Now that my beloved 1981 Capri 2.8 Injection has made its formal debut to the assorted losers, boozers, and jacuzzi users that make up the Autopian staff and community, I suppose I owe you all an explanation of why I bought one that was pre-broken down and what exactly is wrong with it. Well, actually, I don’t owe you anything, but you’re getting an explanation anyway, if only to convince myself I haven’t ended my lifelong streak of old bad decisions by making a new bad decision.
It wasn’t my intention to buy a car that needed immediate attention just to make it drivable. Unless we’re specifically looking for a project, most of us would hope that any car we purchased would at least be able to move under its own steam (ha!) and be somewhat operational, although I appreciate that, being the Autopian we all have our own wildly different definitions of exactly what operational means. Miss Mercedes might be happy with a moldy interior, David comfortable with a chassis constructed from iron oxide, or Jason thrilled to have a car that actually starts, but I am not. I have standards that are considerably higher than my colleagues in so many things, but none more so than the condition I like my own vehicles to be in.
When the couple who bought the Ferrari first came to view it, they asked me if there were any issues. There was no point trying to hide anything because my history with the Mondial is plastered all over the internet, and that’s not the way I believe in doing things. Being autistic means I’m always honest because I’m incapable of being any other way, admittedly sometimes to a fault. I told them the air conditioning compressor was disconnected because it was seized, and besides, when it did work, the climate control was about as effective as being breathed on by a penguin. The electric antenna didn’t work because a switch on the center console made it go up AND down, and I hadn’t been able to source a replacement. In other words, minor issues that didn’t stop the Mondial from being driven, used, and enjoyed.
With the Capri, the story has turned out to be a little different. When I was chatting to the seller during the week prior to purchase, he regaled me with a list of stuff he thought needed doing: a new clutch to fix a judder on pull away, a replacement center prop bearing because it was making a knocking noise, and a heater fan that wasn’t working. Well, color me utterly unsurprised because heater fan failure on a Capri really is a case of ‘they all do that, sir’. In addition, the doors and fender were a bit crusty. I thought all this sounded a bit too much like the dreaded project car I didn’t want and said as much, but the seller said he was being fussy and was happy the Capri was perfectly drivable as it was, and he had a replacement secondhand heater unit to go along with the car.
Burton Power down in Essex (just east of London) has been the preeminent Ford aftermarket specialists since 1963, and the first of what I anticipated to be many visits to their website showed a complete clutch kit for a 2.8 Injection Capri was £109.90. For comparison, Superformance lists a complete clutch for the Mondial at £397.02. Twenty-five years ago my best friend and I would have spent a weekend wriggling around on our backs at the curbside to replace a clutch in one of our many old RWD Fords. Nowadays that sort of job is well past what I would want to be waving a socket set at, but any local garage would be able to handle it with their eyes closed because a Capri is such a simple car – rear-wheel drive with a live axle at the back and Macpherson struts on the front. I couldn’t imagine the whole job relieving me of much more than about £250.
When I went and looked at the Capri, the main problem was not the clutch but the huge stream of hot coolant pissing out from where the water pump met the front of the engine block. This meant my test drive was severely limited to about five minutes around the block with the temperature gauge acting as a countdown timer. My brief time behind the wheel revealed the motor sounded terrific, and the clutch was absolutely fine, but there was a pull to left under braking and a slight judder through the steering wheel. This could be something as simple as needing an alignment and the wheels balancing, and there’s a great local place round the corner that could handle that. Even if I had to fire the parts cannon at the front end, I knew none of it would be wallet-breaking.
