Introducing the Fairlane

I present to you now, the story of a boy and his car. This 1964 Ford Fairlane, which I traded for sight unseen for a wrecked 1965 Triumph Spitfire Mk2. 

Origins

The Fairlane belonged to an Army Buddy, Wes, who you've met in earlier posts.  It was his car in Highschool. It originally came with the infamous Ford 200ci Straight-6 and a two-speed Ford-O-Matic transmission, which candidly I lament swapping out for the HO 5.0 1992 Mustang GT crate motor / AOD with manual shift kit. Because those were such dependable feats of engineering and essentially bullet proof. 

So we did the deal (I can't find any pictures of the Spitfire before, buy I may let Wes's dad do a guest blog on it some time, he's done a number on it). I found my new love sitting on a trailer and no one knew weather she'd run.

There was no carpet, no radio, an extended family of rodents living in the back seat, and it "shifted like a shot gun".

 

But as so often happens with a new love, one over looks the flaws and focuses on the good. And in addition to having a fun new toy and target in which to sink my Afghanistan winnings, it was a nice hobby to keep me out of trouble.

The Early Years

There is something so subtley nostalgic about vintage American Steel that just speaks to me through the ages. In Fall of 2009, the year we got back from the 'Stan, my college ISU for one year only allowed tailgating for the entire game in the parking lot (before and since they always close the parking lot because they think it will make people go to the game, shocking they're still a D2 program).

 

Before this Fairlane, I'd had an '88 Nissan Sentra that I abused nightly as a pizza delivery driver, and kept running via duct tape bailing wire and magic- so I wasn't totally learning from scratch- but this car taught me to be an Engineer (my profession now, you'll see more why in the next section).  So I did little things at first to build my confidence, new carpet, add a radio, etc. 

Oh yea, and those hideous old wheels, well whatever- here I am winning "Residents choice" at a car show in Normal, IL. Pictured with me was a dog who did not like being held.

Creating a Monster

It's too bad I just came up with this idea about blogging my car projects recently. There were a lot of ambitious ones we did on this thing.  So after a year or so of driving around with the old 200ci I had and idea. I had an awful idea. I had a wonderfully awful idea. We'd pull the 200ci and the Ford-o-matic and replace them with a modern 5.0 (original one was from a '86 Crown-Vic) and an AOD. I did some research, it seemed do-able, Wes was down to help- I had a spring break coming up ( I was in grad school at this point). 

I forget where we sourced that old Crown Vic engine, but it was not long for this world- I installed a remote oil filter, and hooked it up backwards which in essence meant the engine was running with out oil. #Engine #Smoked.

But like so many things- getting rid of old stuff makes way for new better stuff. Hence this High Output crate motor for a 1993 5.0 Mustang GT- $1800 from Autozone. 

The trickiest part was marrying the 1964 harness to the 1993 harness, but we made it work, but issues still plague me to this day- I think in an upcoming post / this winter, I'm going to upgrade the brains to a Megasquirt3- and repent for a lot of sins that were committed here.

As I'd said before it's too bad I wasn't blogging back then, I could have dropped lots of little knowledge bombs, like fun fact- the AOD is way to big to fit in older cars' bell housing so we had to cut it out (the bell housing).

This highlights one of my favorite things about this car- if there is ever an issue- i just engineer around it. For instance, I never put sheet metal back down and a couple of winter ago some rats moved in and really wrecked some wires. So then I put the sheet metal in.

So I also replaced the original bench seat with racing seats (again I don't know why). And before I moved to Chicago- I painted it with bomb cans of Rustoleum....

And before you scoff too much it took it from being a 5000 foot car to being a 10 foot car. Also on anything < 1970 you can sort of get away with a quasi-satin sheen.

Today

In 2011 or 2012 when I did the engine was the largest bulk of work, but we've done a bit else since, I mentioned having to re instate the bell housing to keep rats out. We also converted the front to adjustable struts and disc brakes. 

 

And then fixing the things that young Trevor who had very little faith this thing would ever run, then very little followthrough on all the resultant short cuts,  had done. The original connection between the air intake filter (replaced passenger side high beam) and the MAF sensor was done with dryer duct, so here's a patch to that as well as some sloppily done wiring for the electric fans I believe.

And those goofy side pipes, which were objectively cool, finally fell off as time makes fools of every exhaust eventually. But they were not good for city driving (speed bumps).  

So that's it- the story of my not-first love, but a vehicle I'll be working on in upcoming posts, so there's a bit of background.