After hundreds of hours, Model T Ford restored to former glory
INNISFAIL, Alta. - A putt-putt from the alley heralded the milk truck's arrival in the '20s and '30s.
Bill Peters fondly remembers clambering on the running board of the 1922 Ford Model T to take a peek at its three foot pedals and the roadside-mounted lever. When the driver returned, empty bottles rattling, he let the 12-year-old hitch a ride with him for a couple of blocks.
Peters, 79, recently took a spin in the same 1922 Model T after helping to restore the vehicle to its former glory for the Innisfail and District Historical Society.
"Does that ever bring back memories," says Peters, watching the truck putt-putt into the shop at the Innisfail Historical Village.
Dean Jorden, special projects co-ordinator with the society, says it's fitting that the restoration project was completed in 2008, the 100th anniversary of the Ford Model T. The truck will make a great addition to the village's displays, mostly static antique farm machinery.
"People identify with a car," says Jorden. "Unless you were a farm person and knew these old tractors, it doesn't mean that much."
The first "Tin Lizzie" rolled off the assembly line at the Piquette Plant in Detroit, Mich., in October 1908. Touted as the first affordable automobile for the middle class, the Model T could reach speeds of 72 kilometres an hour. Ford sold 15 million vehicles over the next 19 years.
"There is a lot of history behind the Model T and what it did for the country," says Lawrence Gould, project leader. "In the '20s and early '30s, 46 per cent of the vehicles on the road were Model T Fords."
One of them belonged to Hugh Cossey of Innisfail, south of Red Deer. He bought the four-passenger 1922 Ford Model T from the local dealership and cut it down to create a two-seat "Depression truck" with a box on the back. Cossey used it to deliver milk until the 1940s, when Innisfail banned the sale of unpasteurized milk in town limits.
"The creamery could have had something to do with that bylaw," says Peters.
Eventually, the vehicle ended up in the hands of Bill Deniff, owner of the local Royalite Service Station. He used it as a delivery vehicle until parking it for good in 1954.
The Deniff family donated the vehicle to the Innisfail Historical Village in 1985. It languished in storage until 2004, when Gould was casting about for a retirement project.
Gould, 66, had been interested in Model Ts since his cousin took him for a ride in his car as a child. He had restored three Model Ts of his own already, and he figured he could get Innisfail's milk truck running again, too.
"There is no other car on the road that is really like the Model T," says Gould.
Peters was hooked on the Model T after riding shotgun with Cossey. On his 14th birthday, he bought his first car, a 1917 Ford Model T. In high school, he replaced it with a 1927 Ford Model T convertible coupe, the last in the Model T line.
"Wow, was I popular with the gals!" he says with a laugh.
Gould and Peters have invested hundreds of hours in the restoration project since 2005. While the motor was among the best Gould had seen in his restoration career, the elements had taken a toll on the body, mostly wood covered by a thin layer of tin.
"The only thing holding the metal together was the paint that was on it," says Gould.
Gould used a mixture of remanufactured parts, automobile kits and bits and pieces from a 350 Chev and a Cadillac to bring the engine back to life. Meanwhile, Peters, a fourth-generation cabinet maker, tackled the truck's rotten wooden frame.
Gould estimates Peters came within 1/16th of an inch of duplicating the vehicle's original specs.
"As a result of my workmanship, I classify myself as a paleontologist," jokes Peters.
"It was just like a dinosaur, wasn't it?" adds Jorden. "You took a bone here and a bone there."
In all, Gould and Peters estimate they spent over $5,000 on the restoration, five times the price of the original vehicle.
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