept 7, 2019.

And Bob was so kind to clean up our greasy tools while we took down the tarp, moved the chassis back into the garage for another day.

Once more our next workday will be Sept 7th. We hope to make final repairs to the chassis and be able to send the chassis off to be sandblasted and powder coated. We also want to finish the disassembly of the rear end and removal of the wheels so that we can take the wheels and have the tires dismounted and then the rims sandblasted and primed.

A big thank you to Geri for taking pictures for our blog!

2019 MARC National Meet - Dearborn, MI

Several of our club members attended the 2019 MARC National Meet held in Dearborn, Michigan. There were over 435 registered attendees (not including spouses) and close to 350 Model A's (my estimation). There was a swap meet at the host hotel - it was nice to have ALL Model A related items instead of having to wade through various makes and models. Following are some pictures that I took over the course of the meet:
We had our Welcome Banquet at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation. After dinner we had the museum all to ourselves to enjoy. Very nice!

The next few images were taken from our hotel/room (Host Hotel Doubletree Hilton). Not often you see the parking lot filled with Model A's !

Sitting just outside the hotel lobby doors was this nice example of a Fire Engine and a Delivery Truck.

One night we of course had to go to the Ford's Garage Restaurant in Dearborn.

Next are some images of the Grand Tour through Dearborn/Detroit. We estimated over 200 Model A's caravanned through Dearborn. It was a 20 mile trip but took us almost 4 hours to complete - even with Police escorts to get us through the stop lights! Roads were terrible - way too many potholes.

We ended up at the Greenfield Village to explore the rest of the day where we had the opportunity to ride in the 1931 Passenger Bus (330-B) and do a little investigation of the chassis.

And just for laughs I had to take a few pictures of a 1928/29 Tudor Sedan Model A going through the Wendy's drive-thru.

And one of Ford's Headquarters which was just across the highway from our Hotel.

The last night we all got to see the Fine Point Judges Cars. It was very crowded, I only took one picture of a Business Coupe. It was in immaculate condition.

On a side note, we manned the Raffle Ticket Table for the Jay Leno trip several days and sold $1400 in tickets. All proceeds go to the restoration of the 1931 Passenger Bus. The next day we drove our Model A's to the Gilmore Museum. What an experience! The Gilmore is a must see. The following are just a few images and does not do the museum justice.

 

Thomas Edison's car gifted to him by Henry Ford. Personally stamped by Henry Ford with Engine number '1'.

And for about $100 our club could make a donation and have an engraved brick placed to support the Model A Ford Museum at the Gilmore.