Yesterday's daily today - the J69 version

[Jonny69]

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.

[I.K.Brunel]

A superb introduction - Welcome Jonny.

[garethj]

Excellent stuff, I love the Ford Pop and I'm sure something like that will be in my garage at some point.

Your reasoning of "I needed a car for work so bought a Model T hotrod" is something that we should all take on board

[Jonny69]

Cool cool! Well I guess to keep it in the spirit of Seth's post rather than a self-advert I should comment what it's actually like to own, drive and maintain old cars. I'll split this up so it's not awall of text.

Security

All four of mine have been slightly different in terms of ownership but the key thing they all have in common is they are easy to get into, so you have to be careful leaving things on view. I had all my camping gear stolen out the Pop one night when I couldn't be bothered to take it all out, so that was a harsh lesson learned. The second is security. It wasn't ever an issue with the Prefect and I doubt the Pop would have ever got stolen, but the T was worth a bit more money, it had no built-in security other than a battery-kill key and I felt I had to lock it up overnight for peace of mind. I invested in one of those unbreakable motorbike chains, the £140 Immobiliser III from Almax with 16mm quadruple tempered case-hardened links and Squire Stronghold padlock and kept it threaded through the wheel and chassis like so:



They say the chain is impervious to bolt croppers and hacksaws and I had no reason to dispute that, because the chain and lock weighed a whopping 14kg and was tonk to say the least. The car felt completely safe with it - the only way to move it would have been to drag it onto a flatbed, lift it, or put another wheel on, which was unlikely to happen. I did regularly come down to the car to find the boot open or someone had been inside it, but I was always happy that it wouldn't get stolen.

That brings me neatly onto the Anglia where things are on the change. When I got the car it looked pretty much the same as it does now. I didn't used to have to worry about it, but the whole RWD Ford thing has pushed the value up from the £850 I paid for it and the ridiculous price of Lotus steel wheels means I now have to keep more of an eye on it. The insurance requires the car to be garaged overnight, which is a pain, but I know when I leave it out it is simply a matter of time before the wrong person spots it and either it'll go or the wheels will get nicked. It's annoying, because to me it's the same car I bought 10 years ago, but to others it's a easy target and for me that makes it a bit of a headache because I don't want to have to worry about my car all the time. Also, something I've never dealt with is the boot doesn't lock, so I can't leave anything of value in the boot. One of my priorities now there are no major jobs to do must be to fit a boot lock.

[Jonny69]

To drive

As standard, the Prefect was like driving a classic car. It had a lot of body roll, not a lot of grip, it wasn't particularly fast, no synchro in first, 16" steering wheel and no seatbelts. The brakes were very light considering it had no power assist and the large steering wheel compensated for the two turns lock-to-lock with no power steering. Once I'd modified it, it was a very fast little car, stopped very well, but I didn't know a lot about setting up handling so it was a bit of a handful. And it was very loud. The exhaust used to get torn off regularly as it was held on with a series of clamps and the car was very low. Likewise, I was a bit ambitious with the width of the tyres and it used to shred the rears on the bodywork.

The Pop was a different kettle of fish completely and I loved it. A very tall car, quite noisy, slow, but felt fast and you could do some amazing things on the road. 3 gears with no synchro in first. If you had the balls, the handling was completely neutral and you could induce it into a wild drift with full confidence. The massive cable-operated brakes were MUCH more effective than the standard ones on the Prefect and Anglia, but needed a bit of practice if you nailed them while steering. With the tuned sidevalves in there, it was a brilliant car to drive and never failed to put a smile on my face. It struggled on the motorway because, though the car could do 60, the standard engine was only happy to sit at a maximum of about 50mph and this left you feeling quite exposed on the motorway. I did manage to get just under 85mph out of it with my last tuned engine, but it was the sustained high speed stuff in its final weekends that killed it. I miss driving the Pop a lot. It taught me a lot about balancing a car on the edge.

The hotrod was never designed very well and you couldn't really throw it around. The steering was slow, the wheel was in the wrong position and the seating position was all wrong and badly thought out. It was great fun to drive, but I never dared take it out on the track because you couldn't flick the steering around fast enough. Loads of torque and 5 gears made it quite a lazy drive and actually quite fast, despite the dog-leg first gear being pretty much useless. Ultimately, I like to throw my cars around and this was always going to be a lot of work to change it to how I wanted it, hence selling the old chap.

