Hard to believe I have been scratching around this poor old truck for a year now and finally managed to get an engineer to come on board with my project. He is coming over in a couple of weeks to do the first inspection on the truck.
My intention is to get it registered for full road use, but I have a fair way to go yet.
The plan is to fit up an xj6 81 model Jaguar front end in the truck. I already have the front end and am in the middle of upgrading it with new bushes, ball joints, rotors and pads.
The truck already has a Mustang II Heidts front end in it, which seems very good, but I wanted a right hand drive truck since I plan to be on the road plenty of times in the old girl. (I am in Australia- just to let you know) - hence the rhd front.
The engineer will be working with me over the next couple of months as the front end gets fitted up, making sure everything conforms to whatever standards are necessary. I don't imagine he will have to worry too much. Jags being massively heavy cars and these front ends are monsters compared to the mustang II unit under there.
This old girl is a bit of a bitsa. Bitsa this bitsa that. She has an identity crisis, having a 327 Chevy heart, Pontiac rear, Chev transmission, and God knows what else. the rest of her is solid steel Ford.




Sad and sorry still! At least she has new wheels! With some luck she won't be idle very much longer!

This is how she looks for now. I sold off the custom Center lines and fitted up some American Racing Torq Thruster II's instead. I like them much more. Less custom, more hotroddish methinks. Thanks guys!
Wish me luck! Will keep you posted!

 

Good luck with the rest of your build - get on the road soon!

DW

 

Good luck on change over(steering) post pic of that, also would post the inspectors comments would like to see his concerns for the jag ifs

 

ok. will do. thanks guys!

 

Yeah, well, the first inspection is over with.
Not a bad report, really. I mean, there's a ton of stuff that still has to be done.
For those who don't know, I am installing an xj6 Jaguar front end in the truck where a lhd Mustang II front end was.
Since I was born a total ignoramus and know little in the mysterious art of fabbing up work, I have left it to an expert to do the front end swap over for me, and will post pictures of its progress just as soon as it goes under the knife (with luck, next month)

Now, what I have to do with my truck to get it fully road registered is not much. I have a set of retractable seat belts but because they don't have an Australian Design Rules safety tag on them, I cannot use them.
I have an issue with the wipers as well, and this was something I hadn't thought of until it was explained to me, and it makes good sense.
I bought a new (from midfifity) wiper motor and arms and spindles and god knows what else, oh, yeah, switch as well, and hooked it all up. Works beautifully - for a left hand car. The arc of the wipers doesn't clean much of the glass on the right hand side, and since that is where I will be sitting, it needs to be replaced.

I asked the engineer what to replace it with and he suggested something like a Jag wiper motor with its long adjustable tube worm arrangement, but I got to thinking that even if I put the jag setup in there, it still might not be much good because the location of the wiper pivots is off center. So, I am thinking now, rather than buy something else, why not cut out the original wiper motor holes and re weld them further along the cowl and weld up the old holes, and then shift the whole wiper mechanism across to accommodate the new hole arrangement? The wiper has a linkage attached to the arms which can be taken out and basically turned over to allow the wiper to swap direction.
My brake master cylinder arrangement was deemed unsafe but that is going to be living under the dash in one of those integrated under dash units.
Apart from that, nothing much else.
Once the front end is in it has to go for a brake test and a decibel test to ensure it is under the range radar. Which I think it is...
Just have to wait until its registered before I think about fitting those Flowmasters. heheh.

Will keep you posted on progress as well go. Thanks guys!

 

Maybe you can find longer arms and wiper blades for the wipers ?
Those ones do look kind of small ? .