A Falcon's odyssey.

toglhot

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When I was young I took out a patent on stupid; like many teens I was of course – bulletproof: bad things only happen to other people. I had a thing for cars and motor bikes and making them sporty and go faster. Unfortunately, my bank balance meant I couldn’t afford thing s like cams and triple side draft webbers so I had to be content with extractors, floor shifts, bucket seats, and black interiors.

The XM taught me a lot about cars, I rebuilt the motor, gearbox, diff, carb, replaced the starter motor, solenoid, generator, rewired the thing and so on. There was nothing wrong with the motor or gearbox or carb, or the wiring, I just wanted to know how they worked.

Extractors could be had quite cheaply by comparison in the 60s; and, as I discovered , if you plumbed the exhaust right you could make a 6 sound almost like a V8. First split the extractors by removing the two into one collector down the bottom, then buy another exhaust from the wreckers, cut in the middle of each bend, reverse the direction of the bend and weld back together, presto, now you have an exhaust pipe for both sides of the car that snaked their way over the diff and out the back, finish that off with two chromed tips, pointing downwards to amplify the noise of course, install two 24” hot dogs and join the exhausts to the extractor outlets.

Fooled lots of people, on more than one occasion I had servo attendants lift the bonnet for a squiz at what they thought would be V8 lurking under the bonnet; boy, were they disappointed to find a marriage of Pursuit and Super Pursuit engines. Why Ford gave these engines that name is beyond me, a genuine misnomer, I don’t think the Super Pursuit motor would be capable of pursuing a tortoise, they are much too fast. I think only the original four pot Torana was slower! The other people that were mightily interested in the noise the car made were the police. They had no interest in peeking under the hood or turning their heads to listen to the magnificent note emitted from the shiny chrome tips. They did have a very real interest in shutting the thing up, slapping a yellow sticker on the windscreen and getting it off the road, four times in total before I woke up. One copper chased me off from the lights with a sign on a stick, written on the sign backwards were the words ‘STOP POLICE’. Oh my. That guy got me twice, both times in Mt Pleasant, once around the raffles the other on the Esplanade.

Another interesting mod was to install two black bucket seats from a Colt. These were much lower than the bench seat, and being short I had to stretch my neck to see over the dash, but boy, was I cool. I knew I was cool, because everyone looked at me driving past. Well I assumed they were looking at me as a cool dude; either that or, they were wondering where the hell the driver was. Now you can’t have cool black buckets and two tone blue door trim with a blue painted dash can you? So, I bought a can of upholstery colour, painted the door trims black and painted the dash flat black. Boy was I excited, this looked like a cool car now.

This joy was not shared by a girl I knew in a nice white dress, she looked nice when she got in in her nice white dress. Anyway, the can lied, the upholstery paint did not dry to a nice black colour, it simply didn’t dry in patches, it melted the vinyl. When the girl in white exited my cool car she looked like a dalmation. She had a horrified look on her face when she asked me where the black came from, I just shook my head denied any knowledge and drove off, never even got a kiss goodnight. I never saw her again, except when she was with other fellas that was.

Now a sporty interior can’t be sporty with that ship’s wheel Ford called a steering wheel can it? Luckily, being a welder and steel fabricator I had the wherewithal to change that, so I bent up a length of 1” tube into a 12” circle, cut the boss from the steering wheel and mounted it inside a short section of 4” tube and welded on three spokes I’d shaped to tie the wheel to the boss. Of course you have to have lightning holes in the spokes to give the impression of speed, so I drilled a few holes decreasing in size as the blades narrowed and wrapped the wheel with an aftermarket, lace on steering wheel cover, this really looked the part, it made the steering a little heavy but that’s the price you pay for ‘sporty’! Didn’t do my arms any harm either, I developed a good set of guns.

Now Rome wasn’t built in a day, was it? nor was my sporty steering wheel: The 4” tube into which I’d welded the boss had three spokes welded on and that was it until the following weekend when I could weld the 12” wheel in place, but I had to get to work right? Easily solved, I stuck a longish bolt in one of the holes in one of the spokes and used it as a suicide knob, similar to that fitted on forklifts and disabled driver’s cars. I have to tell you these work great, not real sure the sharpish edges on the two spare spokes or the long blot sticking out would have created much joy had I had an accident; but, I’m a teenager, bulletproof right? Fortunately, I never got to test my immortality, but this steering wheel saw many years use, even the coppers liked it, so much in fact they awarded me a gold sticker on a couple of occasions. Well actually the stickers were yellow, which meant I couldn’t drive the car on the road again until I put a proper steering wheel back on.

