I bought a 47 year old car because new cars suck.

This is my 1978 XC Falcon and I recently had this car shipped over from New South Wales because its whole life it has lived inland which means it's away from the salt air and away from rusty conditions. It's lived in dry inland New South Wales and when it came to looking for a nice weekend car that was the ideal spot to buy from because anything that lives on the coast is just bombarded with that ocean spray and just rusts away whether you can see it or not and whilst it's not perfect it's registered it's drivable and I can enjoy it right now and recently I was faced with the choice of having to get another car thanks to a local gas bottle delivery driver and whilst looking at some of the ridiculous prices that people want for just little run-around cars just absolute ---- boxes people want insane money the days of getting a cheap run-around car seemed to be over and I thought well if I'm going to spend five six seven thousand dollars on a car that I just used to get from point a to point b and then will only sell at a loss I thought why don't I increase my budget just a smidgen and get a car that's a either going to retain its value or b just go up in value and whilst I am building the XA ute that is realistically five years into a build that's just been panel work and rust repairs and it could potentially be another couple of years away from even being finished so by the time I've reached 10 years of ownership of that XA Falcon I'm probably going to have only driven it one or two years out of that 10 years and to be honest who has that kind of patience that's just ridiculous so I want to drive something right now that's why I bought this XC and had it shipped over here to Western Australia but before I get into modifying it and doing all sorts of crazy and wacky plans that I have for this car we need to get it past the pits inspection here in WA to get WA registration and to get one of these old cars over the pits it's got to be taken straight back to factory and be stock as a rock thus begins the journey of the XC Falcon build. So the first thing that we have to do is bring it in for a service because at the end of the day this is a 50 something year old car and it still has the original 250 cross float engine so we're going drain the oils give it a bit of a freshen up essentially just reset everything so from me owning it I know it's serviced everything's good everything's done and I can keep the service schedule from there. First go every time and that's what I love about this car it hasn't been touched it hasn't been modified molested or anything so it just does what it's supposed to do it starts up when you turn the key you don't need to do any of this crazy stuff you might need to pull the choke out just a little bit depending how cold it is you put it in drive and you enjoy it. Would you look at that a bucket of ---- really the factory 4.1 litre cross flow nothing exciting it's not even the high compression uh version of the cross flow so this really has to go I do have a worked 351 that really is doing nothing sitting in this XA think of that what you will. But for now we're going to do the basics of this service air filter oil would you believe I can't even get spark leads for this thing I couldn't get them locally um that's an online job you have to order these online can't even get them locally but I'm in not that much of a rush to have that done so today I've got spark plugs filter oil just some of the basics and we'll just do a bit of the cleanup because this is going for inspection tomorrow now it's not going to pass the inspection and I know that but if I can get it inspected they can get it up on a horse they can look over everything and just let me know everything that needs to be changed and that way I can order anything that I need and I'm not going to miss out on things I could keep it for another two weeks and change over the suspension from the XA which is all brand new put it onto the XC and fix everything that I think needs to be done then take it over and then have it fail for something silly so I'll take it there now get the list so from the get-go I know exactly what needs to be fixed on this thing now I have already done a trip to rare spares and picked up a big box full of goodies which is right here got a couple of door seals a couple of weather seals boot seals I think that's what's this bailey channel yeah it's a bailey channel for the window rubbers now I have already changed the driver's door handle because if you know anything about these X-Series Falcons the door handles are ---- so that had already clapped out so I changed out the driver's door handle just so I could get in and out of the driver's door because I have been driving this around for a couple of days just enjoying it felt no need to rush and make a video on it but now it's getting inspected tomorrow I'll get this little service done just make it look a little bit fresher take it over to them and see what needs to be done so this looks just about as old as the car itself so if the air filter looks like that pretty glad that we're doing a full service and here is the repco