Jul 31

More 1911 T progress.

More assembly on my customer's 1911 Model T.
Firewall and column on, column controls hooked up, coil box installed, hood shelves and latches on.
Beginning assembly and test fitting of the safety hubs. The added drum for the Rocky Mountain brakes makes the stack-up too thick for the supplied hardware so I have longer hardware on order.
This is the sort of thing people don't understand about playing with old cars. Nothing "just bolts together".

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Jul 31, 2026

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Replies (8)

· Jul 31

Shawn, this is looking like a full restoration. How many hours will you have in it by the end?

· Jul 31

Not sure really but I can ask the wife unit where I'm at when she makes the next bill.
Nowhere near a full restoration. More like teardown, inspection and re-commisioning.
To be fair, the operator has had over ten years of mostly trouble-free, near daily operation at 10/10ths all the time.
It's doing pretty well for a 100+ year old car.

I'm also not spending 8 hours a day on it. More like 2.
I have lots of other stuff on the go and it's like the guy on Johnny Carson, spinning the plates. If I nudge each one occasionally, they all stay in the air.

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· Jul 31

Part of running a shop is keeping the rotation going. I assume you bill weekly? The last 2 months I had 2 guys on my REO so a solid 40 to 50 billable hours a week. Those bills hurt a bit.

· Jul 31

I bill monthly at this stage but I'm usually around 20 hours per month on the car.
I do small jobs for other customers so that fills the rest of my time.
I just checked and I've billed about 86 hours on the Model T since March.

Part of the issue is parts supply. I wait for parts quite a bit and I don't do busy work.

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· Jul 31

86 hours is very efficient for what I've seen for work. The customer should be very happy. Mechanically it will be top notch.

· Aug 1

Thanks for the kind words.

· Aug 1

I've been following your progress. Thanks for the updates. Basically 2 full weeks spent to do a huge amount of work. Bravo.

· Aug 1

Thank you.