First impressions

I must say my first view of the Fatsback was "ok" as it did look straight - the most important thing. However there were the tell-tale signs of old body repairs in the rear-quarters and some obvious rust holes in the sills. There was no way of easily knowing if these repairs were from rust itself, or from crash damage (and rust set in later).

No matter - I had already purchased the car so it didn't really matter what the condition was, I was going to have to fix whatever was wrong. All the polished trim was there, the interior, the console, the glass was nearly perfect - so I was on to a good start. But no keys was a hassle as it meant I couldn't open the boot and would have to hotwire it if it was ever to go....

A walk around the car showed that it has recently had its pony badges and rocker covers removed. I'm told it sat in a shed for 17 years and the list of receipts that were in the back-seat seemed to verify this (a flurry of activity up until around 1990 and then nothing). The car spent its life in Indiana and from the receipts the previous owner has done the following to the 289.......

• Fitted Tri-Y extractors.


• A new higher lift Comp-Cams cam (no spec' sheet though).


• Compression test.


• Port work in the heads.


• Replaced some valves with "good second hand units" (why second-hand?!).


• New pushrods and roller-tip rockers.


• Plus other sundry tune-ups, new hoses, etc, etc.

All this showed that the owner at least had an interest in "go fast" goodies. But the big clue I saw was that as the rocker covers were gone (replaced with a nice set of old oily tea-towels), I quickly noticed that under those missing valve covers that the rockers, springs, retainers, rocker pedestals and everything else were extremely clean. There was no layer of black oil grunge that coats the inside of an engine that is a daily driver. This motor had done very little work since it's last rebuild (if at all).

Check out the photo above, that is one stock 1966 engine bay.... with 17 years of cobwebs as a bonus.

I'm sure that the fact the engine didn't look like a "runner" helped keep the cost down. No matter, we bundled it onto a trailer from where it landed in Adelaide and drove it back to its new home in Melbourne.

We got our good share of people checking it out on the trip home.

The first tinkerings would prove intersting.........