1970 Torino And Fairlane Builds

So, that style of "Falcon" is much different than what I know as a Falcon. I always figured it was a Canadian Falcon or something screwy like that. You know the Canucks. What is the story with a Falcon that looks like a Torino?

 

It’s a bit strange. There was a regime change going on in Fords upper echelon. At the same time the Maverick hit the showrooms in the second half of 1970, intended to replace the Falcon in the compact car class. So they dropped the futura style Falcon that ran the first half of the year, and dug into the parts bins to run the 70.5 Torino sized Falcon. It was a very basic version of the Torino, and although could be optioned well, including with a CJ 429/4 speed, they were generally budget friendly low option cars.
They did something similar with the Fairlane. I guess they weren’t quite ready to bury the name at the end of 1969 so they built the Fairlane 500 for the first half of 1970, a car exactly the same as the Torino aside from the name. If I recall sales weren’t great for those compared to Torinos and they were dropped mid year.

 

Huh. Interesting. I wonder how many 429/4 speed Falcons were built. Probably a rare bird. Pun intended.

Not sure I've ever seen any factory HP Fairlanes of this body style. All 302 2bbl cars. I guess thats why I prefer the Torino.

 

Well we’re talking a break from the K5 to get the Fairlane rolling. I got the car in the barn last weekend which meant a bunch of car shuffling and garage cleaning to fit the k5. Brake parts are either here or on order. The master was still full and there was a brake pedal but I insisted on replacing the rubber lines and wheel cylinders. A few days ago I spent about thirty minutes trying to get the rear driver drum off. I could not get the slack adjuster sucked in enough to get the drum past the ridge I figured was there. It turned out the ridge was the worst I’d seen.
Yesterday I got the rusted tatters of the battery that removed by welding a 1/2” nut on the rusted mounting bolt heads. There’s rust underneath but nothing that’ll get patched so cleaned and por-15 that. Then Jeff came by with a bunch more parts from his stash and we taped off and painted the engine bay. I’d loaded the car up and taken it to town to hit the engine and interior with the heated pressure washer at work so it was pretty well easy for scuff and paint already.

 

Also I owe a huge thanks to Tumbleweed. I drove to Mountain Home Idaho a few weeks ago to buy a 302/fmx and a ton of other spare engine/trans parts from his brother for a great deal. We got the combo here And used a bore scope to check the cylinders, which all looked pretty ok. A little bit of rust on the cylinder walls that I believe will work itself out. This is operation get her back on the road on the cheap after all, so this combo will be fine.

I’ll take more pictures later on and post them up.

One other note: we’re driving 2 hours north tomorrow to pick another little something up. More on that later, but quick hint, we’re taking the trailer.

 

Well the engine and trans is in.

We got the engine degreased and cleaned and installed. Still lots to do of course. Tomorrow I’ll probably choose one of the 2bbl carbs and give it a good clean. But the ps pump and alternator are mounted and plumbed, the charge and start circuits are wired, and the heater core is bypassed for now. Still need to plumb a temporary fuel system, check the drive shaft length and see if it’ll need shortened, and loop the trans cooler lines and hook up the shift lever to the rod at the trans and it’ll be ready for a test fire. Also this 302 is set up for duraspark and we do intend to run that. But in the short term we’re going to use one of Jeff’s old point distributors just to get it test fired. We want to adapt the duraspark to the factory ignition pigtail which is going to require some wrecking yard scouring to find the two harness to marry. Also we’re waiting on brake parts to arrive.

 

I may need to change this thread to 1970 Torino, 1970 Fairlane, and 1970.5 Falcon build.

We drove up to Ollala wa for this guy this morning. A 1970.5 Falcon a guy has used a few parts off of including all of the unobtinium side glass. But they’re repairable 70.5 Falcon only doors and a ton of extra usable parts, and a 250-6 that turns by hand and will likely run in the neat future. The rear tires are locked up so had to snatch block to load with my little 3500lb trailer winch. Then winched it off the trailer with the cj5.

