My Mk2 Zephyr
By Ken Edgar
The
Zephyr I have is a MkII and
has been in the family since new. My family had once lived in South America (
The Zephyr did all automotive duties for
the next four years. Dad added a trailer hitch and an after market air
conditioning unit; the car took the family to the Grand Canyon and back and it
towed an old plywood boat (another story in itself) to every stretch of water
where the fishing promised to be productive. Dad had been told by the Dagenham
people that Lincoln-Mercury would handle any service for the Zephyr; the local
dealership had no idea what Dad was talking about when he asked them. Luckily,
the car gave little trouble. In 1965 we moved to
Mom, who hadn’t driven the Zephyr much prior
to moving here, began putting more miles on the car. Dad could walk to work so
he didn’t need it most days. Never adept with a manual gearbox, Mom began an
all out assault on the drive train. She never did quite grasp the concept of
dealing with a non-synchro bottom gear and the crunch that accompanied her
engaging first gear from neutral was grating even on my untrained, infant ears.
Dad hopped in the car to go somewhere one day and was assaulted by a rather
loud tapping at start up. Shutting the engine off, he went to quiz Mom on the
noise. When questioned, she replied “Oh, it’s been doing that for a couple of
weeks.” Removal of the rocker cover yielded a broken valve collet. The side
load on the valve stem wore an oval in the top of the guide. How the valve
didn’t end up in the combustion chamber I’ll never know. The low compression
head was junked and a standard head, found in the J.C. Whitney catalog, was fitted
by Dad in the back yard. By this time parts were getting scarce over here. Even
our earlier savior, J. C. Whitney, was no help. With the growing family Dad
bought another vehicle: a 1965 black Pontiac Catalina Safari station wagon.
This Yank tank was about nineteen feet long and tipped the scales at around two
tons. The big vee eight wasn’t as thirsty as you
would think and the car served the family well for years. He also purchased a
$300 1962 Ford Falcon Ranchero Ute (one of the most reliable vehicles we’ve
ever owned). Mom’s abuse of the Zephyr came to a head one day; the incident was
a source of family controversy for years and Dad never let Mom forget it.
Mom, my brother, and I went to the grocery
store one day. Mom still maintains that she was very tired and really didn’t
want to go. We parked the Zephyr on a slight grade and went inside. By this
time the troublesome Girling vacuum booster for the
brakes had packed it in and Dad had bypassed it, unable to find spares. The brakes,
as you can imagine, now required a Herculean amount of pressure to stop the car.
Upon returning to the car, Mom started the engine and the car began to roll.
Always a panicky one in a tight spot, Mom grabbed the shift lever and slammed
the Zephyr into gear without bothering to depress the clutch pedal. A
terrifying crunch was heard and the reverse idler gear shot across the parking
lot. Dad came when called (Mom merely said”It won’t go”) and found the idler gear
some distance away. The gear oil dripped from a huge wound onto a chunk of
gearbox casting lying below. The violence of the break can be imagined by the
fact that it took a chunk of the overdrive spacer (the one inch thick iron
casting between the gearbox and overdrive proper) with it. This piece was never
found.
Dad managed to get the gearbox casing
welded back together and the car resumed service a short time later. During a severe winter cold snap, the box
casing failed at the same spot. The car could go, but with no reverse. Another
Yank tank (a 1969 Pontiac Bonneville – 428 cid, 400 hp, and nine miles to the
gallon) was purchased and the Zephyr was pushed behind the shed.
The car sat there, rotting into the earth,
for thirteen years. By that time I was in high school and had a normal guy’s
interest in cars. Wondering if the car could be brought back to life, I started
doing some research on parts availability. Discovering that the Three Graces all
used the same gearbox I located a Consul parts car for
$75 (I saw a complete Vauxhall Victor nearby – I wished I’d saved it too). I
made one good gearbox out of the two – sort of. To give you an idea of what
kind of shape the Consul’s box was in I found the Consul’s former owner
apparently had taken the gearbox to pieces and shoved it back together without
ensuring that the main shaft roller bearings were not displaced. Needless to
say, the gearbox I cobbled together shifted like a tractor. The brakes were the
biggest problem – I couldn’t find anything for them. Thankfully, I ran into no
major issues with the engine. It started with little difficulty even after
sitting for thirteen years.
My Mom went to visit family in Oz in 1990
and I went with her. During the stay I scrounged as many Zephyr parts as I
could; one of my uncles, who lives in the
I got the Zephyr back on the road in 1992;
I went to several British car shows and always got placed in the Orphan class;
I was chastised by the wife of a Jag owner for being at one show and I had to
explain that this Ford was made in Dagenham and was as British as the Jag was.
I got a sense of morbid satisfaction when another exhibitor’s trailer queen
wouldn’t even start and had to be pushed off the trailer to its exhibit spot
when I had driven 70 miles one way to do the show. I even ran a few rallies
with the Zephyr. By the mid Nineties I was still running on a shoestring budget
and the cheap paint job I put on it was starting to look bad. The addition of a
1966 Triumph Spitfire and a 1976 Jaguar XJ-6C to the stable didn’t help. The
XJ-6C was later sold. I had to rescue its owner and two passengers at a later
show when its gearbox chewed itself up (no fault of mine – he ran it out of
ATF). They had to settle for a ride home in the Zephyr. I finally found a
decent gearbox in 1997 but I should have put new synchro
rings in it. A reworked head was fitted in 1999 when I discovered the valves
and guides were shot. The car was very pleasant to drive, with predictable
handling and excellent visibility in all directions. The overdrive has the
annoying habit of suddenly freewheeling under power and then taking up the
drive again for no apparent reason so I didn’t use it much. (Bad
solenoid, maybe?) Even so, I was getting an honest twenty m.p.g. under
hard (60-65 m.p.h.) driving. I took the car off the
road again in 2003 with the aim of putting everything right. A Jag E-type came
into the family at about the same time and it made its appetite for replacement
parts known in short order. My wife’s mid-Nineties vanilla GM appliance (Olds
Cutlass Supreme) dumped its gearbox one night and it wasn’t worth fixing. She
ended up talking me into a 1985 XJ-6 to replace the Olds and the XJ needed some
work due to being allowed to sit for some years. She drives it every day and
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that nothing major breaks. A 1974 AMC Gremlin
showed up on the door step last fall and it needed new floors and an engine
overhaul. Believe it or not, this has all cost me, per month, less than a new
car payment. I am finally to the point where I can once again turn my attention
to the Zephyr. I had made an earlier inquiry about replacing the venerable old
six with a 302 and an automatic gearbox but, with the price of fuel going
stratospheric over here, I think I want to wring any and all efficiency out of
the stock installation. The engine has 65,000 miles on it and I have 50-60 psi
oil pressure at road speeds so I know the bottom end is still in good shape. I
will have to add a new brake booster and I think a Holley-Weber two barrel
carburetor and a more efficient extractor would be a good start. I’ve already
converted it to a spin-on oil filter, electronic ignition, and an electric fuel
pump. I’ll need electric wipers and an alternator conversion as well. Any other
suggestions would be appreciated. I know that there are several things from the
MkIIIs that would work but I know my odds of finding
such things will be slim over here. My Dad passed away in 2001 and I know he
would have liked to see me restore the car. He always thought highly of it.