New FF Owner

[MattB]

Hello,
My first post! I’ve recently become the proud owner of a 1970 MkII FF, a car which some of you on here may already know. It’s registration CEA 4J and chassis number 127/257.

The car’s been owned by Ricardo Plc for the last 25years, which happens to be the same length of time I’ve worked there! It’s been off the road for the last 5 years, sat in the back of a warehouse due to other business priorities. It was previously used for company events and displayed in the reception areas of our UK offices – including our Midlands site (formerly FFD). In 2015 it was retired off due to a seized rear brake caliper and carburettor issues.

Long story short – myself and a colleague bought it from the company last month. So far, we’ve rebuilt the seized rear caliper (very fiddly seals!!) and got it running sufficiently to relocate it. I’m now in the middle of overhauling the carburettor – which, given the state I’ve found it in, I’m surprised the car was running at all!

Below are a few photos of the car taken last week, it’s in need of some TLC but still looks great.

We’re working our way through the many folders of history which came with the car and have found some fascinating documents along the way – including letters between Tony Sheldon of Formula Ferguson Research and Richard Graves of Jensen. Also, there are several loan agreements from when it was a factory demonstrator – including to journalist Jack de Manio and for use by BBC Horizon in early ’71.

So far, our plan is to recommission the car ready to use over the summer, maybe tidying a few of the cosmetics along the way. The current lock-down is hampering progress, but we’ve made a start. I also own a couple of classic Porsche projects – so this is quite a departure from my usual air-cooled tinkering – I’ve had to invest in an imperial socket set for a start!!

Looking forward to picking the brains of those on here – we’re bound to have lots of questions as we get to know the car. I’ll kick off a thread on the ongoing carburettor rebuild in the FF Tech section soon.

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[Eddie]

Hi Matt,

Welcome to the forum. Nice to see a long standing Ricardo employee has ended up with her.

Hopefully we may see you and CEA along at a club event or two this year.

I have CEA 1J (Interceptor 11) so was good to read your post.

Eddie

[Grant]

Matt...WoW ..Congrats..what a beautiful looking car with a great providence..welcome aboard..come in and pull up a FloorBoard

[Chris_R]

A very warm welcome Matt. I see you are in Sussex, your local Jensen Owners Club area representative is David Wright, he can be contacted at southdowns@joc.org.uk. He organises a number of events during the course of the year including one of the year's premier events, the Hampton Court Concours. Drop him a line and get on his email list, I'm sure he'll be delighted to hear from you.
For your carburettor question, your car would originally have had a Carter AVS type, serial 4682S. Unless you particularly want to overhaul it yourself you may wish to contact Dave Barnett who has overhauled many of these carburettors for club members. He is the Essex area rep and you can find his contact details under the Contact Us link on the web site.
Good luck.

[johnw]

Hi Matt! I remember seeing the car at Brooklands around 2001, I was there in Vignale FF 119/006, Your car looked as good as it does in those pictures!

The rear callipers do respond well to a rebuild, and new pistons in stainless are available from various sources if yours were not 100%, and as you now know the seals are stationary in the calliper, so no need to worry about pitted calliper bores on Girlings. Yes the dust seals can be a pain, as can the auto adjustment handbrake mechanism as it ages! Also the 3 rubber brake hoses tend to collapse internally, causing the pads to bind on. Cheap to fix but possibly difficult to diagnose. Not tried them myself but new FF compatible Dunlop brake master cylinders are being remade for around £250.

With regard to the carb, take your time! As a cheap almost foolproof stop gap, a new Carter/Eidlebrock/Webber 4BBL (with electric choke, 625CFM? again for about £250), should drop on, the fuel inlet connection being the only issue. Try and keep the original steel fuel pipe from the mechanical pump to the carb intact to use with the original carb when rebuilt. I keep a good one of those carbs spare to swap onto any FF I want to set up. Once the rest of the car is perfect, I can switch back the original carb and debug it knowing any issues are due to the carb.

We would be very interested to hear of any documents relating to the GKN Chairman's FF, 119/011, ATU 3F, the car the GKN Chairman ran when GKN bought FFD. It would be interesting to know of any correspondence relating to that car crops up in your paperwork.

