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I'm back with another project thread for my money pit of a 1978 Ford Fairmont XC. This time I'm getting serious with it, as the title says - I'm putting a 4 litre Barra straight six from a 2006 BF Falcon ute into the XC, along with a 4 speed auto (BTR I think?) and a disk brake diff. For those that haven't seen it before, this is my XC:  I'm not going to go over how much I've spent on it so far but it was way too much. I'm pretty attached to it though, so that's why I still own it. A few months ago someone I know wanted to get rid of an EL fairmont:  $500. Bargain. Everything works, I've replaced a single belt and regassed the A/C, that's all I'll end up doing to it most likely. Buying it let me work on the XC without worrying about if I can drive it to work on monday. Then today I spotted an ad on facebook, some guy selling a whole '06 BF Falcon ute, Dedicated LPG (apparently these had the rods out of an XR6T in them). Motor runs like it's new, transmission shifts nicely. The only thing seriously wrong with the ute is that it was hit in the rear and it bent the whole tray. I drove it a little bit and honestly you couldn't even tell it was hit by driving it. I got it over to a mates place where I'll be keeping it before it gets pulled apart. He wasn't too happy about it being dedicated LPG because it just makes it harder, but I couldn't pass up a motor this clean (honestly, I had no idea how clean the oil in an LPG motor is). I'll be getting started on pulling both cars apart and trying to fit all the puzzle pieces together, I'll have a few friends helping out which will make it a bit easier. Oh an the car is getting resprayed after the motor is done too, so big things coming.
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Mar 7, 2016 12:22
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some texas redneck posted:Generally much cleaner than petrol. The oil in the motor was crystal clear, I'm not used to anything but solid black Big Daddy Keynes posted:could be difficult iirc the 4.0 barra has an integral sump thats pretty hard to modify, you would probably be better putting a vct sohc in it out of an au. The BA/BF sump will fit into an XA-XF with a different sway bar. The FG+ sump is the opposite way around and doesn't fit. I've seen somone use one of the FPV turbo motors in an XD and he just swapped a BA sump on.
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Mar 7, 2016 22:44
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CAT INTERCEPTOR posted:....Okay, this has got some serious potential. Even NA I6 swap will make the XC get up and move I'll be pretty close to doubling the power that the alloy head crossflow puts out, and it'll be close to what a stock XC 351 cleveland was putting out. N/A Barras are pretty sweet. ShittyPostmakerPro posted:Much, much cleaner combustion. Wait till you see the pistons and valves! I hope you'll be keeping the LPG (if you have a choice), because that poo poo is freaking awesome. oi mate, keep ya fuckin' mouth shut or I'll fuckin' bash ya! I'll be going to petrol, one of the deciding factors was the mixer set up on the BA/BFs is pretty outdated. It drops around 40kw. If I was going to go LPG I'd get a better set up but that's a bit too expensive for me. It does mean I'll have to grab a bunch of extra parts almost making the whole buying a donor car thing pointless. I couldn't pass up a decent motor though, I've seen some real shitters over the past couple of months. I think I'm looking at intake manifold and all the bit associated with it and the wiring for the petrol bits. ECU I'm unsure about, I've read that it's possible to get it remapped for a petrol engine.
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Mar 8, 2016 11:17
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CAT INTERCEPTOR posted:This might go faster than you expect. Definitely hope so, I got to drive a friends FG XR6 once, it felt really quick and I wasn't even pushing it. I have a feeling it'll feel very different in an XC. ShittyPostmakerPro posted:I don't blame you for ditching the mixer ring setup as those things are a poor way to efficiently add fuel and are likely a big cause of the 'you lose loads of power when on LPG!' myth. I'll definitely make sure to change over everything I need to from the LPG gear to petrol. That'll probably mean oil too. My plans are changing daily right now, I've just got in touch with someone who needs all the front panels off the ute. Turns out he has a BA wagon sitting around that he doesn't want and said I can take the intake manifold and all off it for free if I go around and get it. That should have everything I'll need because as far as I can tell BA and BF intake manifolds are the same set up. I was going to take the ECU and wiring loom out too but while the BA ECU works on the BF motor it won't have the variable dual VCT control that the BF ECU does, I know this really comes out as very little gain but I'd rather just go for it. So I got a quote from a wrecker for a BF ECU and engine bay loom for $250. I was expecting more so I'm happy with that. I'll pick that up in a few weeks when I can throw the money at it.
