Knee action shocks.. Wow, been a LARGE number of years since I have thought about those.
Well, let's see... At 17, I was building Model T Fords with my Dad and my Brother. Back then, parts were everywhere and we were doing ground up reconstructions. I can not say restoration as we never started with a complete car... A frame here, an engine there...
It was during this time that we built our "Speedster". I know it sound odd to say "Model T" and "Fast" in the same sentence but...
We built our with a Frontenac aluminium twin overhead cam cylinder head which meant that we had to add both oil, fuel and water pumps. Neither of which were stock to the Ford. Henry viewed pumps as unreliable so he just eliminated them. The stock T was oiled by the crankshaft splashing in the oil, cooled by thermosiphon and fueled by gravity. All well and fine for the stock engine... Would not do for the race engine.
We backed the two speed semi-automatic transmission with a Warford three speed overdrive transmission and a Ruxtal two speed differential. This gave us a total of well a ton of gearing choices as both the Warford and the Ruxtal could be shifted at any point. What we usually did was to get the T into High gear then start cycling the other two sets of gears, doing the axle last.
Clumsy? Nope. State Of The Art for 1927. My Brother and I were coming back late one night from a Club Run when we got pulled over for speeding. Fortunately for me, my Brother was behind the wheel as we got tagged for doing 125mph in a 55mph Zone. By this time, I had been in the USAF for about three years and was home on leave...
The best was when we went to Traffic Court but... That is another story entirely...
Keep in mind that we had not yet converted from artillery to wire wheels. This means that we were zooming along on wood spokes...
Now that I think about it, that is insane.