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!

28 Years Later

A week or so ago, I watched the first series of The Dukes of Hazzard on DVD. When this first came out (or, at least, when it first made it onto UK TV) it was the talk of the playground. It was ace, and then you could go out and buy the ERTL toys and reenact the stunts and such in the school yard. Thirty-odd years down the line, you realise that it's not really up to much by today's standards - the plot is as thin as the beer in York Dragway's bar, and I don't recall any of the cast ever being nominated for any Academy Awards for their acting abilities. But it was damn good teatime fun.

Tonight, I've just watched the pilot and the first two episodes of The Fall Guy. This was the teatime favourite immediately after the Dukes, if I recall, and, likewise, was just a series of stunts and set-pieces linked together with piss-poor script. Again, though, all good fun.

There are four major (ah-ha-ha) problems with watching these favourites again after all these years. First, you realise that all these were on TV over 30 years ago. That makes me an old bastard. Damn. Secondly, your realise that the cars that were disposable stunt props in 1980 are now exceedingly cool classics. Like the '66 Charger and the '68 Charger written off in the opening sequence of the Fall Guy, or the 409 (!) Dodge Chargers written off in the making of The Dukes Of Hazzard. Thirdly, Lee Majors couldn't sing to save his arsehole. Fourth is the DVD extras.

I love watching the extras on the DVDs, and most of them feature interviews with the cast. Now obviously, you can't expect all these people to look the same as they did 30 years ago; that'd be preposterous. But for christ's sake... This is Catherine Bach/Daisy Duke back in 1979, for the first series of The Dukes Of Hazzard:

And this is Catherine Bach recently, nearly 35 years on:

She's filled out quite nicely, I'd say. Yeah, she's no spring chicken any more, but still a good lay (c. some birthday card I saw once). You can certainly still see the remnants of the woman responsible for an entire generation of boys turning out heterosexual despite growing up in the Eighties.

Now here's Lee Majors as Colt Seavers, in The Fall Guy, circa 1981:

Now here's Lee Majors recently:

I think he might have had a bit of work done, don't you? Frankly, Lee, if I stretch my knacker-bag out until all the wrinkles disappear, it's still a knacker-bag and I'd have trouble convincing anybody otherwise. What makes you think you can get away with it? Who are you trying to kid? I grew up thinking of you as a daredevil stuntman on Saturday evening TV; now you look like the next candidate for investigation by Operation Yew Tree.

Do you also remember Heather Thomas, who played Jody in The Fall Guy? Here's how everyone best remembers her:

And here's how she looks now:

Christ. She looks like my bell-end with a vaguely surprised expression painted on it. Again, who are you trying to kid? Did you wreck yourself that badly in the Eighties that you have to try and persuade people (including yourself) that you're still a Hollywood starlet and should be considered for roles written for a 30-year-old? Love, if you have your mush lifted, nipped and tucked any further, you're going to have your ears on the back of your head and you'll have massive bags under your eyes. Your tits. At least Daisy Duke has grown old(er) with some degree of decorum.

I'm now watching the remake of Hawaii Five-O from a couple of years ago. What could possibly go wrong?

Eugene

The Way Things Were

*****Please note - Rubber Duck wrote this BEFORE the 2013 Street Racer championship***

Things are not the way they used to be. Shows have moved, gone, and been replaced many times over. Our hobby is in fact the one escape from the hum drum of everyday life. I was at a show a while back and the topic of conversation was how our scene has shrunk over the last 10 years, but on that note I would have to say I disagree completely. Over the last few years at shows I have seen many times where it has only been big money cars winning, over and over again, but when they say the scene is not as big as it used to be, they are just talking about the show and shine side, because if you lump ‘Our Scene’ all into one group - drag racing, show'n'shine, 50s retro and all that together - I think in fact you will find it's growing. I don’t see it as a “them and us”; we are all part of the same thing, whether your angle is parking on a field, or running the nuts off your motor down the quarter mile. It all comes from the same roots.

New blood is picking up spanners all over the country and attacking old bangers and turning them into drivable, streetable, road legal cars and popping down to the local drag strip or nearest show. The cars that are being run now are usable, everyday cars. The only problem I see is when these cars and young people turn up to shows, they don’t get the credit that’s due to them, with such big money cars always winning, and I’m not saying they shouldn’t, but what can we do to give them a boost? I have never been to a show and seen a trophy given out for Best Effort, or Young Restorer. Times have changed, not everyone can point at a crusty rod dumped in a bush and say, “build that for me, money is no object”. The one thing I love about drag racing is that you see a 18/19 year old, foot to the floor in a Pop or Prefect they are working on, but people still go round and look at it, talk to them. The Street Racer challenge at York raceway is a perfect example, you can have a 9-second road-legal car, but would it stand the challenge of constant runs next to a Pop with a 2-litre motor that can do a 300-mile trip in one shot with only fuel stops? Now that sounds like a good event to me!

We are all part of the same thing, when you see a half-built rod or yank, just think: you were at that stage at one time. Give them some support and let’s keep the flow of our hobby the way it was, the way it is, and the way it will be in years to come, FUN.

