My father recently gave me his 1928 AB National and I wanted to share some pictures and a story.
I joined the Army at 18 and have moved around a lot but recently my family and I were transferred to Fort Irwin which is relatively close to my birthplace. The car was last registered in 1993 and hasn't run in at least 10 years. There are a few pictures and one home video of me playing in and around what we called the "clown car". This weekend my father and I spent some time moving away all of the junk around it, some of which you can see in one of the photos, and got to wrenching. It didn't take long since, the engine was free, to get her started on ether. The original tank looks like it has shellac in it so we decided to run it off some fresh fuel from a small 2.5 gallon tank behind the driver. Since I'm close now I'd like to get her road worthy and my ultimate goal is to fully restore her. I'd like to keep her pretty much original and only make meaningful updates/upgrades that are in good taste. From the pictures right off you can see that my dad turned the intake around and has put a different carburetor on it. (Carter W1) You can also see that the vacuum fuel pump has been removed and replaced with an electric fuel pump. My dad did give me the vacuum tank and said that it needed to be rebuilt if I was going to use it. I’m not sure if I’d like to do that, so if anyone has a strong opinion they’d like to share I’m open to suggestions. He does have the original carburetor in a box which I will bring home when she comes home, but not the tube or air canister. I’ve already purchased a wiring harness from Y&Z’s, and I also had the turn signal wiring included.
The first thing on my list is brakes. Right now she goes, but don’t stop. I have slid around and oiled up all of the pivot points but they seem to be frozen at the moment.
The wood is mostly ok but I do see some termite damage at the rear near the roof, and I think I will replace all of the flooring wood due to the rats; they lived in her for a while.
I’m not a rich man so I can’t send her off to be rebuilt/restored, but I want to make little improvements in a timely fashion so I don’t have to give this to my son in the condition I got it in, hopefully better. :-)
So after the brakes where do I go from there?
Sincerely,
Michael
Below is a sharable link to my google drive with pictures, and in the future videos, of the clown car.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9_B6koc1VEva3JzZnNNQTVRQWs?usp=sharing
