fbekholden.com

Nice rosco. Gleaming chrome.

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Yes Clay,
when I was a kid, I envied every other kid who had chromed wheels on their bikes.... I had to put up with painted ones...
My first car - a Standard 8 - had a pathetic chrome bumper at front and rear and door handles... the second one, a Morris 850 "humpy" had just about as much, but with a bonnet ornament...... when the EK came along - I was in heaven... Chrome galore!... and all that highly polished stainless.
I don't believe Holden ever came close to furnishing a model with more chrome and stainless than our FB's and EK's....
They look amazing scrubbed up and buffed...but, by golly - the "Sunday morning car wash before the Sunday drive - or church" must have been one great drawback in its day..... whilst the neighbors' Fowlcans and Valigrants were a fairly easy scrub in comparison..

frats,
Rosco

Couple more...

We are at the end of 1976 here. On a fishing trip at East Warburton for the day... unsuccessful, I might further add. We simply had to try out the new "Black Queen" fishing rod Christmas present to the young lady.... which was first successful at Kingston - previously posted.

Another thing we did here, out where there wasn't anyone else around - for some strange reason, I had always wanted to see what it was like traveling in the boot .. just a short distance. We each took a turn of this.... what a sensation!... I'm glad I did those exhaust connections properly.

The pix were taken with a small camera - I was going fishing, not shooting film..

In the pix below, you can see the "hot dog" resonator at rear with the "megaphone" exhaust tip... there was a longer "hot dog" under the front seat area... it gave the car a nice "note"... no crackle, but a pleasing throb when the loud pedal volume was turned up.

In two of the pix, you can also see the "gouge"... resultant from my sister's brother in law backing the car down her steep driveway and scraping the wrought iron fence gate... I lived with that gouge for over 20 years... you'll see later, in the rear section respray post to come - it took a fair bit of fixing up...

Pix.











frats,
Rosco

I see you deleted the front over riders.

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And all but two of the vertical grille bars..... don't fret - it all went back on later... plus hubcaps - soon in this thread, in fact....

frats,
Rosco

This is great Rosco - keep it coming

Those trims look tough. Sought after by the GTR crowd now and hard to find. I bought an fb for $500 that had a set on it couple years ago. Even more so the nibless GTR rims, and the caps, for which repro are available.


FB ute fixer upper, EK van on rotisserie

Ok - couple more.
It is Mar 1977.. I'm solo again... but I have a new interest.
A number of us in the local area have "found" CB radio... and we form CB Eastside...
In the pic below, we can see that I have fitted one "ski bar" to the roof and have mounted my 27 mHz whip antenna... the wiring running down across the gutter at the B pillar on the passenger side, then down under the outer door seal and into the car.
I am running a Kraco 23 channel side band unit... pix..








And this amazing unit (not).... In about 1976 - I ditched the cheap/nasty cassette player and was duped into purchasing this Tandy unit, plus the associated "Quadravox" synthesizer.. it produced a reasonable sound in some decent above deck rear speakers, and some footwell kickboard mounted speakers... the head unit, was quite good.... when it reached the end of the tape, it auto reversed and played the other side... one tape would run continuously until you ejected it...
The downside was - it was super sensitive... and would change direction at will.... I took the first one back to Tandy, told them what it was doing and they replaced it... the fools told me if ever the new one played up - they would replace that too..... in the course of 3 years, I went through no less than six of these units... I eventually got tired of changing them over... but, to be fair - Tandy backed their promise to me.... I was hypersensitive to it being likely to change directions every time I went over a bump... or a railway crossing - and my line of work - they were a plenty.....

Believe it or not, I still have the unit with its "Quadravox" synthesizer ..... I'm a bit of a "hoarder", you see... I would simply shock you with what I have amassed over my lifetime....


Pic..



From this point in time, it is not long before I am in a whirlwind in time... I meet my wife to be and we embark on a future together from my birthday on 16th April, 1977.... we marry in November of 1978.. I don't believe I have one pic of the car during this time.
But - it has suffered my first broken windscreen.... and I lost brake linings coming down Brown Mountain with the little caravan in tow... this happened in May of 1978...

In 1979, I am into photography in a serious manner... my own darkroom, and I am learning to develop B&W film and print... I have thousands of subjects to work on... including some of the old bus...

This first one finds us at Carpenter's Central Motor Camp in Lakes Entrance... where I have been staying since around 1960.... we have dragged out boat down behind the EK and are staying for a holiday in an on site van... the dear old car is looking very shabby here.. you can see the two large Realistic speakers mounted on the rear deck in this pic.





