A Family Heirloom, Restored From Hood to Taillights

Mr. Huff, who owns three versions of the popular vehicle, said, “Most of the older members have some experience with the Model A either through their parents’ purchase of one, when they were a child” or their own interest later in life.

During the restoration, Dr. Haegert said, his father rigging a tripod of wood in the backyard, against a pine tree, to lift the car’s body off the chassis.

Next, Dr. Haegert said, his father constructed a sandblasting cabinet in his garage. The container had two giant cutout holes filled by a pair of rubber gloves so he could insert his hands into the apparatus and shoot pressurized sand onto individual components of the skeleton: stripping away rust and old paint, getting the frame as close to bare metal as possible. He also repaired and completed metalwork on the brakes.

Mr. Haegert, who taught instrumental music for nearly 30 years, took welding classes at night at the community college in Flint, Mich. There, he learned how to fuse and repair rusted parts of the car’s exterior and replaced worn-out steel joints with new ones. The manifold heater, which draws heat from the engine into the automobile to keep passengers warm, was so badly deteriorated that Mr. Haegert built a new one from scratch. After work on the undercarriage was complete, he primed the chassis with three coats of paint.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/business/model-a-ford-restoration.html