Quote:
Originally Posted by Keith Webb
Perhaps you could tell us what you did to the F60S once you got it home... And show us what she looks like with 20" wheels!
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OK...having gotten the F60S safely back across the border, the first job was to get it running. I've had a bit of practice lately, this being the 4th blitz I've coaxed back into life in 2 months!
Following my usual procedure I filled up the pots with oil/petrol mix and let it seep down the bores overnight, then with great anticipation applied the crank handle next morning. My patience was rewarded when the motor spun over freely.
Next precautionary task was to confirm oil flow by removing the oil gallery plug on the bellhousing - I've found this can take quite a bit of cranking sometimes and I'd prefer to get the bearings nicely oiled before firing up.
Next I checked for stuck valves, which I'd encountered on all 3 previous motors. These can be very tedious to unstick, so I was greatly relieved when the compression gauge registered on all 8 pots.
All that remained was to stick in a set of plugs and a proven coil, squirt some juice down the carby and hit the starter - which teased me for a while by whirring away quietly to itself without engaging. My first thoughts were dodgy starter or sticky throwout pinion, or maybe corroded solenoid contacts. However I'd been fooled before into such diagnoses, and had wasted much time pulling out starter motors and swapping solenoids, all to no avail. So this time I was awake up and went looking for earthing problems, and finding no earth strap to the motor anywhere, I tried running the battery lead straight to the gearbox. Hitting the starter again I was rewarded with the sweet sound of a Ford Blitz cranking over on 6 volts.
Jumping back in the cab and giving the carby another squirt, I hit the starter with great anticipation. Alas, she fired only fitfully on one or two pots occasionally, giving no indication of wanting to start. Checking for spark I found it to be present, but very weak and intermittent. Damn! I was hoping to avoid pulling the radiator out to get at that blasted crab thing on the front!
With a sigh of resignation I set about pulling off the grille, hacksawing through the rock hard radiator hoses, and manhandling the radiator out to get at the offending article. Removing the dizzy cap I proceeded to clean up and re-gap the badly corroded points and try again.
Jumping back in the cab I hit the starter again, and lo and behold the long silent flathead burst into life for a few seconds, emitting a great cloud of smoke out the tailpipe from all the oil I'd poured down the pots.
With my efforts finally rewarded, it was now time to get some juice flowing, so after cleaning out the crud in the fuel pump sightglass, I hooked up some plastic tubing to the inlet, and ran it back to the fuel tank - which at this early stage is a plastic 5 litre oil container sitting next to me in the cab. Aside from being free of rust, an advantage of this system is the priming feature - with the tubing fitted snugly through a hole drilled in the plastic screwtop lid, a long hard squeeze on the plastic container will send fuel bubbling into the sightglass, and onwards through the fuel pump to fill the carby.
Having thus primed the carby and given it some choke, I hit the starter again, whereupon my ears were immediately rewarded with the incomparable roar of a flathead V8 echoing around inside a blitz cab. Bathing in the moment for a while, I pumped the pedal several times to hear the distinctive V8 exhaust bark, followed by the comforting sound as she settled back to tick over sweetly on all cylinders.
With no water of course my enjoyment had to be curtailed, so I switched off and prepared for the next stage - test drive! Impatient as I was to go for a spin around the back yard, I thought it best to first get the handbrake working, and swap the gearshift lever to permit reverse gear selection - the reverse lock actuating rod being rusted solid in its channel.
Having completed these tedious tasks, but unwilling to wait until the radiator was back in, I filled the water jackets to the brim, with the water pump inlets fitted with suitably sized plugs, selected from my lemon tree.
All was in readiness now for the first test drive, so I ejected my neighbour's horse from the back yard, where I allow it to cut the grass for me, and proceeded through the gate in my newly mobile F60S. The lemon plugs allow for perhaps 3-5 minutes driving from cold, which I spent slithering around on the wet grass in 2WD, the front drive shaft being missing, doing circuits around the windmill, and running through the gears on the "strait", occasionally hitting top.
All too soon my fun had to be terminated, for reasons of water temperature, as indicated by a finger dipped in the RH cylinder head outlet. However I had done enough to satisfy myself that the motor was a good runner, and once cleared of all the oil poured through the plugholes, it was no longer blowing smoke.
I also learned for myself just how useless road tyres are on wet grass - something I'd heard from truckies before. As well as being almost impossible to get going, I found when I used the handbrake even gently, the tailshaft would lock up, and the road tyre would spin backwards - driven through the diff by the forward rolling bar tread on the other side. The braking effect is negligible and the vehicle just keeps going - as can be seen in one of these pics. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't slowing down, and when I looked out the back window I was amazed to see one wheel spinning backwards!