The three photos shown here demonstrate the lengths that the Ford Motor Company had to go to in the late 1930s because of Henry Ford’s stubborn-ness. He was insistent that the Ford car stay with mechanical brakes, long after most all other firms had changed over to hydraulic brakes. Even his son Edsel Ford could not sway him until finally the 1939 model year, when the change was finally made.
The scheme you see above was probably cooked up to convince the public the brakes on a 1937 Ford could still do the job. The reality of this stunt is probably that most any car with all four brakes locked up, no matter what the type would be able to preform the same PR stunt.
Shown (above) on the left is a 1938 Ford Standard Model and on the right a 1938 Ford Deluxe. Both are shown on brake testing machines installed on the production line to enable the line workers to adjust the brakes. The machine appears to spin each of the four wheels by separate drives and a load gauge of some sort allows the worker to adjust each brake for even operation.
Photos courtesy of the Henry Ford, where you can to learn all about the Henry Ford Museum and Dearborn Village. Many other photos from The Henry Ford, (scroll down) can be seen here on The Old Motor.
My back aches just looking at the pictures of those guys adjusting brakes. Can you imagine spending most of your day bent over like that?
We were thinking the very same thing….
I’m thinking that the mechanism better not spin up those wheels while they have their arms in the wheel wells!
Dennis that is exactly what it did and they bent over all day long and adjusted brakes like that.
I was just thinking about how much easier and safer it would have been to do those adjustments before the body was placed on the frame.
I’ve heard that in the 1930s, if another car stopped alongside you while you were waiting at a stoplight, you could tell it was a Ford even without looking because of the screeching and juddering of its mechanical brakes!