Greetings from Finland! After being without a retro ride for many years the temptation finally took over. I found the perfect example six months ago in the form of an Ford 17M in pristine condition
I only got to ride it home before the winter, so I set about to making it more to my liking, better handling, better brakes, appropriate wheels etc. I also got hold of double headlamps from a 26M
There was also some additional work with the doublelamps as they were rusted and wanted to give them a fresh coat of paint. This resulted in braking the adjusters so I had to come up with a solution
The first thing was to get the car closer to the ground, this was done with lowering blocks at the rear and coilover conversion at the front. I used volvo 240 front dampers as they are around 8 centimeters shorter than the original ones.
The rear brakes are from a ford scorpio and front brakes from a mercedes E (w210). A designed all the adapters and had them laser cut.
I was going to have the original steelies banded but there was no way that they were going to fit over the new front brakes. So of to german ebay where I found these beauties, rial wheels from 1981, originally for a mercedes, 7X16 for the front and 8X16 for the rears. Tyres are 185/50 and 205/50.
I will not touch the trusty V4 at least for this summer, the car has only run 93 000 kilometers so it should still be ok. Future plans calls for a 2.9 V6 mated to an automatic. All I did was clean up the engine bay.
Before
After
That is pretty much where we are now, it only needs two brake lines at the rear and brake fluids and it should be ready for a test drive
More photos can be seen -> s990.photobucket.com/user/tltane/library/17M?page=1
I only got to ride it home before the winter, so I set about to making it more to my liking, better handling, better brakes, appropriate wheels etc. I also got hold of double headlamps from a 26M
There was also some additional work with the doublelamps as they were rusted and wanted to give them a fresh coat of paint. This resulted in braking the adjusters so I had to come up with a solution
The first thing was to get the car closer to the ground, this was done with lowering blocks at the rear and coilover conversion at the front. I used volvo 240 front dampers as they are around 8 centimeters shorter than the original ones.
The rear brakes are from a ford scorpio and front brakes from a mercedes E (w210). A designed all the adapters and had them laser cut.
I was going to have the original steelies banded but there was no way that they were going to fit over the new front brakes. So of to german ebay where I found these beauties, rial wheels from 1981, originally for a mercedes, 7X16 for the front and 8X16 for the rears. Tyres are 185/50 and 205/50.
I will not touch the trusty V4 at least for this summer, the car has only run 93 000 kilometers so it should still be ok. Future plans calls for a 2.9 V6 mated to an automatic. All I did was clean up the engine bay.
Before
After
That is pretty much where we are now, it only needs two brake lines at the rear and brake fluids and it should be ready for a test drive
More photos can be seen -> s990.photobucket.com/user/tltane/library/17M?page=1