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Mar 9, 2016 14:42
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CAT INTERCEPTOR posted:FG - 1760kg I was thinking that looked a bit light, according to the stats I have the XC is 1475 kg. That's still a massive difference. I might shave off a bit of weight with the Barra vs cast iron everything crossflow too. I'll be going to take a couple of parts off the BF ute today, I'll grab some pictures of it while I'm there.
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Mar 12, 2016 04:56
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CAT INTERCEPTOR posted:Thnk evil thoughts and turbo it. I don't hate myself that much yet, I'll probably turbo it once I forget how much pain this swap is going to be. I've just been around to see the ute and discuss it with my friend and I'm now officially at the stage where I'm asking myself what the gently caress am I even getting into. We're going to pull the motor and box next weekend, then someone is coming to pick up the rest of the ute from me for $200. Doesn't even cover the towing I paid, and people sell these engines for $100. In the end, buying this particular ute was completely stupid, I thought they were worth more than they really are. At least I got to see it running? That's worth at least $700... right? Here is my bad purchase:   Is it bad that I'm already annoyed by this project?
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Mar 12, 2016 11:38
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Raluek posted:Why don't you keep the donor vehicle for awhile? As soon as you get rid of it, you will probably find some little gubbin that you needed that you now need to go buy retail. Might as well keep it until the swap is done, and that will give you longer to part out the bits you're sure you don't need (interior, body, etc) and make back some extra money. I agree with that strategy, it's what I did with the last car I took the motor out of then parted out the rest. Problem is once the motor is pulled from this it'll be in the way. I'm doing the swap at friends place because gently caress doing it out of a single garage, building a motor and putting it in was hard enough at my place. So what he says re the wreck goes. Sorry to disappoint everyone else, the ute has a nice big kink in the chassis. It looks good in the picture right? The back end is hosed. I'm sure once I turbo this bitch I'll be able to pull off a stock suspension flip no problem. Though I did have an extra leaf put in the rear springs so I might have hosed up that plan. People keep bugging me about the turbo so there will be a turbo in the future. It'll be easy once the N/A motor is in.
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Mar 13, 2016 23:48
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In the interest of freeing up garage space I started on fixing up the GS/GXL bonnet I've had for a few years. I've been dreading it because I didn't really give it a full inspection before I bought it. It was super cheap for the condition it was in but there were a lot of pin holes in the skin and the frame is completely stuffed in a few sections. It was just going to be a quick "it'll last for a couple of years" job but then I ended up splitting the skin and frame to do it properly. Where it started, my panel beater friend made up some replacement corners for both sides even though I only needed one. He did the welding for me too because I have bad memories from welding sheet metal last time.  Made a tool out of a screwdriver to bend the fold in the skin back to split the two.  A bit of rust under the fold but no holes so it was all good.  The skin and frame successfully split. All the 40 year old sealer still attached, the mix of the sealer and bare metal actually caused a lot of rust in these and the boot lids. The ones still on the car have it really bad. Luckily on this one it only ended up causing some pin holes.   Cut out the corner and drilled out the pin holes. There was about 8 pin holes in the skin total, a few more in the frame.   After a bunch of sanding and a quick sandblasting, the frame came out looking okay at the back. The whole front lip is hosed though.  My friend bought some bronze wire to use with his mig which made doing the pin holes a lot easier. Minimal grinding.  Lining the replacement corner up and welding it in.   I missed getting a picture of the corner once we had finished it. After a lot of work with the hammer it turned out really nicely. Once it's painted up you won't be able to tell. Next up will be fixing up the frame which I'll need to cut off a section of my regular bonnet to use. Both actually use the same frame but because of my past repairs my other one isn't much better.
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Apr 2, 2016 11:29
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Been slowly making progress on the bonnet and I got started on the boot lid too. Excuse the portrait pics, someone else took the pictures while I was doing poo poo. The section cut out of my standard bonnet that's on the car.  Adding a bit more strength into the bonnet frame, it's the most common spot for them to bend right there.  Cut the lip off the skin and made a fresh piece.   After taking the frame off the standard bonnet, I needed to patch it back up so I could drive it around. So I just welded up back up without the frame.    As some of the welding on these parts was a bit easier, I did a fair bit of it. The patch job was me, which for something without body filler didn't turn out too badly. The bronze wire in the mig made everything so much easier. What to do with the engine conversion has been a big discussion recently but it's looking like some good things are happening now. The guy that sold me the XE wagon which the XC's motor came from is now selling me a BA wagon minus brake booster for $750. It almost makes the purchase of the ute pointless but I'll use the motor from the ute and everything else comes from the wagon. I'll have plenty of spares at least! My plan at the moment is to get the ECU in the wagon reflashed so I can disconnect the security and all the interior poo poo. Then while the motor is in the wagon work out the wiring to get it running in there, make up any brackets I'll need for the XC while it's still running over a few weekends. Then when it's all ready to go, try and throw it into the XC. Minimising time that I'm tying up my friend's shed. Before the wagon came up for sale the swap was looking pretty dead, I was very close to buying an EFI 302w from an AU. Back on track now though, looks like the engine swap and respray will be happening in parallel.
