A good friend of mine recently acquired a 1930 Ford Model A out of Florida. He asked for my help in taking care of some odds and ends it needed to get road worthy. The first thing was looking into why it wants to overheat easily. We quickly narrowed that down to a bad head gasket, but not after noticing a little milkiness to the oil. He tackled the head gasket, and I tackled the oiling. It had sat for a number of years before he got it so I figured it was probably bad, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite this bad.
It cleaned up pretty well though after some sloshing and scrubbing with alcohol. I reinstalled the pan and poured in 4 quarts of Havoline Syn-Blend High Mileage 5W-30 with 1 quart of High Performance Lubricants SAE 30 EF which is a 100% ester oil with a CI-4 add pack. The ~20% total ester content should help slowly dissolve any remaining sludge and condition the old cork seals. After that, I'll likely have him run a conventional 10W-30 or 10W-40. I'm hoping there wasn't too much damage to the old babbitt bearings from the coolant contamination. If there is, well then I get to rebuild it.
Beautiful car though, and it doesn't drive as bad as I thought it would. The old manual drum brakes give me anxiety though.
Here's a short video of it running after the oil change and head gasket replaced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yu3HA0VF6Q
Did anyone order a milkshake? 1930 Ford Model A
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Did anyone order a milkshake? 1930 Ford Model A
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Re: Did anyone order a milkshake? 1930 Ford Model A
they are interesting to ride in and work on. my friend has a pretty much all original 31, a few years ago we put a clutch and brakes in it. cant believe how many cotter pins are on that car.