Tag Archives: 1964

Project creep, part one

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The plan was simple, replace the worn out front suspension with all new parts so that the steering wheel would feel more like it had a say in the direction the wagon went. To that end I ordered a complete rebuild kit that had nearly every piece I needed, and on Saturday started pulling the old parts off.

All things considered it came apart surprisingly easily. The tie rods were stuck in place, but after some enthusiastic hammering they popped loose. Compared to other times I did this job this was a cakewalk, no stripped nuts, no rusted in place bolts. Everything came apart with simple hand tools. I spent about 1.5 hours on saturday getting the driver’s side completely removed, and got a good start on the passenger side before having to clean up for a friend’s party.

It was an OMGWTFBBQ!!1!, where you’re supposed to bring weird or disturbing food. We brought a meat cake. Two layers of pork & beef meatloaf frosted with mashed potatoes and iced with ketchup.

Yeah, we’re weird.

 

Sunday found me back out working on the wagon. One great surprise during all of this was the front brakes. The guy I bought the wagon off of told me he didn’t think his mechanic had touched the brakes, so despite them working well I was already budgeting for a complete brake overhaul. So imagine my surprise when I pulled the drums and found front brakes that looked like brand new.

Everything in here looks like new, the pads have tons of meat on them, and the rubber parts are in great condition. Even if the rest of the system is junk this is $100+ in savings right here. Regardless they were removed for now, and eventually the suspension was stripped down to the bare spindles. The spindles, strut rods & springs are the only parts I am re-using, so they will get cleaned up and repainted before going back on.

the squiggles are from a quick pressure-washing before I started, turns out pressure washers remove old undercoating

Eventually I was left with two empty wheel wells. I had planned to paint the mounting points for the suspension before re-assembly so I wouldn’t have to take it back apart to paint those later. Looking at the space in the wheelwell I decided it would make even more sense to clean up and paint the entires wheelwell area while the suspension was out of the way. I started cleaning in here, then realized that if I was going to repaint in here, it would be even easier if I cold reach everything.

And so the project creep begins.

Going…

Going…

Gone.

In the next post I start in on the rust cleanup and repainting.

the manifold exhausting attempts to fix the exhaust manifold.

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As I have said before, the exhaust manifold on the “new” engine was cracked, so I needed to pull it and swap the good manifold from the old engine. Ford sixes are notorious both for cracked manifolds and for the bolts rust-welding themselves to the head. A fun combination. So in the days leading up I sprayed the bolts with PB Blaster and Freeze Off. Once I started in I used a bolt extractor to get a grip on the badly rusted heads.

End result was six bolts actually coming loose, four snapped off bolt heads and one bolt who’s head stripped badly without shifting. I spent the next while trying to shift the stubborn bolt, I tried the bolt extractor, vise-grips, welding a nut onto the head and probably a half-dozen other things without the slightest sign of movement.

 

I finally gave up and cut the head off with an angle grinder, and pried the manifold off in pieces. The places it snapped in the pic are not where the cracks were, but just the result of overly enthusiastic prying. Fortunately I didn’t need this piece anymore. Frustratingly, the bolt that had given me so much hassle and wasted so much time, once the manifold was off it came out in moments with a pair of vise-grips.

Once the manifold was off I still had the problem of the four bolts that had snapped off. I was lucky in that they hadn’t snapped off flush, but I still couldn’t budget them. Vise grips would just chew them up, and attempts to heat or freeze them didn’t do a thing. I even tried welding a nut to them and putting a wrench on it. All I did was snap the nut back off.

Finally I gave in and decided that if the bolt wanted to be a permanent part of the head, I would take advantage of that instead of fighting it. So I cut the bolt back about half way with an angle grinder to get a flat surface. Next I cut the heads off some short bolts and chamfered the ends to give my weld someplace to bite.

 

Then one by one I welded the new bolts to the old once, effectively creating a stud I could put a washer & nut on. Because I was working down in the engine bay I had no good way to get the pieces aligned perfectly straight. So after welding each one I had to grind the welds down and test fit the manifold. I was lucky in that they all ended up straight enough to allow the manifold to slide on and off easily.

Add some stainless steel hardware & a new manifold gasket and the project was done.

