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.
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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