Seeing as I'm already part way into my build, indulge me this one big post to get us up to date. I promise I'll be more concise in the future!
My name is Joe, my ride is called "The HOF". This is our story so far...
It all began when I bought an HR Holden Premier from fellow Sydney music industry pal Andy in 2007. That day, he casually mentioned he also had an EK sitting in a garage in Bondi Junction. At that time, I was still trying to kick my late 60's Holden obsession, so I was all starry eyed in the presence of my new Nasco-optioned, albeit very rusty, HR. The fact that Andy had an EK sitting in another garage was something I promptly forgot about.
Here's a pic of the Prem after I finished it circa 2010 - it sold soon after
Getting the itch again, I decided I wanted either a '59 V8 Studebaker Lark tudor (something different!) but failing that, I was drawn to the idea of finally owning my favourite 'early' Holden: an FB or EK. I had forgotten all about Andy's EK until January 2013 when I had a lucid dream about that day back in 2007. I woke up to send Andy an email in the middle of the night, asking him what ever had happened to it. He replied at 9am that morning - the EK was still there and as luck would have it, he was considering letting it go.
Later that week, I drove to Bondi Junction and this is what greeted me
The HOF was parked in 1999 just before it ran out of rego. As Andy had recently signed a couple of bands that would soon become household names, he suddenly found himself jetsetting all over the world and way too busy to have the EK repaired for a Blue Slip. He paid rent on the garage housing The HOF for over 13 years with plans to one day have it restored. Realising that was never gonna happen, he didn't need much convincing to let me at it.
As I found it, this car is very complete and pretty solid. The white looks to have been repainted in 2 pak and is therefore a bit more... lustrous than I would like, but there is a lot of paint on there and it seems to have been well applied. The roof has been lightly coated and is peeling with a kind of patina. It's a Sydney car, the ID tag matches the Opal Green over Snowcrest White paint scheme with Valley Green & Kentucky Green vinyl trim. Production line chalk mark on the firewall is still there too - does anyone know what the "9" means?
Dash top, steering wheel and carpet are all black . The chrome is dulled and pitted all over but will come up fairly well methinks. The interior is pretty good, apart from the shredded front seat, but the purchase included an additional bench seat with perfect frame/springs.
New sills have been welded in, but I might need to tidy up the welding. New tie sections between the trans tunnel and sills have been welded in badly and are full of dirt. I will replace them entirely when it comes time to fit a bigger trans tunnel (this is a manual body car, but more of that later). The VIN is FB15402B, stamped upright - I understand that means Brisbane built FB? So I guess the front clip has been swapped once already. But this one will be departing too: the battery has leaked and rotted right through the inner guard and the K-frame legs on the LH side rusted through. There are some rust spots in the plenum drains, under both front & rear screens and maybe a bubble in the RHR door, but otherwise, it is a very sound shell and chassis so far.
During 2013, I also managed to buy my first home, from a notorious Sydney family who once had a licence to sell pistols from the premises, complete with a Fort Knox bunker/gun workshop out the back. I picked up a used Roll-a-Door off Gumtree and set about the huge task of knocking out the steel reinforced triple brick wall where the garage door once had been. Yep, there were twin 100kg blast proof vault doors, each using ten rifle bolts to lock them in place... you could stand between them when they were both shut. And that red square in the ground is a waterproof, explosive-proof safe:
By October, it was time to relocate the EK. I threw on the three old HT Monaro wheels I had that would hold air and the spare from Dad's HK Kingswood, only to discover the handbrake had been on and the rear brake shoes were rusted solid. It took some careful bouncing and dragging to get The HOF out of the tight garage and onto the tilt tray
Home at last. The (understandably) paranoid previous owners put a concrete slab on top of the corrugated iron garage roof, so the supporting beams are very sturdy, perfect for lifting out engines... Here's a few photos of the tear down and shots of the carnage in my front end.
In February, my bro helped me drive out to Peak Hill in Western NSW with his tow-pack'd Commondore to pick up a rolling shell which I bought mainly for the front end, which is rust-free. This one has the VIN stamped upside down (it's a Sydney built car) and the number begins with EK, which means my car will have the 'right' chassis number on it now.
My bro took a bunch of photos of the boneyard we fetched it from, which are up here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnandka ... 058249705/
My long suffering parents got to baby sit this thing, wrapped up like a Christo art installation out the front of their house, while I spent a few weeks flat on my back: I managed to herniate 3 discs in my spine lugging drums around a recording studio. Eventually, I was able to gingerly strip this thing and swap over my rusty old front end so that it could be wheeled out and sold to another fella on the Northern Beaches who scored a very nice dry-country shell.
Back in the gun-shed, I finally got motivated to get some drop sheets under The HOF ready to clean up the firewall and floorpan.
Even though my bro and I have just gone halves in a really nice reconditioned TRANSMIG welder, I was too impatient to build a rotisserie for this thing, opting instead to just get underneath in a body suit of old clothes/gloves/goggles/breathing mask and hit it with Oven Cleaner for a solid four hour soaking. Despite how horrible it was at the time, I actually think this is a pretty good method. With buckets of hot water, lots of rags and some scrapers, I got it pretty damn clean in no time at all and didn't make too much mess of the garage. Other than the successful use of dropsheets, I think my clothes soaked up most of the filth...
Some pics before, during and after:
And finally, we're up to date!
I've just found an Engineer who lives locally and our initial phone conversation was far more encouraging than I was expecting. I think he's just glad that I'm calling him for advice BEFORE I start making sweeping modifications! He is familiar with a lot of the NSW Rego friendly mods for FB-EKs that seem commonplace across the forum, and he is very supportive of my plan of attack... which I hope is a sign of good things to come.
But anyway. I wont get ahead of myself just yet. For now, I hope you all enjoyed my little show-and-tell, I'd love to hear any feedback/thoughts/questions you might have. I'm blown away by this forum, I hope to be able to give something back in return for all I've learnt from you lot already.
Cheers! Joe.
