The Ford Model A as a Daily Driver for a Year

i'm standing here with jonathan klinger of hagerty insurance and he's made it his mission to drive this 1930 ford model a for an entire year as his only transportation in a project he's calling 365 days of a jonathan thanks so much for coming down and talking to us today absolutely my pleasure yeah beautiful car you've got here this is a two-door sedan model a correct correct yeah how did you decide on that body style because i know ford offered a lot of different models back then yes they did um yeah there was about half a dozen different mod body styles for that year model a and and i wanted a two-door sedan for two reasons one i've always liked the looks of it and two for driving a vehicle every day for a year in northern michigan obviously you want something that's a close car instead of like a roadster or but if i had to go back and and pick a car over again i would actually pick a four-door sedan because you know when you're dealing with groceries or luggage or whatever it'd be nice to have that rear set of doors definitely definitely now how did you decide on a ford model a over another car of the era what made you pick this one well the beauty of a model a if you've never owned an old car they're simple they're affordable and there's a lot of parts available they made just over five million of them you know when they were new and so there's a lot of them still around and consequently there's a lot of companies that manufacture replacement parts just for model a so that's gotta be good when you're out on the road exactly know that there's a replacement part available if you lose a water pump or something yep it's only an overnight shipping charge away yeah definitely so what have you done to the car i mean it looks pretty stock sitting here right now yeah um purchased this car specifically for this project i found it in craigslist and as you see it it's largely how it would have rolled off the factory floor there are a few modifications that we did to it early on it has when i purchased it it had plate glass all around so for obvious reasons i wanted to have safety glass installed seat belts um believe it or not those are radial tires uh coke or tire just came out a line of radials in that size and uh an electric wiper motor and actually the one last thing is uh those those modern style shocks don't replace the replacements for those shocks are what about 200 bucks a piece yes yeah they are not one at each corner of the vehicle it gets expensive yeah and believe it or not this car did not have any shocks on it when i purchased it so that was an interesting ride definitely so talk about the like the suspension is stock this has got basically like a buggy spring setup from way back then exactly tram versus springs um mechanic four-wheel mechanical brakes which was an improvement when this came out in 1928 you know for the model t's it only had two wheel brakes and uh um other than that i mean it's is as primitive as it seems to a person who's not familiar with old cars it's actually essentially a modern car you know four wheels brakes uh conventional manual transmission you know engine mounted in front and yeah of course a lot of people are gonna say what's modern about this but it's it's it's got the ingredients the features are there exactly it's the ingredients of a modern car yeah so i'm dying to see what's under the hood i know it's a big flathead four-cylinder engine but tell us about it i don't know if big is the right word but i like to call it mighty the mighty model the mighty model a yeah this is a a four-cylinder l-head engine it develops about 40 horsepower um no no once in a while in the snow i was able to get the tires to spin but otherwise uh there's not an excess amount of power there but uh you know one thing that you find interesting there there's there's no air cleaner on this they didn't have an air cleaner in there new and if you think about these cars running down dirt roads you know ingesting bugs and all that stuff and you can actually put an air cleaner on these but i've chosen not to because first of all the air is cleaner believe it or not than what it would have been you know running around when this car was new just because of the dust on the roads fewer dirt roads today exactly but the other reason is is occasionally gas will drip out of this carburetor with it being an updraft and if you have gas dripping into a paper element air filter a hot engine and then it just happens to backfire you know which is not a common occurrence but it could yeah um that that just things might get a little more exciting than i want them to especially you've got the the fuel tank is actually located up at the cowl here isn't it because there's no fuel pump it's just a gravity feed right down exactly you know henry ford had kind of the same philosophy with the model as he did in the model t in any of his previous vehicles is that he wanted a simple reliable and affordable vehicle that the average working family could afford and and because of that you know there's a lot of things that make up that philosophy of being a simple car one of them being the gas tank mounted right up here there's no fuel pump to go wrong so it's just gravity feed down to the carburetor and it works great yeah definitely you mentioned reliability how many times has this left you stranded if at all on your journey because you're probably almost a year in now right yep yep i'm about 10 months in i put about 12 000 miles on it since last october i've been on the side of the road twice um both times being electrical issues and same as