Above: On the road in Arkansas

Left: The TT in its new home

Once I got the vehicle home, I started browsing catalogues for parts I would need and began researching information on this particular vehicle. It turned out that the previous owner apparently had the year wrong. He thought it was 1922. I looked into the Model T Ford Encyclopedia and found that this truck's engine, #8309863, was one of 6942 assembled on August 31, 1923. Since model years ended in July, this would put it in the 1924 model year. Of course that date applies only to the engine. August 31 was a Friday, so the engine might have been put into a new truck as early as the next Monday, or it might have been sent to one of more than thirty assembly plants around the country and assembled weeks or months later. It's also possible that this is not the original engine, but a 1924 model year replacement that was later installed in a 1922 truck. No separate VIN was used in that era, so the only number we have to go by is the engine serial number. For now I'm calling it a 1924 model until some information turns up to change that.

I plan to take plenty of pictures as I work on this vehicle, and I'll put some of them here on the website. The restoration begins with "before" pictures here.