replacement now the box that this was in looks about as old as this is so just goes to show just how many people playing with 250 crossfires just me have a look at this I've just spotted this when I got under the car so we're gonna have a little bit of a better look but holy dilly this rim oh yeah this wheel has come off yeah look at that holy ---- that's um this wheel has come off and it's obviously dropped in here flattened this oh look at that that disc has ground on the road it's even got mud and sticks jammed in it obviously when you're buying a car sight unseen from the other side of the country these are the things that can happen but look I'm not too fussed at the end of the day I've got the car that's what I wanted a nice rust-free straight body something that's registered something I can drive straight away that's what I wanted that's what I got little things like that I can fix I've got wheel woods that are going on this anyways I've got all new suspension going on it so something like that I've already got the parts to replace it but it is interesting now like I said I do have everything all of this all brand new it's just currently mounted to this car so later on we will take all the stuff off this and put that on there but not now doing a basic service get this over to the pits get the list that they give me and we'll do it all in one big hit oh yeah black as definitely due for a change it's only just now that I realize I forgot to get a new copper washer for this but next we'll get this oil filter here which might be hand tight but now to replace that good old ryko z9 if you're not using one of these I don't even want to hear about it a bit of fresh oil around the ring so that doesn't happen again and we do it up by hand all right we're putting oil in I will put a bit of fresh oil in there with the sump plug undone so it just gets some of the dregs out of there you know what I mean and because the front of the car's jacked up a little bit I'll just let it swirl around and get some of the older oil out so I'll chuck in about a half a litre get the dregs out put the plug back in and top it up yeah that oil's looking pretty good coming out of there so put that plug back in and put the rest of the oil in now I am using 2050 oil some nice thick oil it is an old engine it's an old cross flow it's not a performance engine usually in something this old you'd slap in the old diesel oil at 1540 but I'm going with 2050 a little bit of thickness take up those gaps and given the condition of the air filter and how old that oil filter seemed to be might not be a bad idea to use a bit of a thicker oil now I've put in a rough amount I will top that up once I get the car back on the ground to get the level just right but while I've got the car up I will check out some leaks that I noticed on the transmission and I'll also check out that front brake situation right so as you can see it's looking a little bit greasy under here um that's just the sump gasket for the transmission pan which shouldn't be a biggie thankfully it doesn't look like it's coming out of the bell housing righto so it's definitely coming from the oil pan of the transmission which is good that's an easy fix and when I change that gasket I'll also do the filters for the transmission too but output shaft not leaking from there doesn't seem to be leaking from the bell housing which is good and whilst I'm under here I've noticed that's using the original ignition coil that probably came with the car that's a motorcraft bosch ignition coil that's hectic that'll definitely need to be changed it's definitely had a fuel pump changed out at some point and that filter is looking pretty atrocious so I've got a fuel filter we'll change that out there's some ---- in the bottom of that looks like a bit of rust and some other crap so we'll definitely change that out but other than that not too bad a bit of grime built up over the years but nothing that looks like it's too fresh of a leak now let's get this wheel off and check out this brake disc that has had a little bit of a fight with the inside of the rim and then the surface of the road next up is the spark plugs now the leads are all different sizes and different colors I couldn't get new leads locally so that's an online jobby but I do have new plugs and judging by the leads the plugs are probably just as old which means they're well beyond their usable day so I'll get these out see what they look like chuck some freshies in so you can see what came out of it the BP5F I'm replacing it with the BP6E which which is a little bit further into the combustion chamber but these are what you'd expect to run on a mild 250 so something of a holy 350 maybe even a bit of a cam I'm just going to chuck these in see how I probably should have gone with the BP5ES because they run a little bit warmer but we'll see how we go to save spending another 80 odd dollars on spark plugs I might have to throw two or three thousand into a new cam or holly but so that is cylinder six the good thing is the anode is dry everything's dry that's all just from the external it's obviously leaking from the rocker cover and piling up in that area I have