All our old cars have their own story. But its not just the cars, the parts have a tale to tell too.
One I wondered about was a lone HA Viva hubcap I found while clearing out on Monday. I had a HA, but when I sold it the car had a full set of hubcaps. So why have I got one lone one, where has it come from?
But then there’s the stuff you have a story for. I have a FD Victor tailgate in store, now on eBay, anyway a mate saw it and recognised the car it came off, said he'd seen it at the shows, has a couple of owners club stickers and a distinctive black (non standard ) stripe on it. When he mentioned it I remembered the car as well, saw it at Drayton one year, old guy owned it.
Anyway, the one which counts is the bonnet on the Ventora I'm doing now. When I dragged it out to start working on it I was reminded of the story of that bonnet and how I came to own it, which is vaguely interesting so here goes...
Back in 1970 this chap bought a brand new FD Victor estate, he ran it as his own car for 10 years or more and then his son started using the car a bit as it was his dad's second car. It even served as the car he got married and went on honeymoon in. Anyway when the car became quite ropey and needed some work, so it got parked away in a barn at their farm. The chap saved up some money and then went on a restoration blitz on the estate. He had the engine, gearbox, brakes, suspension, and everything you can think of rebuilt with all new parts. Part of the interior was retrimmed, new headliner and carpet too as I recall. He then had the car resprayed in the original green. I saw the receipts and they were a stack like a phone book think. There must have been five grand’s worth easy just in bits. Anyway the car goes down for its first MOT after the resto and guess what, it fails. It needs welding underneath... Well, the car then gets pushed back in the barn and forgot about for some time.
A mate of mine called Chris bought a Vauxhall Victor FD 2000SL which he paid good money for. It had been owned by a mate of ours and restored by the guy who does the stuff for Lord Monegeu's collection at Beuleigh. Anyway, he ran that car as a Sunday special for a while until one day the oil pump failed causing the cam to seize.
Well, Chris came to hear of the estate and bought it "for restoration" and as he had no drive where he lived he came up with a scheme to pull the almost-zero miles engine out of the estate and drop it in the back of his Sierra to take home and fit to his car. The almost-zero miles gearbox was going to a mutual friend as a finders' fee for locating the donor car. As my drive was to be used for the removal I was to be left with the estate to do with as I saw fit.
Well, this estate arrived and damn it looked mint. It looked like a new car, really it did. Until I looked underneath it… There was no inner sill either side right the way down the length of the car.
So I pulled the motor and box and me & Chris loaded it in to his Sierra. As a further "gift" Chris also gave me the sized up motor out of the gold saloon to see if I could do anything with it, after all, it was a rebuilt motor itself, and had like 2500 miles on it (but was out of the 12 month guarantee period).
Well, I thought about it for a bit and then I broke that estate car. It was one of those "needs to be gone by the weekend" moments so I just pulled the obvious stuff off it and had the scrappy take the shell away. Well, today I'd wince at the thought of the car going the way it did, full rebuilt suspension and brakes, new springs, bushes, cups, and shockers and bearings and brakes all round, the lot and I let it all go to scrap. This was about 1996 and ten years ago it didn't seem like stuff like that was a problem to get hold of. Now.... So I had the badges and stuff (all rechromed) the new bumpers, the new grill, and I used the rad in a mates car as I recall. And of course, I had the bonnet.
Now the tale of estates wouldn't be complete without finishing off with "NRO". Now NRO was a 1970 Victor 2000 estate which was really a 1969 model, but as they still had unsold stock of the pre-facelift they sold them on cheap in 1970. This estate was apparently owned by the guy that runs the restoration course at Leeds which often features in Practical Classics. It had been let go down hill a bit since then. A mate Steve bought it and it had been stored in the middle of a forest or some such crazy story and the leaf patterns from decaying leaves had etched themselves into the paint so bad they wouldn't wash off. Yeah, he bought it over the phone (pre eBay days!) having seen just a couple of Polaroid snaps which had been sent in the post and I guess flattered the car somewhat. Well, he shoved it in a lockup and gave up on it and eventually gave it to me . I got the leaf prints off with Ajax surface cleaner (yeah, scouring powder!) which gave it a curious matt finish, but at least it was clean. It sailed right through the MOT too. Well, I drove that noisy old banger every day for ages until one day on the way to a club committee meeting the rings failed and I rattled along at 20 mph until I got to the services and got myself dragged home by the AA.