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Apr 23, 2016 11:29
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 This makes me feel sick for some reason.
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Apr 27, 2016 13:51
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Yeah it was done with all the roller doors open in the shed, no issues with ventilation. It's just how the paint looks peeling back that makes me feel sick. I really don't know why.
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Apr 27, 2016 23:03
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To be fair I was lazy with updates, poo poo keeps getting in the way. I've made a bit of progress recently so I'll upload some pics tonight. Was actually thinking I needed to revive the thread yesterday. The hard part of the bonnet and boot lid are done, the lid is ready for paint and the bonnet just got put into primer after gettng a bit of bog put into it. Going to pick up some temporary flat green so I can throw them on the car. The plan is to do the real top coat all at once to get a matchng finish. Looking back at the thread I didn't even realise how far behind I was on the updates, I'll pick up my game from now on.
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Aug 2, 2016 00:57
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One day late because I'm a lazy piece of poo poo who would rather hoon around in my 944 than post A few of these shots are going back a couple of months now, sadly my friend's brother died and all this work is being done in his shed so we had to stop for a while. The brother owned a Holden WB (I think?) ute which is done as a HQ mock up, nice ute. I helped do a bit of suspension work on it after we finished up priming my panels last weekend, it's funny how parts of it are almost exactly opposite from what Ford did at the same time. The boot lid came out pretty well after a bit of bog, I hosed up buying the wrong poo poo for sealing the panels together. Couldn't find the right stuff so got some sikaflex, I think I bought it from a Boating shop too. It pulled the skin down on the frame too much    We didn't go with the factory method of sealing two pieces of bare metal together either, the inner parts of the skin and frame were primed separately. Probably the reason they rusted out so badly. As I mentioned earlier, I picked up a BA wagon. I did an elderly couple a favour and sold the BF gas motor cheap to them since they had one die on them. Wreckers wanted $1000 for a new motor, I did it for $300 including a 200km delivery.  Can't say the colour suits the wagon too well. 301k on the clock and the motor is still loving great. Ford really did a good job on these barras. A few days after, I picked up this flash tuner which cost more than the wagon.  Also on the hunt for random other parts I scored a GT style fuel cap for a decent price. Came with the proper ring for it too but I need to drill holes into the panel to fit it and get rid of the spill tray.  Probably my favourite day in doing all of this was fitting up the GS bonnet on the car after finishing up with all the metalwork, at the same time I threw in some hinges stolen from a mates long gone XA. The result of that was the bonnet not sitting really high up the back like most do.  Had some fantales on the roof too, delicious fantales The fucker went into primer shortly after that to stop it rusting during the month break we had.  Up to date! I picked up my solid colour today which cost me $230 for some poo poo that I'll rub back eventually, cars are expensive. I'll also just throw in what I've been daily driving too, I got rid of the EL Falcon because gently caress fixing $500 cars. It went to a good home who actually decided to fix it (sold it for $350 with 3 months rego on it). Drove the XC for a month, then I picked up a Porsche 944 because ???, I wanted something that doesn't want to swerve off the road.  When I told everyone they thought I'd given up on the XC, I'm way too attached to my lovely Fairmont to ever replace it with something else. e: gotta post my shitboxes together (the xc gets the garage) 
Ansith fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Aug 3, 2016 |
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Aug 3, 2016 12:55
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Using sikaflex to seal the skin to the frame is biting me in the rear end now. Rubbed back the primer to get some colour on but we found more low spots and high spots. Got some more filler on and primed again. The boot lid was the worst but it might be due to rushing things after taking the month break, there were a few things we forgot to finish off. Did another test fit of the bonnet. It isn't perfect but it's better than most of what's out there for $1000. I bet if I paid a shop to do it there would be more than $1000 in labour there.  Inbetween doing that we also butchered my radiator support panel to test fit the BA radiator and condenser. The best part was cutting my car up and then looking at all the poo poo on the floor and thinking I need to drive it home. Didn't get any pictures because coolant and dirt don't go well with phones.
