Tim Miller - FC Wagon

 

Tim Miller - 1959 Holden FC Special Station Sedan - Updated 9 June 2009
 

    

 
Sorry I've been so quiet lately.  I've been on a slow-motion race against time to get our white and grey 1959 FC Holden Special Station Sedan back on the road.  My wife Bec has been using our red 1958 FC Holden Utility as a daily driver, but with our first baby due on 3 June, it's been driven on borrowed time.  I managed to get our wagon ACT-engineered and re-registered on 2 June, with 24 hours to spare.  Ironically, there is still no sign of our baby boy, but we're told he's due any day now.  I was grateful for the delay, as it meant I was able to join Michael Pilger in our co-owned 1965 HD Holden Standard Station Wagon at the HD-HR Holden Nationals which our club hosted here in Canberra last weekend.  I also managed to take our original two-tone green 1959 FC Holden Special Sedan to Grey Pride in Berrima NSW.  I bought the sedan in 1993 (at age 17) and used it as my daily driver while I looked for a modified FC wagon.  During the next four years, I went all over NSW and Victoria and ironically found my wagon in Canberra, just one suburb away.  It had a 179 red motor, HR front and rear end, plus seat-belts and child restraint bar already fitted. We drove the wagon for a year including many camping trips to go hiking and mountain biking.  In 1998, we left it with a fellow club member for 18 months while we drove a Kombi van from Alaska to Europe.  We returned in 1999 and travelled in our wagon some more before being rear-ended by a Suzuki Swift in 2000.  The panel repairs were done but within weeks of being back on the road, the diff, gearbox and engine all had major failures.  Sadly, the wagon was garaged unrepaired and during the next ten years, we did all of our travelling in a series of 4WDs.  Of course, we still had our sedan for club runs and FE-FC Holden Nationals (missing just the 1999 Nats as we were in Alaska).
 
After we got married in 2007, I bought a ute as I knew I only had a short window of opportunity before we'd have kids - I bought Ray Hammer's ute (QLD Club) which I'd loved since the 2005 Jindabyne Nats.  I'd given up trying to find a replacement FC wagon with late model Commodore running gear.  So last year, once a baby was on its way, fellow club members Colin Tierney and Michael Pilger helped me drag the wagon out of retirement.  We replaced the 179 with a rebuilt 186 with mild cam, rebuilt the seized brakes, gearbox and replaced the diff.  When I first took it to the official ACT inspection station, they were happy with the result but wanted an engineers certificate for all the modifications.  I tried the usual 'but it was already ACT registered with these modifications when I bought it' but as it had been out of rego for so long and they had no record of me even owning it - it was treated as a new vehicle.  The engineer found a few fiddly things for me to fix including rounding the edges of the backing plates for the seat belt mounts.  I also had to swap the 205/60R13s tyres on my 13x7 inch rims for 205/65R13s as the rolling diameter was too small.  The wagon failed what I hoped would be its final registration inspection due to a seized lower control arm pivot nut - which had unfortunately been missed during several previous inspections.  A final days scrouge for a replacement lower control arm and then actually replacing it made for an exciting finish.  The cherry on top (or on the side I guess) was within 24 hours of getting the wagon officially back on the road - I was t-boned by a reversing p-plater in a car park.
 
The three FCs pictured above are now the only cars we own.  I'm proud to have an exclusively FC Holden family and I'm looking forward to taking our son home home from the hospital in our wagon (any day now).  The wagon will be our daily driver until we take it to the Nationals in Orange next year.  The sedan will remain on historic rego and I'll keep the ute as a workhorse for club outings until our FB Holden club trailer is restored.  In the meantime, if anyone knows of an FC panelvan for sale, please let me know as I'd really love to complete the set.