This shows the dashboard (inside) view of the dashboard-firewall. The vernier is in terrible shape and the core boards are split (hidden under vernier).  We sent this out to Jeff Nilson, a superb woodworker who did two custom mantles and a custom door on our house remodel in 2013. You can see his work and contact info at: https://www.jnilsondesigns.com   He did a great job replacing the vernier and aligning all the holes while re-gluing & preserving the core boards. So the core is original and the vernier is new. Thank you, Jeff!

I added a wood stain that matched as close as I could get to the vernier that was preserved under the coil box for the magneto.

I will add a photo of the dashboard / firewall with polyurethane finish at some point in the future.

 

 

While the dash was out getting rebuilt and fixed by Jeff Nilson, I removed and disassembled the steering wheel, steering column and steering gear. The steering wheel has controls for the accelerator and spark advance. These are the two levers attached to the half circle in the middle of the steering wheel.  This sort of control was very common for cars of this era.

The control rod and tubes run down the center of the steering column. They are concentric within one another. and pull out when the gear on the other end is removed. The center lever & rod appear to control the accelerator. The next concentric tube controls the spark advance.

The column disassembles to look like this, when laid out next to each other.

Here is another view that shows each of the tubes. The shorter fat tube is the cosmetic outer column that goes into the passenger compartment. You will observe that this nickel plated tube is very oxidized. Attempts to clean it were a failure with the plating peeling off in sections.

Here is what the steering wheel and re-plated column look like.

This is a picture of the steering gear, throttle and spark controls as they appeared when the car came out of the barn. The GEMMER steering gear is one of the few manufacturer’s labels on this car. GEMMER was a very popular manufacturer and their steering set-ups were used in many other cars. I understand that GEMMER survived into the 1950’s as a maker of steering gears and columns.

Here is another photo of the steering column that shows the dashboard removed and the relationship between the dashboard mount. The cosmetic column cover section goes through the bracket and extends a few inches past the bracket. It is grey in this photo, not the shiny nickel plated restored version. What is NOT shown in this photo is the intake pipe and carburetor which would partially block the view of the steering gear.

Here is an advertisement for the GEMMER steering gear from 1913. Our model appears to be the Model “O” or “K”, but probably “O”.

Here is an engineering drawing of the Model “O” steering gear.