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Aug 9, 2016 23:21
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Just got back from laying down the first bit of colour on the bonnet and boot lid, which was meant to be a temporary coat of solid 2 pack. It came out really dark compared to the metallic version. I like the dark green a lot. My friend suggested that we go with it instead and I'm close to agreeing with him. I'm going back tomorrow once it's dried to get it out into the sun so I can see it under some better light. I'll grab some pictures tomorrow but I think a solid colour might be the way I want to go. Plus it'll be cheaper, the 944 has stolen my wallet and won't give it back so I need to save where I can.
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Aug 13, 2016 06:42
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  A few runs in the paint because my friend didn't have the right size nozzle on his paint gun but on the parts without runs the colour looks great. Most likely I'll sand most of this back to get a better coat on it. Can't wait to start on the rest of the car, it's going to look great.
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Aug 14, 2016 03:21
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Raluek posted:That looks real good. I'm a big fan of non-metallic single-stage paint. I'm really glad I went 2 pack for it as well. The look of it straight out of the gun is great. You Am I posted:I reckon you should keep the chrome petrol spill tray on it I don't know about that, that thing is only on there because when I took it off I found some rust. I put it right back on and ignored what I found. In other news, I've decided that I'm going to put a black vinyl roof on it once it's all painted. None of the cars I see around Brisbane have one, I've always been half interested in them especially with louvres on the back window, and my friends were throwing ideas at me so I said why not. After looking at cars like this who wouldn't want one? 
Ansith fucked around with this message at 13:33 on Aug 17, 2016 |
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Aug 17, 2016 13:30
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Coredump posted:Did that body style ever come in two doors? Yep there was a 2 door. It was called the Hardtop by ford. Apart from small differences it's the same as the XB coupe that was in mad max. Both sedans and coupes had Falcon and Fairmont versions, Fairmonts are just a well optioned Falcon with more chrome. CAT INTERCEPTOR posted:There is good reasons why no one touches vinyl roofs anymore. All of the cars that had them stock rusted horrifically. This is one thing I would urge you to never do as vinyl is a moisture trap and WILL start the roof rusting Definitely an issue with factory vinyl roofs. They didn't put any paint under them. If you find a dealer fit vinyl roof it likely won't have the same rust issues because it had the paint under it.
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Aug 17, 2016 22:57
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Okay, I'll go without the vinyl roof. I went back and looked at a couple of projects that had a dealer fit vinyl roof removed, I had a picture in my mind that they weren't too bad. My memory clearly failed me. They weren't as bad in the way the whole roof wasn't caved in with rust, but they still got it in the a and c pillars. Thanks for the warnings!Coredump posted:Can we get some Ford Barra chat going? We don't get them in the US. How popular for hot rodding are they out in Straya? Can they make good power n/a? Do they like to rev? I'm happy with any barra chat in here! I'm seeing them used a lot more in the past year, the prices for BA Falcons is down to nothing so they are extremely cheap. At the last car show I went to I spotted an N/A in a cortina, tight fit but I bet it was quick. A basic tune and exhaust can get you 215hp at the wheels out of the Barra 182. I've seen people getting just above what a stock BA turbo makes with some more serious mods but the money would be better spent just going turbo. Ansith fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Aug 18, 2016 |
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Aug 18, 2016 01:59
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literally a fish posted:I've seen turbo barras make 700WHP, too Fixed, I left the word stock out. There really isn't much point trying to get power out of an n/a motor when for the same money you can get double out of a turbo
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Aug 18, 2016 02:36
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Unrelated falconchat is cool with me. I've been a bit stuck on progress, got a flat on the highway in my 944 and had to replace tyres when I was already broke, then my computer died on me so I had to replace a few parts. The XC decided it needed rego too. I need to get a booth to paint in which won't cost too much but I need to replace the tie rods, ball joints, and every other loving part on the 944. In no money required news, got the ecu flashed so it now has the security deactivated. One thing I asked them to set up was the speed sensor for the ecu to come off the transmission instead of the abs. I thought this would cause it not to change gearsbut it still does. I'm guessing it has some sort of backup without a signal. Measured up the BA diff to see how it copmares to the xc one, there's a 3cm difference, so 1.5cm each side which means that's a loving perfect fit. The wheels have the same stud pattern just different required offset. The important part was the location of the spring perches, they measured up to be the same. I'll just need to modify the tailshaft to fit, otherwise some wider tyres and it will be perfect. If I really want to I can go find an XR6 lsd diff but this one will do for now.