to get a torch in there and clean that out all right plugs are done that was a nightmare you know why it was a nightmare because the new plugs I had were the 13 16th size and this socket was fouling on the cylinder head like so I had to get the old combination of putting it on there and then getting the angle grinder angle grinder there this doing this you get what I mean but taking down the sidewall there to make it a little bit thinner and to be able to get the pluggy boys back in now I've just ripped off the old fuel filter and you can see here this is the old fuel filter disgusting absolutely oh yeah look at that there's so much ---- in there so that's obviously a fuel tank clean out at some stage but not today just put the fresh filter in so we've got new fuel filter new oil filter and new plugs I wish I had new leads I might try and find some new leads tomorrow whilst I'm out and about I was going to do the belt but the belts look pretty bloody good if a little bit loose but I haven't heard any squeaking so far other than that I think we're good to go it does have lowering blocks in the rear obviously to get it to this stance and if I was seriously trying to get it over the pits tomorrow I would take the lowering blocks out obviously but it's going to fail for a couple of things so I might as well just leave them in and do them with the rest of the stuff because if they pick up some other stuff maybe some other bushes back there I'd rather only do that whole rear end jobby once and get it all done in the one hit so the only thing left to do is start her up get some fuel into that filter get those plugs warm see if there's anything that's gone drastically wrong and then I'll see you guys tomorrow morning All right so we've had the car inspected and we've got the list right here of the things that need to be fixed up before I can get it transferred to Western Australian Rego now whilst it looks like a full page of stuff it's all just a lot of easy stuff and some of it's the same thing just repeated but in different wording so let's go through this list fix everything that needs to be fixed and make sure this thing is ready and safe I didn't really care about that and get this ready for reinspection first thing on the list wheels and rims need to be correct type size offset construction all that sort of jazz problem solved the car did come with a bunch of tyres in the boot but they were cooked and old and different sizes so going through we've gotten the correct size tyres for that period in Western Australia they harp on about rolling diameter so I had to make sure these were the correct rolling diameter for the XC Falcon so straight off the rip done next one brace bar to right front chassis missing a nut nothing wrong with missing a nut I had a mate in the army that was missing a nut and he's doing quite fine but what they're talking about is this little beam here goes from the front section of the chassis to the chrome bumper bar end as you can see there there is one nut oh missing a nut there so it is a little bit loose now I would just put a nut on here but I've got a better idea you see for the XC ute under that car cover I went and got a bunch of stuff powder coated and one of those things I did get powder coated was somewhere up there there is an old chrome front bumper which is not chrome anymore it's been powder coated black and all the brackets were powder coated and all the bolts and nuts are all brand new and all the rubbers are brand new so why would I bother with this old chrome bar when I can put on a pretty much brand new blacked out front bar and I reckon that's going to look a lot cooler and that matches the theme of which this car will be built in instead of fixing it with three minutes worth of work of installing a nut let's spend the next two hours replacing the whole front bumper as you can see here much better I thought I had new rubbers on it but that just made me realize I was thinking of this front bar which has the new rubbers on it that's for the still that's okay this just looks a whole lot better it's a little bit dusty now it's got a couple of scratches on it from being stored I probably should have put this tape all over the raised parts of it because there are a couple of scratches but it's not a show car so this will do so we've got our bumper let's pull the old one off slap this one on oh yeah put that jack under there it's touch oh ---- yeah so I jacked the car up basically just getting easy access to the bolts these front bars are only held on by four bolts two on each side so pretty bloody easy to take off and just like that it's off and here I am painting it black pretty much rebuild in a can that's how I plan to rebuild this entire car now this stuff is kbs edge prime and I wire brushed most of this area gave it a little bit of a clean with some wax and grease remover just cleaned all the loose bits away and I'm just coating it in the kbs prime it just seals it up stops it from further I live directly across from the ocean so just as I go along with replacing parts give these sections some protection with some edge prime paint just to stop them from getting any worse and also