The AA subbed the job out to a local garage who's flatbed was about as bad as the estate was - I remember them checking the diesel with a stick as they had no fuel gauge...
Well so the engine out of the gold saloon was pressed into service. Local top hero Ken attended to this for me as it was supposed to be a simple "in and out" job while I was at work one day. The idea was to use the top end from the estate motor on the bottom end of the saloon motor and drop in a spare oil pump I had. Easy. Erm, no. Vauxhall changed the head dowels when they facelifted the cars in 1969 and my 1970 estate was a pre-facelift remember - well the saloon was a facelift car (SL) so Ken ended up stripping out the cam carrier and cam and remachining all manner of stuff to make it all go together and work.
So I ran the car as a daily driver again for a couple of months and then guess what, the damn oil pump failed. Again. At this point I gave up and put an ad in the club magazine faying it had to go. Well a chap from Scotland offered me a swap for his HB Viva SL Automatic. I didn’t want it but Steve said he fancied it and it had a nice long MOT. So I said I’d sell him it for £275. We had only seen a couple of Polaroid snaps of the car but it looked OK. So the Scottish guy sent a guy with a truck down and brought me the Viva, took away the Victor and I sold Steve the Viva.
Steve later sold me his FD Victor saloon for £250 which was probably the same cash he gave me for the Viva and this Victor is the one which is now lying in that lockup slowly rusting to death.
And digging that old bonnet out of storage to fit to my Ventora project reminded me of the whole cycle of stories which are tied to it.
Now you don’t get that when you nip down Ford for a replacement panel for your Focus do you!
One I wondered about was a lone HA Viva hubcap I found while clearing out on Monday. I had a HA, but when I sold it the car had a full set of hubcaps. So why have I got one lone one, where has it come from?
But then there’s the stuff you have a story for. I have a FD Victor tailgate in store, now on eBay, anyway a mate saw it and recognised the car it came off, said he'd seen it at the shows, has a couple of owners club stickers and a distinctive black (non standard ) stripe on it. When he mentioned it I remembered the car as well, saw it at Drayton one year, old guy owned it.
Anyway, the one which counts is the bonnet on the Ventora I'm doing now. When I dragged it out to start working on it I was reminded of the story of that bonnet and how I came to own it, which is vaguely interesting so here goes...
Back in 1970 this chap bought a brand new FD Victor estate, he ran it as his own car for 10 years or more and then his son started using the car a bit as it was his dad's second car. It even served as the car he got married and went on honeymoon in. Anyway when the car became quite ropey and needed some work, so it got parked away in a barn at their farm. The chap saved up some money and then went on a restoration blitz on the estate. He had the engine, gearbox, brakes, suspension, and everything you can think of rebuilt with all new parts. Part of the interior was retrimmed, new headliner and carpet too as I recall. He then had the car resprayed in the original green. I saw the receipts and they were a stack like a phone book think. There must have been five grand’s worth easy just in bits. Anyway the car goes down for its first MOT after the resto and guess what, it fails. It needs welding underneath... Well, the car then gets pushed back in the barn and forgot about for some time.
A mate of mine called Chris bought a Vauxhall Victor FD 2000SL which he paid good money for. It had been owned by a mate of ours and restored by the guy who does the stuff for Lord Monegeu's collection at Beuleigh. Anyway, he ran that car as a Sunday special for a while until one day the oil pump failed causing the cam to seize.