RubberDuck

Retro Rides Gathering - a woman's tale

It’s nice to be out of the house with no kids in tow, for once in a while, even though it’s an early start: looking forward to meeting up with friends and having a good old catch-up. For us women who have men seriously addicted to cars, it’s a case of ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ (and we can NEVER beat them), so unless you enjoy being dumped for a couple of tons of mobile metal on a regular basis, ‘join ‘em’ it is!

Even though I had been going to many car events with my other half for quite a few years, neither of us had been to this one before. Driving through the beautiful little villages was charming, to say the least, and the sun was shining: it was promising to be a good day, despite the inevitable queue to get in and the size of the event. The interesting ‘stuff’ was queuing with us, and my other half was starting to get as excited as a kid on the run up to Christmas. I have to admit, I was rather excited too. I love old and ‘interesting’ cars of all types and my definition of ‘interesting’ is rather eclectic. What interesting wonders would we find?

The show field was rather extensive and we didn’t have time to cover much of it, especially since my other half had decided he was up for having a go at the hill climb. This was one of those ‘beat them or join them’ moments, so, since signing up as a passenger was free, and I had no one to worry about but myself, ‘join them’ it was! This, however, meant that we were sitting in queues most of the afternoon instead of pottering about. Never mind, the ‘interesting’ stuff was coming to us, as were our friends... life is good. The hill climb itself was quite exciting, especially when my other half put the boot in, but as a Northern lass, I did think of the countryside I drove round in years past, and this course was nothing more than a stroll in the park!

The cars in the show ground were lovely. All of them loved and cared for in their owner’s unique way. Race cars and restorations alike, were all lovely. However, I was constantly on the lookout for the cars I liked most, but none were there. I mentioned this to my other half and he very gently pointed out, that this was about ‘retro’ cars and not classic cars. That is when it dawned on me.... I was getting OLD! These lovely cars, which, in my mind, were rather new, were in fact 30 years old and the ‘retro’ in Retro Rides.

Overall, Retro Rides Gathering 2013 was a great event. I thoroughly enjoyed it! But I suppose my next step is reconciling myself with the fact my teenage years are further behind me than I thought

~ Jessica Rabbit

No fuel (like an old fuel)

The Fox let me down the other day. I shouldn't be too mad - I've had the car for nearly three years, it's hardly the picture of health, but this is the first time it's ever let me down. Previously, all faults have been traced to something that I've done...

In this instance, it had driven about 100 miles, then suddenly decided that that was far enough when the time came for the return journey. After much chuffing about, with help from nearby Dave Evans, plus Mark and Hoppy who happened to be passing, we determined that the fuel pump had pumped its last. Damn ... it came home on an AA wagon.

Mark, the picture of helpful generosity (and a Yorkshireman, too!), had offered me his old fuel pump as a replacement, so I was sorted. I got the chuff-end up in the air, removed the towbar and dropped the tank which was pretty easy. It would have been easier if it was empty. Well, it wouldn't have been easier, but would have hurt less when I dropped it on my head. The pump is an in-tank pump on a hanger bracket, and it seemed that the positive wire had chafed away against the bracket. It hadn't blown a fuse or anything, though. It was a simple enough job to open the bracket, and swap in Mark's old pump (which, after Googling the part number, turned out to be a Walbro 255lph pump! Result!) but the little plastic filter on the end was of the disposable, 'not designed to be removed' design and the grab-ring dropped off inside the filter.

Some copper wire-based ingenuity saw it reattached. Then I fitted everything back together, reinstalled the tank, turned the key and ... bugger all. I tested the voltage (again) at the multiplug nearest the pump, and, sure enough, it was 12v when the ignition was switched on, dropping to about 7v after a second or two. I phoned James who confirmed that this is normal - if there's no tacho signal to the ECU it drops the voltage to the pump after a second. I connected the old pump up to 12v and it fired right up.

So, I dropped the tank again. There was 12 volts right to the pump terminal on top of the tank, but still no pumping. So I took the pump out again, and connected the pump direct to 12 volts. Sure, it begins spinning.

More dicking around with the multimeter showed that somewhere between the top of the hanger bracket and the crimped join to the new pump wiring, there was a break in continuity. Tits. Where the wires go through the metal top of the hanger, the positive side had slightly melted the insulation, and the riveted connection was slightly loose. If I pressed it with my thumb, I got 12v; the second I let go, back to 0v. I looked on Rockauto.com for a new hanger - £39, but with postage, £93. I looked on USAutomotive's website, and they had one in stock, a snip at £330 plus P&P. Not on your life ... honestly, I can only assume that it was gold plated and came with a platinum fuel tank full of 110-octane Sunoco.

So butchery is called for. I carefully and delicately smashed the shite out of the multiplug at the top of the hanger with a pair of mole grips, which left two wire-sized holes. I Super-Glued the insulators back on either side of the holes, pulled the wires through the holes and hey presto.

I cut the other side of the multiplug off the loom, soldered the wires, covered them with insulating tape and put everything back together. First turn of the key, the pump pumps and the motor fires... Result. Should be all fired up for Prescott this weekend.