3500km in a 1960 Vauxhall raising money for the Cancer Council

Hi All,


I thought I'd start a fresh thread in case anyone is interested in our adventure to raise money for the Cancer Council here in Australia.


Next April my girlfriend and I will be one of 150 teams setting off from Melbourne in April 2012 to drive 3500km in 7 days through outback Australia to Cairns in vehicles which have cost less than $1000 including registration. Each team must raise at least $4000 to enter with proceeds going to the Cancer Council. I believe the target for this rally is $1,000,000.


Since there is no racing involved it seemed perfectly logical to purchase something interesting as our 'shitbox'. We wanted something that was manual, pre-1980, rwd,and preferably that we could sleep in if necessary. My daily driver is from 1967 so the age did not scare us.


After searching a wide range of media and vehicle types we made a surprise discovery and did a 500km round trip sight unseen to purchase a 1960 Vauxhall Victor Super.


The car is now safely home after a good looking-over. There is a little bit of metalwork to do and some very simple mechanical work but the car is in great original condition for it's age and should be perfect for the purpose.














We are currently negotiating sponsors for the vehicle who would like to have their logos on what will almost certainly be the most unique vehicle in a well publicised road event, if anyone here has a business which may be interested please feel free to contact me for more information. Good systems are in place to make sure that sponsorship is largely tax-deductible.


Also 'rattling the can' if anyone is willing to put a few tax deductible donation $ towards the Cancer Council and this nutty adventure our team page for online donations is http://everydayhero.com.au/desertsailors


We have 2 sponsors on board so far:


Team Desert Sailors are very happy to announce our first major sponsors, The LUCKY COQ ;D


One of my favourite haunts since it opened the Lucky Coq is a big friendly corner pub right next to Swinburne Uni on Chapel St, Prahran which has built a name for itself serving great original pizzas, flavoured vodkas and a top selection of local beers. The funky vibe of the venue is perfectly inline with our team and our car and we're wrapped to have them on board.


http://www.luckycoq.com.au/





more exciting news, we'd like to welcome Vintage Caravan Magazine as our second sponsor.


Vintage Caravan Magazine is a recently started Australian magazine covering the classic caravan and touring world in Australia, and as well as becoming Team Desert Sailor sponsors we will be keeping their readers up to date with team updates in their coming magazines


http://vintagecaravanmagazine.com.au/



We've since had half a day to spend beginning work on the Victor and things are going very well. We rehung the front doors which had only been sat on in order to get it home and they are now opening and closing nicely. We also refitted the interior trim to the front doors which is in AMAZING condition (unfortunately we will have to remove it again to properly refit the outside chrome trim).





We had been told by the previous owner that the drums were freshly machined and the pads new, and after taking off 2 of the drums this definitely seems to be the case. It also appears that the brake cylinders may be in good condition as they appear to have nice fresh feeling dust seals on them and show no visible signs of leaking. Some fluid in the drained master cylinder and the brakes are now well on their way to being useable.

Just read a great little article on the F series Victors, sounds very promising about mechanical durability! It also suggests that the interiors wear out and aren;t durable even in the UK environment, making me even certain that the near perfext vinyl in ours makes for a very low km car
http://www.4x4mart.co.uk/archive.php?ed_id=330&limit=0&pos=0&channel=&keywords=&smonth=&syear=&emonth=&eyear=

Fantastic man, keep it up sir.

We spent another couple of hours on the Victor today. Sanded down the bodyfiller in the guard and bonnet to see what lies beneath. No rust but lots of dints, the previous owner managed to find a remarkable number of sharp objects with the front left corner of the car!



We got the basic panelbeating tools out that I've had for a while, had a read of a how-to article in a classic car magazine and got stuck into it. We won't be putting any filler in, just straightening it as much as possible and then repainting to seal the metal.



I added a quick bit of paint to the bonnet to seal it from the bad weather of the next few days. Pretty happy with the result for our first time!

Late notice as it ends tonight but we've added our Victor to Just Car Insurance's coolest car competition for a laugh,Please vote for us if you're on facebook, or even better drop a couple of dollars into our everyday heroes tax deductible sponsorship page

http://www.facebook.com/justcar?sk=app_233013726736756&app_data=1199

http://everydayhero.com.au/desertsailors

Victor's got new shoes!

Scored a near new set of 165x80x13" tyres off Ebay a week or so ago and fitted them up to the old girls wheels today. Also chucked on my spare roofrack to make her more rally-ish

Exciting times,the route has been announced!