Well, Chris came to hear of the estate and bought it "for restoration" and as he had no drive where he lived he came up with a scheme to pull the almost-zero miles engine out of the estate and drop it in the back of his Sierra to take home and fit to his car. The almost-zero miles gearbox was going to a mutual friend as a finders' fee for locating the donor car. As my drive was to be used for the removal I was to be left with the estate to do with as I saw fit.
Well, this estate arrived and damn it looked mint. It looked like a new car, really it did. Until I looked underneath it… There was no inner sill either side right the way down the length of the car.
So I pulled the motor and box and me & Chris loaded it in to his Sierra. As a further "gift" Chris also gave me the sized up motor out of the gold saloon to see if I could do anything with it, after all, it was a rebuilt motor itself, and had like 2500 miles on it (but was out of the 12 month guarantee period).
Well, I thought about it for a bit and then I broke that estate car. It was one of those "needs to be gone by the weekend" moments so I just pulled the obvious stuff off it and had the scrappy take the shell away. Well, today I'd wince at the thought of the car going the way it did, full rebuilt suspension and brakes, new springs, bushes, cups, and shockers and bearings and brakes all round, the lot and I let it all go to scrap. This was about 1996 and ten years ago it didn't seem like stuff like that was a problem to get hold of. Now.... So I had the badges and stuff (all rechromed) the new bumpers, the new grill, and I used the rad in a mates car as I recall. And of course, I had the bonnet.
Now the tale of estates wouldn't be complete without finishing off with "NRO". Now NRO was a 1970 Victor 2000 estate which was really a 1969 model, but as they still had unsold stock of the pre-facelift they sold them on cheap in 1970. This estate was apparently owned by the guy that runs the restoration course at Leeds which often features in Practical Classics. It had been let go down hill a bit since then. A mate Steve bought it and it had been stored in the middle of a forest or some such crazy story and the leaf patterns from decaying leaves had etched themselves into the paint so bad they wouldn't wash off. Yeah, he bought it over the phone (pre eBay days!) having seen just a couple of Polaroid snaps which had been sent in the post and I guess flattered the car somewhat. Well, he shoved it in a lockup and gave up on it and eventually gave it to me . I got the leaf prints off with Ajax surface cleaner (yeah, scouring powder!) which gave it a curious matt finish, but at least it was clean. It sailed right through the MOT too. Well, I drove that noisy old banger every day for ages until one day on the way to a club committee meeting the rings failed and I rattled along at 20 mph until I got to the services and got myself dragged home by the AA.
The AA subbed the job out to a local garage who's flatbed was about as bad as the estate was - I remember them checking the diesel with a stick as they had no fuel gauge...
Well so the engine out of the gold saloon was pressed into service. Local top hero Ken attended to this for me as it was supposed to be a simple "in and out" job while I was at work one day. The idea was to use the top end from the estate motor on the bottom end of the saloon motor and drop in a spare oil pump I had. Easy. Erm, no. Vauxhall changed the head dowels when they facelifted the cars in 1969 and my 1970 estate was a pre-facelift remember - well the saloon was a facelift car (SL) so Ken ended up stripping out the cam carrier and cam and remachining all manner of stuff to make it all go together and work.
So I ran the car as a daily driver again for a couple of months and then guess what, the damn oil pump failed. Again. At this point I gave up and put an ad in the club magazine faying it had to go. Well a chap from Scotland offered me a swap for his HB Viva SL Automatic. I didn’t want it but Steve said he fancied it and it had a nice long MOT. So I said I’d sell him it for £275. We had only seen a couple of Polaroid snaps of the car but it looked OK. So the Scottish guy sent a guy with a truck down and brought me the Viva, took away the Victor and I sold Steve the Viva.
Steve later sold me his FD Victor saloon for £250 which was probably the same cash he gave me for the Viva and this Victor is the one which is now lying in that lockup slowly rusting to death.
And digging that old bonnet out of storage to fit to my Ventora project reminded me of the whole cycle of stories which are tied to it.
Now you don’t get that when you nip down Ford for a replacement panel for your Focus do you!
Hummm, wonder where i got this car fetish from? ;D