Ford Blitz Restoration/Rebuild

[Private_collector]

Euan,

Thanks for the information and the photo.

I will take a good look at the one I have my eye one, when I make the trip up to sellers / givers property. Hopefully that will be this Saturday afternoon. I do like the look of those roofs (rooves?).

An added advantage of the sunshine roof would be not having to do a major rebuild on the roof hatch. I have two that I could make one out of, I guess, but both have rested corners on hinge side. If all corners are the same, that would not be a problem.

This afternoon my Wife tells me the credit card is filling up again, so it stands to reason that my upholsterer would phone only minutes after, to tell me the canvas side curtains will be ready for me some time this week. Thats OK by me though. I really want to get em home and see how they look in place. No point in being the richest one in the cemetary!!!!!

[Private_collector]

Front air duct 1.jpg Front air duct 2.jpg Front air duct 3.jpg
I forgot to mention yesterday, that when I looked over the three radiator ducts I have, they were all less than ideal. With some reluctance, I have come to the conclusion that I will have to make one good one out of two (possibly the three).
Front air duct 4.jpg
This is the side I will be replacing. Someone has had a thorough go at repairing this once before......but failed with the welding. I used to weld like that, sometimes still do

Two of the three remaining sides are not too bad and should be repairable without too much surgery. The third side I did some panel beating on last Sunday. It should be OK with a little skim of plastic filler.

God I hate panelbeating

[Euan McDonald]

Tony,
The sunshine roof would be correct for the F15 but not a F60s. The only truck other than a swb I have seen fitted with a sunshine roof is a #6 gun tractor.

[Private_collector]

While my chassis has been shortened, it's not as short as F15, so I guess that stuffs that! Unless I find someone with a good F15 chassis. It would save me from cross member work on this one too.

I met a guy several weeks ago who said he has a rear cross member I can have but I lost his number somehow.

[Phil Waterman]

Hi

Where was your chassis shortened between the wheels or off the back end?

Cheers Phil

[Tony Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Private_collector

While my chassis has been shortened, it's not as short as F15, so I guess that stuffs that! Unless I find someone with a good F15 chassis. It would save me from cross member work on this one too.

Hi Tony,
I've only joined MLU recently but I've been greatly enjoying your posts, and finding much useful information in your detailed reports of this very fine resto job. Keep up the good work! I'm looking forward to many more hours of enjoyment following your progress!

I've gotten about half way through this thread so I'm not fully conversant with your plans, but one thing I've been wondering about is the chassis. To my mind the F60L chassis is not up to your standards - having been butchered pretty badly towards the rear, and missing what looks to be two crossmembers, as well as all four spring hangers. Those chains give new meaning to the term "fully floating rear axle"!

Also, in using that chassis, you'd need to choose a wheelbase, which for the sake of originality I imagine you'd want to keep standard, ie. medium or SWB. Eventually you may want to put an original body on it, which means sticking to a standard blitz wheelbase. But even then, it would always be something of a "mongrel" chassis, due to the incorrect taper at the rear.

I'm sure you've considered all this so I hope you don't feel I'm insulting your intelligence! It's just that I'm curious about the next installment in the story!

You mention finding someone with a good F15 chassis, which I agree would be ideal. However, judging by the pics in your very first post, the original F15 chassis looks pretty good to me. The rear crossmember appears to be intact (difficult to tell from the pic) with only the rear chassis rails having been docked. A new pair of ends wouldn't be too hard to fabricate, along with the missing gusset plates, as seen in the pic below. You'd probably want to reinforce the weld joint internally, so you could fit a pintle hook and tow stuff without seeing it overtake you on the highway!

One query though...I'm not that familiar with F15 chassis, but is it missing the gearbox mount crossmember? If so, perhaps the one off the F60L would fit.

I can't quite discern the front axle in the pics, which looks to be original F15, but with 6 stud hubs fitted. Very weird! Almost looks like F8, which would be extremely unlikely.

Of course, you could always get hold of an F15A chassis and go 4WD! Depends what you want to do with it I guess. I'm told the F15 is much lighter to steer, and I've certainly seen Keith throw one around corners!

As you mention, an F15 chassis would allow you to use the sunshine roof and still keep it original (as would an F15A chassis, like Euan says). Personally I'd go with the sunshine roof, I reckon they're a good Aussie feature, quite handy in hot weather I imagine. Besides, you've already Australianized the floor, so why not the roof as well!

Anyway, looking forward to the next exciting episode....

Cheers,
Tony

[Keith Webb]

Originally Posted by Euan McDonald

Tony,
The sunshine roof would be correct for the F15 but not a F60s. The only truck other than a swb I have seen fitted with a sunshine roof is a #6 gun tractor.

And that was a prototype.

[cliff]

I have seen one Chev. Australian Pattern Ambulance with what appears to be a Sunshine roof and this photo is one which I modeled my 1/35 scale model on.

[Private_collector]

Guys, my F15 chassis had been very much modified by a previous owner. That chassis was 'adapted' to fit modern engine and gearbox, so a great deal of crossmember mods were done to accomodate, thus buggering it for economical repair. Tony, the vehicle this chassis belongs to has become a parts truck. No plans to attempt repair. The rear cross member on the F15 is not nearly good enough, because it is bent and has a section cut out of it, making a replacement essential. Because of all the changes to the F15 chassis, it is basically useless.