This was in the early 70s when GT Falcons and Monaros were king. The GT falcon had a nice spoiler under the front bumper, I thought my XM would look excellent with one of those, so fashioned one for the XM. I used 4” x 1/8” plate, with brackets welded at the back to attach it to the chassis. It actually looked more like grader blade, but I liked it, until I took a trip to Kalgoorlie, trying to sell insurance policies for the Combined Insurance Company of America. They were really good to work for, looked after their salesman, unfortunately, I wasn’t a good salesman so I wasn’t very good to them. I think I sold two policies in the time I was with them, I lived off renewals, many of which I lost. Salesmen are born, not made I discovered! Anyway, Kalgoorlie is a mining town about 350 miles East of Perth. Every intersection in Kalgoorlie is like a roller coaster, requiring drivers to slow down so as not to bottom out their cars. And this is where I found my ubeaut spoiler wasn’t really that beaut, I only new fast, slow was for oldies. My ubeaut spoiler acted like a grader and I left great gouges all over the Kalgoorlie intersections. Didn’t do my spoiler much good either, but I wasn’t deterred and when I returned to Perth, I straightened it and added some bracing so It wouldn’t bend in future adventures.

Roll on a couple of months and the sales team all headed south to Esperance, about 700klms from Perth. Between Ravensthorpe and Esperance there was an absolute plague of rabbits just before Esperance there were so many rabbits, so many you couldn’t count them. The spoiler did a pretty good job scooping them out of the way. A few made their way past the grader, sorry, the spoiler and got caught up on the dual exhaust. By the time I got to Esperance the car smelled like rabbit stew.

Not my XM, but this is how they looked. Just a wagon, minus the rear doors and windows.
 

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Continued.

On return to Perth I gave up trying to sell insurance. and moved into the building trade. Still obsessed with the XM, I turned my attention to gauges. The early Falcons had a mesh bit up top in the middle of the dash for a speaker, I ripped that out and mounted some gauges up there: Amp gauge, volt gauge, vacuum gauge, oil gauge plus a couple more, can’t remember what they were for, but I bought up every gauge available in the speed shop, plus the obligatory tacho mounted on the column. A mate counted eight all up, including the tacho. At night the interior lit up like a Xmas tree from all the lights. To cover all the ugly wires, I covered the back of the gauges with that silky, hairy, fluffy stuff that was all the rage in toilets at the time.

Almost done, just the ‘piece de resistance’ was needed, a floor shift! For the uneducated that means , not cool but, ‘Super Cool’ The local wreckers had a straight line shifter so I grabbed that real quick and raced home. Straight line shifters found favour with street dragsters of the day, they were a spring loaded lever which had a pin at the bottom, the pin engaged in slots machined into two sliders which moved the two levers exiting the gear box. The top slider operated second and third whilst the bottom slider operated first and reverse. They worked thus: Push down and forward and first gear is selected, once up to speed just pull the lever back, the lever pops up on it’s way through neutral and thus engages the upper slider engaging second gear. These work great – when new. Unfortunately, when old and worn (which mine was) and if moved too quickly the lever can move both sliders at the same time, engaging second and reverse at the same time.

On my initial test run I was engaging a rather steep hill, so I made a lightning fast shift to second; remember, I’m young and so therefore an expert driver, this enables me to change gears much faster than an oldy (or mere mortal) and so, the vehicle came to an abrupt halt jamming the gearbox. I engaged the handbrake, not something I had used a lot, cars are meant to go, not stop, right? From the rear of the van I grabbed a hammer and slid under the car, and with just a couple of light taps the gear box freed up.

Now I’ve told you the score with brakes, not really needed, so the hand brake never received any of my expert workmanship and was not largely ignored; rather, it was totally ignored. Repercussion is a terrible word for the young and bulletproof, but usually after a few repercussions and if you’re lucky, you do learn, unfortunately, I never did learn and kept repeating my mistakes for many, many years. Anyway, with no working handbrake and stuck in the middle of the road on a steep incline with me underneath, the car took of backwards down the hill.

