Hi All!
I recently contacted Terry and got to talking about Dad's '81 Moke, which we have just blown the dust off after about twenty years of sitting out in the weather. Thought I'd better share it's story here
It started life as a guard's vehicle to patrol the perimeter of a chemical factory somewhere in Melbourne. It was originally painted Red, and Dad bought it around '88. He bought it because it had the Bronco canopy and absolutely no rust - out of the three mokes he'd owned around the time (one of which had hydrolastic suspension), this was the only one that was in perfect nick in regards to rust.
He used to take his mokes to the football, and found it impossible to keep the paintwork good due to this. He would leave to grab a pie and come back to find the vehicle crawling with kids, hanging off everything except the rear view mirror, hence the industrial strength hot-dip gal job. Nobody wanted to gal it - they all told him he was delusional, but he finally managed to convince Furphy's in Shepperton to entertain him after he got in touch with one of their biggest clients! After three months of sandblasting the body and subframes with a 10CMF 1-cylinder compressor, with sand up his nose and in his ears, and in a few other places, the Moke made the cover of a galvanising magazine.
Around this time he owned 11 cars with A series engines, and finally got ahold of a 1275 engine. Twelve months later, the engine was all done up - everything except for the head. First gear was a bit average, as was second & second's bulk ring, but third gear was perfect and fourth had obviously never been used. We figure the guards must have putted around their factory in second gear non-stop.
Within a month after it had been galvanised, it was off and racing. He drove it to South Australia in his shorts, with a perfect tan-line around the seatbelt region. Twenty years ago it was parked in the backyard, and I came along around the same time.
About to get my P's (if not for Caronavirus) I decided to push him to get it going again. My grandfather and I took it apart and painted the bullbar, rear bumper, dash and rollbar, and then we bought another 1275 off of a bloke in NSW on gumtree.
We got the 1275 shipped home and began stripping it apart. Bits of it were in baths of costic soda, other bits in tubs soaking in degreaser - and I looked up the engine number. Turns out it was stolen 28 years ago, and now it's in a million pieces!
Dad and I went down to the local cop shop and after a couple of weeks we managed to track down the bloke who owned it. We bought it off him, and once that was sorted we started the rebuild. It's now back in one piece, and we've painted it up and got it running. In the meantime, we've ripped out the front subframe and disassembled it ready to be painted up.
Here are some photos of our progress over the last few months:
Topic: Dad's Gal Moke (Read 1813 times)
