Guys,

The FE Ute and Van brochure is available on line at oldholden.com - I was planning to add more there when I get around to it....

As far as the original presses were concerned, I believe they were melted down.

I'm going to add a new board in here for people to post pix of their cars (as links, as Alex has done here).  It seems to be popular!

cheers
RET

That's a great start, and it looks like that site offer some pretty neat tools.  Good stuff

RET

My current FE and the previous one I had, both original, untouched late 1957 model specials, had front and rear carpet. Was this just to get rid of any remaining stock or was it an optional extra ?
Hope this doesn't confuse things.
Cheers
Tony

Yeah, I'd be interested in some clarification of this one.  I thought rubber mats in the back of FE Specials was only found in the last ones built, just prior to the FC's introduction in May 1958.  I'm not sure whether that 'just prior' means two weeks or 3 months, and no doubt it varied from factory to factory

RET

On the subject of ALL HOLDEN DAY's.
What is the general perception of the judging for the NSW ALL HOLDEN DAY??
Does "Sponsor Judging" over come the pain of individual "Quality" Judging??? Or does this inflame the matter. ALL Responses APPRECIATED.
Steve

In my opinion, by trying to please everyone, they please no-one.  Our club used to sponsor a trophy at the AHD, but no longer do so.  Rather than re-explain why that is, I've pasted the content of our letter to the AHD organisers here.

The Secretary
All Holden Day Limited
P.O. Box 5517
WINDSOR NSW 2756


Dear Sir,

Congratulations to you all on another successful All Holden Day.  Thank you for your recent invitation to attend the Annual General Meeting.  Unfortunately, none of our executive will be able to attend on that evening.  It is for this reason that we are writing to you, to express our concern over the method employed by the organisers in adjudicating the final trophy winners.

As you will no doubt be aware, our club has sponsored a trophy each year since the introduction of Sponsor-only awards.  Having delegated the responsibility of choosing a vehicle to a group of our members, it was extremely vexing to be sent out to choose yet more cars, because our choice had already been selected by another sponsor.  Without taking anything away from the vehicle that ultimately received our trophy -  it was a well presented vehicle - but it was also our fourth choice, and not the vehicle our delegates believed the most desirable car of the day.  Based on the number of sponsors that were called up to re-select vehicles, it is fair to presume that a significant proportion of the trophies went to vehicles other than that intended by the sponsor.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the answer.  As organisers of a national car show ourselves, we are keenly aware of the problems inherent in one or two vehicles taking out all the trophies - it is always better to see a wider distribution of winners.  We would like to suggest that perhaps each sponsor could choose a model or model group from which they will select a winner.  This will stop every sponsor from choosing the same car from the entire pool.  Of course there are equitable distribution issues with this scheme, particularly if the two best cars on display are both EHs, the only HJ is a bush-basher, and you have only one trophy for each model.

Whatever the decision, being sent out into the blazing sun at 3pm to try and pick a car that no-one else will have already selected is not the best method.  So for this reason, we will not be sponsoring a trophy at the 15th All Holden Day.  In place of sponsorship, we will be happy to make a donation of equivalent value to AHD Limited towards the event.  And we are looking forward to participating next year.

Holden Together,



Richard Thomas
Secretary
FE-FC Holden Car Club of NSW inc

You can link photos from Star Boulevarde directly in these boards.  As I wrote previously, when writing (or editing) a message, use the button that looks like a framed picture in the 'Add YABBC tags' area above the Message area.  (It's fourth from the left, bottom row).  That will whack some tags at the end of your current message that look like this [ img ] URL [ /img ].  Replace the string "URL" between the tags with the literal URL of the picture, just as you do with web-link tags.

For example, here's Alex's picture (which I took, by the way )

The tags in my message look like this: [ img ]http://photo.starblvd.net/~customfc/1-1-1.jpg?i=1013133125 [ /img ]

Hope that helps, and we see more pix on the boards!

RET

Food for thought indeed.

These forums are proof that there are a hell of a lot of FE-FC enthusiasts out there that aren't members of one of the FE-FC Holden Car Clubs of Australia.

One of the things I've never understood is the logic that "I'll join the club once I've got the car on the road".  We can't stress too strongly that you don't have to have a car on the road to belong to our club, in fact, we have quite a few members who haven't owned one for years, if ever.  But if you're building up a car, whether it's original or modified, NOW is the time to join a club.  Why not save yourself some time, money and trouble by learning from other members experiences.  Apart from the regular 'Parts for sale' and 'Parts wanted' segments at our meetings, there's a wealth of information in club members' heads:
- where to find parts
- what bits from other models fit when you can't find the original part
- where to take your car for commercial repairs
- where NOT to go!
- when the swap meets are on, and which ones are better than others
And then there's things like Club Plates, cheaper insurance and so on once the car is on the road.  But more than anything, it's a social thing.  And as Gary said, your membership counts in the AOMC, (or in NSW, the CMC)

As I always say,

Holden Together,
RET

G'day HRDivivan
You say that the judges for Vic All Holden Day come from the Hot Rod Association and the Vic Street Machine Association.