Engine swap, woefully under-photographed.

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As I mentioned in the last entry about the wagon, the engine had violently overheated while trying to drive the Falcon to work. Since I already had a spare engine for it waiting, I filled the radiator with water, cut & re-routed the heater hoses to take the now blown heater core out of the circuit, and limped her home, staying off the highway. On the way home I stopped and rented an engine hoist, & loaded it in the back.

While it had been bright & warm when I left work at noon, by the time I got home at 1:30 it had remembered it was early February and gotten cold & grey, with erratic drizzle. However I was already going to have to pay for the engine hoist so I pushed on with the swap anyway. You can see however why taking photos was not my priority.

I started disconnecting things, sawing off radiator hoses and generally swearing up a storm. After about an hour I had the motor disconnected to the point where I could start actually pulling. Ford sixes have no good place to hook up chains to yank them, ,so I ended up using two ratchet straps from my trailer to form slings front & rear. With my girlfriend manning the engine hoist I pushed pulled, pried & kicked the engine free of the transmission and guided it out of the engine bay & down to the pavement.

Once the old lump had been pried free, there was a bit of jockeying engine hoist & straps to get the “new” engine secured. Then that was lifted, swung around, and dropped into place.

Ok, that last sentence is technically correct, however what it leaves out is the 1.5 hours that it took pulling, prying, levering, shoving, swearing, bashing, cursing, praying, etc. to get the engine & transmission to line up and slide together. I hate putting engines in when the transmission is already in place, and doing in a cold driveway while being drizzled on does not improve the experience.

Once the engine was in place and bolted to the transmission and frame, the engine hoist was disassembled & loaded into Box to be returned and I went upstairs to shower off. Over the next few weeks the cold weather hung around, and once it started to lift my work went on insane amounts of mandatory overtime. So the wagon sat with the engine in place but other wise unattached for almost a month before I could carve out some time to start reconnecting everything. Most of it went smoothly, and with few surprises. I couldn’t help but be amused to use guides I had written up myself to rewire the car for an alternator & modify the radiator support to fix an thicker radiator. The only issue I had was swapping out the cracked exhaust manifold for the good one from the old engine. That was enough of a project to warrant it’s own blog post, so that will be coming soon.

Hot stuff, in the good, then bad way

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About two weeks ago I decided to finally use the parts I ordered from Falconparts to get the heat working in the wagon. The heating system was completely non-functional all playing with the levers would get you is a faint smell of mouse pee. After unhooking the heater hoses & unbolting the heater box I crawled under the dash to disconnect it. Clearly I’d been lucky with the faint wiffs of pee, the heater box was both full of, and topped with mouse nests.

After pulling the heater box out and dragging it downstairs I cracked it open. Lets just says you should be incredibly grateful this blog is not in Smell-O-Vision or you’d be desperately deleting these pictures.  The picture to the right is after I pulled out the worst of the still-damp mouse nests. I pulled everything apart & vacuumed up what I could, then carried everything upstairs.

I then spent the next hour bent over the tub scrubbing the ever loving hell out of every square inch of all the pieces. I scrubbed so hard the paint came off most of the painted pieces. After that hour I had a load of blessedly scent-free parts and a really disgusting tub(I have an incredibly patient girlfriend). Everything was laid out to dry overnight.

The next morning before work I masked and painted the metal pieces, as well as the screws & hardware. Once I returned home the re-assembly process began. First came gluing in all new foam seals on the various flaps. I have to say I am really unimpressed with the seal kit from Falconparts. The foam for the seals is really thin, the instructions are completely useless, and there was a missing gasket I had to make from some other foam I had.  Last time I did this with my ’62 Comet I used a mustang kit and the materials were higher quality and the instructions at least mentioned each piece.

Eventually it did go together, along with a new blower motor (single speed, but it will work for now), and an ABS plenum to replace the rotted out original plenum. I decided to leave the old heater core in place for now, It didn’t seem worth putting a new one in while there was so much rust & junk in the system. The plan was to replace it when the new engine went in.

Next it went back into the car, It’ll come back out again when I work on the floors so I can properly deal with the surface rust on the firewall and put up some sound deadener. I hooked up the cables,  installed new defroster ducts, and hooked the heater hoses up.

