The real Capri - not the plastic pop-out of recent years   A long-term member of our family is the Ford V6 Capri.     Our Capri was built in 1970 and has had only two owners in all this time. The first owner drove it around Perth, Western Australia, until the beginning of 1974 when Danny traded in his first car - a Burgundy and Doeskin coloured 1962 Wolseley 24/80 - on the Capri. Danny was then 20 and wanted something reliable and sporty but only had a small budget to work with. The Capri, at around $2400, fitted the bill. In 1974, the V6 version of the Capri was also available in limited numbers but the price was a little outside Danny's range. The idea was to move into something more modern and trade up every couple of years or so. Twenty eight years later - the 32 year old Capri is still with us. Perth 1974   Our Capri started its life fitted with a four cylinder 1600 cc cross-flow engine and Borg Warner 35 three speed automatic transmission. The body shape was well ahead of its time and with its sporty look, metallic blue paint job and brilliant white interior, it really turned heads. Indeed, the body shape withstood the test of time and still looked modern for years and years.   Danny continued to drive the Capri around Perth - as far north as Yanchep and as far south as Busselton - until he moved to East Sale in Victoria, in mid-1975. On relocation, the Capri was driven from the west coast to east coast of Australia, a distance of around 3,000 km. This  journey included the famous Eyre Highway across the Nullabor, which in those days encompassed a 430 km stretch of very rough dirt road  ..... er, actually, it was mud. When Danny moved to Perth in 1973 the Nullabor was a rough dirt road - lots of corrugations, potholes, heat and bulldust - nearly shook the Wolseley apart. But when travelling east in the Capri, the rains had arrived and almost the entire unsealed section was slippery red mud. Not wanting to tackle the mud by night, Danny slept in the car overnight at Eucla and then headed out across the mud early next morning. With a 7 x 5 ft trailer in tow and everything he owned on board ....  the combination fish-tailed all over the place, but surprisingly, the Capri did not get bogged once and managed to get across under its own steam. Many less fortunate cars and trucks were seen bogged up to their axles along the way though.    4 Cylinder 1600 cc Cross-Flow Engine By early 1975, the Capri's paint job was starting to look a little tired. Metallic paints do not fare well under the Ultra Violet bombardment of the Australian sun and the roof and other sections of the paint started crazing. A paint job was in order. So during Easter of that year Danny took the car to his brother's house in Melbourne (a panel beater) and repainted it - the same metallic blue. The engine was removed to paint the compartment, the engine had a few gaskets changed and the engine given a Rocket Red paint job. During the period 1975-76, when the Capri was based in Sale, Victoria, it roamed around Gippsland, from Bairnsdale in the northeast to Melbourne in the south. In mid-1976, Danny moved to South Australia. There, it spent most of its time on the roads of Adelaide but made the occasional trip to Melbourne, Canberra and Port Macquarie on the New South Wales central coast.  The next milestone in the Capri's life came in 1978 when the head gasket developed a water leak, the engine hydraulic locked and damaged a piston and some bearings. A reconditioned replacement engine was installed but it was a low quality job (from an allegedly reputable firm) that had a very short service life and required a rebuild by 1981. That was done, again at Danny's brother's house in Melbourne, along with a recondition of the BW 35 transmission - piece of cake really.   San Remo Green with Tan Vinyl Roof and Rocket Wire Rims    During the engine and gearbox rebuild, Danny also took the opportunity to give the Capri a real face-lift by painting it a light metallic green (Honda's San Remo Green) and having a tan vinyl roof applied. The bumpers were buffed up and given a satin black paint job. A black spoiler was fixed to the boot lid. The latter looked good at the time but the screw holes caused the boot lid to rust and had to be replaced a few years later - lesson - don't drill holes in boot lids. The standard Capri tail lights (very small and ineffective) were removed, a bit of panel surgery performed, and Holden Torana Sunbird tail lights were installed. They look like they were made for the Capri. Best favour Holden ever did Ford. Inside, a Pioneer cassette stereo system was installed and the standard black carpet was replaced with a rich tan. The white vinyl trim remained in reasonably good condition. Sunbird Tail Lights While the car was being refurbished a neighbour popped in to admire the work underway. He remarked in passing that he had a brother on a farm who used to have a V6 Capri and that he had a broken V6 engine and assorted parts still lying in his shed - was Danny interested? Well, yes .... and the project to turn the Capri into a V6 began. It took some years to accumulate all the parts necessary to convert the Capri into an almost genuine