Features 65 XP Falcon sedan build. Yeah, its a 4 door, coupes are expensive here!

In the past I have kept blowing by this thread as I scroll down the page. 4 door UGH! finally took a look today and I really dig your Falcon. The car looks great,sits just right and the mods are making it a neat driver. Here in Indiana I drive by a house once in a while that has a Aussie falcon sitting outside in the yard. Looks like a 70's Torino but not quite. I should stop sometime and see what the deal is.

 

I have a real soft spot for "Fordor" Falcons, grew up with a '62. Have had several others, currently working on a '64 wagon; 170 power, this will be a driver. It's interesting to see all the differences between the U.S. and Aussie versions. You seem to be very methodical and picky about your work, which is very good, Liam. I take it your cars don't have 8 inch rears, what did they use? Have a great day! Mike.

 

You should go find out about that car, sounds like its a long way from home! get a picture up and I can id it for you, maybe find out how collectable it is!

 

Your wagon sounds cool, got a soft spot for them. I like all early Falcons, they rule!

All the Australian Falcons up to 65 got the same 4 stud small borg warner diff, like you guys. (except the uts, they got 5 stud axles but still the same diff size)

The later V8 Falcons got 8 or 9 inch's but mostly got the larger local made borg warners were fitted.

 

cool build man.

 

Very neat. I like that colour.
Are you going to re-chrome the dash facia? They look to be the same as 63 comet, maybe someone re-pops them?

There's an XP in our family too. White and Brown poverty pack with no options!

 

Small update time

Been busy sorting out a way to connect my stock driveshaft to my new diff. Problem was the U joint on my original driveshaft was too small to suit the pinion yoke on the 8 inch Maverick diff. I found a suitable U joint but was too wide to fit my driveshaft. My original one on the left, Correct maverick one on the right :




So got busy with the new lathe at work!




Turned a 8mm spacer up from an old Porsche Cayenne rear driveshaft (Just so happened to have one lying around lol) I also drilled a hole in the middle to weld the centre to the U joint cup as well. unmodified U joint cup on the right :








Time to get out the mig and join them together






Back into the lathe and machine both U joint cups with welded spacers down to size




Weighed both U joint cups to make sure both were exactly the same weight, don't want any vibrations!






Finished and installed into car.








All this is just to keep the car mobile for now, I plan on fitting a V8 driveshaft when I put the 302 and C4 some time in the near future, when funds allow!

I probably should have got the driveshaft cut and re-welded but hey, this cost me nothing and was easy enough to make ha ha

Not much else been going on, I have got to get onto the interior next and then tackle some small rust holes

 

Great to see someone else building a 4 door as well. Great looking car. ?i am building one as well.

 

^ ha ha, yeah mate, I have seen your car on another forum, think it was oz rodders? Anyway that looks like its coming along nicely! I would love to 4 link mine one day similar to your set up

 

Yeah getting there slowly, dont know if i would go down the bagged route again, such a massive amount of work.

 

yeah, lots of work but worth it in the end! Your car looks awesome slammed on the ground.

How are you getting on with getting it engineered?

 

Thanks and all good

 

The car is really shaping up,,unusually body style for us here in the states,,no problem with the doors,,I like it. HRP

 

It drives! Thought I would get some decent pictures now its mobile.










Need to get the seats reupholstered next and while thats being done, I will tackle a little bit of rust that needs to be sorted.

 

Looking great. ive got a 65 4 door too and i love driving it and its my daily.

 

Really cool man. Congrats and well done.

 

Love it ,great looking car.

 

^ Cheers everyone, makes it worth my while posting up on here for you to all see

Thought I better check a few things after all the suspension mods. Bought a digital angle finder, cool little toy! Was quite cheap as well. Best thing is it reads upside down on the LCD if you need it to. First thing I did was measure my Pinion angle against the transmission, found it was 4 degrees pointing downward, so well with in spec for a street car. (ignore the reading, my garage floor is not level...) Because my car has a 250 engine fitted, its been shimmed under the front engine mounts a little so the sump clears the drag link. I think this is why the pinion angle is so close with my transmission and normally they are out from what I have read when you lower the leaf rear end quite a lot like mine. Might just be a fluke lol




Borrowed a couple of tools from work and carried out a quick DIY wheel alignment, checked the camber first, using this neat little Dunlop camber gauge. I had to use the wood adapter due to the tyre ballooning a little at the bottom, so was giving false readings. We normally use this tool on race cars that have low profile tyres fitted, so not normally a problem! Anyway, I was looking for 0.5 degrees negative camber on my car and surprisingly the RH side was in specification. The left hand side was showing 1 degree negative, so I fitted a couple more shims on the upper control arm to correct it.






