Bedford HA van
After I sold my share of the Ford Pop to Stuart Evans, it was back to the scooter for a while, but I had managed to get a job at the Northwich Guardian as a trainee reporter and I was soon able to save up £25 for another car. A lot of us bought vans rather than cars because they were much cheaper and my second car was a van - a Bedford HA van.
This was a very different vehicle to the Ford Pop. There was still a starting handle, but it had an overhead-valve four-cylinder engine of 1057cc, hydraulic brakes, four-speed gearbox (all synchro) and a “massive” 45bhp on tap. Compare that to the 165bhp of my car today! Top speed was not much more than 70mph and, at that speed, it was very noisy. There was also 12-volt electrics, so the headlights actually lit up the road!
There were lots of these on the road. The GPO used them for years and I'm sure they carried on making them into the 1980s.
I bought the van for £25 from Ford’s Motors in Winsford. The place was run by a farmer, who bought and sold cars as a sideline, and had them all parked up in a field on his farm. The car was dark green with a fair bit of rust. It was a 1965 model, so seven years old.
The rear bumper was a bit deformed, and the locks on the front doors didn’t work. To lock the doors (and unlock them) you had to open the back doors, climb through and unlock/lock the front doors from the inside. On the passenger door, the interior lock didn’t work either, so I had to cut a hole in the interior trim on the door and pull the mechanism directly. It was a faff and one night I didn’t bother to lock it and it was stolen.
It’s an awful feeling going back next day to where you parked your car and finding an empty space. I couldn’t believe someone had stolen such a heap of a car, but they did. The police found it about an hour or two after I reported it. Someone had opened the door, ripped out the wiring and started it by shorting the blade of my Swiss Army knife across the ignition switch connectors. Because the wiring was all ripped out, it wasn’t charging the battery and the thief ran it for about eight miles until the battery went flat just north of Great Budworth on the Warrington road. The police had it towed to a garage, who fixed the wiring and charged the battery. I got away quite lightly. It wasn’t much of a car, but it was my means of transport.
The worse thing was that in using my pen-knife blade as a connector, the thief has burned half the blade away - it looked as if it had been seared by a spot welder. I hope he burned his fingers.
With all cars back then, rust was a major problem. The van had some bits of rust around the mudguards, but once I’d bought it I found lots of other faults. The worst was that water had obviously laid in the gutters all around the roof and had literally rotted the metal all the way round where the roof joined the sides of the van. You could get hold of the roof at the back doors and lift it a couple of inches - it was only joined at the front cab.
I was getting a dab hand with the fibreglass and I had to fix this by going all round the roof on the inside, filling and joining. It was an OK job in the end, although I didn’t do such a neat job with the rear doors, which were rotten at the bottom. I finished the job by painting the inside with the rest of the purple paint left over from the Ford Pop.
I was obsessed with trying to make the van as quiet as possible and filled the back with old carpet and rugs, which helped no end and also gave passengers somewhere to sit. I also fitted a new sporty steering wheel which didn’t seem at all incongruous to me at the time. The steering was rack and pinion and it was really light and precise compared to the Ford. There was a massive steering wheel as standard so the smaller, sporty wheel was actually rather useful even though it must have looked ridiculous.
The Bedford van was based on the Viva HA saloon, which was quite a good car for its day, much better than the Ford Anglia. It was rear-wheel drive and had hydraulic drum brakes. After those rod-and-cable-operated ones on the old Ford, they felt amazing, but there was no servo and ABS was miles away.
It was fairly reliable but needed a bit of coaxing at times.In those days I was always cleaning spark plugs or distributor caps to try to get a big fat spark. Sometimes, the van would just not pull and I’d find myself struggling to get over 50mph; at other times it would fair bowl along. It failed its first MoT in my ownership because the chassis was rotting and it also needed to have seat belts fitted. My cousin Bernard welded the chassis and I got a cheap set of fixed seat belts and put them in.
On the way back from Preston, where I was at college, the clutch started slipping and juddering, so we came home along the M6 at about 40mph. It turned out not to be a worn clutch, but part of the thrust plate which had torn off.
I finally got rid of the car when it failed its second MoT with more chassis rot. I think one of my dad’s mates had it for spares and I moved on the car No 3.
