10/17/2026
The first few hundred Model T engines had a water pump. Then Ford took it off and never put it back.
What replaced it was nothing at all. Hot water rises and cold water sinks, so coolant moved around the engine by itself, driven only by the temperature difference between the block and the radiator. No pump, no belt, no bearing, no seal, nothing to fail.
The same thinking runs through the entire engine.
The fuel tank sat under the front seat, higher than the carburetor, so petrol arrived by gravity. No fuel pump. On a steep enough hill the tank ended up lower than the engine, and drivers reversed up it. That was considered acceptable.
Ignition came from sixteen magnets cast into the flywheel, spinning past coils in the engine. The faster it turned, the more current it made. No battery was needed to run the car at all, and the system tolerated an enormous amount of wear and poor adjustment before it stopped working.
The engine and the two speed planetary transmission shared one oil supply in a common sump.
And the block itself was the quiet revolution. In 1908 most engines used an aluminium crankcase with separate iron cylinders bolted on in ones or twos. Ford cast all four cylinders and the upper crankcase as one piece of iron, with a detachable head on top so valves could be worked on without pulling the engine out.
177 cubic inches, three main bearings, around 20 horsepower.
It would run on petrol, kerosene or ethanol, and it stayed in production from September 1908 until August 1941, which comes to roughly twelve thousand days.
Everything it did not have is the reason it worked.