V6. The engine was purchased from the farm for $200 (Danny's brother beat him down from $250) and came fully complete with clutch (such as it was), gearbox and drive shaft. That combination was selling elsewhere at the time for $1,000 (albeit in working order). We discovered that the engine had broken a piston rod in its previous life but clearly continued to run on five cylinders. The owner had driven the car, riding the clutch until it had finally burnt out and welded itself to the flywheel, at which time he pulled that engine out and put another in. We bought the engine in the same condition as it was pulled out - one of the pistons and its con rod was totally missing - a mass of very small metal fragments in the sump was all that remained. Normally this much damage and abuse would spell the end of an engine but as luck would have it, damage to the bore was minor and above the stroke, the crankshaft was trashed and needed replacing and the other bearings were somewhat worse for wear having enjoyed running on metal filings during its clutch riding days. In the big scheme of things though, it was all easy to repair or replace and the engine purchase  was still a bargain.                             Ignore the cutie - its the white trim on show here The hunt for V6 parts was assisted by an acquaintance of Danny's who also had a V6 Capri but had whipped that out and replaced it with a Windsor 302 V8. Danny purchased many V6 parts from him at bargain prices. The restoration process began with a gearbox overhaul - before the Capri, and lots of boxes of parts, were relocated with the family (yes Danny had accumulated a family by this time) to Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory - November 1984. By the time the Capri hit the streets of Canberra the trim was really starting to show its age and Danny was also a bit nervous about driving around in low back bucket seats - whiplash waiting to happen. So he prowled the wreckers looking for high back bucket seats - which he found - from a late model Escort. But while searching for the seats he chanced upon a Capri rolling shell at the wreckers, complete with V6 bonnet but minus the engine and gearbox - a plan was hatched. The V6 would go into a totally different body - and the paint job of choice was to be a Black and Gold John Players Special - as per the racing teams of the day. To cut a long story short, the V6 engine was rebuilt in Canberra during 1985 and installed in the rolling shell before further restoration was interrupted by another employment related move - this time to Townsville, North Queensland.  But before this happened, Danny discovered that the cold winter weather in Canberra (aided by a persistent electrical system fault) was hell on batteries. The car kept getting caught with a flat battery and with an automatic transmission precluding push starting, Danny decided to convert the car to a manual gearbox. A Cortina MK 1 gearbox, compatible bell housing and clutch assembly was sourced; and a single piece drive shaft was fabricated at a local engineering shop. The conversion was trouble free. From 1985 to 1991, little work was done on the V6 project. During this time, the Capri was based successively in Townsville, Brisbane and then back to Canberra where it largely just commuted around town, although the rare long distance trip did occur. During this time, the rolling shell was also relocated to Telegraph Point, NSW, where Danny's brother, Peter, had moved onto a farm. It quickly became apparent though, that the rolling shell had far too much rust and too many dents to make it practical to restore (especially with a high gloss black JPS paint job) so the engine was removed, the body stripped of useful parts and disposed of. By 1992, the green paint job and vinyl roof were declared well and truly past their use-by-date. A few years under the tropical sun had taken its toll. So Danny drove the car to Telegraph Point and spent two weeks of very long days overhauling the cosmetics. Because of the very poor state the paint was in (not to mention having to deep-six the vinyl roof and restore the metal surface), the vehicle was totally stripped down to a metal shell. Paint stripper was used to help "deglaze" the many layers of paint accumulated over the years. This had the unfortunate side effect of chewing out any body filler that had been applied to small dents and surface irregularities over the years. This meant the entire body had to be refilled and resmoothed where necessary. Underneath the car was cleaned up and a rust proofing / sound deadening coat of bitumen paint was reapplied. Danny was very ably assisted by his brother Peter, specialising in panel beating and spray painting. The paint chosen was a two-pack 1992 Celica Red. It was a last minute choice, having only just spotted a red Celica on the way to purchasing paint. It saved lots of time in otherwise having to troll through colour charts and try to imagine what the colour would look like when applied to the car. As it turned out though, the chosen red was much brighter and more orangey than intended, so the car isn't quite the red originally anticipated - but it's done now.