After I sold my share of the Ford Pop to Stuart Evans, it was back to the scooter for a while, but I had managed to get a job at the Northwich Guardian as a trainee reporter and I was soon able to save up £25 for another car. A lot of us bought vans rather than cars because they were much cheaper and my second car was a van - a Bedford HA van.
This was a very different vehicle to the Ford Pop. There was still a starting handle, but it had an overhead-valve four-cylinder engine of 1057cc, hydraulic brakes, four-speed gearbox (all synchro) and a “massive” 45bhp on tap. Compare that to the 165bhp of my car today! Top speed was not much more than 70mph and, at that speed, it was very noisy. There was also 12-volt electrics, so the headlights actually lit up the road!
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| The Bedford HA van |
I bought the van for £25 from Ford’s Motors in Winsford. The place was run by a farmer, who bought and sold cars as a sideline, and had them all parked up in a field on his farm. The car was dark green with a fair bit of rust. It was a 1965 model, so seven years old.
The rear bumper was a bit deformed, and the locks on the front doors didn’t work. To lock the doors (and unlock them) you had to open the back doors, climb through and unlock/lock the front doors from the inside. On the passenger door, the interior lock didn’t work either, so I had to cut a hole in the interior trim on the door and pull the mechanism directly. It was a faff and one night I didn’t bother to lock it and it was stolen.
It’s an awful feeling going back next day to where you parked your car and finding an empty space. I couldn’t believe someone had stolen such a heap of a car, but they did. The police found it about an hour or two after I reported it. Someone had opened the door, ripped out the wiring and started it by shorting the blade of my Swiss Army knife across the ignition switch connectors. Because the wiring was all ripped out, it wasn’t charging the battery and the thief ran it for about eight miles until the battery went flat just north of Great Budworth on the Warrington road. The police had it towed to a garage, who fixed the wiring and charged the battery. I got away quite lightly. It wasn’t much of a car, but it was my means of transport.
The worse thing was that in using my pen-knife blade as a connector, the thief has burned half the blade away - it looked as if it had been seared by a spot welder. I hope he burned his fingers.
With all cars back then, rust was a major problem. The van had some bits of rust around the mudguards, but once I’d bought it I found lots of other faults. The worst was that water had obviously laid in the gutters all around the roof and had literally rotted the metal all the way round where the roof joined the sides of the van. You could get hold of the roof at the back doors and lift it a couple of inches - it was only joined at the front cab.
I was getting a dab hand with the fibreglass and I had to fix this by going all round the roof on the inside, filling and joining. It was an OK job in the end, although I didn’t do such a neat job with the rear doors, which were rotten at the bottom. I finished the job by painting the inside with the rest of the purple paint left over from the Ford Pop.
I was obsessed with trying to make the van as quiet as possible and filled the back with old carpet and rugs, which helped no end and also gave passengers somewhere to sit. I also fitted a new sporty steering wheel which didn’t seem at all incongruous to me at the time. The steering was rack and pinion and it was really light and precise compared to the Ford. There was a massive steering wheel as standard so the smaller, sporty wheel was actually rather useful even though it must have looked ridiculous.
The Bedford van was based on the Viva HA saloon, which was quite a good car for its day, much better than the Ford Anglia. It was rear-wheel drive and had hydraulic drum brakes. After those rod-and-cable-operated ones on the old Ford, they felt amazing, but there was no servo and ABS was miles away.
It was fairly reliable but needed a bit of coaxing at times.In those days I was always cleaning spark plugs or distributor caps to try to get a big fat spark. Sometimes, the van would just not pull and I’d find myself struggling to get over 50mph; at other times it would fair bowl along. It failed its first MoT in my ownership because the chassis was rotting and it also needed to have seat belts fitted. My cousin Bernard welded the chassis and I got a cheap set of fixed seat belts and put them in.
On the way back from Preston, where I was at college, the clutch started slipping and juddering, so we came home along the M6 at about 40mph. It turned out not to be a worn clutch, but part of the thrust plate which had torn off.
I finally got rid of the car when it failed its second MoT with more chassis rot. I think one of my dad’s mates had it for spares and I moved on the car No 3.
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