Cross-country Model T drivers deal with a breakdown

When you’re driving a century-old car, engine trouble is not what you want.

Mike Vaughn of Lincoln, Neb., and two other volunteers from Nebraska’s Museum of American Speed pulled into their planned stop in Greensburg and noticed their 1924 Model T Ford was making an odd sound.

That led to the three of them putting in 18-hour days as they rebuilt the engine, transmission and rear end of the car.

“We did about two weeks of work in three days,” Vaughn said with a chuckle.

The trio of museum volunteers is working with the Hathaway family from the Midwest, whose father Dr. Alan Hathaway owned the Model T, to drive it from New York to San Francisco along the historic Lincoln Highway for its 100th birthday.

This week, that necessitated a side trip to Marengo, Ohio.

“There’s a Model T parts supplier and one of our sponsors there, Dave’s Restoration and Machine Shop, and he let us use his shop to make our repairs,” Vaughn said.

Vaughn is affiliated with the Model T Ford Club of America, primarily made up of people who supply parts for the vintage cars.

“The network is fairly large,” he said. “There’s a lot of Model T’s still in existence, so we were able to find all the parts we needed.”

And while the engine failure was catastrophic in nature, the support network of club members along with the comparatively simple structure of a 1924 automobile engine worked to the team’s advantage.

“We were able to do a complete engine, transmission and rear-end rebuild in three days,” Vaughn said. “You couldn’t do that with a modern car.”

After spending some extra time in Greensburg, the group will be back on the road at 8 a.m. Sunday morning.

Barring any more unforeseen difficulty, they’ll be in Mansfield, Ohio, by nightfall.

But just in case, Vaughn’s got a full set of replacement tires that will go onto the Model T halfway through its journey.

“It’s not like a modern car,” he said. “You’ve got to do maintenance on it every day.”