From YOUR Garage – Jack Mather – ’26 T Roadster – Update 2

Jack’s ’26 – Victoria, British Columbia, Canada – Part 2 – Gathering Parts

By Jack Mather

If you haven’t viewed the Intro / Update 1, have a look HERE

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Gathering Parts
With the flathead home, the first order of business was to see what kind of shape it was in:

So far so good. So I took the block and heads to Don McCron at JB Machine in Victoria for the necessary machining. Don sleeved one cylinder, bored the cylinders .125” over stock, cleaned up the main journals, cam journals and head/block mating surfaces.

From JB, the engine went to friend Gus McTavish’s back yard shop for reassembling. Gus apprenticed and became a journeyman at the local Ford dealer’s shop in the mid fifty’s, spent years wrenching race cars and taught Auto Shop at Victoria High School. He can work on this early Ford stuff in his sleep.

With me in attendance to “pass this” or “hold that”, the engine came back together including a new rotating assembly from Speedway Motors, oversized pistons, Colt Cam, adjustable lifters, Chevrolet valves, etc.

While this was going on, the remnants of a ‘26 T roadster pickup became available from Deuces Northwest customer Terry Grant in Vancouver.

It turned out that he also had a set of ‘35 Ford wire wheels. The rears were widened and reduced in diameter to 15” by legendary machinist, Peter Reimer “back in the day”. I brought the whole works home.

Then, time for a little dreaming:

This was in August 2011.

In November of 2011, while visiting my family in Florida, I decided to take a side trip and pay my friend Clarke Pringle (RIP) a visit in North Carolina. This turned out to be a very good decision.

While on a shop crawl at the premises of one John Bell, I literally tripped over some parts on the floor. The parts turned out to be a complete 1937 Ford tube axle front end. To some one who started devouring hot rod literature in the early fifties, a 37 Ford tube axle is an iconic piece. Of course John had no intention of parting with it – not that day anyway.

However the following summer, a brewery became interested and bought John’s property. Clarke was called on to help in disbursing his collection and I was given the option of buying the axle. I put a cheque in the next mail.

Instead of doing the logical thing and shipping it Fed Ex, we decided on a Canadian Rodder relay to get it from Candler, North Carolina to Victoria BC.

This odyssey is recorded in the Canadian Rodder Forum HERE.

The beginning of the relay (thanks to Wayne Rochon and Jamie Burns):