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Sep 16, 2016 02:04
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I'm still not on to the good part of this build, sorry to disappoint. Decided to paint without a booth and felt like I should be on the gun rather than getting my mate to do it. Got both panels sanded back to get rid of the runs then got the top coat down. Looked great up until we tried to get the orange peel out of it and found that my mate used more thinner instead of the hardener when he mixed it for me. So it was all still wet. Thinners took care of that luckily and the past two weekends I got the top coat down again and sanded and buffed it.   Still need a bit more polishing but for a backyard job and one I did myself at that, I don't think it could be any better. It's like a green mirror, I'm amazed at how nice it came out. The bonnet is up next, I was a bit light with the coats of paint so there's a fair bit of orange peel in it but nothing a few hours of work can't fix. In barra swap news, after Christmas I'll be getting a loom put together for me. A few guys on facebook popped up recently doing looms for a very fair price in their spare time. Seems like a safer option than spending 10 years working out what each wire does myself.
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Nov 21, 2016 09:24
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Finished both panels off finally, did a 12 hour day working on them to get both on the car.  My arms are killing me but I can't complain about the results, I've seen worse professional paint jobs.
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Nov 28, 2016 10:42
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Thanks guys, I'm still really shocked at how nice they came out, pretty good for a $20 spray gun in a filthy shed with a first time painter. Now I just have to get the same finish on the rest of the car! Starting on the front guards this weekend. My mate has an xc ute shell sitting around with guards on it so they'll get put on my car while we do them. Bright yellow so it'll look great. I think the hard part is over, unless there's surprises under bog in the body, the rest shouldn't need as much work. All things considered the car is pretty rust free. Boaz MacPhereson posted:When you're done, come to America and paint my green sedan Buy me a plane ticket and you've got yourself a painter 
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Dec 1, 2016 23:04
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Plans changed a bit and my mates all agreed to spend a week on the rest of the bodywork with me while we're all on Christmas holidays. Boxing day (yesterday) we started by pulling a bunch of stuff off the car. The plan is to have all the panels and body prepared for paint by the end of the week. Here's the starting point, I've been driving around with the yellow guards on for a couple of weeks. People look at me funny.  One of my guards was actually cut at the front and had another front welded onto it, the work was fine but we decided because we're going to all this effort it's best to get another one and use that instead. Another mate of mine had one spare which he donated to me. The only poo poo part of it was the eyebrow chrome mould for that guard turned out to be some lovely stick on chrome so it's something I have to hunt down. The same guy is letting me borrow one for a while because they're impossible to get and his car is still a rusty shell. This one had a bit of rust in the bottom as most do, so we used part of the old one which was in good condition. It still needed a bit of work to get the metal straight, it had a bit of accident damage.  Removing bits and pieces off the car.    In the interest of doing things right this time around we pulled off part we he done some patch work to a couple of years ago. At first I was a bit worried about it but having seen other peoples cars and how bad theirs has been, mine is pretty loving good. It's probably why my feet get wet when it rains.  Apart from those holes there isn't any other rust there, we've since cut it back a bit further and it was all clean around the air vent. Part of fixing that section means taking out the windscreen, which I didn't really want to do. Better to sacrifice it to fix the rust problems though.  The guards are almost complete too   Just before finishing up today we stripped back some paint on the left rear 1/4 panel. Turns out it's had a new panel welded in - very likely in the 80s because it's only got one layer of paint on there so it was a new panel from Ford. It's most likely the reason the car was resprayed. Apart from the rear door on the left side that whole side was hosed. Replaced that guard, the front door is unusable, and now the rear 1/4. I'll grab a picture of that tomorrow once all the paint is off it. The repair work on the rear quarter looks okay but it's got some laziness to it, around the weld it shrunk a bit so they've just put on a thick layer of bog. It looks like we might be able to hammer it out a bit to get a nicer shape to it and use a bit less filler in the final product.