 

I spent some time this morning cleaning one of the 2100 carbs. Shockingly the accelerator pump worked and the bowl looked fairly ok. But one of the pump nozzles was plugged solid. Otherwise the carb was actually petty ok.
There were a number of battery cables I found, in the barn two of which were pretty ok. So I wired it up and nothing from the starter relay. So I tried another relay, more of the same. I did get the engine cranking bypassing the relay. I tried to buy a relay from my local Napa but they wanted $44 for it I walked away from it and the $13 3/8” clamps and a few other things in the counter. Napa is on the list.

On the bright side I did have some daddy sodas and hit the car with the buffer. The paint is trash but it actually polished up ok. Of course though, no pictures.

 

Another note. The Falcon had locked up rear brakes, which taxed my little 3500 warn trailer winch even with a snatch block loading the car up. Well I backed the slack adjusters Up and got the tires rolling, but after the fact found the brake pedal sticks down. I probably just needed to pull the pedal up to get it to roll nice and easy. Ah well. Maybe somebody else will learn from my mistake.

 

Jeff bright by a beautiful and nearly correct paint ltd trunk lid for the Falcon today. That made my day. The lid it came with was so incredibly bent, bondoed, and hacked for harvest thing I’ve seen used. I spent probably 6 hours over the last week trying to comet wash the black and gray primer off her to expose the beautiful baby crap green, that I do actually love, but I’m about over it. I’m exposing bare metal that the crappy paint has covered and at that point, I’m doing more harm than good.
Otherwise work has continued on the Fairlane. The column shifter is setup and gets almost all of the gears including Park. The driveshaft that came with the engine/trans was slightly too short, and came with 1330 joints. The shaft that came with the car for its c4/8” combo used 1310 but was too long? So Jeff brought over a few of his spare driveshafts and hell, each of the wrong shafts had a twin. So now we have a total of 4 wing radiators and 4 wrong driveshafts
Regardless, we got the rear drum brakes rebuilt, the distributor installed at tdc, the engine prelubed a few times, new battery test installed, and half of the body buffed…. Because that’s what I do which was perfectly timed because Jeff brought over a freshly painted pastel blue rear deck lid and we got that installed in place of the somewhat rotten stocker.

 

Work continues on the Fairlane. I worked in brakes again today. Got the new front wheel cylinders, shoes and rubber hoses installed. Of course it was a battle to preserve the hard line, even with presoaking all of the fittings with pb blaster days in advance. In the end heat did the trick. The rear is pretty well buttoned up. Replaced that rubber hose and built new T to wheel cylinder brake lines with nicop tube. The front drums are in town getting turned. So once those arrive, we’ll bleed and installed a replacement brake cable and the brakes are done. Jeff worked on a bunch of stuff topside like getting the valve cover gaskets done and the power steering belt installed among other things. At this point we’re about to be waiting for parts. The new thermostat, starter relay, radiator, ect.

I was messing with the electrical to see what we have and what we need. I noticed there was no power to anything at the fuse panel, except one end of one fuse, which has -2.5v. Something’s grounding out, so we have that to look forward to. We will probably just set it to run with a jumper wire to the coil and my remote starter switch just to get it running, bypassing the cab and hopefully it’s issues.

 

One more note. We ordered side glass, regulators and hardware for the Falcon today. I spent way too much time looking for side glass, in vain. Since those 70.5 falcons are the only cars with door posts and wing windows, parts need to come from that specific 2 door car. I finally found a guy parting out a 70.5 Falcon in South Carolina so those should be in the mail Wednesday.

