ZETEC ANGLIA 100E
It took two attempts, but Dave Caley finally made this year’s Unveiling with his incredible 100E — and he’s not shy about using it.
It took two attempts, but Dave Caley finally made this year’s Great Unveiling with his incredible 100E — and it’s packed with power.
So many projects fall by the wayside. Whether it’s running out of money, time, patience or even storage, we dread to think what the success rate of completed homebuilt projects is.
This 1958 100E, affectionately named Dolly, almost suffered that fate on several occasions, but six years after starting it, Dave Caley finally finished this outstanding Anglia, and in time for The Great Unveiling, too — even if it was his second attempt at doing so!
Dave’s first car was a Mk1 Escort when he was 17, and that car sowed the seeds for a love of Fords ever since — to the extent that he’s only ever owned Blue Ovals, and mainly Transits at that. “I did have Toyota for about three weeks once, but that doesn’t count,” he grins.
After messing about with classic British bikes for years, back in 2013 Dave decided he wanted to build something a bit different, and started scouting around for a suitable project.
“I’ve always loved the simple shape of the 100E — if you asked a child to draw a car, that’s what they would come up with, a classic three-box design — plus they do make for a great hot rod.
“This one belonged to a friend of mine. He’d had it for almost a decade and it was just sat there doing nothing, so I convinced him I was the person to bring it back to life. It’s always
been a local car, and we think may have been owned by a couple of US serviceman at one point, as we found an old logbook with RAF Bentwaters as the address under the back seat.”
“I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do with the car from the start — in fact, I bought the Zetec engine before the car — but there was an awful lot of work to do before that. Even before it was stripped down, I could see the body wasn’t great. I took the shell off to be blasted and it came back with holes in the rear quarters, sills, floor, and the lower corners of the front wings... nothing I couldn’t tackle, as I work in the motor trade and learnt to weld as a youngster. Luckily, repair sections for these areas are readily available for the 100E now and I bought some from Ex-Pressed Steel Panels, which fitted up a treat.”
Once the basic shell was solid again, Dave tuned his attention to the front end — specifically making room for the Zetec in the engine bay.
“I had to do the usual stuff,” he recalls. “Make up a new bulkhead and gearbox tunnel — it wasn’t too difficult, really, I just took my time and made lots of measurements.”
With the bodyshell ready for paint, like many of us, Dave elected to get it done by a bodyshop rather that try and do it himself. “This is where it all started to go wrong,” he groans. “The first guy had it for seven months and did nothing with it. I took the shell back and found someone else, who then did exactly the same thing! By this point I was utterly fed up and was going to chuck it in — this was definitely the lowest point of the build. But my partner, Teresa and son,
Adam persuaded me to keep going, so I found someone else, and two months later the shell was in paint.”
With no real idea of the Anglia’s original colour, Dave took a sample down to a paintshop, and the closest match he could find was a Fiat beige — it may be a modern shade, but it looks perfectly period on the 100E.
Blast off
With the shell away for so long, Dave had plenty of time to prepare the running gear. The 2-litre Zetec originally came out of a Mondeo, and was stripped down to a bare block before being sent off to be media-blasted, then rebuilt by Dave with standard internals, with Dave adding a set of ARP rod bolts for good measure. Around this time he came across a set of second-hand 45 mm Jenvey throttle bodies on an inlet manifold for sale, so these were quickly snapped up, with Dave sourcing an Emerald ECU to
suit later. “It’s reliable but not too wild,” explains Dave. “Having said that, when the car was later mapped at Emerald on their rolling road, it made 186 bhp, which I’m well-pleased with!” A good Type-9 five-speed was then picked up, Dave adding a lightened flywheel and one of Retro Ford’s hydraulic clutch kits at the same time.
Of course, once you start modifying a 100E, you find that everything needs upgrading, and Dave elected to go for an Escort-based set-up at the front, giving him rack-and-pinion steering and better brakes. At the rear, an Anglia 105E axle was adapted to fit, giving the 100E wider drums — and the chance to install a limited-slip diff. Once the spring saddles had been moved, the axle was bolted up with GAZ dampers and the standard leaf springs, though these have been retempered by Midland Road Springs.
Going inside
With the Anglia sitting on all four (now banded) wheels again, Dave could turn his attention to the interior — and he spent almost as much time and thought putting this together as the engine bay. “It was always going to be a road car, so I wanted to make it as comfortable as possible. I originally went for a pair of lowback buckets but we couldn’t get on with them, so they were quickly swapped for a pair of fishnet Recaros, which are much more suitable. I bought new covers for these from Aldridge and then took them down to a local guy who fitted then and recovered the rear seat to match. Kevin at Car Glass & Trim then fitted a new headlining, coming over to the house a couple of evenings one week to do it. It was amazing to watch him methodically fit it — I just wouldn’t have the patience to be able to do it.”
Dave sourced some new, classic Smiths gauges with modern internals, and these were installed in the Anglia’s dash while he added some neat push-button switches to the dash rail, too. With a woodrim steering wheel, new door cards from East Kent Trim, and carpet added, the interior was almost there. “The gearbox tunnel was looking a bit bare though,” explains Dave.
“Then at a hot rod show we came across a lady doing pinstriping, and she added a design there and then to the top of the tunnel — that was the finishing touch.”
Close connection
With a summer of shows and roadtrips now behind the Anglia, Dave and Teresa are finally enjoying the fruits of this six-year build, and while Dave has never been one to hang onto cars (or vans) before, this one is firmly staying put. “I’m building a proper garage for it at the moment,” he admits. “It used to live in a lean-to, but it deserves better than that. We’ll never sell it, it’ll be passed on to Adam at some point, because it turns out this car could have a family connection. It was originally sold by Mann Egerton, the Ford main dealers in Ipswich and my Dad worked in the service department at the time. Sadly, he’s no longer around to confirm this, but it’s highly likely he would have worked on the Anglia at some point. Although he wasn’t into modified cars, he would have loved Dolly.”