Ford blitz ambo project

[Euan McDonald]

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]

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!

[Tony Wheeler]

Having subjected the forum to my childhood reminiscing long enough, I shall fast-forward to the present day which finds me attempting to resume my teenage Ford blitz ambo project after a 38 year interruption.

Here's a few pics to show where I'm at currently. The plan is to mate this ambo body purchased on ebay to the F60S from recent Coolamon clearing sale. Apologies to Ganmain Tony who also had his eye on it - yet another border raid from those dirty Mexicans!

In the short term I'll get it on the road as a cab and chassis and work on the body later.

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TONY4167.jpg

TONY4220.jpg

[Keith Webb]

Originally Posted by Tony Wheeler

Here's a few pics to show where I'm at currently. The plan is to mate this ambo body purchased on ebay to the F60S from recent Coolamon clearing sale. Apologies to Ganmain Tony who also had his eye on it - yet another border raid from those dirty Mexicans!

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!

[Tony Wheeler]

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!

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!

[Tony Wheeler]

Next job was to get rid of those silly little wheels, which IMO are only presentable with 10.50 x 16 chevrons, at least on a medium wheelbase at any rate. I'll need them for the ambo eventually but in the meantime it will be an F60S cab and chassis, which means 20" wheels.

With the backyard being rather soggy I drove around the front and parked on the driveway so as to use the jack (pic 1).

I think you'll agree the 20" wheels are a big improvement. Radiator went back in to allow for extended driving and I set off into the backyard again. Ran out of time to fit a front drive shaft as I wanted to get some laps in before dark.

Handling greatly improved with proper tyres all round. Good traction allowed me to charge round and round the windmill in 3rd gear with full lock on without cutting up the ground much. Got a bit dizzy though so had to go back the other way round for a while!

Had a ball for half an hour or so doing donuts and spinning out on the boggy ground down the back. Made quite a mess down there but I couldn't help going back for more. It's so much fun to hit the gas half way through a tight turn and promptly find yourself pointing back the other way, to take off again in one motion with the back wheels spinning furiously as you fishtail back up the yard, then swing back around the windmill and do it all over again! I fear for the state of my back yard in the coming wet months!

The fun was interrupted when I ran out of petrol, and by the time I'd raided the lawnmower supply it was pretty much dark, so I called it a day and parked next to my F60L. This one I bought from Ian Styles in Temora nearly 2 years ago, but it only came home in March this year. It was the first one I got running. On the back is Keith's SWB GS body, also bought from Ian, which hitched a ride down. It will be coming off shortly to make way for the crane off my F60S. I'll be needing a crane truck here as the shed is too flimsy to hang a block and tackle.

That pretty much brings you up to date with my blitz ambo project so far. I also have a FGT project planned, which I'll present in a separate thread.

[Keith Webb]

Nice work, Tony - she looks so much better with chevron 20" tyres.

Thanks also for sharing your story so well. I can see I'll have to film a segment for the current 'Year of' DVD at your place.