Plumber Truck: 1931 Ford Model A Closed-Cab Pickup (17 Photos + 3 Videos)

Small pickup trucks based on the Ford A were very popular. among American hard workers, especially those working in the service sector. A typical "plumber" needed such a truck in general as air.





Plumber is a word unusual for our ear, as they called it in the USA plumbers, it came from the name of lead - plumbum. The thing is, that a hundred years ago, water was supplied to American homes through lead pipes. In a number of European countries, there were also lead plumbing.



Probably, in those years they did not yet fully know about the toxicity of lead, and its properties such as plasticity, ease of processing and durability in the case of plumbing played a decisive role.





Even a small supply of pipes that they carried with them plumbers, weighed under a hundred kilograms. Add to them a cylinder for a burner, connecting these tubes by soldering and knurling an additional layer of metal on connection, and as a result, the cargo will run into a whole pickup truck.



The old Ford has been restored to near original condition. Itself machine 1931 release, already from the last batches. It's the same in the cockpit. as it was then, in the thirties. Even the upholstery material was selected similar to original.



This is not genuine leather, but a semblance of its modern artificial analogues. The fabric base was impregnated with a nitrocellulose composition with addition of plasticizers and pigments. Exactly the same material did the roof.





Of the instruments, only a drum speedometer, an ammeter and a mechanical fuel indicator "peephole", displayed directly in the gas tank, which located behind the dash.



Let's open the hood, shall we? Four-cylinder carburetor engine a volume of 3.3 liters produces only 40 horses. Everything is extreme here. simply. Gasoline in the carburetor from the tank goes by gravity, the voltage from the distributor to the candles is transmitted by contact plates, not wires, there were no air and oil filters yet.





Rumor has it that the pickup worked until the sixties. Then there was briefly abandoned, but already in the seventies, after restoration, found a new application, as an advertising and exhibition truck of the family plumbing company.