New Member sorta

I’ve lurked on and off for a while but finally bought an early! The cabling/wiring for the heater system wasn’t right so the seller fixed that for me and I go pick it up today. I will figure out how to post photos etc but it is one that you can see in the “for sale” forum that was listed on SF Craigslist. It’s actually near Portland, OR where I live so I was able to see it before making an offer.

I’m sure I will have many questions and I look forward to being a part of this community.

I have been an “Italian car guy” for many years and currently own a 71 Fiat 124 Spider and a 73 Lancia Fulvia so I’m a bit used to tinkering with wiring and general maintenance but I wonder what I should pay extra attention to as I start driving my first van. It’s a 1967 Ford Falcon with its original (reportedly rebuilt in mid 2000s) 170 and 3 on the tree. After some research I am wishing it had been a bigger motor car with the larger rear end as I would love to put a 300 in it some day but that may not happen as my cost of admission was already quite high...

Thanks all

Well, away we go. Drove her home today and there was no charge so the battery is dead. I started perusing the wiring diagrams in the manual and crawled under the dash and damn it is janky under there. Has anyone ever used a "painless" type kit to rewire one of these? There are splices and cut wires and when they painted the interior they did not mask the wiring so a lot of paint on there. Electriclal is something I dont mind doing too much but without seeing the individual colors damn it's hard to know whats what.

It will be a while until this can be my daily driver I guess...patience.

Hey Congrats on the van! Search this site (and maybe others but there's a ton of info here) for a wiring diagram and scrape a little paint off until you can see what color each wire is. The "painless" kits are nice but they are expensive and most useful if you are starting from scratch. If most of your electrical works it would be easier to troubleshoot the few issues you run into one by one - just my 2 cents. Have fun!

Thanks that has become the plan as I couldn’t actually find a kit for the van plus I saw how expensive they were. I put in a new alternator and am getting good charge now but there is a parasitic draw that needs to be figured out

In the meantime I ordered the Pertronix guts for the dizzy, the updated coil and plug wires and sent the carb out for a deep clean/rebuild. I will “detail” the motor and engine bay as well as I can while I await those parts but hopefully once back together it will start better and be on the way to more daily service. I am excited. It’s fun to be able to work on it while inside the vehicle in relative comfort