The Anglia has gone through a number of guises. When I got it, it had a tuned pre-crossflow, standard box, standard drum brakes, cut springs at the front and lowering blocks at the back. It was cool looking, but it was a handful with the standard brakes. Once I'd switched on the Escort struts from the crashed Prefect, it was much better, but it understeered terribly. I had a friend at university who raced MGBs and after a conversation with him about handling, I knew I had to beef up the rear end. When I had the car in bits to do the floor and sills, I got a new pair of rear springs made up with seven leaves instead of five, and 2" lower. I also got Leda to modify a pair of new lever arm shocks. Lots of people get it very wrong with Anglias by spending a fortune on all the wrong Milton bits and they just end up with a car that must be a pain to drive. I've got mine spot-on and the handling is almost completely neutral. I'd probably go a little harder at the back if I did more track or hillclimb work, but it's a really nice balance between a firm ride and comfortable standard interior. With the close ratio box and standard engine, it's actually quite nippy but tops out at about 80mph. Now the engine is a lot quieter it's highlighted a number of rattles and squeaks, but I really enjoy driving it.

Curiously, my other half, her, stopped liking the Anglia a few years ago and wouldn't go in it because for her it was uncomfortable, smelly and noisy and she didn't feel safe because of its age. She didn't mind the Pop too much but she only came on short local journeys in it and I don't think she'd have liked the motorway much or the way I drove it to work. She jumped straight in the T no questions asked, which I thought was curious, because it was clearly the shonkiest, smelliest, noisiest, dirtiest, most exposed, most unsafe vehicle with no seatbelts I've owned by any stretch of the imagination. But she loved it and was sad to see it go. She's better in the Anglia now and we've done a few journeys together. I think the fact that it's a lot quieter than it used to be, it's got a full interior, it's clean and I fitted inertia seatbelts helps.

In terms of driving behaviour, you need to drive slightly differently to if you were in a silver Mondeo. Generally it's a positive driving experience, but you need to be aware of the fact that people do some strange things in front of old cars that they wouldn't do in front of a normal car. The main thing is people pulling out in front of you and you having to slam on the brakes. I've never worked out the logic of why you'd pull out into a dangerously small space in front of the car that is least likely to be able to stop, but people do it nonetheless. You will get tailgated and overtaken in 30mph zones, even when doing 35 or 40. Again, I don't know why this is but it happens a lot. I don't like to generalise, but I've observed younger women in hatchbacks have a habit of panicking around old cars and can be unpredictable. You'll think you've seen it all but you haven't, so just be wary. People cut you up and then eye the car up or try to talk to you, expecting it to all be ok because they're interested in the car. You will get people talking to you about the car, so make sure you leave enough time to get stuck in supermarket carparks, petrol station forecourts etc.

The final and probably strangest thing is something I've only noticed quite recently. I can only describe it as a fly-by. When I was driving the Pop I noticed people getting way too close to my rear corner when overtaking and cutting my front corner off worryingly close when pulling back in. At first I thought it was people misjudging their speed - understandable, because not much motorway traffic can only do 50-55mph these days - but I started to notice it was always the same sort of cars and drivers doing it and they appeared to be doing it deliberately. When I got the hotrod I saw the same cars and drivers giving it a go, but because I was doing 70-80mph it wasn't as much of an issue. Now I'm in the Anglia, I've noticed it happening again while I'm sat at 60 over on the left hand side. No idea why this 'trend' has come about or why people do it, but it's definitely happening.

[Jonny69]

Reliability

I'll just get this out the way and say that old cars do break down occasionally when you use them all the time. When you're dealing with 50 year old parts, something occasionally breaks and there's not much you can do about it. That said, there are the usual suspects and you can go a long way to eradicate most of the potential breakdowns.