The front axle on my F15 may be original, but at some stage, someone has fit later model hubs and wheels from another make of vehicle, Dodge if I recall correctly. Rear axle is definately NOT CMP at all. The chap I bought this from said the owner before had started to turn this vehicle into a 'Hotrod' project. Thats' the way, get a really heavy vehicle and then try to make it go fast. Christ man, BUY A CORVETTE or something......jeez! That truck did come with two rooves and several other goodies which made it attractive.

The chassis of my F60 has definately been shortened, but I am grateful it is only from the rear, not middle. Axle has been moved forward, and this seems to have been done well. I did a test fit of springs before I pulled them apart, everything lined up OK and measured same on both sides! I do have all the spring hanger brackets for this vehicle, and overrider bump stops as well. In fact I have several additional spares of these, should one or more prove to be less than ideal. I couldn't tell you WHY the prior owner decided to disassemble to extent that he did.....and then just stop work and leave truck to suffer weather damage etc, but that's what happened. Tony, the two rear cross members you refer to would include one which was bolted in place. This piece, and a spare, is currently on one of my parts shelves. Apart from the absolute rear member, there are no further parts I need for the F60 chassis.....as far as I can tell! I am planning to replace the very front cross member, becuase I don't like the extent of cracking around bumper bolt areas. A competent welder could easily repair this, but I already have a perfect replacement which came on the piece of chassis that was attached to an engine I bought ages ago. That piece of chassis also had both cross members that engine bolt to (of course), so I COULD redo the F15 chassis back to original if so inclined. I'm not really!

While it may seem a bit of a waste to scrap the F15 (or Frankentruck), it did donate two quite usable doors to my F60 rebuild. I have searched high & low, and not seen too many doors in ANY condition recently. Having said that, I do have three spare doors that might come in handy one day, but they are almost RUBBISH!

I think I have written than I met a fellow around 4-5 weeks ago who happens to have a Ford rear cross member I can have, free.

Pity I can't find his phone number.........yet!

He also has a Chevrolet CMP for sale at $1400, which he says runs, stops and is complete. Not of interest to me but when I find the phone number, I will arrange to go inspect and take photos in case anyone else may want to buy it.

[Tony Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Private_collector

That piece of chassis also had both cross members that engine bolt to (of course), so I COULD redo the F15 chassis back to original if so inclined. I'm not really!

Yes, I understand perfectly now. Sounds like there's a lot more damage to that F15 chassis than I realized. With chopped rails and virtually no usable crossmembers, there's not a lot to work with! Plus you'd have to find some F15 front hubs, which is a tall order in iteslf, and that's assuming the stub axles haven't been modified as well. It also needs a rear axle, and F15 ones are slightly different from 4x4 models.

It's good to strive for originality, but there's a critical mass of damage and alterations and missing parts beyond which you lose interest in trying to rectify everything. I'd go the extra yards for a FGT chassis because they're rare, but unless you specifically want an F15, there's no real point here.

I've also just remembered that you have some very nice 11.00 x 20 tyres...which look so much better than 16s IMO. Plus they look best with intermediate wheelbase IMO - I've always considered the medium wheelbase with 20" tyres to have the most aesthetically pleasing proportions.

Thanks for your reply BTW Tony, I can see now where the project is going. Under the circumstances I'd take exactly the same approach as you. In fact I already did! My first resto was F60L shortened to F60S, and it came up a treat (see pics).

As you can see the rear crossmember was cactus, and the gusset plates had been torched through when the chassis rails were docked (why was this so commonly done?!! ) I think the rear crossmember on my first blitz (the bent and plated chassis) was salvageable, but not the gusset plates, and I never got around to finding some more. Apart from that, all I had to do was move everything forward 24", and remove the extra F60L crossmember (the rearmost bifurcated one, which lies 24" behind the front one, to fill the extra F60L length).

As an interesting aside - I retained the F60L two-piece tailshaft set up, which saved me having to find an F60S tailshaft (which runs directly from transfer case to diff). IIRC, I was able to use a spare front drive shaft, which conveniently proved to be exactly the required length. I could be wrong, but I don't recall getting the F60L one shortened. Anyway it was a good move I reckon, which bought me a little extra ground clearance.

In your case Tony, if you can't get hold of an original rear crossmember, I'm sure you could get one bent up from flat quite easily. Maybe chop out a section of the damaged F15 one for them to work off. Likewise the gusset plates - if you don't have any for a pattern I can send you some pics and dimensions.

Anyway I'm looking forward to seeing it shaping up as an F60S, or thereabouts. Having seen the work to date I'm sure it will be an exceedingly tidy job, and very hard to pick as non-original. And I certainly wouldn't worry about the sunshine roof being non-original (which we don't seem to know for sure anyway).

Cheers

[Euan McDonald]

Originally Posted by cliff

I have seen one Chev. Australian Pattern Ambulance with what appears to be a Sunshine roof and this photo is one which I modeled my 1/35 scale model on.

Intresting Cliff,
Note the sun compass mount above the windscreen in the AWM pic, this mount is not uncommon to sunshine cabs.

On your model i'm not sure about the canvas fixing along the front edge as the canvas returns under a metal angle that is held by two wing nuts.

[cliff]

Originally Posted by Euan McDonald

Note the sun compass mount above the windscreen in the AWM pic, this mount is not uncommon to sunshine cabs.

On your model i'm not sure about the canvas fixing along the front edge as the canvas returns under a metal angle that is held by two wing nuts.

Thanks Euan. The photo you see was the only reference I had to the Sunshine roof at the time so if you could send me photos of the fixings of both Chev and Ford for my reference only I'd appreciate it as I have never seen a real one.