Many of us in the NSW Club have access to all manner of rare and/or informative information about FEs and FCs.  And I have no doubt that our collective collections are dwarfed by what the guys in the Vic club have.

And herein lies the rub.  One of the benefits of belonging to a club is access to information and assistance from other members, be it in the form of advice or old books and documentation.  The more of this information we put up on our site, the more the benefit of belonging to the club is diluted.  This is compounded by the fact that the FE-FC Holden Car Clubs of NSW, Vic, Qld and SA pay the hosting costs (which are not loose change, btw) to support this discussion board and all the other parts of fefcholden.org.au

In the spirit of community, access to this discussion board is open to all, and everyone (hopefully) benefits - whether the respondents are club members or not.  Giving unfettered access to documentation, however, which consume a lot of both bandwidth and disk space that we (the clubs) have to pay for is quite something else.

I'm happy to discuss this, of course.  For all I know many of you are members of the FE-FC Holden Car Clubs.  Did you know there is a private section in this board which is only visible to club members?  You might have noticed some people have the word 'club' appear next to their name when they post messages.  If you are a member of one of the FE-FC Holden Clubs and don't have access to this private area, please send me an email or IM and I'll get you access to it.

I welcome any and all comments.

RET

The addition of scallops to break up the all black.

Hey!  That was my wedding!  I recognise my in-laws' front yard  

That's a great collection of photos.  I see changes in this car from year to year that I'd never really noticed before.  Keep 'em coming.  Where's the one with the old green paint worn down to the primer and the lettering on the boot advertising the club?

RET

Hi there Nunzio,

The front end is pretty much a bolt-up job.  There is a tech-sheet on how to do it here: http://www.fefcholden.org.au/techinfo/tech002.html  Likewise the rear-end is a straight-forward swap.

A red-motor is almost a bolt-up job.  The mounts on the HR front end need to be modified (see the article for more), and because the red is a bit longer than a grey, there's very little clearance for the mechanical accelerator linkage as well as the standard fan.  Usually one of these has to go, or the radiator has to be moved forward (as was done in my car).

However, there is a lot of work in my floor, although that's not necessarily the way you have to do it.  We used (thanks Dad, thanks Charlie) the floor out of a HK (which also donated the 'glide and the T-bar and console), and trimmed it to size, cutting out virtually all of the FE's original floor.  Only the central hump support remains.  It's very strong, but there are easier ways of doing it.  You can cut a H-shape in the floor and open it up and weld in a new top to the tunnel.  You are best off to speak to an engineer (who will usually give you some advice before you start for nothing).  I recommend John Varetimidis of Lohning International (they're based in Mortdale).  John is the engineer who does the technical write-ups in Street Machine's "Expression Session" articles.

As mentioned in passing above, I use a T-bar shifter.  With a left-handed gearbox, getting the column connected up was just a nightmare I wasn't even going to consider.  In any case, I was replacing a previously installed 4-speed, so already had bucket seats and a big hole in the floor.  That hole was almost a lot bigger when the main shaft in the 4-speed snapped at 60kays!

Not to mention the effect on my shorts :-/

cheers
RET

Booths are in Milton Street, opp. Chubb/Wormald.  (Near where Georges River Road ends).

Check this thread http://www.fefcholden.org.au/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1012348907 for a discussion on Vic mechanics

RET

Mike,

It's off an FE that wasn't a Special Sedan or Station Sedan.  The Standard models, utes and panel-vans all had no indicators ex factory.  Here's one here:



The same applied to the FCs, but their indicator lenses were integral to the grille, and the parking lights were in them even if the indicators weren't actually fitted.  The FE parkers are in the headlights, of course.

Hope that helps,
RET

hey richard, you wouldn't have any more pics of that purple fc behind in the bottom picture, sure looks nice and low

Naa, just the long grass  

That's our President's car - Here it is from the front:
and there's more photos here: http://www.fefcholden.org.au/nsw/clubcars/ClubCars01.html

cheers
RET

Didn't follow all of what you wrote - can you post a pic of the area you're referring to?

