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