Initially the right front tyre rolled over my feet which I apparently had crossed, then up my body, fortunately missing the nomad Gonads (I was single then) due to having my legs crossed, and continued up my body exiting over my left shoulder. Luckily the part that drove this know it all, bulletproof teen (the brain box) was missed, that of course left it free to make many, many more stupid mistakes. Once free of the speed hump, the car continued downhill heading toward busy Morley Rd in Eden Hill WA. I jumped up and chased the vehicle downhill, at the last moment the car swung to the left up someone’s driveway on to their front lawn and demolished their brick letterbox. Being a responsible type teen, I jumped in the car and took off quickly, being very careful not to change from first to second too fast. The only damage done, aside from the letterbox, was a chipped bone on my left heel - amazing! Did I get some grief over that ‘the guy who ran over himself’!

That shifter saw a couple of weeks of careful use, I then purchased an H pattern shifter, made a few brackets and longer linkages for it, shortened the lever to around 4”, covered the hole where the straight line shifter had been, cut a new hole between the seats and secured the shifter in place. Finally making this car the ultimate in tricked up XMs.

I did a lot more work to this car: The plastic instrument unit found its way to the bin and I made up a new sheet metal unit to hold all the gauges: speedo, fuel, temp, vacuum, ammeter, voltmeter and a few others, eight in all from memory and of course a tacho mounted independently on the column, the interior of the car lit up like a Xmas tree at night. I also resprayed it, dark blue with a white roof, originally it was grey – no such thing as a cool ‘grey’ car. I installed a state of the art AM, mechanical, push button radio, made longer hangers for the leaf springs giving it that dragster look, made up a roof shelf behind the seats and of course a mattress in the back like all good PVs, known as shagin wagons in Oz. But, I never saw any shagging in it, I did sleep in it frequently, other than that, that was the only action it ever saw. People called me a hood and the girls stayed away in their droves. Annoyingly, I wasn’t, I never broke the law (aside from speeding tickets and yellow stickers), never stole anything, never assaulted anyone, was reasonably respectful of my elders (sometimes), thinking back, I was a very quiet chap, just enthralled with noisy fast cars.

One night coming home from the Raffles pub the Damnedest thing happened, a tree jumped in front of the XM, what can you do? This tree caused a lot of damage: the side of the car just behind the passenger seat was punched in, almost to the middle, the tailgate popped open and my toolbox fell out spraying tools all over the road. Had I not been so interested in listening to the ‘note’ the rear window would have been up preventing the tailgate from opening. Anyway, I alighted from the vehicle and started gathering the tools, almost done, I heard a voice ‘I saw what you did’ and spied an old codger running up his driveway. Not wanting him to call the police (I’d been at the Raffles remember), I gave chase, to talk, nothing else. He wasn’t having that and locked his doors and windows and I heard him call to his wife ‘quick, ring the police’. That was enough for me so I took off. The next day I came back and collected what tools I could find. Not being a big drinker, I’d only had a couple of drinks that night so I often wonder if the exhaust fumes had been sucked in the open rear window and affected me. More probably though, I was affected by plain, ordinary, youthful stupidity…

Prior to draping the car around the tree, I’d lost control, my mate Greg, sitting in the passenger seat panicked and was jumping up and down screaming ‘I don’t wanna die’ or some other such foolishness. So, I only had one hand on the wheel, the other was stretched out holding him down. I drove the car back to his place, meeting up with the others of our group, then we all jumped in someone else’s car and went to a night club in Perth. I slept in the car that night in Greg’s driveway, next morning I drove the XM home and started paperwork for the insurance claim.

I was sure the car would be written off, but the insurance company authorised repairs. The panel beater sliced through the floor pan just in front of the seats, through the windscreen pillars and a new rear section was welded in place. I lost interest in the car after that, it squeaked and groaned and the section added was full of bog and rust.

Eventually I sold it to a young married couple, the fellow telling his naïve wife a van was ideal for the pram, which his wife swallowed.
 
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The Ford inline sixes were ok, but on the gutless side until they came out with the 250CI six. That was a beast. I had a Cortina with the 250 six, that thing moved. They copped a bit of flak for having too much power for the Cortina. I don't think the US got the Cortina, they were an English Ford, originally with a four pot, but Ford Australia dumped a big six in them, we had a choice of a 1.6, 2.0, 3.3 or a 4.1 (250ci).
The 250 developed max torque at around 1500 rpm.
 

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The Ford inline sixes were ok, but on the gutless side until they came out with the 250CI six. That was a beast. I had a Cortina with the 250 six, that thing moved. They copped a bit of flak for having too much power for the Cortina. I don't think the US got the Cortina, they were an English Ford, originally with a four pot, but Ford Australia dumped a big six in them, we had a choice of a 1.6, 2.0, 3.3 or a 4.1 (250ci).
The 250 developed max torque at around 1500 rpm.
My dad had a '67 Cortina when we lived in Canada.
 
