We're fixing my first car to drive down the same first road

Australian 1956 Holden Special Sedan.
I am the second owner. First owner was Mr. Reginald O' Neill, my grandfather's brother. Reg bought the car, new, as part of a run-out deal , via United Motors and his employer, General Motor's Holdens (Woodville plant). Reg worked his whole working life in the upholstery dept. at Woodville. Reg lived a bike ride away in Alberton.

I bought the car from Reg in 1980 for $190.00. I went to his Edwardian villa on a Saturday morning with my father to inspect it. Reg asked to drive the car one more time down the driveway, as his licence had been revoked on account of his failing eyesight. I recall he got very close to the house wall performing this manouver- may have touched the wall. I recall he had a tear in his eye.

It was one of the first cars in my family. It was Reg's only car as far as I know. He used to cart his disabled daughter around in the car.

The car was in reasonable shape for the price. It appeared OK on the outside, better inside, and fairly well mechanically. The engine had 96,000 on it and was tired. Driveline was fine. It appeared to be a good car with a tired engine. It had rust in the sills and particularly the boot, where the car often was dipped into the Port River, at the boat ramp.

As we off & away'ed in first gear, Reg yelled 'Wait-up!'. I got out. He said " I have something you may like to 'jazz her up with'. We walked down the driveway and into his little depression-era, cobbled-from-flat-tin tin shed.
Reaching into the dark rafters, he produced a pair of OEM NASCO fender skirts and a tin of Duplicolor cream lacquer paint. Of course, I accepted..

I drove the car for several years, had the boot rust fixed, shot it in primer, and then again in the original Frankston Cream. I drove the car to the 1983 ASRF Street Rod Nationals in Mildura, as a hanger-on. The engine eventually gave out, after too many pulls up through the Adelaide hills each work day. In the meantime, I had discovered that my brother's old chrome yellow business sedan was sitting in a suburban front yard. I bought it, retrieved the 105 mph hopped- up engine, then sold the body. I installed the engine into Reg's FJ. Being young, I had no idea on setting float bowls on dual Strombergs. It ran fine until under load. It was undrivable. I bought a Fairlane on 30% interest.

I stripped the FJ back to bare metal, chucking parts unlabelled into boxes. Eventually I ghosted some primer onto it, with some colour on top. It ended up under a bitumen tarp in my brother's yard from 1988 until 2013. I started to restore again, but it stalled. It is hard to restore a car with no money. It is hard to restore a car that is 15 miles away.

So here we go again. The means to do it have arrived. Car is 90% complete. Budget will be tight- $30K. At that price, I think I'm happy with an almost- standard build. Headers, lowering, mild shaving and a hint of custom work. I may go further wth the custom thing later, but I'm staying near stock for now. Mom wants to ride in it as she remembers it with her uncle..

Motivation is family history. Also, when car is done, it will be driven onto the same road upon which I self-taught myself to drive. Reg's FJ, the very same car on the very same road.

 

Here it is in June last year, out of hibernation and on it's way to the shop where my brother and friends are helping me fix her up. I'll post updates in the next day or two, it's late here. There's a few twists literally emerging in the fix, you'll see.

 

I'll prolly be playin' catch-up more often than not with my lo-fi photo entries. We started this thing off with me & my pal Mark stripping paint back to bare metal, one panel at a time, by nhand with tungsten blades, or with paint stripper. This is a '56 Holden, last year of this first series which debuted in 1948 in Australia. These, believe it or not, were, and still are extremely popular, kinda like the '55 Chevy of Australia. They still have a big following and large dedicated club network .

The stripping was the first thing. The budget is modest on this build. I'm leaving the front clip on. Most parts in the front end are new/ restored but I will go thru & re- check later. Stripping has revealed rust/ damage in
• cowl vent. attaching hinge broken. I found a cherry cowl vent in a now-gone yard of 2500 cars, then lost it. The next day we knew someone going out there to the yard and told them of it. In this massive old yard, they found it and bought it for me for 30 bucks.
• left hand inner & outer sill, rear dogleg- collision and rust. rear LH corner of car crushed 1/2 inch inward. More soon.
• rust in rear lower roof area L & R and LH upper trunk channel
• rust rear RH body lower corner
• front floors gone
Plus a few minor areas in fenders
Some blasting here & there (inner fenders, doors, hood)

 

Tomorrow, we are installing a new inner LH sill. This follws intense repair to dogleg & B pillar & door aligning the last few weeks; This is a photo before we started;
yuck. Door always needed a good slam. big crease is seen near that wood tip
The primer grey panel was cold chiseled out of a donor car in 1984. finally using it.

This is how the LHS looked before repair, looking rearward. A new outer sill had been roughly installed in '83 in order to make the car look OK to any cop's eye (from a distance, obviously). I had done a nice thick Bondo job here. Seemed a shame to scrape it off..



rusty wheelwell replaced- first welding job



These chassis-less cars are light (2280 lbs). So brace yourself before you hack.