With the Capri purchased and recovered to my house that same Saturday, on Sunday I pulled the radiator and fan cowl, and then discovered I needed a fan spanner for the viscous fan, which my measly tool bag obviously did not contain. Off to Halfords in Coventry I went, returning home £25 lighter with said implement that I’ll probably never use again. A complete water pump and gasket set was ordered from Capri Club International for a princely £58.80 (Mondial – £195), which arrived on Tuesday – a day I was in university, so I couldn’t continue work on the Capri until Wednesday. By the time I got everything buttoned up and bled the cooling system twice, because I fucked it up the first time by only topping up the expansion tank and not the actual radiator, it was Friday night before FOTU on Saturday. A late-night shakedown blat around Leamington went well. The Capri pulled like a train and the temperature gauge behaved itself. The clutch didn’t slip or judder even on exuberant pull-aways, but braking from higher speeds, that mild pull to the left I felt on the short test drive became a case of the Capri vaulting over the white lines into the next lane. Coming off the M40 and heaving on the anchors from about 65 mph and bloody hell – the steering wheel was making both my hands do an involuntary wanker gesture. Backing off the throttle revealed another problem. Something in the driveline was singing like the New York Choral Society in the opening bars of “This Corrosion” by The Sisters of Mercy. There was no shunting, just an operatic chorus taking over as the dominant volume when the burbling exhaust returned to tick-over levels. There was nothing I could do about either the wobbly front end or the chorists hiding under the rear squab but grin and bear both for the trip to Festival of the Unexceptional the following day. Cooling systems on old cars are frequently their Achilles’ heel, but sitting in traffic on what turned out to be a sunblock-two-million kind of day, the newly repaired Capri didn’t wilt once – so for the moment I consider that a repair well done.
It’s probably not a stunning revelation that music is important to me and has played a big part in the tattered fabric of my life. Having a functional stereo in all my cars is therefore non-negotiable. The bells of St Mary Le Bow didn’t grant me a Cockney accent but an incessant ringing in my ears, which I’ve long since learned to live with, so I’m far from an audiophile. But I cannot live with a shitty stereo that constantly drops a Bluetooth connection and does more clipping than a fucking barbershop. Which is exactly the behavior the mid-aughts Kenwood unit in the Capri was exhibiting on the way to FOTU. On the way back it simply stopped connecting to my phone altogether. The following weekend I was planning on a considerably longer four-hour drive to see my uncle in Clacton, so I needed to get the audio situation sorted out post-haste.
As standard Capris had a twin spindle installation – fitting a modern single DIN unit requires cutting the dash pad – which is why unmodified originals are such prized treasures within the community. At some point in its past, someone had butchered mine to fit the aforementioned Kenwood. With mere hope the only thing securing it in the dashboard, yanking the Kenwood out revealed a veritable rat’s nest of wiring and mismatched connectors that had to be seen to be believed. I disconnected the lot and chucked the Kenwood straight in the trash. Sitting on the shelf in the spare room, I had a single DIN Eonon CarPlay unit which I had intended to stick in the Mini. I decided to put this into temporary service in the Capri and decide on a permanent solution at a later date. I simply needed to figure the wiring out. Honestly, what sort of cowboy uses negative wires for one front speaker channel and positive wires for the other one? A cowboy job? Fucking John Wayne had risen from the grave to personally supervise this installation, pardner.
FOTU was very hot and dry, and since the Capri arrived I hadn’t had time to wash it, so it was now filthier than David’s post-Jeep-build driveway. Before setting off to Clacton, I ran it through a local car wash and, pulling out, cleared the windshield by giving the wipers a flick. When I tried to do the same for the rear, the wiper arm moved maybe twenty degrees and then stopped. So that’ll be me visiting Halfords in Clacton for a set of fuses next then. Apparently, they have around 370 stores across the UK, so that’s two down, 368 to go. I just had to get there, which didn’t turn out to be plain sailing. In fact, at one point I didn’t think the Capri would make it at all.
Festival of the Unexceptional is held at Grimsthorpe Castle, and I’m certain the Hagerty events team were high-fiving when they found out the name of the place. Situated in a liminal area between Leicester and Peterboghorror (or as residents call it, Peterborough), this is around 80 miles from my house. Clacton-on-Sea in Essex is a considerably greater distance at about 170 miles. After a jolly afternoon alternately gently cruising on dual-carriageways and winding the mighty 2.8 Injection out on B roads, after about 140 miles the motor suddenly hesitated. Then it was fine. After about another five miles it hesitated again. The closer I got to Clacton, the worse and more frequent it got. Maybe the Capri was protesting about returning to its home county. It wasn’t misfiring, but by the time I rolled into town I was having to bury the throttle just to prevent it stalling when pulling away. As I backed onto my uncle’s driveway, I could hear the fuel pump spinning at about five million rpm, which didn’t sound optimal.