Hey there Air-Chief,

I think what he means is that the AHD judges all attended the courses held by either of those Associations.  And I think that's fair enough - that's talking about the theory of judging, rather than the specifics of hot/not, originality etc, which the judges chosen for an event are expected to be well versed in.

Having said that, transparency is the thing here.  Even if we can't have access to every entrants scores (although I reckon that's a bloody good idea), at the very least the CV of the judges should appear in the programme, so you know the calibre of the people judging your car.  I have been to shows (I think the ACT AHD was one) where this happens.

Hope that helps,
RET

Re Gary's comments, I'd dearly love the information about judging guidelines and courses too.  Please email and/or post it here.

cheers
RET

Check out the contact details at http://www.qld.fefcholden.org.au - there are some phone numbers there, or email committee@qld.fefcholden.org.au

cheers
RET

Just a note on this.  You don't have to be able to upload a picture onto our servers to display it in a message.  Take for example this photo:

which was taken at Saturday's NRMA Motorfest.  I uploaded this image onto my ISP's server, in my web-page area (that I've never used).  If you have a dial-up account, you too have at least 5MB of space for this type of use.  In order to embed a picture, you have to know its URL.  Armed with that, click on the icon that looks like a framed-print (in the Post Reply window) and you'll get a set of tags to put your URL into that look like this:
[ img ] URL [ /img ]

Your ISP's home page should direct you to a help area that will explain how to transfer files onto their server, and figure out the URL(s) for them.  The URL for the picture above is http://members.optusnet.com.au/~thomasri/images/motorfest.jpeg

There are also dozens of sites offering free web-page space that can be used for this purpose.

Hope that makes sense.

cheers
RET

[edit: where to find help at your ISP]

Hey there Jason,

I'll look into it.  Because this site is owned (and paid for) by members of the FE-FC Holden Car Clubs of Australia, each of these clubs has (or can have) an area under their own section for their club members' cars.  Whilst this area (the forum) is a resource for all, images can take up a hell of a lot more space than discussion boards.

I have also been in discussions with Rusty from OldHolden.Com, and his site provides this service.  He's also got a lot more bandwidth and space than I have, too!

I'll see what's around that can allow guests to upload files and limit their size to something reasonable.  I'll post another message here then.  In the meantime, is anyone else keen to have this facility here?

cheers
RET

Just noticed that this forum has cracked the hundred mark (101 members at time of writing).  Thanks everyone for the active participation - the new boards have become a great source of information.  I've learnt a few things I didn't know, and I doubt I'm alone there!

Happy New Year to all.

Holden Together,
RET

I've seen a Kleinig inlet manifold for a grey motor before, although it was to suit twin carbs (from memory   )

Open-wheeler racing clubs are one of the best places for finding out about stove-hot grey motors - that's where the repco cross-flow heads and superchargers for grey motors tend to be, not in road-going Holdens.

cheers
RET

Well, you're in luck insofar that the next FE-FC Nationals will be held on the Gold Coast, over Easter 2003.  So compared to say Adelaide or Hobart, it's just around the corner for you!

You should contact the FE-FC Holden Car Club of Queensland for more details, as accommodation needs to be booked before the end of this year if  you wish to get the discounted price arranged.

The venue is the Isle of Palms, on the Gold Coast.

cheers
RET

Jason,

Pleased to hear that you got the brochure OK.  I wasn't all that happy with the panel van page, and might scan it again.  Will let you know.

So, a commercial pigeon-pair, eh?  Hope to see them at a Nationals one day.  What part of the country do you live in?

RET

I had a look in the workshop manual and the FE parts catalogue last night to see if there was a picture of the bracket I could send you, but there wasn't, unfortunately.  However, for what it's worth it is called a Floor pan retainer and is part number 7409350  

There is a bracket that looks something like this:

 _|""""|_

that holds the front of the seat down.  There are also bakelite spacers that can be used to lift the height of the seat in here as well.

I'd be surprised if FB-EK seats weren't the same.  The brackets certainly aren't a rarity, you should be able to get a pair at a swap meet or even Rare Spares or Harrisons.

cheers
RET

I just wanted to say congrats to the FE-HR Holden Owners Club of ACT for putting on the best ACT AHD yet.  It was a great day, plenty of fantastic cars on display.

Hopefully I'll have some photos from the day posted on the NSW club site soon.

cheers
RET

Well, that was a lot of fun.  I think I have managed to recover most (if not all) of the data from the General Board.  If you notice a thread you were interested in appears to be gone, let me know and I'll try and fix it.

I've made some modifications to the code so that it should be much simpler to fix if this happens again.  I know that is not following the advice of the General Motors Service Bulletins:  "Cure the Cause - not the Effect", but since I don't know what caused it in the first place....
Enjoy.

RET

Tickets are still available to this great combined run with the Romans Hot Rod Club.  We are holding a fund-raiser Trivia Night, with some excellent prizes, and raffles worth hundreds of dollars.  It's great fun and not car-related trivia either, so if you'd like to know more, please email me.

Price is $10/Adults, $5/Children, which includes a light meal and refreshments.

Venue is in Taren Point, Sydney, and the event is this Saturday, 27 October.  We hope to see you there!

RET