Day 1 - Melbourne CBD to Wentworth (near Mildura)
Day 2 - Wentworth out of Victoria to Tibooburra via Broken Hill
Day 3 - Tibooburra to Innaminka in South Australia via Camerons corner (the borders of Queensland, South Australia and NSW)
Day 4 - Innaminka to Windora in Queensland
Day 5 - Windora to Winton
Day 6 - Winton to Mount Surprise
Day 7 - Mount Surprise to Cairns (Hopefully downhill!)

Getting very excited now! To give you an idea of the distance covered here's a screen-capture of the route map:


There are promises of sand dunes, wet and dry river crossings and lots of dirt roads, time to find some spare wheels! ;D

Route map here: http://www.shitboxrally.com.au/route-2012/

Donations page here: http://everydayhero.com.au/desertsailors

I just found this photo today, great to see a Victor going hard in the dirt! Anyone know where I can get a copy of the movie it comes from? (Rallybrudar, 2008) It features the Victor, a bunch of Volvo 122s' and many more lovely classics and I can;t find a copy for sale anywhere!

Finally got around to doing some welding on the car. I'll let the pictures do the work:

Lower guard work:





Rest of the guards:



Where battery had rotted through:



Sitting back together:

To continue our wonderfully productive week Desert Sailors is very pleased to announce another sponsor for our grand adventure for the Cancer Council.

Hemco seatbelts ( http://www.hemco.com.au/seatbelts.html )has come on board this week. For those that don't know them, Hemco are suppliers of volume and one-off seatbelts for all makes and models of cars. We use them at work and I've had a set of standard belts fitted to my Volvo for the last 12 months, and have just treated myself to some custom belts in green to match the interior. Hemco can do custom length static and retractable belts with a range of stalk options and colour options at very reasonable prices and made in Australia. They've been here for a while too, I recently hopped into a mate's Peugeot 403 and the period fitted belts in that are Hemco!

We've had some fun recently and decided to put together some Team Tshirts for the Desert Sailors. All designs give $10 directly to our donation drive for the Cancer Council.


http://desertsailors.communitee.com.au/home?ma=4

Exciting times, 3 days of long hours and late nights and the Victor is painted!

Day 1 involved the last bits of metalwork and some metal prep and final assembly:





Day 2 I prepped the top half of the car with the help of a good mate, masked it up and hit it with 1l of 'aluminium', small compressor, gun set up for thick paint and paint made to be brushed on rather then sprayed, thinned heavily for the purpose. The result is appalling but fitting :









Then day 3 saw the lower half of the car prepped,silver drips removed and a litre of ridiculously loud blue added. Like the silver the blue had issues, very thin and didn't want to adhere to the base, but again I think the result is fitting:






Then reassembly on the mostly-dry new car:












not bad for 3 days work!

So exciting to see it outside in the sun for the first time!

I'd like to say a big thankyou Lucky Coq for hosting our Shitbox Rally launch party on Sunday. The sun was shining, BBQ was sizzling, and between the BBQ and raffle we managed to raise another $240 for a good cause.
Raffle Winners were:
Polly (ticket 18)
Kiy (ticket 1)
Jason (ticket 26)

BIG weekend on the Victor. Started to piece the wiring back together, so far I am a couple of globes away from working indicators, brake lights and taillights. Still need to figure out how to hook up the headlights since the wiring has been cut to change from the old globes to sealed beams.

Gearshift is linked up and seems to be shifting quite well, Starter motor is working, car is turning over,fuel is getting to the carb, just lacking something in the spark department as far as I can tell before she is a runner

Also drilled out the broken stud in the exhaust manifold, reassembled it, hooked up throttle and choke, removed, inspected and reinstalled the waterpump, I think that'll do me for the weekend!

Want to say thankyou to Smithy's LPG in Bayswater too, as they made a very generous donaqtion to the team on Friday.

2 friendly cars during my weekend workathon

IT RUNS!!!!!

Given stale fuel, dirty old plugs, spark plug leads covered in electrical tape she runs soo much better than she has any right to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vb2Hxd1G-8

devilishdesigner said:

I just found this photo today, great to see a Victor going hard in the dirt! Anyone know where I can get a copy of the movie it comes from? (Rallybrudar, 2008) It features the Victor, a bunch of Volvo 122s' and many more lovely classics and I can;t find a copy for sale anywhere!

Click to expand...

I have the movie. Gimme your email and i'll use wetransfer to get it to ya. Good project!

I uploaded it to YT,

http://youtu.be/dG6ceEmYzo4

cheers!