Here we have the new addition to the family, it is a 1960 Ford Popular Deluxe 100E.
I had been looking for some time just at how much these cars went for on places like ebay, I wanted a new project and suddenly thought I needed to see what parts were available, after all I didnt want to get a car with a broken part to find that it is almost impossible to the part i needed. To do this I emailed Classic Ford Magazine, i asked if they could point me in the right direction as I didnt know where to start with old Fords, as I had always been involved in Minis. I had a reply from the magazine really quick and were they wereextremely helpful. They pointed me in the direction of the Ford Sidevalve Owners Club. I noticed they had a classifieds page and i had to have a look and I found this 1960 100E which was very local to me, I contacted the owner (Jamie Littlechild) and emails went back and forth, I arranged to go and view the car on Saturday 10th December 2011. Below are the photos that were taken when we went to view the car.
OOPS! I only went and viewd it and came home with some reading material and the cost of the deposit lighter, All exciting! I was going to collect the car on Tuesday 13th December 2011 lucily it was not a friday!
I managed to find a family frined who races an MGB GT with a trailer, he very kindly let me borrow the trailer and we trundled down to Pembury to collect the car. We got there and loaded up the car onto the trailer, all the spare parts went into the Pop, Dads car and trailer and Rons van. There were loads of spare parts that came with the car and i didnt realsie quite how much until we had to fit it into a the cars. We exchanged Log Book and Money and then we went on our way home. We unloaded the car and kicked the Mini out of its car port and the Pop gained a new dryish house.
Over the next couple of days I spent it unloading the Pop and the Trailer and Dads car and looking for places to put all of the spare parts so now we cant get in the shed :D
On Wednesday I thought i would see what the electrics were like... surprise surprise they didnt work, I then used a multi meter to see how much charge the batery had, it turned out to have a massive 1.88V so i decided that it was as flat as a pancake, I had a rumage and found an old spare battery that was knackered. It had enough juice in it to run lights lucily and they all worked to my amazement !!!! Wooo (apart from one tail light) so was well chuffed with that!
On Sunday 18th December 2011 I got the Pop out and gave it a good wash, It came up reasonably well and looked smart, I then removed the 'Popular' and the 'Deluxe' badge, this is because there is rust on the boot lid under the badges which needs to be treated.
Also I Drained the oil from the engine, I have brought some new oil and a filter from my local motor factors, which surprisingly had the correct oil filter, also I drained the water as the weather was freezing temperatures and I didnt know how much water was in it, as I removed the bottom hose from the rad the whole hose came off in my hand, the bit of pipe that sticks out the side of the block has corroded away and was still in the bottom hose. I joined the Ford 100E Forum who were extremely helpful, they told me that the bit of pipe was just a press fit, I had a rumage at work and managed to find an offcut of pipe that I think is the correct outside diameter but will only know when I get round to having some time during the christmas break to have a proper look, to get access to the hole I had to remove the dynamo, this gives you lots of room to see whats what.
On Tuesday 27th December I was outside early ish so that I could have a nice day working on the car, to start with I noticed that the weather has been getting bad, I thought I should treat the worst parts of the rust so that it would survive the winter. To start with I used 2 scrapers and removed the chrome trim from the sides with my dad. I then used a screwdriver, scraper and a small wire brush so remove the flakey paint. Then I cleaned all of the worst bits up with the wire brush, then I used a DA attatched to the compressor with some 280 grit disks to clean up the metal around the corroded area. I then painted the corroded area with some rust preventer (Bilt Hamber Hydrate 80) and allowed it to dry, this worked really well! I then fitted the pipe in the side of the block and fitted with some sealer and let that go off, next job is to see if the pipe leaks as i may have to re-do the pipe.
15/7/12
Now the weather has had a great improvement I have been able to go out and work on the Pop with out having to come indoors to warm up. I had previously got the fuel pump working by hitting it with a hammer then it started ticking away, winner.
The next job was to get the engine running, I removed the carb and had it cleaned in an ultrasonic tank, this cleans it inside and out, refitted this and plumbed in the fuel system to the carb but fitted a fuel filter in the pipe. Then I removed the fuel tank as this had old stagnent fuel in so just tried to get it running with a fuel can in the boot. With the help of my Dad and Uncle we set the ignition timing and tried it and it ran! It went really well and no blue smoke at all which is a bonus :) we then found that the coil was getting extremely hot and the engine wouldnt restart when the engine was hot so next job is to probably change the distributor to one which has push fit leads rather than screw fit leads as I think the push fit leads are more reliable and easier to get hold of and also I have a couple of push fit coils lying around from my mini and I have a spare distributor too so that is the next job along with removing the master cylinders and cleaning to see if I need new cylinders or just a rebuild kit then hopefully with a battery and the fuel tank it should be ready for an mot :D
More Updates Coming Soon .....