Checked the toe angle next, using the trusty Dunlop tracking gauges, these things are surprisingly accurate, I use them all the time at work to quickly check the toe after straightening a off centre steering wheel etc. I set the total toe in to 2.5 mm for now, I will see how that goes but I will be doing it on a proper machine later anyway.






I need to check the caster of course but it will have to wait until I can take the car into work and put it on our Hunter wheel alignment machine (pretty high tech for an old Falcon lol) I was going to buy a caster gauge for home but you need the turntables etc to do it properly, so not too fussed at the moment.

 

Just read through the whole thread , neat car and great work . Nice to see someone with an understanding on suspension setting a project up correctly .



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Nice car, like the Aussie touches!! Not sure about the right (wrong), hand drive!! LOL!! In all seriousness, I could adapt to that car much, MUCH easier than trying to change my truck driving skills!! 18 wheels you ask; I have pulled a "set" with as many as 26!! That's triple trailers! How's the weather down there? And yes alignments can be done with string and a level, high tech computerized stuff doesn't make anyone an "expert"! Mike.

 

Pulled the interior out today and sent the seats and door trims off to be reupholstered, they are going to come up really nice after looking at the matching colours. I have chosen to keep the original 2 tone blue colour scheme. Should be all finished in a few weeks, along with new carpet. I will post some pics when they are all done.

But wait there's more!

Scored a complete running 302 windsor and C4 today, pretty stoked actually. I looked the engine number up and its from a 1971 ZD Fairlane 500. The engine has been recently reconditioned in the last few years and there are no oil leaks and its all there ready to run. I need to address the white manifolds though and I will paint the whole thing up nicely. It turns over though with great compression and the spark plugs are all burning clean. It has a Holley 2 barrel carb on there at the moment, I might get it up and running first then swap it out for a 4 barrel and aluminum intake. Should be a bit of fun when I get around to fitting it

 

Nice work on the XP.
Btw, is that the same Liam who bought a green VG Regal from me a few years ago?

 

Hey, yeah it is the same Liam! Small world!

I had sell that Valiant you sold to me shortly after I got it due to my lease running out in the property I was living in at the time and having no storage for it. It was a good car though, the body was really straight and rust free. I put some proper Valiant seats in it and drove it around for a few months.

Anyway, got the XP to keep me busy now

 

Yeah, the Holden seats were the worst part of the car.
I always like cars with the red dust all through them, it usually means "rust free"

 

Hi again Liam,

What sort of radio do you have in the dash? Looks like some sort of vintage multiband job.

 

Its an Australian Ford AM radio but it has all the interstate stations on the front. Not sure how many of those are still transmitting these days though.

 

Bang up job mate!

 

Man she is looking SWEET!

 

Small update, This is how the interior is currently looking on the Falcon now, got the whole lot out to be reupholstered.




I thought I would use this time to clean up and repaint the floors (no rust at all luckily!) and thought I would install the seat belt mounts for the inertia reel seatbelts I have for it. The factory seat belt hole in on the floor pan and is kinda under the seat, not so good for a inertia reel seat belt mount, so had to get creative to try mount it properly on the bottom of the B pillar. Ending up cutting a slot in the sill for the mount and used a magnet to drop it into the hole where I could then pop rivet into place, then welded back over the cut out I made.








Also set up my new toy, very happy with it so far, was a great investment! Lincoln 180C





Also made another major purchase, bought some headers for the windsor conversion.



Nearly have all the parts for the V8 conversion now

 

Because any true early Ford Falcon project would not be complete with out some kind of rust removal, I Decided to put my new mig to work and made a start on the rust. It only had a few small holes in the sills that did not look to bad but you know how it is, once you start grinding the next thing you know a big hole appears!

Started on the RH rear side sill first, found the bottom of the inner dog leg was also rusty, so cut that piece out as well.




You can see rust never sleeps on a 50 year old car and is always on the move, creeping along the bottom of the sills!




Welded a new inner patch and primed.




Bought a new sill panel from Craig Vane. I ended up just cutting out pieces to repair my sills. I thought about replacing the whole sill but decided it would be easier to just replace only what I needed to. All welded in nicely now, was pleased with the Lincoln 180C



Ground down ready for primer.




Moved onto the front end of the sill, I got a before photo on this repair to show the small ammount of rust I thought I was going to be dealing with but not so.




Cut that out till I had got rid of the whole rusty area



All welded in




Thought that was the worst of it but got to do the left hand side next. I noticed there was quite a bit of rust on the box section at the bottom of the left hand A pillar area which is going to be a pain to get to.





This kind of sucks, I am going to have to cut the box section open I think to get in there and clean that mess up. A big Job for next weekend, should keep me busy! Wish me luck