[MattB]

Thank you all for the warm welcome! Some useful information already.

Chris - you're right, the carb is an Carter AVS 4682S. I like the challenge of rebuilding stuff like this so planning to do myself, advice and tips welcome though. I've got the carb fully stripped now - the upper and lower carb housings are being vapour blasted and ultrasonically cleaned now. I'm going to ream and bush the throttle spindle bores next - both the primary and secondary shafts had a lot of play in them. I also discovered some debris 'fused' to one of the float valves which meant it was jammed open... explaining some of the running and flooding issues it had.

John - yes, it was the double dust seal on the rear brake caliper that was a pain to get in right, not come across one like that before. The pistons were in very good condition fortunately. We also had one of the rear flex hoses collapse internally - we only discovered this when trying to bleed the system, so that had to be replaced too before we could move the car. The brakes seems to be working fine now but won't be sure until it's running well enough to go for a proper drive. I'll look out for any documents in the history files relating to 119/011, I don't recall seeing any so far.

[Chris_R]

There is a very good book "How to Rebuild Carter Carburetors" by Dave Emanuel. You could search out a copy of that either on ebay or Amazon. Well worth buying. There's also one by Larry Shepard.

[DPP]

Welcome Matt, your car looks beautiful.

[Martin R]

Welcome Matt - I approve whole heartedly with your recent purchase

[Kevin Birch]

Welcome, I would take up the advice to send your carb to Dave Barrnett, he is very reasonable on price and his turn around is usually a couple of weeks, and you just bolt it on then set up the idle stop. I seem to remember at the international a few years ago, somebody said that there were 4 FFs produced in Cassis and 3 of them were there, the joke then went round that they were as common as muck. Perhaps next time all 4 of them can get together.

[Mark1Stu]

Great looking car Matt. Congratulations.

Dave Barnett is the go to man for FFs as Kev mentioned. I think the Carter AVS is a great carb and have reconditioned mine over the years. There's a great book called overhauling Carter carburettors which is worth getting hold of. Will post a picture of it if needed. The only thing I found is there are different diameter accelerator pumps in some of the carbs. My '69 'D' series engined Interceptor was different to my 'E' series '69 FF for instance.

Depending on the knowledge of the parts specialist you use, you may find you get a generic rebuild kit for the carb which has the wrong replacement accelerator pump. I found an American parts specialist in the SW who looked up the carb number in his old parts books to find the original rebuild kit number and cross referenced it with the revised current part number. So, if you hit this problem let me know.

Btw, those Rostyles look good to my eyes, chrome polish the centres within an inch of their lives, new black paint and resilvered rims will set off an already special car I'm sure. Hope you intend keeping it as original as possible.

[MattB]

I'm quite a long way on with the carb overhaul now so going to push on for now - I'll certainly be in touch with Dave Barnett if I get stuck. I'm enjoying working on something different. I've rebuilt and modified a number of air-cooled Porsche engines over the years but nothing with a 4 barrel carb!

This is the AVS carb as removed:

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These are the float valves needles as removed and the likely cause of some of the running issues. Looks like a bit of wire or filter gauze has fused itself to the needle:

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The housings are now clean and ready for bushing the throttle spindle bores:

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[smillard]

I was intrigued that the car was loaned to the broadcaster Jack de Manio for an Horizon programme. Being a science based series, perhaps it was about 4 wheel drive ? I had a look at the BBC online archive, but there's very little about Horizon episodes from that period. Would be interesting viewing if the episode has survived.

[MattB]

We've been trying to locate the Horizon footage but hit a dead end

It was actually a long term loan to Jack de Manio as a daily driver, then subsequently loaned to the BBC. Details of the loan here:

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We've worked out which Horizon episode it was - it was on Car Safety developments... which makes sense. It aired in March '71. The BBC archives show that they have no recordings:

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Any suggestions where else we might find a copy gratefully received

[smillard]

Thanks for posting all the extra info and copies. It might be worth asking the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu who have a huge motoring archive library if they have a recording. Apparently they have a recording of ITV's 1970 ' Turnaround Man ' documentary on Carl Duerr.