My initial reaction was panic, because that seemed as good an option as any. Dropping the fuel tank to fit a new pump (£120.50 – Ferrari £234) would constitute a major ballache, and I didn’t have any tools with me anyway. In desperation, I made a late evening post on the Capri Facebook group. Within two hours I was talking to a classic car fuel injection specialist on the phone. Try driving the car without the fuel filler cap on tomorrow was the advice, because it sounded like prolonged running was creating a vacuum in the tank, causing fuel starvation. The next morning I drove to Halfords to get two sets of continental fuses without the filler cap on, and apart from the occasional whiff of gas, the Capri ran perfectly. The fuel pump whine was conspicuous by its absence, so it seems likely the breather is blocked, which is located – guess where – on the top of the tank.
I replaced the blown fuse, which promptly blew again as soon as I tried the rear wiper. I’m guessing the mechanism is seized up tighter than David’s wallet, but the UK is drier than a good Martini at the moment, so that’s another problem for future Adrian, though the wiper being stuck a third of the way up the rear windshield is bugging the ever-loving shit out of me. Because I also bought an emergency gas cap that allows air to enter the tank via the filler neck, the fuel starvation issue didn’t return on the long journey back home. This will suffice for now; although I’ve avoided dropping the tank by dint of real East London get-you-home bodge, I’m going to have to do it (or get it done) at some point in the future.
Once back home, I figured the easiest way to diagnose the wheel wobble and find out if there was anything else urgent that needed doing was to book the Capri in for an MOT. Being 45 years old, it doesn’t legally require one, but I consider the fifty quid fee a small price to pay for an annual roadworthiness check. Needless to say, it failed, but not in the way I expected it to. The gaiter on the bottom ball joint was split, necessitating the fitment of a new track control arm, but slightly more worryingly there was a small hole in what was described to me on the phone as being on the inner rocker, but turned out to be in the floor about six inches in front of the rear spring hangers. That’s another job that can wait, but replacing the TCA didn’t fix the wheel wobble. The garage said it felt like a warped disc, so a pair of upgraded vented discs and new upgraded pads were ordered from Burton (£180 – Mondial £770). I have literally just collected the car this morning as I write this, and I’m pleased to say that the wheel wobble appears to have been banished. Although I didn’t have the time to properly stand the thing on its nose, it feels much, much better already. The bill for fitting the new brakes, plus the track control arm and the MOT came to £474 – so I’m finishing this article just in time to cover some of that.
Right, so what’s the too-long, didn’t read version? The water leak and wheel wobble have been sorted for about £800 all in – I had to buy a couple of other bits and pieces when replacing the water pump, aside from the fan wrench: because of the snapped bolt, I had to buy a bolt extractor (which didn’t work) and then a Helicoil kit. As a precaution, I also replaced a hose that wasn’t secured properly and consequently had rubbed against the accessory belt. That leaves the fuel tank breather, the rear wiper, the heater fan and the hole in the floor. I’m minded to leave the tank breather and welding for now – with old cars, fixing existing problems can sometimes create new ones as you start yanking out stubborn parts. Repairing the small, non-structural hole in the floor will necessitate pulling the rear seats and carpet out so welding doesn’t set the whole caboodle on fire, so that won’t be a work of the moment, and neither will dropping the tank. The blower fan and rear wiper will need doing before the weather turns to shit later in the year, because I don’t like the idea of trying to drive with my head out of the window like a deranged dog just to see where I’m going when the windows are all fogged up. I have a secondhand blower unit that came with the car, and thanks to my adventures with the stereo I know how to take the dash apart.