 

Installed (tacked) inner sill on this fucked-up LH Side yessdy. We've lost 8,9 or10 mm somewhere between inner & outer sill. WTF. Also Had an alignment issue with LHR door window pillar channel, which appears to be corrected using a hydraulic jacK & wood bearers as per workshop manuals.

 

Whoops, sorry for the '64 Galaxie drawing.

 

Why sorry it’s cool
Dan

 

Nicely hand-fabbed 'A' pillar base (LHS).

 

So we have the rear dogleg buttoned up and spent Thursday standing around figuring how to find 1/2" between the floor and the outer sill, which we intended to tack in. This has occupied us for a few weeks, no, longer.
We deduced that the sill (repro) was a pretty crude thing, with tired die pressings. Nevertheless, a bit of heaving and muscling (by hand) on the bench, and I managed to create a roll in the panel to the point where it all lines up pretty nice. We went for coffee after that work and I forgot photos- next week.
I'm off to get a back massage.

 

Love it!!

 

So today Geoff apparently buttoned up the outer sill. I was not there. I was there yesterday, doing the goofy classic chore of scraping crap off the underfloor, subframes etc. I tracked grease all over the new paving and later on at Mom's place for dinner, so I was a popular boy.
Geoff is looking forward to wrapping up this LHS, it's been a twisted rusty mess. How the car did not break on the transporter over to where it now sits- who knows? A few stitches of weld held fast..

Most of the servicable components in the front end are new, just thrown in. Stripping the gunk off the underside of the car is a job for a rocket-scientist like me, with a tungsten blade, pain, and swear words.

 

Mild- filled filler neck, slammed, custom grille, shave.. Doubt I'll get there this time, time & dough is tight and just getting this thing sound is taking all resources. That's what you can get when choosing a car on sentimental grounds.

 

Nice one mate - remember those from when I was downunder between 1986-1987, there were quite a few done up or running around in primer with souped up engines! Am envious of being able to retain the car in the family, wish I had my dad's 64 compact Fairlane but that has gone to the big scrapyard in the sky long ago... Lots of hard yakka but it looks like you're on the right track. I'll be following this.

 

I was running around in this car in '82-3 in grey primer / 3 inch wide whites. It looked so good, I'm tempted to redo it that way.
I had a novelty toy- a hollow rubber plucked turkey chicken- life sized. I fixed it to the hood thru the 2 bolt holes. The chicken had a long neck. It would lay flaccid on the hood. Would you believe it, at 35 mph the head sprang erect on the chicken. It was a speed limit indicator. Very functional.
Some cops with no sense of humour told me to remove it.
Anyway, these cars look sweet in grey primer. with big wide whites. I like the shape of these cars. Similar to a scaled- down Cadillac 60. Considering the styling of them emenated out of Detroit, the connection is interesting from a historic view.
Long hood/ short trunk- like a Mustang. At least one was customised with Mustang details. The Mustang was a big deal, and right in the middle of the hey-day of customising these early Holdens.

 

Aussie cops with no sense of humor - perish the thought (yes In did have close encounters, what with the XB Falcon F__k Truck I had when I was downunder). The primer thing had good reason though, it allowed the sun to bake all the layers of primer, filler primer and filler so they sank before you did the final flatting for the topcoat... Used the same trick here in Austria and even with our weak sun it worked.
Styling: there was a Pommy version, the Vauxhall Velox - sort of. But it didn't pull it off as well as the humpy because of the short wheelbase...
I almost had a Holden myself, the only HQ Monaro in Austria but decided to walk away (owner messed it up with a Mopar 360/727 and Cherokee rear, which would have made it totally illegal here, and I don't have a proper garage needed to do a GTS 350 rep, so)... I think the car is in Oz now.

 

Yeah the Velox is nowhere near the Holden for styling. There's a very distinct trickle-down of Harley Earl/ Ed Glowacki/ Cadillac in the details and shape of the Holden. Quite the feat with a 103" 2250 lb car.

 

But there's worse than the Vauxhall, the Standard Vanguard or the Austin Atlantic Cutting & pasting US styling into a short wheelbase Pommy chassis is a risky business. So yes, Holden did a far better job...

 

My paternal grandfather drove on of those Vanguards- pretty solid cars so it's said. Ugly to our eyes but probably looked pretty swingin' to car-starved post-WW2 vets.
A fella 90+ y.o. drives around here in an A90 Atlantic. Heard they are an OK car over the road, not slow? Certainly awkward styling ( flowing English form wrestles USA jet-age)- details & quality are charming. 'The Automobile' (UK) did a good look at one a year or two ago.
Worked on the car today. More later.

