Andrew's fb - the transformation to Colleen

TAYZ 58 · Post by **TAYZ 58** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 8:52 pm

Nice car and great ideas and plans for it, you will definately have a great summer and a good weekensd this weekend if it doesnt rain!!

EK JAY · Post by **EK JAY** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 10:07 pm

good on ya fbfinnally great to see some excitement
in the ranks well done

element5au · Post by **element5au** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:40 am

Woohoo Its the long lost twin to Richards FB. Congrats on a great purchase. Looking forward to see it cruizing. Cheers

Mephious · Post by **Mephious** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:59 pm

Nice ride FB Finnale !!!

Looks like you have great canvas to start your art on mate. Well done !

NoMAD · Post by **NoMAD** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:35 pm

Well done mate....good to see the name change happening soon!

Drive the wheels off her, shes looking nice and shiny!

Cheers
NoMAD

FB wannabe · Post by **FB wannabe** » Thu Aug 27, 2009 2:02 pm

Hi all, thought I would update this thread.

When I first got the car it was in a pretty sad state and the main problem was the clutch was dead. I got the clutch done cleaned the old girl up and got it on the road. It sure looked the part and I did little things to it along the way while having some fun going on cruises and car shows with the club. Winter last year she ran out of rego and I decided that although the car looked good, it really did need some work and decided to stop putting it off. The plan was to change the motor and fix the rust in the passenger side sill and the headlight peaks. Yeah well, we all know how that went

Here are some pics of the car about 2 / 3 weeks before pulling it apart

http://www.fbekholden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6829

I know alot of you on here will boo and hiss at this but I have got Lenny from our car club to do the work on this for me. He comes round during the day and works on it and does it all at my place. I really can't thank him enough for his contribution on this, his rates are very good and his work is even better. I still do a fair bit on it like organising parts and other jobs. Basicly he pulls it apart and fixes it and I clean it up and paint it and he puts it back together. I figure the main thing is that the old girl is getting the work done and it's getting done properly.

Stage 1 the teardown.

Day 1 we knew the passenger side inner and outer sill panel would need to be replaced so we started there. Someone had pop riveted a piece of metel over this to hide the rust!

This is what it was covering

The old sill, lots of bog and chook wire there!

Sill removed

It was when we got the car to this stage we realised we were in a bit of trouble.

I was hoping to have this ready for the Nationals but after seeing this I realised we had no hope.

We realised the Y frames were alot worse than we first thought and it was decided that the whole thing had to come apart.

Cleaning up the Y frames so Lenny could work on them

I don't have any shots of the Y frames all pulled off to show the rust but they were bad. Basically the Y pieces themselves were really good but the front cross member piece was totally rotten

I bought another Y frame off Lenny which was the oppisite to mine. The Y pieces were rotted away but the front piece was mint. This is where Lenny really proved himself and his metal fabrication skills absolutely floored me. After many many hours and some creative cutting and welding we had a set of rust free Y frames!

Then it was onto the front end. Doesn't look too dirty in this pic......

But on closer inspection realised it was absolutely filthy! and while we were there might as well pull it down and clean it up. It's staggering just how greasy / oily these get. First step was to pull it down then the cleaning began!

Scrub, scrape soak and repeat lol

Alot of cleaning later and I had this

The crossmember part of the front end was even worse! nothing I did seemed to remove the gunk off it and I considered having it blasted but this would have slowed me down too much so I had it soaking in Kero for about 3 days. To end up with this

I put the first coat on it last night

So there you have it, once I have the painting done the front end will be put back together and then we will work on having it back on all four wheels. Still lots of work to do but it's getting there. Don't really have a dead line except I want to take it across for the fb / ek nats in June.

Finny · Post by **Finny** » Thu Aug 27, 2009 3:33 pm

Looked really nice in the just before photos.

But it's normally what hides beneath that scares us.

Great to see an update.
It amazing what happens when you go to do what appears to be a simple quick job.
I'm sure in the end you'll be much happier.

Nice progress so far.

TC XLE with 250. If it's a 4 speed your very lucky.
They fly like the wind.
Not sure about the F**D flag on the wall

How much did the "Sky Hook" for the steering box cost.

Very rare items to find these days.