We are now back home in our little cottage in Donvale and it is Autumn in 1980.... my B&W photography days are coming to an end and I have found "Cibachrome".
I still shoot a little bit of B&W to use up film... these were probably the last pix I took of the old bus in B&W... Cibrachrome is on the way....
The dear car has now lived outside for the 8 years that I have owned it... fully exposed to the weather.
In this pic, you can see that I have lost one of my Torana trims, and have replaced it with a "speed shop" alternative - the other three are still in situ.
We looked and looked for that trim when I heard it fling off... to no avail..
We can also see in these pix, I have fitted a gauge binnacle to the radio speaker ... there was a second one fitted under the dash.. where the Kraco CB used to reside - I have obtained my CB radio license and believe the "fun" of running "pirate" killed the "chase".... I lose interest in CB radio - and don't return to it until 2010 when I go to UHF for the purpose of communicating with road trains when hauling our caravan in retirement.




















We next pick up pix again in 1980 (year of the Moscow Olympics).
I am now married for two years... the poor old bus is suffering - I continue to look after it with the available time I have, but this has now moved the dear old thing very much down the list in my now re-appraised priorities...

I have changed work locations as well - now on suburban trains, which afford me more time at home... and the car is now well away from diesel oil and iron brake dust.

I have returned to shooting slide film, and have now opted to go with the much better Eastman Kodachrome system... it is proving to be an excellent film type for printing large pix from colour slides.
The legacy of which today - is that I can now scan these slides and convert them to digital format - definition is outstanding.

I have begun to get the iron dust out of the paintwork, but sadly - the damage is done.

It doesn't look too bad here, just after being washed.
Further, we can see that I have lashed out and replaced the aftermarket wheel trim with another Torana one.

That "gouge" continues to annoy the living daylights out of me.. I would dearly love to learn how to repair this... but sadly, this doesn't come for another 20 years...

This was probably the last year I ran with the chrome domes and nuts... after this, we start to put the dear old thing back together as original.....but, it is short lived...

Pic..








cont'd...


frats,
Rosco

Very good so far mate,enjoying it

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Despite what you say the paint still looks good in the photos, and in can't really pick the odd wheel trim. Keep going Rosco, I'm hooked.
Cheers
Clay

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Thanks Clay - considering what it was subjected to, and the amount of Porzelak Blue polish I used on it... the paintwork was always "just" another cut away from being great... but, cutting takes it's toll... and soon, we'll start to see the dreaded red primer under the blue come through.. and later the blue under the white roof.... it is 20 years away from a respray of the shot paint panels... and this was at a time when almost everyone was using a "polish" to maintain paintwork - and not a wax or sealer.
I tried the Porzelak Gold hard wax... used it twice, and decided spending a day each time trying to buff it off was not for me... the stuff went on like bee's wax.. and was even harder to buff up... but, it did seal... I stuck with Porzelak blue for many years..... cutting away in ignorant abandon...

I shudder now to think how much paint I took off over all those years... all by hand, a machine has never been used on this vehicle once it came out of the factory.

frats,
Rosco

Ok - we have skipped 1981... I think I started getting into electronics in that year.... ended up building my own complete stereo system, an "Electronics Today International" Series 5000... still have and use it... had to do something with all that theory knowledge gained from sitting the Ham radio certificate....

We leap from 1980 to 1982.....


I was rear ended late at night on 11th August, 1982 - the night before my son was born... a young bloke in a Sandman went to sleep.. put a slight twist in the rear left bumper (still there), holed the left over-rider (later replaced) and smashed my tail-light lens.... along with putting dents in the rear beaver by the bumper irons... that was all I suffered.... they towed his Sandman away... oozing coolant and with a nose that looked like a Concord on landing approach...

I was donated an FB for spare parts just after that - the car was a mess... and I graciously accepted the carcass for whatever I could canibalise from it. Looking back, if it were looked at in today's terms - it would most certainly have been a most suitable restoration.. it really wasn't that bad... "bits" were falling off it... but the full body was intact and it was driven to me....

It didn't take long for someone to spot it in storage at the rear of my EK ... came to see me asking for parts for his girlfriend's FB... the FB parts were of no use to me, and I obliged... asking for some EK spares he told me he had which he promised to return with ... he disappeared with my parts and was never seen again.... lesson learned.

After the arrival of my son and when the new family had settled into routine... it was time to take a good look at the old bus and put a plan together...it was looking tired, and it needed either to be addressed... or sold on - I had nightmares over losing it and I believe this brought some sensibility into the decision...