But for what it's worth the guards are identical on FEs and FCs, save for the drilling for mounting the indicators, if they had any.

RET

Howie,

It sounds like it's just a matter of fitting the shifter back on the column (not hard to get) and the linkages back onto the box from the lower end of the column (also common enough).  It's the original column still?  You can see where the column shift used to go?

As far as mechanical repair work is concerned, I can heartily recommend Dennis Booth, of O.N. Booth and Co, who is in Ashfield (Sydney).  His number is 9798 8521
RET

That's odd - it's almost like it's using some of the previous layout and styles.  I'll have a look and see if I can improve it a bit.

Bear in mind that if/when you log in (or 'stay logged in') the folder and thread heading icons show whether that board or thread has new posts since you last visited.

cheers
RET

Hey there Coolaride,

To the best of my knowledge the Detroit was made by Tilli's.  I recall Ken McLean had a folder depicting every trim kit for every Holden up to HZ that he showed me once.  What he doesn't know about them is not worth knowing.

What I can point you to are a couple of pix:

Siggy's FE has the Detroit kit:
Dan Power's FE has a Victoria kit:

There is also another variant of the Victoria called the Victoria Twinline, which has a second thinner strip butted up below the lower one shown on Dan's car, that runs down to the end of the rear door and then continues along the same line onto the quarter for maybe 4 inches.  I've got one of these to go one my car when it gets rebuilt. Just a few more spots for water to get in  

cheers
RET

PS - on the Twinline kit the bonnet is the same colour as the front guards, unlike Dan's car above.  There is a small piece of trim that runs from the front flipper window down to the start of the extra trim (maybe three inches), that breaks up the colour there.  Something like a late 59 FC, below the window-line anyway.

Ed,

I am not having that problem this afternoon, but it was slow this morning - maybe zeta's servers were overloaded (all those FE chatters )

RET

You also need to have your browser set to allow cookies.  Check the security settings.  There is a "Michael" and a "Michael_D" registered, so I presume one of them is you.

cheers
RET

Unless you're blind and someone is reading this to you, you might notice the boards look quite different!  The board software has been upgraded to YaBB 1 - SP1.  I have done some limited testing, and it seems to be OK.  I would appreciate if you could send me an IM or an email if you discover anything broken.

Holden Together,
Richard

admin@fefcholden.org.au

1966 ?

Good on you for customising a relatively new car, or did you mean 1996 ?  

RET

Howie,

Ditto to Craig's comments.  Come along to the meeting and see if anyone can help you out.  The venue can be found here http://www.fefcholden.org.au/nsw/meetings.html - including a map and everything!

There's a heap of info about paint colours and so on in our Tech Info section http://www.fefcholden.org.au/techinfo/index.html, although not the original ute colours.  I'm pretty sure I've got that info somewhere, though.  From memory, there's black, a light blue, cream, two different greys, two greens, and some special colours (ie army, PMG etc).

cheers
RET

Of course there's only about half a dozen original ute colours anyway!

RET

The most recent Nats were Easter 2001, and were held in Sydney.  Heaps of info about them can be found here http://www.fefcholden.org.au/nsw/2001nats/index.html

The next Nats are on the Gold Coast in 2003.

cheers
RET

I'll update the PLEASE READ thread with this info as well.  It seems that GeoCities deny links to images from external sites, which is presumably to stop bandwidth theft.  This also explains why you can't download old copies of Sideplate direct from our old site there.

Note that you can drag the broken link icon to another explorer page and it will load there.

cheers
RET

notice the Kawasaki bike blinkers.

Cool!  I've been thinking about some custom mods for my FE sedan, and I've just been inspired to get some of those  

Maybe mounted on the top of the fins.  What do you think?

RET

I'll kick proceedings off with a pic of my 1957 FE Sedan:

I've owned this car for more than 10 years, and it's a very rough (almost) daily driver.  Hiding under the '57 exterior is a '67 Holden, with 186, powerglide auto, HR front and rear ends.  As long as she's running sweet, the license-plate is pronounced "Eff Ee Cool".  When she lets me down (which thankfully, is not often), it's pronounced "Faecal"

cheers
RET