Continued.

On return to Perth I gave up trying to sell insurance. and moved into the building trade. Still obsessed with the XM, I turned my attention to gauges. The early Falcons had a mesh bit up top in the middle of the dash for a speaker, I ripped that out and mounted some gauges up there: Amp gauge, volt gauge, vacuum gauge, oil gauge plus a couple more, can’t remember what they were for, but I bought up every gauge available in the speed shop, plus the obligatory tacho mounted on the column. A mate counted eight all up, including the tacho. At night the interior lit up like a Xmas tree from all the lights. To cover all the ugly wires, I covered the back of the gauges with that silky, hairy, fluffy stuff that was all the rage in toilets at the time.

Almost done, just the ‘piece de resistance’ was needed, a floor shift! For the uneducated that means , not cool but, ‘Super Cool’ The local wreckers had a straight line shifter so I grabbed that real quick and raced home. Straight line shifters found favour with street dragsters of the day, they were a spring loaded lever which had a pin at the bottom, the pin engaged in slots machined into two sliders which moved the two levers exiting the gear box. The top slider operated second and third whilst the bottom slider operated first and reverse. They worked thus: Push down and forward and first gear is selected, once up to speed just pull the lever back, the lever pops up on it’s way through neutral and thus engages the upper slider engaging second gear. These work great – when new. Unfortunately, when old and worn (which mine was) and if moved too quickly the lever can move both sliders at the same time, engaging second and reverse at the same time.

On my initial test run I was engaging a rather steep hill, so I made a lightning fast shift to second; remember, I’m young and so therefore an expert driver, this enables me to change gears much faster than an oldy (or mere mortal) and so, the vehicle came to an abrupt halt jamming the gearbox. I engaged the handbrake, not something I had used a lot, cars are meant to go, not stop, right? From the rear of the van I grabbed a hammer and slid under the car, and with just a couple of light taps the gear box freed up.

Now I’ve told you the score with brakes, not really needed, so the hand brake never received any of my expert workmanship and was not largely ignored; rather, it was totally ignored. Repercussion is a terrible word for the young and bulletproof, but usually after a few repercussions and if you’re lucky, you do learn, unfortunately, I never did learn and kept repeating my mistakes for many, many years. Anyway, with no working handbrake and stuck in the middle of the road on a steep incline with me underneath, the car took of backwards down the hill.

Initially the right front tyre rolled over my feet which I apparently had crossed, then up my body, fortunately missing the nomad Gonads (I was single then) due to having my legs crossed, and continued up my body exiting over my left shoulder. Luckily the part that drove this know it all, bulletproof teen (the brain box) was missed, that of course left it free to make many, many more stupid mistakes. Once free of the speed hump, the car continued downhill heading toward busy Morley Rd in Eden Hill WA. I jumped up and chased the vehicle downhill, at the last moment the car swung to the left up someone’s driveway on to their front lawn and demolished their brick letterbox. Being a responsible type teen, I jumped in the car and took off quickly, being very careful not to change from first to second too fast. The only damage done, aside from the letterbox, was a chipped bone on my left heel - amazing! Did I get some grief over that ‘the guy who ran over himself’!

That shifter saw a couple of weeks of careful use, I then purchased an H pattern shifter, made a few brackets and longer linkages for it, shortened the lever to around 4”, covered the hole where the straight line shifter had been, cut a new hole between the seats and secured the shifter in place. Finally making this car the ultimate in tricked up XMs.

I did a lot more work to this car: The plastic instrument unit found its way to the bin and I made up a new sheet metal unit to hold all the gauges: speedo, fuel, temp, vacuum, ammeter, voltmeter and a few others, eight in all from memory and of course a tacho mounted independently on the column, the interior of the car lit up like a Xmas tree at night. I also resprayed it, dark blue with a white roof, originally it was grey – no such thing as a cool ‘grey’ car. I installed a state of the art AM, mechanical, push button radio, made longer hangers for the leaf springs giving it that dragster look, made up a roof shelf behind the seats and of course a mattress in the back like all good PVs, known as shagin wagons in Oz. But, I never saw any shagging in it, I did sleep in it frequently, other than that, that was the only action it ever saw. People called me a hood and the girls stayed away in their droves. Annoyingly, I wasn’t, I never broke the law (aside from speeding tickets and yellow stickers), never stole anything, never assaulted anyone, was reasonably respectful of my elders (sometimes), thinking back, I was a very quiet chap, just enthralled with noisy fast cars.