I now had heat.

The next morning I decided that heat meant I could drive the wagon to work. My commute is a 15 mile drive with a 3 mile highway bit near the end. Everything seemed to go well, and on the highway the wagon was doing ok (though the drivetrain gearing limited it to about 65mph) . However just as I came off the highway the heater core failed pretty spectaularly, pouring coolant out of the bottom of the heater box. Wisps of steam were coming out from under the hood. I limped the car to work where it immediately marked it’s spot wit ha puddle of rusty water. The radiator was spraying coolant out of the overflow pipe so violently the firewall at the back of the engine compartment was soaked.

Looks like that “new” engine needs to go in sooner rather than later…

Open up and say ‘ah’

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Since I bought the wagon I have not been able to open the tailgate. The power window doesn’t go up and down so it has effectively locked it closed. After futzing with the wiring without any luck I shelved it as “something to deal with in the spring”. However two weekends ago the weather was amazingly warm for the last weekend of January, and I decided to take advantage of it and work on the tailgate. A couple guys on the Ford Falcon News forums gave me some hints on how to get it open and what to look for.

I unbolted the chrome trim around the back, then from inside pried out a dozen-plus rusty screws attaching the metal channels holding the weatherstripping. Once those were unscrewed and pried loose I carefully unlatched the tailgate and pushed it open, prying the weatherstripping mounts as needed to get the door to swing open. Success! The tailgate was now open, with the glass hanging at a disturbing angle since it was never designed to be in the up position without being supported by the channels.

Fighting with a few more screws, I got the back panel off the tailgate(the screws are inaccessible with the door closed), and was able to get at the guts of the door. Bizarrely someone had unplugged the factory wiring from the motor, made new wiring & attached that, then cut it off at the bottom of the tailgate. This explained why playing with the wiring didn’t work, the factory wiring was not in the circuit anymore.

I tested the motor and it worked, albeit sluggishly. Further testing showed the original wiring from the tailgate to the rest of the harness was also intact. So why they’d added the new wiring is a complete mystery. So I reconnected the old wiring, sprayed some grease on the mechanism and buttoned the whole thing back together. Now that I knew the tailgate worked I started messing with the harness. I found at least five places it had been cut within a two foot chunk. A lot of soldering and shrink wrapping and the harness was back intact. However the limit switch(which keeps the window from moving unless the gate is closed) was bad, the key switch on the tailgate is a stripped out mess and the dash switch doesn’t work(even with a new switch). So as a stop-gap measure I jumpered around the limit switch and wired a regular switch inline with the tailgate switch and mounted it on the back bumper. So now I can at least use the tailgate until I can get in again and make further repairs.

So now I have a real station wagon, not just a car with a really awkward storage area behind the back seats.

 

New toys for the wagon!

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This weekend I was able to pick up this pile of new bits for the wagon. Bright & early Sunday morning I dug the xB & my little utility trailer out of the snow and headed to CT. There I met up with a gentleman who was rebuilding his wife’s 1966 Mustang and was upgrading it to a newer Thunderbird 3.8 V6 & 5-speed. I was able to buy the original 200ci six, C4 transmission, driveshaft and a box of parts & accessories for only $250.

In addition to not having a bad valve, the motor has only 77K miles on it, and allows me to in the same package get a 60 amp alternator(instead of my 30amp generator), automatic choke, and a carb that isn’t leaking gasoline. It does need an exhaust manifold as these are prone to cracking, however the one on my old motor is good. Also the distributor bushings are worn so it slowly goes out of tune. I’ll be trying my distributor, and if that doesn’t work a remanufactured replacement is only $50.

I’m planning to stab the motor in as soon as possible, but the transmission is going to have to wait until at least the spring as going from the 2-speed Fordomatic in the wagon the 3-speed C4 requires a bit more adapting (new driveshaft, transmission crossmember and custom linkage).

 

Not sure when I’m going to get a chance to swap the motors, so until then everything is sitting wrapped in a tarp on the trailer. This is the joy of trying to get stuff done on a car in New England without a garage. You never know when your work area is going to be under several inches of snow.

 

 

Gratuitous wagon shots

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Aside from a couple failed attempts to get the tailgate glass to go down so I can open the tailgate I haven’t had a chance to work on the wagon. So here are some beauty shots from  the weekend I brought it home.