	(click on thumbnails for larger pics)
By now, all the V6 drive train components had been sourced and were ready to go so Danny took the car to Port Macquarie for the engine conversion.  Enroute, the four cylinder started spitting oil and billowing smoke and only just made it up the steep hill to the farm, virtually on the edge of extinction. It would not have made another 50 km. A cop pulled Danny over along the way because of the smoke trail he was leaving but decided not to ticket him when he discovered that the engine problem had indeed only just happened that morning - as evidenced by an otherwise clean and tidy engine compartment and underbelly sprayed with fresh oil. The conversion started off relatively straight forward. The engine compartment was gutted and painted; the V6 was painted red to suit the body colour (it had previously been painted gold to match the originally intended black and gold JPS colour scheme); and the wiring loom rejigged to suit the different engine and electrical requirements. The battery tray had to be relocated to the opposite side of the compartment and provision made for the much larger V6 radiator. Danny was assisted throughout by his brother, Peter and nephew, Glenn. The days were long and hard, as so much had to be done at once, but everything went according to plan ... until disaster struck.  After about a week, the V6 was in and ready to go for the first time. After about two minutes of cranking to get fuel and oil flowing, it burst into life. But after burning off the cobwebs and then running relatively smoothly for about 40 seconds, it suddenly came to a grinding halt. There was then much cursing, wringing of hands and banging of heads, before we finally decided the engine had seized and needed to come out and be stripped down to find the cause. And the cause took some finding. After lots of searching, the culprit turned out to be the small gasket that goes between the base of the oil pump pick-up pipe and the engine block - the gasket had no hole - it hadn't been punched through. It is still a mystery how the engine got assembled without the faulty gasket not being noticed, but that's history now. The only apparent damage was a few  crankshaft bearings - but the lot were replaced (after waiting a day or two for them to be delivered from Sydney). The engine was cleaned up, reassembled and put back in the car. But disaster struck again on the restart - the engine ran for about 20 minutes but then started issuing a huge repetitive squeak. Another heart-in-the-mouth mystery. To cut a long story short, the engine cleanup after the previous seizure was less than perfect and corners were cut. Instead of totally tearing down the engine to be sure all the metal swarf had been removed, just solvent and air pressure was used. Clearly that wasn't good enough and enough fine metal debris had remained to chew out one of the conrod bearings during the second starting attempt. The squeak was caused when that particular piston came under load on its firing stroke - remove the spark plug and no squeak. Sounds simple but that took a long time to diagnose. Another engine removal, more bearings and another strip clean of the engine - this time a complete teardown. By now, Danny had run out of holiday leave and had to return to Canberra. Leaving the engine in bits on the bench and a new set of bearings ordered, Danny's nephew, Glenn, kindly completed the rebuild. He obviously has the golden touch as he got the car up and running, tuned it and after some test driving, delivered it personally to Canberra a couple of weeks later. What a deal ! And what a car ! The power difference between the old four cylinder and the 3 Litre V6 is amazing - even though the engine is very low-tech and the gear ratios made for quick takeoffs, rather than quiet high speed cruising. After the V6 conversion dramas, the car (and its owners) settled down quite quickly and attention then turned to the interior of the vehicle. However, after only the dash had been reconditioned (vacuformed) and the carpet replaced, Danny's employment took he and the family overseas for two years. After expending so much effort on the vehicle (and having had the car for 20 years) it was decided to put the car into storage for two years. So the Capri went for a holiday at the local U-Stow-It. It was late 1993. In January 1996, The Capri again saw the light of day. Requiring only a new battery, HT leads and spark plugs (a misfire had developed the day before it went into storage), the car quickly lept into life. It then journeyed with the family to its new home in Brisbane, where it spent the next two years commuting about 70 km per day into the countryside. Most of it was relatively trouble-free. The radiator core needed replacing after a while (probably damaged by sitting idle in storage for two years) and a relatively major breakdown occurred when a couple of teeth on the fibre timing gear sheared, causing some valves to clash with the pistons. Luckily it happened at low speed and the subsequent engine noise sounded worse than it really was. It was eventually rectified quite simply with some new valves, a little head refurbishment work and a gasket set. The pistons were undamaged.  In 1998. the Capri moved back to Canberra for its third time prowling around the streets of the capital. In the intervening period it has been trouble-free, but of late has developed both a clutch and gear shift lever problem that will require minor surgery.  So here we are in 2002. The Capri is now in its 33rd year and still going better than Mr Ford probably ever expected. It still needs its interior refurbished, the engine is getting a little tired again and could do with an overhaul in the next year or two but it drives well (overlooking the temporary clutch problem) and the body is still in excellent condition. And its future ? Well believe it or not, it's up for sale - looking for a good home, so to speak. We bought a Nissan Patrol last December and are busy kitting it out for serious off road driving - that has now become our project car and consumer of spare time. We also still have the fully kitted out Subaru 4WD wagon - another consumer of time. So it is getting more difficult to find the time and money (and dare I say, enthusiasm) to maintain the fleet. It's time to let someone else have a go and finish the restoration project. . . . . . . . . . . and before you ask, kids - no you can't have it - Danny will only end up getting suckered into maintaining it for another 20 years or so !

Footnote: The Capri has been registered in WA, SA and the ACT  It has been garaged in Perth, East Sale, Adelaide, Townsville, Brisbane (twice) and Canberra (three times) It has mercifully been spared from any major collisions - the only damage being: 1974 - Skidded into a truck that tried to cross a very busy road and then stopped dead across the lane (FR guard replaced) 1979 - Impact by another vehicle turning left without indicating (FR guard repaired) 1981 - Passenger door damaged by another car reversing into it (door skin replaced) 1982 - 1600cc minor engine fire - fuel hose leak dripping on distributor - known design fault (1600cc bonnet repainted)

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