MOUNTAIN VIEW COUNTY — Model T Fords have been a keen interest of Karee Harms ever since she was a little girl.
Now she restores them with help from other Model T club members,
Harms, 49, lives, between Olds and Didsbury. She entered a Model T in the fifth annual Cam Clark Ford Smoke Show, held Aug. 2.
“I always liked the look of Model Ts, and then one came up at auction by Pigeon Lake as a lawn ornament, and I figured that was the closest I'd get, so I ended up getting it,” she said during an interview with the Albertan. “It had an engine that turned over, and the body wasn't too bad.
“That would have been about four years ago now, and that was the start of everything. So now I've got this one. I've got a 1926 Model T pickup with the tractor conversion on it, and I've got three that I'm restoring.”
Harms is a member of a Calgary-based Model T club. She bought the Model T in the show from a fellow member.
“I bought it running so I had something to drive while I'm working on rebuilding some others.
“I’ve replaced the starter and I’ve replaced the generator and rebuilt the carburetor. There’s always something,” she said.
Harms said generally Model Ts like the one she displayed in the show seem to be selling for about $10,000 right now.
She’s one of a handful of women she knows who buy and rebuild cars.
“There’s a lot of wives and that, that are just involved with their husbands and that with it too.”
“I'm learning as I go,” she said. “I've got a bunch of manuals and the members of the Model T club are amazing. I mean, it's just a wealth of knowledge, so they come and help you build it.”
It’s convenient to do all this on the farm where she lives and helps her dad.
“We don't have any animals on the farm,” Harms said. “My dad had already partly converted the barn into workshop for his tractors, so it's now a Model T barn.”
One labour of love for Harms and her dad is working on a 1926 Model T pick up with a 1917 Smith Form-a-tractor conversion on it.
“I got it at auction last year because it was kind of a mixture of my interest and his,” she said.