 

Probably a bit late to help but when I had an FJ panelvan a few years back, the driver's door always sat out at the bottom like 75% of the restored ones I've seen at car shows. I got hold of an original Holden workshop manual which showed the structural dimensions. When measured from bottom door hinge to other side I foung a big discrepancy. I worked out that when you cut the floor sections out or they rust away completely, the bottom of the pillar springs out. Most people just stick a new section in the floor without checking door gaps.
On the panelvan the floors had been replaced sometime so were in good nick so I cut a large slit in the floor near the bottom of the pillar, welded a tag on the centre floor hump and used a turnbuckle attached to the bottom door hinge to pull the pillar in. When it measured to specs I took it a tad more and tacked the slit and checked the door gaps. All good, welded it up. The door gaps need to checked before any bracing gets done.

 

Hey Spanners I'm on board with you there. My first thought on this car was to consult those factory drawings. It did not happen, and we've been since thru our share of 'fuck around and find out'. We'er good, budget is on track too. I heard of a FJ ute six-figure horror show project -gone -wrong the other day. Whole shell covered in 1/8" of bondo. 'Professional' restoration shop.
BTW I have a nice hot 132" & Celica 5 spd- go nice in a HAMBster?
Anyway, it's now a done deal on the left side. Not sure I remember where to next re welding. The 1982 trunk floor replacement is sub- par and may be next. We crawled around my nephews nice older rust free resto'd car to gain notes.
I 'm stripping dirt, scale off the front clip with knife& wire wheel etc. It will be cleaned up enough for KBH satin black sealer. I'm also going to pull the steering box and check that the lash is OK. I went thru the box about 5 years ago and it seemed OK. Just to be sure.

 

A few years ago I did the repairs on a mate's FJ panelvan and then he handed it over to a 'professional 'spray painter who then sprayed it all over with a thin coat of bog, or Bondo if you prefer. After 2 years the paint and primer bubbled and lifted off but left my repair work intact. The 'professional' painter was nowhere to be found.

 

I'll round up some photos soon. Bodywork has continued but I have been hands-off any actual work on the car myself- my bro is doing the welding. Like I say, photos soon.
I don't like to shitpost, but be aware of some inconvenience when dealing with Old Era Services. His stuff ( replacement panels (sills. etc.) are really nice pieces- accurate, nice steel. Real good stuff. But hey, dude- 3 times in a row he has sent the ordered piece (each piece a different piece with a different part #) for the WRONG SIDE of the car. Last time I stressed 6 times to him I wanted RHS. He sent LHS. Again.
Luckily we have been able to rework each piece to suit. But it's wasted labour that has cost me money.

 

Bugger. Sounds like many small businesses - good product, bad organization. At least you're in the same country, 90% of what I need has to come from the US and with wrong or faulty parts you're basically stuffed... I now use a speed shop in Vienna - yes they get their mark-up but if something is wrong it's their problem so they only work with trusted US sources.

 

Yes these are interesting times with new challenges for both consumer and supplier.
Had a look at the car tonight, no time for photos but will soon. Coming along nicely. The RH sill/ floor thing is nutted out, I've approved leaving the B pillar base as is and repairing fore & aft of it. In the meantime trunk gutter repair . Once these two things are done, there is a small patch in rear corner of rear 1/4, and cowl vent mounts to install, and we are just about ready to go on dent & paint.

 

I dig different builds and look forwards to seeing more progress

I live in the US and have shipped more than a few things to yalls part of the world

The heaviest was a Ford FE 428 crank, I shipped to a guy in California
He put it in the truck of a car going to Australia
The guy got the car a few months later, handed the crank off to a mutual friend who drove it home
Then handed it off to his Friend who delivered it to the buyer

I sold the crank for what I paid for it which was cheap, I had it wet magged and checked for straightness

It was real cheap as to the shipping due to great Folks helping

I still ship all over the world .... I shipped a Mopar 833 OD to Germany via a certain way for $100.00

Ricky

 

Of course the right hand side of the car appeared OK. Until we went to install a new front floor. So, order more sill panels and get to it.
While the welding is going on, I have organised my shed into a workable (barely) space. I am organising things like all hardware restoring/ reconditioning, replacing. I have been concentrating this last week or two on the doors and anything to do with them.
Last photo shows an area of concern- rear spring hangers. Want to make sure this floor which was 'fixed up' in 1984 is a stable platform for the spring hangers.
Gotta make new buttress brackets Back corner RHS hole is for gas tank.

 

Front RH corner of car repaired. All extraneous holes in inner fenders filled too. Getting close to having a nice solid body.

 

Look at this fabulous hand-built wagon. There never was a wagon. Look close at the top rear of the front fender. I 'shopped in 2 louvers. These cars always rust up there, and I like this as an idea.

 

I like that!!

Ben

 

Sorry it's been so long. The floors, rear wheelwells and boot are buttoned up, epoxied, Shutz'ed. Rear end painted, Northern Springs here in Willaston reset my rear leafs 2" lower. I like it. Next, throw steering box back in, get the thing off the hoist. Treat & KBS roof underside. Then straight into bondo/ paint. Little devils are enticing me to do wild paint- but think I'll stick to original 'duo-tone' Frankston cream with cream/corella green (Duco 'Metallichrome') interior (green door caps/ window surrounds/ dash top. Keep Mum happy.