 

Yay, she’s a runner!!!
The brakes are buttoned up…. Sort of. The master cylinder has a good pedal but the rear port is plugged. We have another master and booster from Anna’s Falcon when we did the manual 4 wheel disc swap on it so that’ll get swapped on at some point.
Otherwise we were just doing a bunch of dink and dunk stuff. Jeff installed some wheel well trim and worked on getting the headlight buckets in the grill put together. I pie cut and welded up an exhaust down pipe only to realize the flange is wrong for the manifold. There was another in one on a spare manifold but only one and no donut.
There are a bunch of parts in the mail now so soon we’ll be able to do a legit warm up and transmission test.
Did I mention it runs??? This was a huge load off of both of our minds. It actually cleared up really well after the initial blue smoke, part of which was the prelube on the cylinder walls. We ran it for only about 30 seconds two times. No valve train noise or cause for concern at this point.

 

Glad to see it coming together. That motor, trans, and other loose parts sat for nearly 40 years. I see you are using the custom motor cradle/cart still. Can't beat the supermarket parts. Let my brother know about the progress tonight. He is happy that it has a new, great home and owner.

 

The Fairlane got some somewhat quality run time today. We’ve been wrenching on it in small bits for the last week. We got a 1310/1330 conversion u joint to adapt the c6 /fmx slip yolk to the stock 1310 u joint shaft and the length was perfect despite my previous synopsis. Jeff installed the new voltage regulator and fuel pump while I installed the new master cylinder today. Again had to use a bunch of heat to separate the tube from fitting in the master to preserve the stock lines from master to combo valve.
He ordered the cheapest radiator that fits this car, an aluminum unit from eBay, and outside of some tweaks needed to the top mount clamps, it’s a nice little $120 unit. Then the spacer we’d measured for had the wrong pilot so the bolt lengths were wrong. We made adjustments for that
This afternoon, after a few hours of wrenching, we fired the car up pulling fuel from the new fuel pump and a gas can. Water circulation was great. The alternator still doesn’t charge based on the light. Haven’t checked manually, and there’s a few alternator options here at the house. The exhaust is still a soup sandwich but we’re making headway.
The other big sign of success is the transmission. IT at least has reverse. I’d roughed in the trans linkage adjustment but it turns out park was reverse, and it only took a quart of type f added to do it. I was running over to grab another tool and turned to notice the rear wheel turning. Is still early but it was a huge relief seeing that drum turn. At least we know the tranny does something.

 

One more quick note. I had a buddy swing by today and out of curiosity we tried to fire it up. One quick crank was all it took to fire her up without any assistance. That was very nice to see. And no smoke on startup. Also we got a aftermarket gage set to monitor the vitals.

 

Jeff came up for a bit yesterday and we messed with the Fairlane. The alternator was bad so we swapped it with another used one that came with the tumbleweed engine purchase, and that one worked fine. I worked on the exhaust. I got the downpipies on and one 45 degree section welded on so the passenger sides. But we need more straight sections. Muffler and hangers. I need to do some cutting and welding to get the other 45 to work.
Tonight I put the tires back on and put the car on the ground so I could roll it forward and work on getting the fuel tank out and cleaned. Of course that was a mess so I shut everything in the barn off and it’s now airing out. The trunk is full of parts and I’m not ready to tackle that so I’ll let future John worry about that.
On a side note we’ve got some cold coming so I got other bay cleaned and organized and put the jeep back in its spot.
Here’s the stance with the car almost up to weight. And here’s the trash that came out of the tank with the pickup removed.
also Jeff has a set of really nice torque thrusts I think that’ll go on once the brakes are buttoned up, which looks like will be after we replace the brand new master cylinder

 

You're making me waste time on Marketplace looking at/for these. Rust buckets around here.

 

There’s a guy named Troy Lemming out your way. He has I believe 4 2d falcons for sale now. Ones actually pretty cool, 302/c4, satin black, not bad looking, rolling on magnums. Unfortunately he knows what they’re worth. He’s asking 13k. He has a bunch of other cars too though.

 

Thanks. I think I'd forego the Falcon and stick to a Torino or, failing that, a Fairlane.