One night coming home from the Raffles pub the Damnedest thing happened, a tree jumped in front of the XM, what can you do? This tree caused a lot of damage: the side of the car just behind the passenger seat was punched in, almost to the middle, the tailgate popped open and my toolbox fell out spraying tools all over the road. Had I not been so interested in listening to the ‘note’ the rear window would have been up preventing the tailgate from opening. Anyway, I alighted from the vehicle and started gathering the tools, almost done, I heard a voice ‘I saw what you did’ and spied an old codger running up his driveway. Not wanting him to call the police (I’d been at the Raffles remember), I gave chase, to talk, nothing else. He wasn’t having that and locked his doors and windows and I heard him call to his wife ‘quick, ring the police’. That was enough for me so I took off. The next day I came back and collected what tools I could find. Not being a big drinker, I’d only had a couple of drinks that night so I often wonder if the exhaust fumes had been sucked in the open rear window and affected me. More probably though, I was affected by plain, ordinary, youthful stupidity…

Prior to draping the car around the tree, I’d lost control, my mate Greg, sitting in the passenger seat panicked and was jumping up and down screaming ‘I don’t wanna die’ or some other such foolishness. So, I only had one hand on the wheel, the other was stretched out holding him down. I drove the car back to his place, meeting up with the others of our group, then we all jumped in someone else’s car and went to a night club in Perth. I slept in the car that night in Greg’s driveway, next morning I drove the XM home and started paperwork for the insurance claim.

I was sure the car would be written off, but the insurance company authorised repairs. The panel beater sliced through the floor pan just in front of the seats, through the windscreen pillars and a new rear section was welded in place. I lost interest in the car after that, it squeaked and groaned and the section added was full of bog and rust.

Eventually I sold it to a young married couple, the fellow telling his naïve wife a van was ideal for the pram, which his wife swallowed.
Thanks for sharing your memories of a misspent youth. Mine was similar. Damn we were stupid.
 
When I bought my XM, it had a 144ci pursuit motor. I could run faster than that thing! I thought the 170ci 'Super Pursuit' would have more power, so I bought a 170 short motor and installed that. The 144 and 170 had the same top end, including carb and jetting. I think the 170 had less power than the 144.
It was embarrassing being beaten at the lights by a Mini. I think the main problem with them was that cast in manifold, the inside of that manifold was like an obstacle course. At the time there was a Webber kit available for them, three side draught Webbers, but you had to shave the original manifold off. I couldn't afford that, so I went to a guy who was advertising a 'semi fuel injection mod'. Paid my money and he fitted it, made absolutely no difference.
The Minis, and every other car on the market, still left me in their dust. The mod entailed an aluminium spacer fitted between the carb and manifold. It had a small lip around the bore and six copper tubes led from that to the manifold close to the cylinder head. Total waste of time and money. Semi fuel injection, my arse!
 
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Had a Mk3 Cortina GT when I was posted to England back in the 70's. Lovely little hotrod.
 
We have a few XL and XK falcons floating around with 250 sixes in them on the show circuit. There are also a few XP coupes around with V8s. I think the US had the V8s, we had the sixes. It was quite a popular swap here. I heard there were a handful of factory XP V8s coupes imported from the US, 8 is what I heard.

The XL through to the XP had a very weak front end on them which tended to fall apart on some, mine was alright, all I had to replace were a couple of tie rods.

The funniest thing was the two great big boxes under the dash, they had little doors on them you had to open to get fresh air through. Thank christ we don't have to drive around in cars like that anymore.

I have very fond memories of my XM Falcon, but in reality it was a horrid car. It was a different time, cars were very rudimentary and I was very young and in my prime!
 
The original Cortinas with the 1500/1600 motors were great, my folks had two, the 220 and the 440. The police in West Australia had suped up 1500s, they were very popular on the second hand market when they became available.
I lusted after the Ford Capri GT with the V6 motor, that was one good looking car.
 

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The XM was far from the worst car I ever bought. When I was stationed in Butterworth Malaysia, I bought a Volvo, what an absolute POS. The handbrake lever was on the right side of the seat and I had to open the door to get to it. The indicator stork was on the left side of the column, it was a half arsed attempt at converting to right hand drive. The thing was an absolute rust bucket, the rear window winding mechanism was rusted away so you couldn't wind the windows down, it had rust everywhere and worst of all, an SU carb, these must have been Mr Su's joke on the world. But I only paid RM3000, about $Aus1800, but, it did, it's job for two years whilst I was stuck in the the (black) pearl of the orient.
 
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