So what about the stereo? A while back, the usual UK auto-influencer faces were punting the new retro-styled head units from not-Blaupunkt and Pioneer. They might look the part, but at £400 they’re a complete rip-off, because you’re not getting any better functionality than a modern unit at £150. And they don’t have CarPlay. I like CarPlay, and if I’m going to a show, unless it’s taking place at Bicester bloody Heritage, I don’t always know where I’m going, so having navigation in the Capri will be extremely useful. So I think the Eonon will stay in place, and I’ll get another one for the Mini. At about £70, this is a cost-effective no-brainer.
So yes, my dream car and I have had a slightly tempestuous start to our relationship, not helped by the condensed timescale. You might be wondering why I didn’t make my life considerably easier by purchasing a better example, and to that I would answer: I enjoy doing things the hard way. I don’t really; it just seems to be the way things constantly happen to me. If I had been able to give the car a proper test drive, it’s reasonable to assume that red flags would have been popping up left, right, and center – which I would have ignored, but not because I was because I was blinded by love. Back in the dim and distant past, when I used to bother myself with romantic entanglements, being autistic I would constantly miss red flags big enough for a Soviet military parade. This led to me making bad choices of partner, even if on the surface they appeared perfect to me.
That’s not what’s happening here. You should always expect some snagging issues when buying a classic car – as I said at the top of this piece, we all have different expectations and standards within which we are comfortable; in other words, what one person finds acceptable, someone else won’t. I knew I would be fine with whatever issues the Capri might throw up, because these are anvil-simple cars with a large ownership base of non-wankers and a lot of aftermarket support. Across all models, Ford sold nearly two million Capris, and there’s a lot of plug-and-play parts commonality with other rear-wheel-drive Euro Fords of the era – and they sold millions of Escorts, Cortinas and Granadas as well. Furthermore, I only paid £12,500 pounds for it – if my car had gone through an auction, considering its originality and good (but not mint) condition, I reckon it would have hammered for the thick end of fifteen or sixteen grand plus fees. And how long would I have had to wait for another early Graphite Grey over Stratos Silver (or black) four-speed, Carla interior car to come up? A year? Two? There’s no guarantee it would be in better condition, have no hidden problems, and potentially it could cost a lot more to buy.
I adored the Ferrari and owning it was a privilege, but like my love life, that time had come to an end. I’ve learned the hard way over the years that there are many things I’m fundamentally unsuited for, despite my aspirations and dubious personal gifts doing their utmost to convince me otherwise. Buying a Capri 2.8 Injection is in some way a comforting reflection of that, on my own terms. I might not have been great at picking partners, but this time, I just might have picked the right car.
All images by author unless otherwise stated
Sorry to hear that a previous owner cut the dash to put in a DIN unit. The stereo in my 82 RX7 finally died and I am installing a bluetooth amp and leaving the OEM head unit on the dash. I will replace the speakers and the wiring since my Dad killed the speakers when he owned the 7, and the wiring is very small for modern speakers and amps.
Good luck with the rest of the issues on a 40+ year old car. I am going through a lot of that with the 7. Let’s just say that my Dad’s penny pinching ways from growing up in the Great Depression lead to lots of WTF moments.
The fun of a classic car. The one I recently bought has a long list of undisclosed faults, too, but some of it just has to be expected. At least that’s what I tell myself. My next batch of parts should get here on Friday and hopefully I can get it up and running by the end of the weekend.
Worth every penny and every pain. Jeez, just look at it! I’d love one of those.
I understand it’s a Ford CAP-ree, which is sort of like our Mercury ca-PREE of the same era, right?
That hi-fi wiring looks great compared to some cars I’ve had. One particularly memorable one was a Triumph Dolomite 1850 into which a previous owner had bodged a mysterious toggle switch. As far as I could tell the only function of this switch was to cause the car to catch on fire a bit.
Eveyone should have a fire toggle. Ideally it should be behind one of those guards you have to flip up before you can activate it.
I have a formal request to The Autopian that all future articles use a Mondial as a base comparison when listing parts cost.
But it’s absolutely gorgeous, and that, after all, is the very best reason to buy a car.
Sounds like you should trade it in for something reliable.
Like a Ferrari Mondial.