just makes it look a little bit fresher speaking of fresh here is the new front bar going on just completes the look it doesn't really complete the look because I haven't even started to look but it starts to look it makes it look a lot better than the chrome in my opinion I love the blackout now I'm here putting in some fresh plastic inserts for the number plate now I'm still undecided on custom plates for this I'm thinking something to do with making fun of EVs but we'll see replace missing nut done next on this underneath replace missing nut replace the left front wheel liner well it was sitting in the boot so I'm just gonna slap this back on left front wheel liner done it's not pretty but it's done next on the list driveline exhaust system stove pipe missing now you may be wondering what the stove pipe is people call it different things but essentially it's the heat riser tube which is a pipe that connects onto this and goes into the air intake now you may be thinking why have you got a pipe going from the exhaust intake is it some kind of early DPF system well no that's not plumbed into the exhaust it's just pointing at the exhaust and what that does is it pulls hot air from the exhaust to help with cleaner fuel burning there's a little valve there that opens and shuts you got vacuum you got heat and it's like an early emission control system and to pass roadworthy if it's there you gotta have it plumbed up so where on earth would you get such a pipe well Repco sell this I think it's a fuel miser I don't even know what it's called it's like an aluminium expandable bendy pipe it's like 30 bucks problem solved so 30 bucks for this from Repco I think like five bucks each for these 50 mil hose clamps I'm not even gonna oh I was gonna try and get away with not even cutting it but I might have to cut it heat riser pipe done next on the list is the exhaust pipe rectify all exhaust leaks it makes it sound like there's a lot but there is only about 12 and they're all located on the muffler here this muffler is absolutely shot the ---- it has more holes in it than the government's story on how Epstein killed himself so I ordered the exact replacement part for the XC Falcon which is this system here it replaces the pipe all the way up until the manifold at the front of the vehicle so that is ready to go on now it does have slip joints however I think this one has tack welds on it so I might have to cut it off and use the old hot metal glue gun here to put it back on but we'll get this rear end in the air and see if we can get her off I might have to get the grinder in and cut that because that is just caked with ---- all right I might just move the GoPro out of the way because it was in my way a little bit I'll get right into that and I'll see you guys after I've gotten that old rusty piece of ---- off the car and here we have the final result of how I ended up getting it out I had to pull out the big grinder cut this pipe off just so I could maneuver the muffler around and then I had to cut a section so it just released all that pressure and then I had to bend the pipe off but this part was rusted on so badly you can see there how it's kind of pointing at a different direction I had to just get my foot in there and just leg press the muffler in a direction that would break the seal I ended up bending the outlet before it was breaking the seal so that's that quick little spruce up of each end on the car and then we'll slap that new one on all right she's tacked up she's on let's turn this on and see what it sounds like all right let's see if there's any leaks look obviously you guys won't really be able to hear it on the camera but from where I am I can't hear any leaks exhaust done next on the list is the engine leaks and transmission leaks which some new gaskets for that however it is Friday night so I'll continue this tomorrow morning next on the list is the oil leak so there was a leak coming from the transmission and from around the top of the engine which obviously the rocker cover rocker cover doesn't look like it's been changed on this thing in a long time and with the 250 cross flows the reason people don't change the rocker cover gaskets on these is because of this this is like a little transfer pipe takes a bit of the exhaust heat out and puts it into the intake manifold another emissions thing cold starting situation and the reason people don't like taking this off is because that usually gets rusted to the point where it's impossible to undo and you can't undo it without breaking this off now the risk here is I can't break this pot because I need it for the road baby obviously and to get the rocker cover off you need to take this off and some people get to doing this it's too hard and then they just don't even bother with the rocker cover gasket I'm actually super surprised to see that this has not been rounded off that looks like no one's even attempted to hit that with a spanner ever so that's a little bonus so hopefully that can come off and I can take the rocker cover off and change the gasket out but first up we'll do the transmission we'll change the transmission out so we're going to drain the transmission