modern cars then exactly and unfortunately i was close to home you know i i called a flatbed tow truck i called it back home because when it comes to working on cars the electrical system is my weakest area of expertise and so you know i i basically know that you don't want to let the smoke out of the wires and i didn't really want to experiment with that on the side of the road so i chose to have it hauled home but otherwise it's been a very reliable car um i did swap an engine out about three months ago um it was it i pulled it into the shop with the engine it was running um but it had developed a crack in the block and it wasn't because it froze it's just you know 80 watts yep 81 year old cast iron it just for whatever reason decided to let go then and and i've kept that original engine and it's fixable and i plan on rebuilding it but for the sake of me driving this every day i swapped at a different short block okay get you down the road then exactly so it's been pretty reliable how's the comfort these cars didn't have a lot of features on them no air conditioning no radio no mechanical brakes i mean this is bare bones no power steering no heated seats no i mean yeah the list goes on and on and on if you wanted to compare it to a modern car um but comfort wise you know a lot of people thought my word how did you get through the winter no heater because these did not come from the factory with a heater wow however there were heater kits available for them when they were new it's an exhaust manifold heater i had one of those on it worked great actually if i was in it for more than an hour i had to crack the windows because it would get so warm really but i did have to adjust to not having a radio and of course you know this time of the year with it being as warm and as humid as it has been um i definitely noticed that it doesn't have air conditioning but you know as far as the basic comforts the seat is plenty comfortable and you know even someone our height you know you can be comfortable in it um and actually the back seat is tremendously roomy you know if you think about when these cars were made new especially higher end cars of this era it was more about passenger comfort than driver comfort you know in those days it was a luxury to be driven in an automobile not so much to drive an automobile so hence the mechanical brakes and steering exactly so it actually the rear seat has far more legroom it's far more comfortable and so the passengers get a better experience then can you give us a glimpse in there absolutely show us what it was like driving in 1930 absolutely well if you can excuse the cup holder with all of my stuff in it that is a modern this is what it is it's just very spartan you know like i said i added the seat belts but uh you know with this being a two-door sedan you know these two seats will fold forward and you can get into the into the rear these nice big windows roll all the way down wow that's nice on a 90 degree day it's nice on a 90 degree day and that's also how i load my groceries right through who needs a hatchback when you've got a gigantic side window exactly well you know it's interesting the term the trunk in a modern car actually was a carryover from cars of this area they literally would mount a rack back here and fix a trunk a giant box so the trunk that you know like in your grandparents attic that just went on the back of the car and that was the truck and it was you know into the 40s automakers late 30s early 40s they started integrating a storage compartment into the body called the truck definitely definitely but uh oh another modification i've done and i highly recommend it to anybody who's driving an old car on modern roads is these are actually led inserts still six volt but uh they light up so much better than what the originals do and that that just makes sense from a safety standpoint i installed those on my first trip to chicago so okay so you mentioned you kept it six volt that's the stock configuration then how are those headlights at night they can't be can't be like a projector beam today i wouldn't think well it's all relative i own a 1919 model t4 pickup that i've restored and those the only purpose those headlights serve is they let something else know that there's somebody else know there's something in the road so these are far better so again i i actually was expecting headlights like that and i was pleasantly surprised that being said you know they're not like modern headlights you just get used to it but you're also not driving 80 miles an hour you know so at 45 or 50 miles an hour you're not out driving the speed of your headlights exactly what is the top speed on this car or how fast have you taken it well it will top out at 65 miles an hour believe it or not um i don't do that yeah that often but uh 50 is a comfortable cruising speed it's not abusing the the car definitely yeah i also feel like you stopped because remember you have to stop too definitely with those mechanical brakes yep yeah well jonathan klinger hegarty insurance thanks so much for stopping by absolutely showing us your beautiful model a where can people learn more about it well you can follow along at 365daysofa.com daily blog entries with photos and videos and all of my misadventures cool thanks so much

Channel: Autoline Network

Views: 380,613

Keywords: autos, vehicles, automotive, cars, automobiles, Model A, Ford Model A, Ford, classic, Henry Ford, 365 Days of A, Jonathan Klinger, buggy, restoration, Woodward Dream Cruise, Dream Cruise

Id: 4eHKcQw0bO0

Length: 10min 9sec (609 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 11 2011