Quote:
Originally Posted by Tudortomnz
It was actually done to prevent a leak at the weld joint of the column support as drivers put weight on to the steering wheel when getting in.
Although much is made of fires with the Model A, these were never common. A trick done at Ford Dealers was to light a match over the tank with the gas cap off ; because of the arrester screen, nothing happened.
It is hard to make a car go up in flames because of fuel ; check out old Myth Busters on this. The new bracket was a fix for this & was promoted in the Service Bulletins to fit on earlier cars if the problem occurred. There was even one for RHD & they were available here in NZ.
Regarding being impaled on the steering, in the Model A era this was not worried about, only much later were auto makers forced to improve interior design to lessen injury, but certainly not in the '30's, '40's or '50's.
Cheers.
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Rigid steering column gets impacted by the driver in a front collision,breaking the mount at the tank,dousing the driver in fuel.You can play with gasoline,I prefer not to.The fix in the service bulletins was probably noted as 'a driver issue getting in and out of the vehicle',Ford,even back then avoided citing direct reasons why they instituted a change.