Building an Australian 80's racing icon, Johnson's Greens Tuf XE Falcon

Daved_XB

Ok, so this is a project that I started about two months ago & I'd been documenting in a thread on another forum & I hadn't planned on capturing as much detail as I normally do… but seems I've failed at that so thought I'd share the thread here too. Assuming there is interest in it I'll update it regularly as I do with my other threads.

My oldest friend here in Aus (and I mean that in both ways, longest running friendship & he's my oldest mate too) has had a dream since the early 80's to have a replica of D!ck Johnson's Greens Tuf XE Falcon as raced at Bathurst. If you don't know what that it.... here she is

Personally I've never been a huge fan of the Falcons post the XC, I've always felt that the curves of the XA/B/C cars where much more stylish that the square bland box shape that was the XD & XE Falcons. But even I can admit that the car above looks awesome & so I've always encouraged my mate to just follow his dream & make one.

To this end I found one back in 2014 for sale from a friend of a friend in South Australia & it was going dirt cheap as the crazy car market hadn't fallen in love with the cornflake box design queues of the 80's just yet... this car I found was dry stored in a shed for years & was completely rust free, had some mechanical & electrical issues but for $1500 back then it was a great buy... so I bought it for my mate for his birthday.

This was how she looked when we got her to my old house & put her up on the hoist for quick look. She's a 1982 XE with the 4.1ltr straight 6 from the factory.

Unfortunately my mate has since just let the car sit out his back yard on the grass & slowly start rotting away. He's had some really bad health issues the last few years & he was forced to retire a few years earlier that he wanted too & so I've really pushed him to either sell the bloody thing & get some cash or we drag it to my place & make his dream car before he bloody dies or is too sick to enjoy it. The other week I got tired of the debate & just hired a trailer & turned up at his place & told him I was taking the car.

Now that I have it at my place & I've been walking around it the last few days, she's worse that I feared... there is a lot of rust showing & as I always say rust is like an iceberg you only see 10% of it so this will be a bigger job that I was thinking but I'm getting half good at this rusty shitbox revival thing so I'm confident I can fix her.

Daved_XB

The bonnet on this car is way too far gone at the front, not just the skin but the actual structure underneath is gone, parts for these cars are now asking stupid money as the market now loves etch-a-sketch designed cars now I guess. I was lucky last weekend & found a guy restoring an XE ute very close to me & he was selling his old bonnet, this one has rust at the front too but it's a thousand time better that what we have on the car & he only wanted $100... I've seen worse sell for 4 to 5 times that so I snapped this up

Mrs_XB has reminded me again that this is not my car & not my project & as such she will be slapping me about the head if I start taking over too much on this... I do have form for taking on other peoples projects & just running away with them. The Holden Ute is a classic example of that. Now due to the fact my mates retired this will be more of a budget build as he simply doesn't have tens of thousands to pour into this... so we'll be painting the engine bay & all of the inside of the doors etc ourselves & only getting a closed door repay when the time comes, other corners may be cut, like the wheels needed for this car are close to $4000 for the set... we'll have to find a cheaper option than that.

One expense that couldn't be skipped is the body kit, that turned up the other day, it's a replacement front bumper & skirt, wide body flares, the rears are split as one half is attached to the door & the rear bird bath wing for the boot lid. Since we had the kit unwrapped to make sure nothing was damaged we felt it was only right to crudely clamp it to the car to see how it looks. We'll also be fitting the "optional" very low rise bonnet scoup that other race teams ran as my mate just likes the look of it.

Daved_XB

On the mechanical front, we'll be putting the old 5.1ltr V8 that came out of my XB into this car, I've been storing it under the bench for long time now

Ford ran several different colours on their engines over the years & the one that my mate wants to use is a little lighter than the one I had on the XB block

He's also sourced a pair of the hard to find these days Power By Ford rocker covers, this is the good one... the other one needs some rust repair before it can be painted & used

Speaking of paint, this is the paint we have for doing the inside of the engine bay & the door inners... it's very green.

We're refreshing all of the suspension, we have a set of competition sway bars from Whiteline to go on

Every bush, rubber & ball joint will be replaced

Along with new shocks & springs all round & the two front lower arms will be replaced with new thicker steel items

For the brakes, we'll be leaving the rear drums stock... well that's the plan for now anyway. The front end is getting new hubs

Fancy new disks

And a set of twin pot callipers to replace the OEM single pot versions that came on the straight 6 cars. These have been power coated in green because reasons but sadly you only have a limited range of colours with power coating so these are a Lambo green & not the correct Greens Tuf green.. but I don't think that anyone will really notice

The plastic brake masters are know to get brittle & fail with age so we've pre-empted this & have a new one ready to go

Ok, so let me know… is this of interest? Do you want to see how far I've gotten in just under two months whilst juggling all my other projects?