fluid there's a little protector on the sump we're going to take that little protector plate off and then drop the sump we'll change out the transmission filter and the gasket so I've got this it's for a borg warner 35 which this transmission is I'm just hoping that there isn't some strange variant that this has that makes it completely different but it should be the right one so let's get out of the car start getting covered in delicious transmission fluid now I haven't been to Thailand but I do know my way around a tranny and this one was quite surprising that when I went to go take the sump bolts off most of them were barely even finger tight so that was the obvious cause of the leak but the crap gasket didn't help either all right so sump out and obviously gasket is old as ---- also doesn't help that pretty much 100 of the bolts were finger tight and some of them weren't even finger tight they were like a thread or so out so that combined with a ******* rock hard gasket of course it's going to piss out transmission fluid so I'll scrape all this off put on the new transmission gasket which is a rubber kind and then I'm still going to use some three bond because why not this will be the last time that I change transmission filter and lights will adjust before the whole assembly gets taken out anyways so we'll seal that up right make sure it doesn't leak and get it back on so with these transmission sumps over time they do get a little bit warped where the bolts go in they get little rounded spots so I hit it with the flappy disc to sort of get a little flat again put a bit of three bond on it and then installed the seal and then just sort of put that to the side to let the three bond grip onto the seal a bit and dry a tad bit here I am changing out the filter screen and the gasket for the filter screen which it didn't have a gasket on the old filter screen so that's fun anyways put the transmission on do the bolts up finger tight arena and leave them like that just like I found it all right fixed transmission leak done now next up was meant to be the rocker cover gasket leak but I've got that pipe soaking in some yield just so I can guarantee that it comes off and in the meantime I thought I'd tackle some of the other easier ones and one of those easier ones is this dicky seat here now it did fail because the dicky seat isn't actually secured and he basically said either secure it or just take it out so a loose dicky seat done now if you think oh it's you might be able to get some money for that you know put it up on marketplace someone might be looking for a dicky seat no I'm gonna use this as the base for the center console so I'll use this piece here because it's designed for it as the base for a custom center console that I'll be making that will go from there up into the dash and I've just got to decide on the air conditioning system that I'm going with whether I'm going with an under dash aircon system or something that integrates into the dash itself that will determine how the center console is made up so I've got to finalize my decision on that but there's a lot of other stuff I need to be doing before I'm thinking about that i.e getting this ready for inspection now the next thing on the list that I want to tackle is doors check strap to be effective and that's because the driver's side door doesn't stay open you know when you open a door and it sort of like gets to that point where it will stay open this doesn't now what they're referring to is this here which is a check strap and as you can see when I open up this door as the door opens it moves into these certain points where it'll it'll stop the door from closing that's the first point and that is the second point and the one that is cooked is on the driver's door and I don't want to hit Emma's car but essentially it's worn out it's you know it's 50 years old from opening and closing its whole life it's worn out it doesn't stay at any point and to fix that I've got this hinge kit from rare spares which as you can see replaces all the pins bushings and has a brand new check strap in there so now the door will stay open at its areas it'd be like a brand new door I actually actually as a matter of fact I don't even need that because I've got I've got the hinges for this powder coated here's the upper door hinge I've got them all powder coated and actually is that lower just slap this on and save myself messing around rebuilding that one or I could rebuild this one because this has just been powder coated this actually hasn't been rebuilt I'm not sure if that check strap will work as efficiently I don't know we'll get the car out it's raining at the moment so that's why I've got the door shut I'm relying on these fluro lights floating but we get the car out open this door up get that old hinge off and I'll make my decision then whether or not I just rebuild it or I slap this one on so here's my plan I'm going to take the door off to get these hinges off without taking the front guard off pretty much just got to take the door off so this is the easiest way three bolts upper and lower door comes off and then I can get this lower bracket off and then see if I want