When I hear the term "barn find" I think of rare cars that delight the enthusiasts mind - not this thing. This was a great find though. It was being relinquished because its owner decided to sell up and cull anything not necessary. He parked this HD Premier in the derelict garage in 1989 and removed the engine. He had planned to restore the car but then it got covered in junk and forgotten about. The first few pictures show it in its garage after being tidied... one literally couldn't walk in prior to the photo's being taken. Before taking it to work, I thought a preliminary clean may be in order. The quantity of rat turds was unbelievable. If you were to place each turd end to end you would probably reach the moon... seriously though, that many rats could equate to a snake and that worried me, so I really needed to take a close and careful look. Once cleaned, I took the car to work for the VET kids to see if we could make something driveable out of it - and we did. A 202 was located and I had a Tri-matic under my bench at home so we threw that in, resurrected the brakes and drove it. The special part about this car... it had all of its books from new and original unused spare keys. Premiers are fairly rare anyway and this one sold and went to Tasmania, where it's new owner said to me as he was leaving "I'll throw twenty grand at it and keep it."
I've kept in touch with him, and he sent me a picture of the restored car, see below...
I've kept in touch with him, and he sent me a picture of the restored car, see below...
Well, I don't know much about the car now, other than the current owner has done a brilliant job. He apparently kept the engine we installed and changed the camshaft, carburettor, manifold and exhaust. This goes to show that a few sensible mods can equate to huge power gains - because this thing lights up in second now... Well done mate, you saved it from the gold diggers who part these things out and send them to the crusher - a fantastic result!