Thread: T Bucket-Start

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It's always nice to have new parts coming in. I almost sold something to buy an original steel body 27 T roadster last week. Luckily it sold before any of my stuff sold.

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Getting caught up on this thread. Sorry to hear of your's and your Dad's health issues.

Your T is coming along nicely. One potential issue I see is your use of power brakes. Everyone told me not to use them on mine, but I did anyway. I had trouble with the front brakes locking up with just a touch of the pedal. To get the brakes to work, I had to very gently press with just my toe. The main issue was that you never knew which front tire would lock up. It was almost never both and it was almost never the same side. This led to the car pulling hard and I always had to be ready to correct. Panic stops were an adventure to say the least.

T buckets are strange animals. Looking at them you would guess that they are front heavy. Mine was not. It carried 59% of it's weight on the rear. So it was more like a mid engine car. The old rule of thumb that says 75% of your braking is on the front does not seem to apply to T buckets. I finally ditched the power brake booster and replaced it with dual master cylinders operated by a race car type balance bar. This allowed me to run different size MC's and fine tune the braking for each end. It was amazing now much shorter the car stopped after getting the everything working together. A large part of the stopping power on a T is on the rear and is why they were able to operate years ago with just rear brakes. I never missed the power brakes.

If you do have trouble with front locking and don't want to change the MC setup, you could try what Spirit Motors used to do on their factory built T's. They plumbed an adjustable proportioning valve into the front brake circuit so they could adjust the initial pressure. It worked, but that seems strange to me to put the most powerful brakes on the front and then disable them by lowering the pressure with a regulator.

Just passing this along and it is my 2 cents. Something to keep in mind if you have issues.

Thanks for this