Bruce’s 40 year project to restore a Model T-Ford

About 40 years ago Bruce Mellinton, of the Tatura Men’s Shed, started work on restoring a 1915 model-T Ford Roadster. And he’s been working on it ever since! Bruce gathered the bones of it from a fellow in Hopeton Victoria for $700, but it was just a 1000 bits and pieces, with none of them connected. Over that time Bruce has been going to swap meets to find all the missing parts and now finally, has enough to complete the project.

Bruce’s background is in maths and science teaching, but with an interest in technical skills, he was able to do some work in the workshops after school finished. This enabled him to make many of the smaller pieces the Ford required by hand himself. Metalwork has included the mudguards and fuel tank, but when it came to the radiator he outsourced that one. Currently a panel beater is helping with some of the body and paint work.

“We’re working on the front mudguards and the scuttle at the moment – that’s the piece that sits above the dash and it encloses the dash underneath. All the pieces are either original, or exact copies. I’ve tried to copy exactly from the original pieces like the fuel cap over there” says Bruce.

Bruce has also done all the timber work himself. The T model Ford seats two and has a ‘little dickey’ seat which Bruce says “is barely big enough to carry a lunch and that’s about all it was useful for. The dickey seat is a basically timber work with panels metal panels attached to the timber.”

“The motor was a major project. It had been restored about 40 years ago, but it has since seized up. We freed that after a lot of effort – we finally rocked it free. The electricals aren’t wired up yet, but we have cranked it over” he explains.

When asked how much he’s spent on it over the 40 years Bruce says he’s hasn’t spent much on it at all – in fact, he gets enjoyment out of finding things that are damaged, buying them cheap, and fixing them himself, rather than paying big money for things that are already repaired or manufactured.

Bruce says his wife hasn’t been as enamoured with the project over the years as he has. About only about three or four months they moved from a property with two acres to a smaller house and with limited space, and that’s when he moved the car to the Men’s Shed where he now works on it.

It’s definitely been a labour of love. Bruce can’t even estimate how many hours he’s put into it but making the smaller pieces has taken hundreds of hours. He’s planning to have it finished by the end of the year.

And what’s the plan once it’s finished?

“Yeah, good question. I don’t have room for any of these things in my car port or garage. So I guess it’s just going to be a toy. And probably sold off and I’ll start the next one which ia at home in the shed!”
One of Bruce’s finished projects is a horse buggy. Again, it was just a pile of bits and pieces when he bought it from a fellow teacher in Shepparton, 45 to 50 years ago!
He and his buddies have remade the top seat, done all of the leather work, as well as redone all of the paintwork. They were fortunate to find a business in Glenrowen who could put rubber tyres put on the large 50 inch wheels.

Bruce isn’t sure what vintage it is as there weren’t any identifying tags or pieces on it apart from some words which said “Cox Cox and Sons” which appear to be funeral directors, around the turn of the century. So far the buggy has been displayed it at a heritage display day at the Heritage Centre in Merrigan. Ideally Bruce would like it to go into a museum.

He said “I’d be happy for it just to sit there for a little while anyhow, that’d be ideal. And it would be a bit of a legacy.”