Thommo · Post by **Thommo** » Thu Aug 27, 2009 4:31 pm

Well done Andrew and Lenny.
Your making all the right decisions to do it properly first time around.
Looking good mate, nice work fella's.

rosco · Post by **rosco** » Thu Aug 27, 2009 5:21 pm

good work - this is the right way to do it...... you won't have any regrets.... it just takes a bit more time to get it back on the road...... but you'll have a bigger smile on your face when you do - you'll know more of what you've now got........

frats,
Rosco

parisian62 · Post by **parisian62** » Thu Aug 27, 2009 7:09 pm

great work Andrew. Gee that inner sill looked worse for wear! Love the 'action' shots in the shed. Looking forward to seeing the FB at the Narrandera Nats...

Stewart

ek61 · Post by **ek61** » Sat Aug 29, 2009 8:44 pm

nice work

pitty about that bloody &*#@ flag hangin up in the shed
unless your wiping you hands clean on it ???

karsten · Post by **karsten** » Sat Aug 29, 2009 10:08 pm

im with tommo andrew,, when you get it back together and drive it to narrandera , you will feel more safe cause your doing what it needs,, to be safe ,,

keep going with the cleaning it makes a better result to protect the metal underneath if its spotless once you paint it ,and paint is really to preserve the metal,,,,,looking pretty is just a bonus,,,, when you see all the bits return clean and painted it does make you forget the crap you spent three weeks cleaning to get there

karsten · Post by **karsten** » Sat Aug 29, 2009 10:09 pm

you,ll be on the hunt for a tow bar id reckon to

FB wannabe · Post by **FB wannabe** » Mon Aug 31, 2009 12:55 pm

Hey everyone, thanks for the comments!

Finny, I know what you mean. I would drive it around and people loved it and always said how clean and nice it looked, same thing when people saw photos of it they would say "wow that's immaculate!" It was only when you put it on a hoist it was realised how much of a pig it was. This car is a text book example of how people get burnt when buying a car sight unseen like on ebay etc.

This car was advertised on ebay but I didn't have the cash together so had to let it go. A few weeks passed and I had the cash together so on the off chance he still had it I emailed him. The bloke who had won the bid was a tool and said he would have to come up and look at it before he paid for it

and he lived miles away. They eventually tired of his "I'll be down this weekend for sure" and contacted me. I went and looked at it with Retro - Richard on this forum and were happy with it. Admittadly neither of us realised how bad the subframe was but it's all good!

Lenny did throw the option at me that we just try and do something with the subframe and get it back on the road as he knew I really wanted it for the nats. That's not how I roll, my old man always told me "do it once, do it right".

As for the &*#@ flag yeah.... I knew I would cop sh!t for that. Meh I used to be one eyed Holden and hate ALL things &*#@ but as I got older I started seeing cars for what they are rather than what badge was on the front.

Karsten I know what you mean about the paint and cleaning. It's so worth it when you see the part your cleaning all clean and shiney. And yes alot safer, when I took the front end to my mate at Pedders to be pulled apart so I could clean and paint it he undid the control arm and the passenger side spring dropped onto the ground in 2 peices!

the bottom coil had just snapped off, there was no real sign of rust on the spring. Scary stuff! As for a towbar I think I have one sorted, I picked up one from a swap meet that the bloke was 99% sure it was fb / ek. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

Anyway more updates. Got the front end nearly finished and will have it back at Pedders this week for assembly. Here is the wifey who had been spraying the control arms for me while I worked on the crossmember part of the front end. She is always keen to help me in the shed where ever I need it. Yeah I know I am one lucky man!

More digging and surpise suprise more rust! lol

This is where I would be thinking oh crap I'm screwed! Lucky for me N O T H I N G seems to scare Lenny and we divised a plan.

Saturday arvo Leny and I headed down south to see El Presidente as he had picked up a good ek sedan shell. Even managed to get Lenny in a picture this time! The pic was taken on my phone so it's a bit ordinary.

The removed Donar section

I am not exactly sure what Lenny is going to do here but no doubt it will involve alot of creative cutting and welding.

Thanks again to ek61 for providing the piece I needed, we would have been screwed without it.

Lastly a couple of photo's of the car as it sits now.

FB wannabe · Post by **FB wannabe** » Thu Sep 10, 2009 12:23 pm

Not too much to update unfortunately, Lenny doesn't want to do too much to it until it's back on all fours as it does seem a little rickety even thought it's on axle stands with the back wheels chocked. Called into Pedders yesterday to see how the front end is going. He is having a hard time as he can't use spring compressors to get the spring in as they foul up on the "hat" piece on the top where the spring goes. He has bought wire and compressed them down them wrapped them up using the wire but is still struggling a little. He assures me that he will get it back together and it might be ready this Saturday to pick up.

Here's a pic of it all going back together. He is using the hoist to try and compress the spring even further.