I decided to restore it as far back to original as I could.. I was now a parent with responsibility.. the "hoon sports" look didn't fit in with us needing a "family" car. I was reaching "middle age" at all of 27 years old - my youth was waning fast and I had responsibilities now... think you understand.

The first thing was to re-fit the full grille and over-riders...... get rid of those stupid fog lamps (which were as useful from the drivers seat as a dynamo bicycle light with a yellow lens would have been)...


And so, here we have the start of re-assembly... It is mid Spring in 1982 - the air is still cold and the evenings are short... I am working on a short strip of driveway near our little cottage.... regular cups of coffee are being hauled up to me as I beaver away with my tools and the parts taken out of storage...
My very limited tools are strewn around on the ground.. I have no workshop, no cover, no concrete... this, folk - is my "garage"... and was so until 1988.... the car lived out in the open from 1972 until 1989.... all 17 years of it.




We continue on adding the full grille..







and the bumper - even if it is a bit loose at this point... it was all going back together, and I felt I was doing justice to the dear old bus...






And finally - those over-riders..... the "sports" look is now gone... we are now looking at the old car as it should always have been.






And in this final pic.... it is a month or so later and I decide that the chrome domes and nuts are no more... and re-fit the hubcaps......
To me, this is the best the dear old thing has looked since 1974....
You might further note, at some stage - I had fitted a "three hole" binnacle gauge mount to the dash.... incorporating temp, vacuum and oil pressure.
The binnacle is still in the vehicle to this day, but is mounted as an "add on" to the cut back Volvo console... in pix taken 25 years later coming 1,000 posts from here....
You can now also clearly see the multi-frame internal rear view mirror.... it was great - but did not suit the EK, which has a "low" roof line at rear.
For the multi-mirror unit to work properly, it needed to be mounted another 2" lower... but would have been almost in line with my straight ahead view.. I put up with this mirror for many years - the original went back in at around 2000.. so, I put up with this for 18 years..






Ok folk, that's it for today..... from here, tragedy strikes as we discover rust in the sub-frame and make a very foolish decision to destroy the vehicle for the next 38 years, which will bring us to today...... bit of water to go under the bridge before then though....

Once we hit the "digital" era... there will be more pix than words (yeah! - you shriek).


frats,
Rosco

Looks great. The trims still give a slightly sporty air to it. I got my sedan a few years later, age 26. It never looked this good. It had already got serious rust which was cut out and soon returned. It had a hard life and went around the clock twice. A fair portion of it at 80mph around rural and remote SA. The stripped shell sits in a mates shed and will probably not see the road again.

Keep going


FB ute fixer upper, EK van on rotisserie

Great story Rosco - enjoying it with my morning coffee -

Yes Clay,
I blew my first motor (B 210600) up in 1975 (forgot to mention that). I did a run from Melbourne to Milton, NSW and back in two days to collect an aunt for my parents 40th wedding anniversary. The car was often at its limit.. and it was 80 - 85 mph... By the time I got home - the entire engine bay was covered in oil... the oil light had not come on, but there was nothing showing on the dip-stick.... I had blown the seals at both the front and rear...
The way the old chap had driven it when running in and for the first 46,631 miles did not prepare it for the thrashing it got in the second half of it's life.
It had done 78,287 miles when I foolishly let Repco have my motor for a "Gold Star" exchange..... motor number B 319144 - it was never a good motor.. it was lumpy compared to the original.
I should have had the original reconditioned, but could not afford the time of having the car off the road.... the change-over was done it just two days on 19th August, 1975.
This motor lasted until I replaced it with the current engine - a red..... on 25th October, 1982.... mileage 152,250.5. The second grey motor didn't quite make the distance of the first, at just 73,963.5 miles.... falling some 4,500 miles short. It still ran, did not burn a lot of oil - but had lost all power. Oil pressure was still up around the 130 psi.... but as my former Office colleague once said of an old Austin he had back in Ireland "wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding"...

It was a disaster for the car when I made some terrible decisions.. which are just a post away.... only a couple of weeks after finally putting the dear old thing back together in the above post..... having it restored back to original was short lived.....

We are shortly going to read of my very poor choices and the issues which were a revolving door for the next 10 years.... yes, everything did fit - but the manner in which they were fitted resulted in some very frustrating events..... hence why I now post whenever opinion is requested that any vehicle in good condition should be left original..... they really are a wonderful car to drive, modify them and they seem to resist and fight anything you do to make them "better"... there was an "ambience" or persona that my old bus lost when I modified it - it has never been the same car since.

I began disassembly of the vehicle on Wednesday 13th October, 1982.... the worst day of its life.

Back soon - we very much go downhill from here for many years....

frats,
Rosco