Vintage Trico Fans

Probably one of my favorite vintage car parts, gadjets, whatever you would like to call it... The super 'Cool" Vintage vacuum windshield fan!

The only item on the Model A Ford that didn't come from the FOMOCO factory. One popular type of aftermarket defroster fans was the Trico Fan. 
















Tri-Continental Corporation... later shortened to Trico. Founded by R.J. Oshiethe in 1916 and became famous for the lines of wiperblades and related products. During the 1920s and 30s Trico also started to provide other accessories for automobiles in addition to wiper blades. These other accessories were vacuum powered! The company even marketed a separate vacuum pump that ran off the outside of the fan belt. Two designs for the Trico fan were available for the Model A Ford. The first design had steel blades and a steel cage surrounding the blades.



























Trico fans could be mounted to the steering column with two brackets.  A vacuum hose was connected to a nipple at the base of the fan.  The knob at the side of the base was used to adjust the amount of vacuum, which controlled the speed of the fan. 

















Second design was the Rubber Bladed Trico Fan. It had no cage around the blades because the blades were made of rubber. Sadly a common problem with these models was that the rubber blade could become soft and inefective. 



















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