to re-pin it or just slap that other one on there now here's the little hack for you DIYers you got to have a spare office chair hanging around your house they are the best thing to get doors off cars because you put it under the door and you just raise the chair up until it meets with the door and then you've got the perfect height for something to just wheel it away magic so I'm just going to slap this on but there's a bit of rust there obviously behind that that's never really been taken off so I think I'll just put something on here to treat this rust and then I'll set that on and that's all I'm doing I don't want to get too much into it because if you've ever worked on old cars before as soon as you start digging you could just dig forever and then suddenly it's on jack stands for the next five years so I'm just doing that just there white spray of a rust converter and then a primer and we'll put the hinge back on check strap done now I will rebuild this with this kit here but that just for the sake of time and expediency swap that one out so I can get on with the other stuff and I'll rebuild this I'll take a little bit more time on my hands but now we're onto this one here that's been soaking for a bit I've been spraying it intermittently as I do that job so we should be right to take all this off and fix that rocker cover leak now I do have to say I ordered a rocker cover gasket you used to be able to find cross flow rocker cover gaskets at super cheap order they used to be on the shelves like it used to be a very common gasket but now you can't get them so mind you when I say used to I'm saying like 15 years ago but I have ordered this and it still hasn't arrived so because I leave for work tomorrow what I'm going to do is I'm going to take all this off strip this rocker cover of the orange paint we'll do all that get it ready and then by the time I come back from work the new gasket will be here and we can slap that on and put it back together nice with the new leads so let's get this off make sure we can undo that heat transfer pipe and we might have to call it there all right this one's for you guys playing at home first person in the comments to guess correctly which audio book I'm listening to I will send you a $50 super cheap audio gift voucher have at it into the comments what book when the fighting is over you dig if you're still alive the emperor's troops worked their way further into the cold up leaves blue on the wind whipping around the lawns below because they are a hundred we are two and time has not been kind to us so much lost and now we are come to fill the hall with clashing echoes the second balcony extended on wires no thicker than threads the great mechanism ******* got it twisting and flexing wobbling with her every movement threatening to shatter she hung down legs crossed around the rail tip of her middle finger brushed against it something dropped free falling slowly as if it sank through water to throw me down her black eyes swiveled to ferro right so rocker covers off obviously they leak because your cork gasket just turns into just ---- really that's solid that's not stopping anything from coming through if you look towards the back there you can just see that's just totally soaked through and that's where it's been pissing out so we'll rip this off but like I said I don't have the new one to go on yet it hasn't rocked up so we'll clean this up cover it over with some rags and then we'll clean this old girl up and give it a fresh lick of paint however it's still raining outside so all right give it a couple of minutes with the old paint stripper and then I might give it one sort of base coat and call it there because it's on and off raining every five ten minutes so I'll give it a quick coat after this is down to bare metal and I'll wait until next week when it's a bit sunnier and I'm back from work to give it its final couple of coats all right so I'm gonna wrap it up there for now until I get back next week with the new gasket for the rocker cover and we'll finish off the rest of the list that needs doing which is stuff like rear sway bar got a whole new rear sway bar rocking up and there was some play in the front left tie rod end which the XA has mined the mess I've just thrown everything around but this XA has pretty much all brand new suspension including all the linkages and everything have been freshly powder coated with new ball joints and tie rod ends and all that so so I'll just put all that brand new XA suspension onto the XC here but that'll be next episode so thank you very much for watching if you enjoyed watching the XC give the video a like hit subscribe if you would be so kind and I'll see you guys next time when we continue doing this and take it over the pits again to get WA Rego and then once it has WA Rego and I don't need to keep it standard and all pits regulation then I can start putting all the cool stuff on the XC like these wheel woods here and start putting the the clevo out of the XA and put that in the XC and start doing all the cool stuff you know once you once you got past the pesky regulations anyways thanks for watching I'll see you guys in the next one