G'day gang,
Morris's son came home with news of a mate's father-in-law who has a Reek to move on so we went for a quick squiz one evening last week and couldn't believe our eyes; - a dust covered, finished, late model, Purvis F4 that has never been registered!
So we went back there yesterday, freed up the brakes, pushed it out of the shed, gave it a wash, raised the roof and pawed and drooled all over it for a while
Steven, the owner bought the kit from Allan in late '88 - '89 and built it up himself chroming various parts of it as he went, drove it a couple of k's to get a roadworthy which it failed for half a dozen of the usual reasons
then drove it home, parked it in the shed and went on holidays the next day or so later. When he came home from holidays he got married and that's where it has stayed ever since! His wife of 20+ years had never seen it with the roof up until the day before yesterday!!!
It's a white over black F4 on a '68 floorpan with a ball joint, disc brake front end, drum brake, swingaxle rear, hydraulic roof with a 1600 Ford crossflow Cortina motor. There is a single radiator mounted on the angle in the passengers side of the engine bay and it has a heater/demister fitted in the passengers footwell. The engine has a chrome rocker cover, sump and a few other bits and pieces. The swingaxle tubes have been chromed as are some other bits underneath, the pedals are chromed and some of the brake components are too. There is not a scrap of rust on it anywhere, only one crack in the fibreglass on the engine cover near the lock and although there are 1 or 2 pushbike/lawnmower scuffs on it the body is as brand new and would polish up magnificently
The pin stripes came from a moonlight bowling session that he won sometime after he built it and were worth $1000 apparently
It has retractable seat belts, some other brand of seats which are adjustable and the floorpan is standard, not lowered.
He has a manilla folder full of receipts and history ... somewhere...... but he's pretty sure he hasn't chucked it out.
The brake pedal went to the floor and wouldn't pump back up unfortunately and we bolted the wiper arms back on after taking the photos so they are there but we couldn't get them working and the taillights weren't working either. He let his brother-in-law have a crack at finishing it many years ago but all he did was remove the side mirrors, spray some white paint on the chrome sump, mess up some wiring (probably the wipers) and break the side windows before declaring it all too hard.
We didn't try to get the engine going as we would have preferred to put some stuff down the sparkplug holes, check the carby and spend a lot of time winding it over by hand etc, checking or changing the fluids etc etc rather than possibly damaging a nice little rebuilt Ford donk for no reason
So there it is, a brand new, 99.9% finished, stuck in a shed for 24 or 25 years, never registered F4 ready for a new owner to put in a little effort to get it on the road where it deserves to be.
You can contact Steven by email at
steven@prestonhire.com.au or by phone on 0419 561 731. He lives in Warragul and the car is located in Churchill in the Latrobe Valley here in Victoria. Or you can ask Morris or myself any questions you might have and we'll do our best to answer them. Steven is "over it now" but would dearly like to see it completed and registered and loved by someone who still has the passion of course and he is willing to listen to all offers or to come to some sort of an agreement to get it on the road etc so please contact him if you're interested.
You can check out some pics of it on our PhotoBucket site as per below; (make sure you zoom in on the speedo)
PP.
for life.
