The Sick Brown Fox

Well, the crusty four-pot Fox is gone. as of this moment, it's only gone about 40 feet from my workshop, but it's no longer my concern. Had a really good day of it, as it happens. No photos, as I was far too busy...

Here's one I prepared earlier - throughout the course of the week, I'd stripped the shell down including taking the windscreen out in one piece. Sorry, I meant one dustbin. I'd unpicked the wiring loom so that all the engine side was in one piece, which was pretty easy as all the loom went through the bulkhead next to the steering column, straight to two multiplugs. All except one big wire and three normal ones that went through on the passenger side. The big one was the main power feed to the ignition switch; the other three I traced down the A-pillar to a big relay.

This is a great idea in a leaky old Fox, as rainwater treats the A-pillar much as the Colorado treats the Hoover Dam. Consequently, when I found the relay I unplugged it ... and the three spade terminals came with the plug. They were rustier than the sheriff's badge, and when I tipped the relay up, water ran out of it. Damn...

Anyway, today, a couple of Fox fans came all the way up from Essex to buy a body panel. The roof. Yep, Foxes are known for rotting around the sunroof, especially the right-hookers, for some reason. My crusty Fox is a rare beast with no sunroof, and the roof was pretty rust-free and sound. In fact I'd say you could land a helicopter on it... (sorry, too soon?)

Don and Steve rocked up, cut the roof off to replace the crusty tin-top on their rare '81 Cobra, and while they were at it cut a few more bits and bats off to take home. Great - no sense weighing in useful stuff. While they were doing that, I perused the wiring diagram and after some serious eye-strain trying to read tiny writing in Haynes' rather second-rate print, I found that the rusty relay was an EGR purge solenoid control valve relay or some such shit and is part of a whole ream of redundant emissions gear that can be thrown away anyway. Hurrah!

Then my mate Pete rolled up on his crotch rocket - he was just out for a blast - and we headed over to Andy's to help him move his Standard Vanguard project out of the garage. He's spent years and thousands of pounds making the basis of a superb street rod, but now the money's run out and he's facing the fact that he'll never get it finished. It's a shame, especially as it's at that point where it's had years of work pumped into it but doesn't show it - it just looks like a tacked together shell on castors. I mean it's been converted to a two-door, with the B-pillars moved back and the doors stretched 5". Looks wonderful, but as he said, he's got £1000-worth of labour in each door, but has ended up with a pair of doors that don't fit anything else and are therefore scrap if nobody buys the shell... A real shame. We moved it out of the garage, he took his pics, we moved it back in. I hope it finds a home that'll finish it.

I then headed back to the workshop, where Ben and his mate Bell-End (I still don't know his real name, but apparently everyone calls him Bell-End) helped me push the roofless Fox onto Ben's concrete workshop apron and crane the engine out. Then, while it dripped ATF all over his concrete, we shoved the shell back in front of my unit, he put the engine/box in the back of his Transit Luton box van, drove it the 40 ft over the yard and craned it out again on my side. He knew I wanted the back axle, so rather than chuff about with a jack, he just slung a chain around the back bumper bar and hoisted it up about 4ft in the air.

I thanked him very much, but I didn't want tomorrow's newspaper headlines to read "Scrap car supported by shonky engine crane crushes local moron". "No problem," says Ben. We craned the front end up, put it in the back of his Luton, then craned the back end up, and he reversed the van until the car was just over halfway in. Brilliant, removing the back axle, brake pipes and handbrake cables was a piece of piss. I then told him I wanted the back bumper bar... "No problem," says Ben, who reverses the van more so that three-quarters of the shell is inside, removes the crane and chain, then I unbolt the back bumper bar. "How are we going to get the rest of the shell in now?" I asked. "No problem," says Ben, who drives off across the yard to about 20mph, then slams on the anchors. CRASH, and the rest of the shell is firmly ensconced in the van, filled with a load of other scrap and will be weighed in in the morning.

This sort of stuff is lots of fun, especially when you can spend a day being very productive AND dicking about all at the same time.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. And consign their parts most private to a Rutland tree...

Eugene

Trying it on

I've been getting on with the rotted Fox the past few days, but with it getting dark at lunchtime and me getting sick of working with frost forming on my extremities, it's been a bit slow. The interior is now completely out, and I've advertised all of it as free to a good home - or any home, frankly - and if nobody takes it, it'll be going to the tip at the weekend. That'll make it twice in a fortnight I've been to the tip ... must be some kind of record. Shame they don't offer Nectar points. Mind you, during the last visit I ran in to a right jobsworthy little bum-pucker. I was throwing out a Fox notch rear screen - another part I'd advertised as free to collector with no takers. I was walking up the ramp to the skip marked 'Small and bagged waste' when he yells "You can't put that in there!" Why not, where should it go? "It's got to go in 'Large and bulky waste'." But it's a windscreen. "No, that's large and bulky waste." Okay, so I walk two skips along and throw it in the almost empty 'Large and bulky waste' skip. SMASH! Oh, yes, I see what you mean, those 16,000 glass fragments certainly are large and bulky. You really are the intellectual power of Stephen Hawking in a hi-vis tabard, aren't you? Twat.

