This is a car I bought nearly a decade ago from a fellow in Shepparton, who had recently traded it in with the original owner.
I wasn’t allowed to buy anything other than a Ford. When I once bought a VT Holden, Dad got home from work and said: “I hope you bought a house to park it in!” That car didn’t last long.
The driveline in the XR is a 289 Windsor with three-speed Cruise-O-Matic C4.
We’ve left the body and trim, other than to polish it and make it look as good as it can. It was so original, right down to having a pile of owner books and receipts in the glovebox, that we couldn’t bring ourselves to mess around with it.
I like the Sultan Marone colour and the fact it’s a Fairmont V8. It’s all fully optioned. In my opinion, the XR is the pick of the four shapes in this series. Dad’s XW (featured last year in Unique Cars #498) is fantastic, but I prefer this shape. It still has a very strong Mustang influence, particularly on the rear – they advertised it as the mustang-bred Falcon.
There’s no power steering – we call it Armstrong steering! It had a lot of options, including the V8, front disc brakes and the radio. I believe Fairmonts came with bucket seats, however, it has the parchment-coloured trim rather than the more usual black or burgundy.
When the fellow rang and said he had one, I went and had a look and said I’ll have it, straight away. It had original hubcaps on it, a time capsule. Little things like the steel horn ring are still in place.
I believe it may have been a one-owner car, originally bought to tow a caravan. He ended up in a job that included a company car, so this one didn’t get as much use as they might have anticipated.
With the car being so original, we had no intention of restoring it. However, after a drive out to the Dookie Hotel for lunch, I did the usual check-over once it cooled down. Under the radiator cap was a pink sludge. The colour suggested there was transmission fluid involved. I then checked the transmission and it looked like a pink milkshake.
In these old girls the transmission cooler ran inside the bottom tank of the radiator, and in this case it had split so trans fluid was being pushed into the cooling system and vice versa. That’s what started the rebuild.
We got the radiator repaired and had a think about what to do with the cooler, as we weren’t keen on housing it in the radiator. In the end, Barry came up with a solution using two small coolers hidden out of sight, so it looks stock when you look inside the engine bay.
We removed the transmission, a C4, drained it and had Wayne, an expert mate of Dad’s, pull it apart and freshen it up.
While it was out, we thought we might as well fix the rear main seal in the old Windsor. And if you’re in there, maybe we should pull the sump off and have a look.
Of course, you keep going and going. Our friend Wayne came around and started checking the tolerances on the bottom end of the motor. When you removed the end caps from the conrods you could see the hard bearing surfaces had worn through.
There was no catastrophic failure and you knew it would be a bit tired – it’s just that it had never been rebuilt in all this time.
We kept the build close to standard. For example we ran with a mild cam for a 351 Windsor and nothing too radical when it came to pistons.
The block was sent to Melbourne for a freshen-up. The people who did that heat it up to operating temperature when they work on it, in the belief it produces a better result.
A Shepparton-based specialist did the heads for us. They’re still the originals, but running bigger valves and have been ported and polished for better flow.
Pretty much all the internals are new, and I’ve kept the original parts.
It’s now running an Edelbrock manifold, painted in Windsor blue, to look like the original, and running a four-barrel Holley carburettor. Meanwhile, we’ve stuck with the original exhaust manifolds and toyed with the idea of dual exhausts. However, the fella who has been working for the family for 30 years baulked at that idea. It meant a lot of drilling and messing with a good original car, so we instead opted for single-exit system in a bigger diameter than standard.
Overall the engine has been trickled up so it has a little more power than the standard GT of the day, but still looks stock when you open the bonnet.
We, of course, freshened-up the brakes and suspension, and stuck with an original-style rubber when it came to doing bushes. It’s fantastic to drive, like a brand-new car from 1967!
The engine is by no means a monster, but it’s just that little bit better than factory. With all the work that Dad put into it, with the steering and suspension it cruises really well.