I wasn't planning to take the car to any shows but I though it'd look good next to its garage mate the orange Cortina at the Perth All Ford Day. You never know maybe the MK1 GT will join them next time.
Cheers Drew.

The orange 70' Esky fits the scene.

Cheers mate, I flat spotted the tyres on the Falcon when I saw that on the verge side collection

Its been a while, so I thought I'd do a quick update on the car. I've been driving the car regularly and with a few thousand kms now its running nicely. The golf course shut for a couple of weeks over the covid lockdowns so I took the chance to give it a nut and bolt check over, fix an annoying rattle from the parcel shelf and fit a new started motor. The old one was slowly giving up the ghost and whilst it hadn't left me stranded it was only a matter of time.
A couple of gratuitous glamour pics...

I've had a bad run with this one lately but I've been wrenching on this thing since I was 17 years old so nothings new.
First was the nylon shifter bush, surprised its lasted this long honestly. I went to back it out of the garage and reverse was a bit awkward to find, took off up the road and couldn't get third, then any other gear afterwards. Lucky I live on a hill so I rolled home and on inspection found this.

 

 
Picked up and fitted a nlyon short shifter then set off for take two on that cruise.
 

 

 
Stoked about my new shifter I started rifling through the gears with a stupid grin on my face when I made it to the first roundabout and felt and heard a clunk through the steering, back home I went for a second week in a row to find another failed nylon bush this time in the steering rack.
 

 
The decision was made to go with the Grp4 fabrications brass kit and bearing set.
New bush with an old spare nylon as a comparison.
 

 

 
Whilst waiting for them to arrive I took the time to smooth the castings from the case and send it out for powdercoating. The rest of the hardware was also sent for zinc plating.
 

 

 

 
...and the finished product.
 

 

 
Fingers crossed thats it for now but so far I'm back to driving the wheels off it every weekend
 
 
 

Hi Drew,
Looking good, mate.  Hadn't realised that you were running the aircon in it, got some pictures of the setup?  My donor car had a bodgy system, didn't use it but have the under dash unit and the controls for the console, was thinking small Jap condensor etc to go under dash. Did you end up taking out/ modifying the heater box?
Cheers, Len

Nice work, as always Drew. How's reverse gear selection with that new shifter of yours? Always confident it's in fully?

Drew, they never looked that good new!
Whats the go with zinc plating nowdays? Chroming is not as good as it once was due to strict environmental laws.
Mark

NQRS
Hi Drew,
Looking good, mate.  Hadn't realised that you were running the aircon in it, got some pictures of the setup?  My donor car had a bodgy system, didn't use it but have the under dash unit and the controls for the console, was thinking small Jap condensor etc to go under dash. Did you end up taking out/ modifying the heater box?
 

 
Hey Len, what pics would you be after, its pretty packed under there and may be hard to get, I have a couple of factory diagrams I maybe able to pass on, either that or the factory manual that is available on CD has the diagrams also.
The heater box has the dash vents deleted, picked up by the a/c and only operates the foot and windscreen vents.

Flighter
Nice work, as always Drew. How's reverse gear selection with that new shifter of yours? Always confident it's in fully?

Hey Rob, yeah I've noticed reverse is a bit tricky, I'd never really noticed how sloppy the original was until the new one was fitted. It makes a lovely 'snick' noise when shifting and I'm getting used to heel toeing again with the new one.

escfalcap
Drew, they never looked that good new!
Whats the go with zinc plating nowdays? Chroming is not as good as it once was due to strict environmental laws.
Mark
 

Hey Mark, we've only got one oldschool chrome plater left in town, he charges appropriately but its worth the money.
I have a 'guy' that does the zinc, you only get back what you put in though so I always wire brush and metal polish the bits first. They're a high output shop that mainly does new items for industry so his prep of old car parts can be a bit hit and miss. Mind you at $1-$2 a part I can't complain.
Heres some old EnFo spanners I had done, they came up really well for 60 odd year old bits of rubbish that I found in the wheel well of a wreck.

Maybe I've been watching too many custom car shows but one thing I've always wanted to do is delete the rear bumper bolts on the car.
I wanted to keep my original and with RS bumpers getting hard to find and expensive I changed tact and decided to build one out of a standard bumper.
I had a couple of choices, a creased one with no rubber moulding or an arrow straight one with the trim and also the mounting holes that go with it. I felt more confident plug welding than panel beating so grabbed the straight one.
Heres what I started with.
 

 
And stripped down ready for welding. It also only had one number plate light so some more work needed to put the two in there.
 

 
Plug welded, ground, ends cut and mounts made, gapped and test fitted before solid welding the mounts and plug welding the bolt holes.
 

 
Final test fitting.
 

 
With some careful grinding I managed a metal finish but did use a high fill primer and a bit of wet sanding to give it its final finish.
 

 
Painted and fitted. It was a fair bit of work to not be able to see two bolts but the originals still there if ever I change my mind.