So, back at the ranch, working by halogen light, I got on with the job in hand. Man, this thing is really rotten. It's been left outside for the thick end of two decades, parked up against a hedge, and the hedge-side is just crusty rot, the sort where, in places, the steel has rotted to dust and left the paintwork intact. Everything you touch just collapses helplessly - it's like playing in the Premiership. for instance, this (above) is the top of the C-pillar. Remove the piece of plastic trim, however, and you find this:

All that guff just disintegrated under the sheer force of me looking at it. I thought this might be a good opportunity to polish up some of those helplessly trite phrases that chancers trot out when they're trying to convince you that the hopeless old shed they're trying to sell you is, in fact, an investment-grade classic in the making. How about: "Worth a lot of money when done up."

"99% done, only needs a weekend's work for MoT"

"MoT expired in 1990, but it's only done 4 miles since so it should fly through another one."

"Just needs welding for MoT."
"Ideal project."
"Valuable registration."
And my favourite one, "Rust free". Note the punctuation. If it said "Rust-free" this would imply that the vehicle was not suffering from any corrosion. "Rust free" sounds like a special offer - "Buy the car, get the rust free! While stocks last."
Sadly, my stocks of rust show no signs of diminishing at any point any time soon.

Eugene

What The Fox Say...

Christ, it's been two months since I last put anything on here. It's been a busy couple of months. First off, the NSCC ended, in fine style. The last round was a corker, and John Peace sewed the whole season up in fine style to retain his championship belt - well done, John, you've earned it. And hasn't it been a tremendous year? Six weeks of solid sunshine at the beginning of summer, some excellent shows and events, and nine rounds of NSCC at York Dragway with not one single rain-off! That's some good going, there.

In home news, the MG Midget that has been occupying the back of the unit has been returned to its owner. Not finished, of course, that'd be silly. However, it will be back at some point for a coat of paint and some further reassembly. I got it rewired and running, but ran out of time. As I'd spunked a wad on hiring a trailer, I thought I'd best go and pick up another car that I was supposed to collect. It's only been 4 months...

I'd bought a pair of Fox Mustangs from a guy in Stevenage whose circumstances had changed. He'd seen a Fox on a driveway, and it had been there for years. It belonged to a little old lady, her and her husband had bought it while they lived in the States in 1979 and brought it home with them in 1982. Then, a few years later, he'd died and it had spent 12 years on the driveway against a hedge. It's a base-model 2.3 auto, but the guy finally persuaded her to sell, as he'd hoped he and his son could do it as a project together. Until they dragged it away from the hedge...

Hedge-side was as rotten as a peach. The top of the door, the top of the quarter, all round the bootlid, rotten. So he managed to scare up a bare, rolling shell from a completely rust-free 1979 GT V8. The project never got started, and when the old circumstances changed, he wanted to sell them as a pair, and quickly. I said I'd have 'em, paid 20% of the asking price by PayPal ... and that was in June. After the Mopar Nats, at the end of July, I went with a towing dolly to collect the shell, and paid a further 50%. Then, last weekend, I collected the ruin and paid the remainder.

Yes, this means I'd collected the bare, rust-free shell in July and left it outside for four months, while the already-rotten four-pot has spent those four months in a nice, dry lock-up. I didn't think that one through, did I?

Anyway, with the Midget out of the unit I can finally get the Fox shell under cover and start some work. The four-pot is beyond any practical repair - nobody gives two shits about Foxes when they're sweet V8s, never mind a shonky base four-pot, so I doubt anyone will take it on as a resto. It needs going by the weekend, ideally, but the end of the month at the latest, so if anyone can find a use for a Fox hatch, NO SUNROOF, let me know as the banger racer in the facing unit has put his bid in. It owes me about £200, all told.

In the meantime, I have a Bedford CF ambulance to begin dicking about with. And, having started out with sensible plans for Transit diesels and the like, I'm finally warming to the idea of a Lexus V8 and auto... how silly. So if anyone has an LS400 that needs intercepting on its way to the scrapyard, let me know. LPG would be even better, and wanting to PX against a rancid four-pot Fox Mustang would be better still!