igor

Just read this whole thread. Keep up the good work. I'm a Falcon driver but I don't mind the look of the VL Commie. Borrowed a V8 one off my Dr once to pull a heavy tandem axle transporter. Went bloody well. I was most impressed with it. Pulled 80-130 in fifth gear to pass a slow car like the trailer wasn't even there. Clutch was mega heavy, race spec gearbox felt clunky, and the cam was so wild it wouldn't do 50 in fourth gear so second and third round town but I could easily live with that for the V8 coolness factor.

Nice. Looks like a rarity. What's the interior like? Still good?

Cut the rivets off with a cold chisel and seperated the two halves of the bonnet then removed the hinge pin with the use of lots of crc, vice grips, and a pipe spanner as well as a claw hammer and a big drift punch.

Thought I'd do a bit of the easy stuff so took the bonnet into the workshop to bash the lumps out of it and make it actually open and shut properly. Note the pop rivets where some rough bastard has broken it and joined it back together crooked.

Had a go at fixing the electric start a while back too. Put a battery in and tried to crank it over. No go. Knew it should at least crank over as we had previously had it cranking and trying to start with jumper leads off our real farmer mate's Ford 6610. Took the starter motor off and when I turned it over rusty brown water came out. Hmm. That's what I get for leaving the bonnet off. Stripped down starter motor and cleaned parts. Never done this before. Figured I couldn't fuck it up any more than it already was so being too tight and too broke to pay someone else I had a go anyway. Discovered one of the carbon brush springs had half dissolved in the aforementioned water. Sorry no pics. Dunno where the camera was that day. Looked only slightly better than the above pics of the horn. Reassembled and refitted starter motor complete with dodgy broken spring and put jumper leads across it. It cranked over but did not start. I'm guessing fuel starvation. It's had issues with that several times before. Most of the time cleaning the filter gauze on the fuel pump and bleeding the air bubbles out has made it go again. I've drained the tank and cleaned it out as much as I can and blown the filter cartridge out with air pressure even though it looked like a newish one but I'm still thinking there is a fuel supply problem. Will replace the filter cartridge when I can. I'm hoping it hasn't sucked some crap into the injector pump cos I'm not keen to fuck with that myself and getting a pro to check it sounds expensive.

I have been doing a bit of work on this again of late. I think I have found why the horn doesn't work.

Man from Hinds garage ordered a new manifold from England for me. He had two 40' containers coming with some old trucks and other stuff so all seemed good. Free freight. Woohoo. The day his mate in England finished loading the containers the new manifold had not arrived at his depot so he stripped the manifold off his own tractor that he had been using that day to load the containers and sent that one instead. When I went to collect it the guy showed me where he thought it was but we couldn't see it. He was busy so I was given free rein to find it myself. After I had spent what seemed like a couple of hours searching through a four bedroom house jammed full of parts as well as two big garages I found the manifold under a stack of bumpers less than a foot from where he thought it had been. This whole process took over a year from ordering to collecting but I ended up getting a good second hand part for $80 instead of paying $150 for a new one so I'm claiming that as a win.

I bought this loader which of course was different to the one that had previously been on the tractor so the subframes, rams, and hydraulic pipework were not the same. Changed them over, managed to make it work after a fashion and got a bit of earthworks done. The chain is so that the hydraulics can't leak down and drop the bucket on the ground. Loader ram had a conflict with the exhaust pipe resulting in the manifold looking like this.

Can see your point re cops pulling him up in that thing. BIL and his mad mate got done big time for driving a home built go-cart on the road forty years ago. Can't imagine the law being any easier now, stricter if anything. Of course they were pulling about 60 mph in a resdential street so there is a little bit of a difference.

Whatever else you change you absolutely must keep the column change and split bench seat. Fairmonts with that must be as rare as rocking horse shit now.

Yes please. All of the ADO16 goodness.

Amazing progress in just two years. 'Twas your post of this on LSB shortly after you bought it that led me into OS. Would love to come for a look some time.

Louvres on this car would totally have to be brown or beige to match everything else.

Bloody brilliant car rusti.

The bolts'll be whitworth or some such weird arse thread.

Ladaspeed/Pog if that olive drab twin cam wagon went on to get Soviet military police graphics for the Undie 500 then I very nearly bid on it myself when they sold it after the event. Probably should have.

...but it might be a good idea if you did.

Makes it look a bit like Bob the Builder's tractor with the lights up there eh? The original owner did that to avoid conflict with the loader. I'm only the fourth owner. A neighbour bought it new in 1957. He turned up here one day when I was working on it and recognised it. Somewhere along the line he gave it to his brother who used it for many years to drive a pump. Then a young guy bought it as a project, realised he had too many projects, and sold it to me.

It has a few issues. The electric start has never worked since I got it and the brakes are dodgy. The diesel tank is about as clean as one would expect after over 50 years of hard use so there has been the odd problem with fuel blockages. I've used it a bit to tow things and move stuff around with pallet forks on the three point linkage, and done some minor earthworks with the loader, but mostly it has just sat there gathering even more rust. I'm not sure if it is two or three years since I had it going but it is well past time that I made an effort and at least fixed it enough to use it safely. I'll leave it at that for tonight and continue the story sometime when I'm awake.

Some years ago I bought this tractor to use on my small holding. Drove it home and parked it on the drive.

One of my earliest car related memories is riding in my grandfathers Mk3 Zodiac. I loved that car. So good to see an old Zed still looking sweet and being used. Keep up the good work.

Old tyres, really hard, more smoke faster eh?

I must admit to being one of those who pretty much ignored most of the Jap stuff for many years but there are a few old Jappas that I do like. Mostly the medium to large sedans. Don't mind this thing at all.

Is it possible to run the cable inside the sill to bypass the crossmember? By the looks of your pic you might just get away with it.

Looking good sheepers.