This was once I’d scrubbed the outside clean. Eventually the car will get an exterior restoration and repaint, but for now I’m rather in love with the patina it has.

Got the wagon home & significantly less gross

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I brought the wagon home this past weekend. Amazingly with a new battery & some gas it fired up and drove out ofthe yard it was sitting in Brakes/transmission/engine all seem to work (I’m still going to go through them all). The engine runs rough and does seem to have some kind of valve issue, but it runs better than I was lead to believe

Once we had it on the trailer & strapped down I used some waterproofing tape(butyl back aluminum) to seal the roof holes for now to at least stop moisture getting in. Then it was back home with one stop to fill the tank on the wagon and another to spend $10 at a car wash powerwashing as much of the grime of the exterior & engine bay as possible.

Once home and unloaded we started cleaning it up. The seats & door cards had a massive amount of black mold on them, but bleach and scrubbing did amazing things for the seats as you can see in the half-done shot to the right. The backs of the door cards have rotted cardboard, so a winter project is going to be to try and peel off the vinyl and glue it to new backers.

The insides of the door were amazingly rust free, and will only need some minor cleanup & a few coats of Materseries to keep them looking good. The car has an old “Rusty” rustproofing sticker so maybe that is why the doors survived so well. I found some small rust pinholes in the cargo floor & spare tire well, but they should be pretty simple to weld in patches.

After bleaching & scrubbing the seats look quite presentable and I am really happy with them. I tossed the armrests as they were all some combination of stained, moldy & torn; I do have a decent set of red ones that will work for now. Once I get a new filter for my shop vac the interior will get a vacuuming, and I’ll start pulling out the old rubber mat in the back footwell. Unfortunately the power tailgate seems to be DOA, and it would require a bunch of dis-assembly to diagnose so I’m probably going to hold off on dealing with it until the spring.

In addition to the cleaning I got some small jobs done on the car(new exhaust donut gasket, new radiator cap, running some seafoam through the motor, seal tears/cracks in old 1/4 glass & windshield gaskets with RTV). I’m starting to make lists of what the car needs so I can better plan my strategy. Amazingly it runs and drives well enough that I’ve taken it on a few short drives. The next few weeks are going to be skimpy on free time to work on the wagon, but I have a backlog of car shopping posts to finish anyway.

One has been chosen.

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I had absolutely no expectation of finding something this (relatively) quickly, and this car is the opposite of nearly everything I’d been looking for. But love is blind, and sometimes bloody stupid. Regardless I am now the (somewhat nervous) owner of this 1964 Ford Falcon wagon.

It is the midrange model and has a few options(automatic transmission, power tailgate window) but is still pretty spartan. The exterior still has the original white paint and the tan seats & door panels are there and decent, though the carpeting & headliner are missing. This car has been sitting under a pine tree for about eight months due to a bad valve. The battery is flat and it won’t start and the tree has left it dirty outside & moldy inside.

According to the previous owner he bought it from Iowa via ebay in 2009 and had a lot of work done(tires/radiator/starter/exhaust/new front floors) to make it a decent driver and used it regularly until “a valve went bad”. However he knows nothing about engines and couldn’t explain it any further. I’m going on the assumption the head is bad on the off chance it means I’ll be pleasantly surprised. My plan is to go out where it is still sitting with a battery & fresh gas to see if i can get it to run enough to at least make loading it on a trailer easier.

Besides the engine the single biggest problem with the car is the roof. The edge of the roof is badly rusted/rotted from above the back doors all the way to the tailgate. This is apparently common on these wagons as condensation forms on the inside of the roof and collects in the edges rotting them out from the inside. I’m going to just seal the holes for right now, and deal with proper repairs in the spring. I’ll probably weld in patches for now and depending on how that ends up looking probably look for a good roof to splice in down the line.

For now though my plan with this car is to make it a reliable beater and just enjoy it without trying to make it perfect. An old wagon with a chrome roof rack and faded original paint is undeniably cool, and should make for a great project.

Of course updates will be posted her as things happen with the wagon, I will also still be posting car shopping entries from the backlog of vehicles I looked at before I bought this.