10 Sep Preparing the Crestline
With the Road to Mandalay rally only a few months away, Rod’s begun the preparation of his 1953 Ford Crestline in earnest.
The engine and doors have been removed with some upgrades taking place in order to get the car ready for its rally debut.
We’ll have more updates on the Crestline’s progress soon.
Bonnet off, engine out, doors off. Doors need to be off to afford better access to the dash which requires a full rebuild with many extra gauges to be added.
The engine in the ’53 has now been removed and is being stripped down for a rebuild.
The pistons are all set to go to the bin because the block has to be rebored and new oversize pistons and rings fitted.
The radiator has been flushed and flow tested and is ready for refitting. My friend Andrea at Red Devil Radiators at my local Coomera radiator shop did the job. The charge for this and the repaint was a coffee! Well actually no, Andrea bought me a coffee! Red Devil are supporters and followers of VA.
The engine has been broken into bits and assessed. As you would expect an engine that is 70 years old there would be issues and there are. The crankshaft that takes #1 piston has been ground 30thou under and the rest 20thou under. The shaft will require a complete regrind so that all journals match and new parts sourced.
This is a new steering box which is “power steering” to replace the existing ‘armstrong’ steering box. This will make it easier to steer at slow speeds and for parking.
The instrument panel will need to be added to so that there is better monitoring of all components. Note the new Tremec 5 speed manual gearbox gear change lever.