For years I had problems with the woefully inadequate electrics on small Fords. Specifically the batteries are too small and the dynamos can't cope with keeping them charged up. The constantly low battery would put too much strain on the dynamo which would eventually die and you'd replace it, but by that point you'd killed the battery and it would need replacing too, but by then the starter motor had been under too much strain by the dead battery and would need replacing. Then because you'd been emptying the battery into the dying starter motor the dynamo would start to struggle and you can see where this is leading... 3-way vicious cycle that just went round and round. I know better now and all my engines have alternators and batteries with nice long warranties. Halfords Calcium batteries seem to be immune to the occasional complete discharge and don't seem to mine being left partially charged.

With a bit of help from Seth's lathe, I converted my Pop to an alternator and it never gave me battery problems. Most of the time you can fit an alternator in the same space as the dynamo and I managed to modify the pulley to take the original fan as an added bonus:



The other common electrics fun is points and condensors. I usually replace them for new parts out of routine when I get a new car, although Fords don't seem to suffer too much with their points and they rarely need attention once set. Even the very exposed ones on the engine in the T rarely gave any bother and the only time I had to fettle the ones on the Pop was when the crusty old rad hose split and dumped hot water in the distributor. New HT leads are another must-have item to ensure easy starting on cold damp mornings.

Mechanical problems usually arise as a result of the fact that you're using old parts. Things like master cylinders, slave cylinders, bearings and linkages simply wear out and rubber parts perish. There's not much you can do about it, but spending a bit of cash up-front on some new parts generally ensures that most of it will be trouble-free. Joining all the relevant forums and knowing parts suppliers is an absolute must for a lot of cars. I used to be able to buy Q&H parts from my local motorfactor, but I doubt they do them any more and all the local little places run by old blokes are sadly long gone, so the forums and online sources are invaluable. Spares aren't hard to get for most cars as long as you know where to look and as long as the car isn't too rare.

Breakdown cover with relay is another absolute must for me. I've used it a lot over the years and it's got me out of a lot of trouble. I don't carry tools on local journeys, but for longer distance stuff I carry a small box of tools and a socket set and jack if I'm really going away. A selection of bits is also handy to have in the car, like a length of wire and a few terminals, a couple of jubilee clips, the odd nut and bolt etc. For example, on the way back from RRG12 the nuts came loose on the exhaust downpipe and if I'd just had a spare random nut and bolt in the box I could have sorted it there and then instead of faffing a bodge to get me home.

[garethj]

The final and probably strangest thing is something I've only noticed quite recently. I can only describe it as a fly-by. When I was driving the Pop I noticed people getting way too close to my rear corner when overtaking and cutting my front corner off worryingly close when pulling back in.

I can relate to this when I've had cars worth staring at. On a motorbike, they go in the direction you look, it's called target fixation. If you say "oh no, I'm going to hit that kerb / wall / elk" then that's what you'll do because you're staring at it. You need to force yourself to look through the corner to the exit, or look to the left of the elk, then you'll go around it.

Car drivers are staring at your motah as they drive past, as they look to the left they pull the wheel to the left. And when they pull in, they're looking at you in the mirror so they just naturally pull in.

This fact* has been brought to you by someone who's currently driving a car that's as dull as dishwater and rarely gets cut up. And of course I drive so fast that I'm never overtaken, natch

[tone_depear]

Fabulous work J69. I particularly approve of the Angular on the basis of it's being red.

I think Gareth has something with the rubberneck-steering connection. I suspect the odd one is probably steering with his knees while taking a picture with his phone which may or may not end up on the brown forum as well. Probably.

Yes, GOOD WORK!

[Barrett]

Really really enjoying this J69, as usual reading about people actually using their old cars is making me wish my 'yesterday's garden feature today' was a little closer to being on the road.
I must say, reading the first post you do seem to have had more than your fair share of bad luck with old cars, have you actually come close to whipping the angle grinder out and cutting them up in frustration or do you just take it as par for the course? I fly into a murderous rage when I can't get a jar open or whatever so I dunno how I'd cope with all that shiz tbh.
anyway, GR14.7 Thread, moar please!

[Leonard Hatred]

A great read and inspiring stuff! It's better than most things you'd read in a cla**ic magazine, good to read about the realities of keeping an ancient car on the road, it doesn't sound that bad really. How many miles a year do you cover?
I'd love to run an old car as a daily, but I live in the 'salt belt' of Scotland, travel over 20k miles a year and can't afford to keep more than one elderly car reliable. Also I'm soft.