Posted by Don in Missouri on Wednesday, July 21, 2004 at 4:10PM :
Fred Coldwell, I don't have a current e-mail address for you, or I would have contacted you directly. The fortunate thing about contacting you this way, is that it gives me an opportuntiy to hear from all the other smart guys out there, too.
I got some more pictures of that Model A half-track at http://imageevent.com/shaggy/modela
I'm still trying to figure out who built it and whether it started as a AA truck or as a Model A passanger car. It does have a passenger car radiator shell, but that could have easily been changed.
I originally suspected that if this conversion was designed for a AA it would have bolted onto or in place of the Ford truck brake drums using the original Ford rear axle. Does that look like a Ford axle?
I remember looking at photos of AA trucks and they had 1/4-eleptic springs on the outside of the frame. This rig is not sprung like that. It looks like semi-eleptic springs with no shackles on the bottom side of the frame. It is concievable that the spings would have been redesigned to carry heavier loads. The passenger car would, of course, have a single transverse spring and a much shorter frame. I can't tell if the frame has been welded together.
What about where the torque tube goes through the crossmember in photo 13? Does that look like Model A or AA?
See the double wishbones in photo 14? That has something to do with how they lifted the front end, but I don't understand what is going on there.
What do you suppose that little lever is attached to the shifting lever in photo 7?
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