Ford blitz ambo project

Keith Webb · #1 31-05-12, 08:29

The main thing is we didn't kill ourselves thank goodness and damage was fairly minimal. Before going to Yarra Junction the truck had an occasional workout around the night streets of North Box Hill upsetting all the neighbour's TV reception, what a hoot that was!

When it went to Peter Growse after my brief ownership (it had to go when I went overseas for 18 months). I steered it while we flat towed it with Peter's F15A to Heathmont. It was a slow trip.

Tony Wheeler · #2 31-05-12, 12:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keith Webb

it went to Peter Growse after my brief ownership (it had to go when I went overseas for 18 months)

It's a shame you couldn't hang on to it and keep your FGT body too, which wasn't too badly rusted at that stage. You could have shortened the chassis (again) and had a FGT on the road in no time. From there you could finish it off at your leisure.

There would have been a nice synergy in merging our two teenage projects! If only we'd had somewhere to store them....

Keith Webb · #3 31-05-12, 12:56

Yes; but at least body and it's correct chassis have been reunited and Peter's brother Alan is restoring it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tony Wheeler

It's a shame you couldn't hang on to it and keep your FGT body too, which wasn't too badly rusted at that stage. You could have shortened the chassis (again) and had a FGT on the road in no time. From there you could finish it off at your leisure.

There would have been a nice synergy in merging our two teenage projects! If only we'd had somewhere to store them....

Tony Wheeler · #4 31-05-12, 13:32

Here's a few pics from our next outing, with me looking a picture of concentration at the wheel!

Lots of mud in evidence here - this may have been the "mudslide" outing. We found a freshly cleared logging coup on top of a mountain - several acres of flat muddy ground, completely devoid of vegetation. Here we had great fun slithering around and spinning out in the mud, by building up speed in a straight line, then chucking on full lock and slamming on the brakes. These antics would have made an excellent U-tube clip today - the sight of a blitz spinning like a top while sliding along in a 4 wheel lock up would be quite entertaining I reckon.

Tony Wheeler · #5 31-05-12, 14:01

Here endeth the story of my first blitz resto, with a few pics from the final outings. By this time we were taking guest passengers - seen here are Keith's mate from school, and his girlfriend at the time. You'll note the bumper is back on now.

For some reason the thermostats were missing, which caused it to run too cold in winter, often needing choke as Keith mentioned earlier.

Euan McDonald · #6 01-06-12, 01:17

Hi Tony,
A couple of weeks ago I was in at Power train as its being closed down and the propety sold and on the wall is still the pic of your truck and the sig van.
Who would have thought after 35+ years that pic would still be on the notice board.

Tony Wheeler · #7 01-06-12, 04:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Euan McDonald

Hi Tony, A couple of weeks ago I was in at Power train and on the wall is still the pic of your truck and the sig van.
Who would have thought after 35+ years that pic would still be on the notice board.

Blimey Euan...if I'd known it was going to grace the halls of commerce for the next 3 decades I would have posed for the camera!

It's quite a good pic though, and I'm very glad Keith kept all his negs from those days, otherwise there'd be no record of this blitz at all. My own stuff went west long ago, when my folks cleared out the house prior to sale when I was gone - although they did hang to Keith's resto album, which surfaced a couple of years ago when my mother died.

Prior to these pics we took a phenomenal amount of B&W photos in our blitz hunting days as kids. We had very little money of course, so we used to ride our pushbikes almost 10 miles to Ringwood camera store to purchase bulk film, in the form of 10 metre rolls of expired stock which was incredibly cheap as I recall. Then we'd retire to the darkroom at home and roll it by hand onto film canisters which we recycled over and over! On top of doing our own processing, this brought the net cost down to perhaps one tenth of commercial price, enabling us to snap away at blitzes with gay abandon! We more or less took the same shots, so the loss of my stuff is no big deal.

Of course, the film rolling was rather tricky - unlike processing where you could use a safelight, it had to be done in absolute darkness - wielding scissors to cut the film into 1 metre strips, which inevitably sprung into tight coils, and little pieces of sticky tape to attach the end to the roll, which inevitably stuck to your fingers instead, then carefully winding it onto the roll without getting fingerprints on the emulsion, and fumbling around in the blackness to find the metal shroud and some caps to press on the ends. As you can imagine, the entire process was accompanied by much cursing and swearing in the dark!

It was a wonderful hobby though, and strange to think it's been completely wiped out by digital cameras. Not that I'd ever want to back to the old way!