1963 1/2 Ford Galaxie 500 - Dan Gurney NASCAR Inspiration

This has just jumped to number one in awesome cars in my head, can't wait for updates

Gurneylicious!

i was watching that on ebay, love those cars

That's what appealed to me too, that there's so much you can do to them, American classics do seem to have a well-supported spares/aftermarket scene! I'm replacing the pump on mine with another mechanical one, it was only £18 from Rockauto and I didn't think it was worth going to an electric pump. Thanks for the links, as mentioned I've already used Rockauto for a bunch of stuff along with the pump, came out a lot cheaper than I was expecting!

Glad that people seem interested in this! I'll go over what I did in the first couple of days tinkering before the fuel pump died.

So, to be able to actually drive this thing, the first big problem I had to sort was that the rear wheels were too big for the car. The PO must've got it MOT'd on it's original wheels or something, because I found out very quickly that the car was undriveable with these ones fitted. As shown here by the amount of rubber that'd gone missing from the sidewall after doing about 200 yards down the road and back.

IMG_1168 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

The car has spacers fitted to the rear, as without them the wide tyres rub on the leaf spring on the inside edge. The PO said that 10mm spacers weren't enough so he fitted a set of 30mm spacers, which means the tyres clear the springs but then, as I found out, they rub on the wheel wells on the outer side. I had thought maybe I should try 20mm spacers and see if that's the sweet spot, but then I thought to myself, what would Roadkill do? So, firstly I jacked up the car and took off the wheels. 275 60 R15s wrapped around a 15x10 smooth steel wheel. HNNNNNG. 15x8's on the front with the same tyres.

IMG_1167 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

Little bit of rubbing perhaps?

IMG_1169 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

As you can kind of see at the bottom of the photo above, and as mentioned before, the rear arches aren't in the best of health - lots of rust and filler. With this in mind, I decided the easiest way to clearance the wheels was to just cut out some clearance from the inner arch. The tyre can't rub if there's no metal to rub against. I couldn't get any decent pictures in there, but I cut out about an A4 size piece of steel on both sides of the car. The tyres do still rub going over a speed bump, but I can't see where they're rubbing and I can't simulate that suspension compression on the driveway, but the car is at least driveable now! They are a tight fit under there... oh and don't worry, I'll weld the holes back up again sometime, but not much point doing it now when there's no lower edge to weld to.

IMG_1173 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

So, the next bit of tinkering was to solve this little problem.

IMG_1164 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

That was a fairly quick job to do, I replaced a couple of lengths of 5/8" heater hose that had gone as hard and brittle as rotten wood. Never seen such perished rubber! The hose above split whilst I was revving the car up on the driveway, so not a big issue.

It was after this I went out for a drive and the fuel pump expired. I've ordered the parts needed and they'll hopefully be here in the next week or so. In the meantime I've been fiddling with the washer pump. I mentioned that the old one was seized, and I broke it messing around to try and unseize it so I needed a new one. The OEM style ones seem a little hard to come by (most places I checked just listed a universal style pump and washer bottle for the car, and original metal style ones were a bit expensive) I decided to adapt something a bit cheaper and closer to home. So, after spending a smidge over £10 on ebay, I had this.

IMG_1175 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

I wanted to keep the pump looking as original as possible, so decided to go on a long winded process to fit this Lucas pump inside the old Ford pump housing. The original pump is in the middle, with it's cover plate off to the right. There was a motor on top, with a little drive plate that spun the pump impellers in the base.

IMG_1177 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

I kind of broke the wafer thin drive plate trying to rotate the pump shaft...

IMG_1178 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

But it was obviously a bit knackered anyway.

IMG_1179 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

So, first thing I did to the Lucas pump was remove the mounting plate. Easy peasy, three little screws.

IMG_1180 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

Back to the Ford pump, I used my powerfile to grind through the rivet heads and release the old impeller housing. No wonder it wouldn't turn...

IMG_1181 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

I then ground the rivets holding the motor in and got the die grinder out to open up the top surface of the housing.

IMG_1183 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

So I could slot the Lucas pump in.

IMG_1184 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

I drilled three holes in the base to let me screw the new pump in place. Was a little too low to get hoses on though.

IMG_1185 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

So I squeezed a couple of washers underneath each of the screw holes.

IMG_1186 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

Then I chopped about the original electrical connector.

IMG_1187 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

I wanted to keep the factory wiring the same if I could, so thought I'd try and hide the new wiring inside the housing. I needed to join up the positive terminal on the pump to the connector stub above. I then also needed to hook up the negative terminal to the pump housing, as the original pump was grounded through the housing through a fixing screw in to the firewall. So, with a bit of bad soldering and some crimping and bending, I had this.

IMG_1189 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

IMG_1190 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

Lovely. Except the nozzles were now nowhere near the holes on the casing. So I drilled a couple more.

IMG_1192 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

Giving me this.

IMG_1194 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

I then whacked it in the car, temporarily feeding off a watering can.

IMG_1196 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

Worked like a charm! I really like the washer nozzles on this car, it's so simple and clean, just a couple of bits of pipe hiding beneath the cowl vent.

IMG_1197 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

The reason I was feeding the pump from a watering can was because the original washer fluid bag (yes, bag, I didn't know old cars had fluid bags!) was leaking like a sieve. I've got a new one coming from the states, for about £35! What a fantastic bit of design though, that they made a washer bag so stylish and with slogans and logos on it. Brilliant!

IMG_1198 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

Then the only other thing I've done is tighten up a leaky power steering return hose, and swap the battery positive cable. The old one was pretty new so must've been broken by the PO, the clamp was snapped so you couldn't tighten it up, it was jammed in place with a self tapping screw when I bought the car.

IMG_1199 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

IMG_1200 by Sven Cumner, on Flickr

That's up to date then, hopefully the next update will be about swapping the fuel pump and firing it up again! I'll be sure to get a video for you all! I really need to fix the lights and turn signals before I drive it again though, and the fuses are (sadly) all good, so I might have some electrical gremlin chasing to do soon...

Hillman IMP has a 'screen wash bag', on the l/h inner wing.

Thumb powered jets though...


OVIMOR

Nearly bought one of these...but didn't. Nearly bought something else...but didn't. Bought something else though..... I'm only in warwick so we should pow wow.

Did you get stung with import tax on the rockauto order?

Matt

Oh my.

I do love a Galaxie 500.

my definition of "beyond cool"?
this.

i'm gonna cry myself to sleep...

thought I would put this here:

www.hemmings.com/blog/2017/07/11/jaguar-beating-british-saloon-car-championship-winning-1963-galaxie-500-offered-out-of-collection-of-jack-sears/?refer=news

and of course Thunderbolt!

www.hemmings.com/magazine/mus/2006/08/The-First-Thunderbolt---1964-Ford/1317232.html