Since joining this forum I've been literally overwhelmed with one request to post up a bit about my Anglia. Like Seth, I've never owned a 'modern' car and have always bummed around in motors from the 60's or earlier. In my 16 years of motoring, I've only had four cars and my Anglia is my second car that saw me through my 20's and is the newest of all the cars I've had. In order, they have been: a 1961 Ford 107E Prefect that I learned to drive in back in 1997, this 1967 Ford Anglia, a 1954 upright Ford Pop and a 1927* Ford* Model T hotrod. No badge snobbery - it's just coincidence they all happen to be Fords. I don't (think I) do the sort of mileage that Seth does but all of these have done daily duty at some point.
The Prefect was my first car, I learned to drive in it and it took me from South London to Essex when I was a student apprentice and then to university. I had a wheel come off at one point that did quite a lot of damage underneath, but I got it welded by a local place and replaced the damaged wing with a fibreglass one. The bodywork looked ok but was actually quite bubbly where it had been fixed with filler over the years and after a while I did my own comical restoration work with aluminium mesh, fibreglass bridging and stellar quantities of P38, topped with a free spray job. I eventually swapped the engine to a hot crossflow and Escort struts, it was running very low and I'd got some 13" slotmags on the mill in the workshop and got them well tucked under the car. I really ought to dig out the photos of me and my comedy late-90's hairdo and glasses with the car. Here it is at the Essex NASC Nationals either 1999 or 2000:
Then I crashed it in 2000 which wrote the car off, at which point I bought the Anglia. I never particularly liked Anglias and this was a sort of emergency purchase to get back on the road asap and minimise my losses. Ideally, I wanted another Prefect so I could swap all my bits from one car to the other, but 107E's were a bit thin on the ground even back then, and this was the closest I could find. It was a bit tatty round the edges, bodywork wasn't great, but it polished up, it was cheap and I didn't have to worry about it. I switched in the engine and struts from the other car and off I went. The 69's went on some time during my work placement to distract from some rust bubbles and to cover the rusty patches in the middle of the doors, which are a typical place where Anglias rust from the inside. I then went and did my final year at university by which point the car had grown a pair of Webers and I was thinking about plans. I'd learned to weld at university so I re-silled the car which included much of the floor and suspension, then one thing led to another and the big restoration of 2005 began. Here it is with the sills in primer just before I started cutting. Again, I really ought to dig out and scan in some of the earlier pics:
In hindsight, if I'd known the car was going to be so rotten, I probably wouldn't have started the work, but, suffice to say, I'm glad I did it and I know my car is 100% solid now. Quite a few people in the Anglia scene have paid out big money for their cars only to find they are like rotten pears under the shiny paint. I know mine isn't like that.
Around 2006 I bought a barn-find Pop. I'd just started a new job and I had to drive to work and the Anglia wasn't on the road. I spent a couple of months cracking into it and replaced everything underneath while keeping the body and interior 'as found'. I did quite a few miles in this car but I got carried away tuning the weak sidevalve and kept killing them. Some pics outside my garage and as-captured scene pic with added roof rack by Seth up at the Ace:
http://www.jonny69.co.uk/uploads/pop/20 ... G_2981.jpg (sorry - can't find this pic)
The last engine died at the Retro Rides Gathering 2008 after I'd taken it to the NSRA Supernats one weekend, stuffed the side of the car in oval racing at the Hotrod Hayride a few weeks later...
http://www.jonny69.co.uk/uploads/pop/20 ... -after.jpg (can't find this one either)
http://www.jonny69.co.uk/uploads/pop/20 ... y-pop2.jpg (or this one)
...and then hammered the poor thing from London to Southampton then Southampton to near Birmingham the following weekend. After that I left the engine near standard and it went off to a new owner early in 2009.
The Anglia went back on the road in late 2008.
I'd finished the bodywork, sprayed it outside in 2007 and I used it as my work hack. The engine was pretty tired and it nearly ended in tears when when one of the carbs spat back and caught light at the builders merchants. Typically, the bonnet catch decided to jam at the same time so I couldn't get the front open but I got really lucky because a passing truck driver threw me a fire extinguisher and I managed to put it out before too much got damaged.
I gave it a rebuild shortly after, ready for the Retro Rides Gathering for August 2009. That was when I grenaded it on the motorway and the car went back in the garage because I couldn't face another engine swap. Here it is at the side of the M3 - the last sorry picture of it I could bear at the time:
This was when I landed my current job and, again, I needed a car and the T came up at just the right time. I needed to drive for the first few months and then I'd mainly be commuting by train. I would then only using the car for regular courses at the university, so it didn't have to be 100% practical, just reliable.
I actually found it quite liberating driving something so out there. I loved the fact that it had loads of ground clearance, it was actually really easy to drive in the snow and the roof was surprisingly effective in the rain unless you turned right. I decided to put it up for sale in early 2012 and it finally went to its new owner in July. In the meantime I'd been mucked about left, right and centre by a well known engine place in Grays, Essex who had made a complete mess of the head and crank in my Anglia engine. I decided not to take the chance until I'd had a chance to properly check everything and dropped in a standard 1200 that I'd bought as a 'runner'. The bloke I bought it off thought it was quite funny having to load it up into the passenger footwell of the T.
As is typical I managed to make a mistake and had to pull it back out again, but I got the car back together and MOTd again in April 2012, the 1200 turning out to be a bit on the tired side but it gets me from A to B. I've actually racked up quite a few miles on this engine but it's starting to show signs of death so it'll have to come out again at some point. I had thought about the bigger engine but I actually love the little 1200. Call me old, but I do like the fact that it's a lot quieter on longer journeys, she doesn't mind riding in it, it's a bit better on fuel and it's easier to start when it's very cold.
Then there was the crash. I went over some ridiculously bad road surface on a roundabout near Brighton in June and the car took a diversion over a kerbstone, narrowly missing a lamp post and just missing a ditch. The chassis was badly bent on both sides at the front, the steering was bent like a banana and the two front wheels got buckled. I put it in to Burnham Autos on the insurance who straightened the car out and sorted the two front wheels. While it was in I got all four wheels powdercoated because I'd been putting off painting them for far too long.
http://www.jonny69.co.uk/uploads/anglia ... G_7945.JPG (sorry, this one is gone too)
Shortly after I got it back, it's first 'event' was the Retro Rides Gathering. I got some vinyl 69's cut, let everyone say "where are the 69's" and fitted them at the event. Well that's not strictly true - I tried to put one on at the service station with Dan VIP and we truly made a mess of it so I pulled it back off and gave it another go in the campsite later on...
It was a great weekend! I got some track time and some of the RRers took some amazing pics:
Unfortunately, on the journey home I was in a shunt with a driver who decided to emergency stop for no apparent reason on the A40 (60mph) and the car suffered some cosmetic damage. I decided not to put it through the insurance again. Once I'd calmed down, it's a bent grille, some bent mountings, a couple of splits in the fibreglass and some more cracking in the paint. It's not the end of the world and I decided to chalk it up as experience.
The front just popped back out because it's fibreglass and there was no damage underneath. The grille straightened out no problem and I just screwed it back on and it looks fine. Which brings us up to today. The car is definitely 'back' now. I had a few fuelling issues at RRG which I thought were fuel surging on the track, but it turned out to be the fuel filter causing it. It's currently chucking its water out quite quickly which I'm hoping is just the rad cap (which is over 12 years old) and nothing more serious. I'll be able to get to the spares shop on Friday and we're off to Goodwood on Saturday so I guess I'll find out for sure then.