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Dec 27, 2016 09:28
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Getting a bit closer, there's a lot of sanding required with the 6 layers of paint and all, plus the 3mm of bog. This is the good side of the car, very minor dings with filler in them. Slowly going for the warboys interceptor look!  The other side of the car, as I mentioned before, is a different story. Here's the rear quarter weld. The metal is sunk right in, fixing that up with less filler is on the cards.  Here's the passengers side front door, the only one with rust in it. It's had a couple of repairs before and had a solid layer of bog in it, at least 3mm. The problem with that was the rear door had to match it, so the rear door ended up being fine under the 3mm of bog it had on it. We're going to use the skin from another door and keep the current door frame because it's still pretty solid. Random fact - XB doors are almost literally just two pieces of sheet metal in between you and whatever is crashing into you, the XC doors while they are the same door had intrusion bars added - still not really that safe but better than sheet metal.  No more rust up front. Still needs to be cleaned up but no more leaks!  I can't remove this tail light, the plastic housing cracks and the metal studs that are supposed to be stuck in there just spin with the nuts. Towbar removed for good too. 
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Dec 28, 2016 12:29
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Raluek posted:I'm guessing that the tire in the trunk is the ghost of christmas future? That's a spare off my 944 since the other side exploded on the highway but I'll be going for a similar size once the new rear end is in, I'll probably get some wide steelies. You Am I posted:Wait? A Falcon without a tow bar? That's like a Commodore ute without a Southern Cross sticker on the back window. It's almost unaustralian to remove it Couple of extra pictures, doesn't look like much progress has been made but there were a few problem areas that needed to be fixed up. Had to get a rust repair section for the bottom of the left rear quarter and got into it a bit with a hammer but it's looking pretty good now. The roof took me a days worth of sanding to get all the paint off, the acrylic would melt onto the sanding discs and the enamel under it was really dry and just took a long time to get off.   The deadline is now Friday to have paint on it. On schedule so far, still heaps to do and we're doing short days because it's 45 degrees in the shed.
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Dec 31, 2016 09:10
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The deadline is out the window, there ended up being a bit more rust to fix up and some of the filler needed to be redone. I got lazy with the pictures, working 10 days straight started to get to me pretty badly. Here's a few from a repair of the lower left rear quarter in random stages of progress, luckily for me my mate had a rare spares repair section sitting around from a couple of shells he bought.    We got the door jambs done, which is around the point I got lazy with the pictures. Our priorities were a bit off and we kept doing random repairs on the car which I think is what killed the deadline. We're sort of back on track now, the car is now in primer and ready for a bit of sanding.      It looks like there's a lot of filler in it but it's all pretty thin, much less than we took out of it. It should come out pretty nice in the end! No show car but definitely a solid backyard job.
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Jan 5, 2017 11:24
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Got the paint on early today as we figured it was better to leave it to harden up for a full week before touching it again. Came out pretty well.    My mate ended up spraying it, the gun kept loving up in my hands for some reason. That's what you get with sub $30 spray guns. Has a few runs but nothing too serious, it should all come out. I expect it'll look as good as the bonnet and boot lid once it's all sanded and buffed.
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Jan 7, 2017 16:26
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Been a bit busy with my Grandma dying and then I had to go in for a hospital visit but I'm back to my normal life again now. The car was stuck in my friends shed for a few extra weeks because of all of that which I felt pretty bad about but he was cool with it. Finally got it all buffed and reassembled. Still needs a bit of clean up plus I need to replace a bunch of poo poo the broke when I took it off the car. Anyway, I'm very loving happy to present pictures of a car that can be driven on the roads legally again, it also looks good while doing it:       
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Feb 5, 2017 09:49
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Thanks everyone! I've been a bit worried driving it everywhere but once I went over it pretty closely theres a few defects so if I get a chip from driving, it won't bother me as much. That stuff can always be fixed up, I don't really want to leave it in the garage all the time. I'm in the process of ridding myself of the 944, I had my fun with it and now I want something a bit more suited for taking to work. I'll probably grab a BA ute and use the change for the XC. You Am I posted:But for the love of Pete get rid of those ED Futura alloy wheels I'll have you know that they're optional EF Falcon wheels! They'll be gone in a few weeks, I'm just going to get some 15" steelies. Seat Safety Switch posted:Sorry to hear about your grandmother. Thanks, it was kind of sad finishing the car off a couple of weeks after it happened because she actually liked the car quite a bit. She had a couple of pictures of me with the car she took up on her wall and whenever she would talk to me she was always interested in hearing how far along it was.
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Feb 6, 2017 23:36
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I'm still trying to get some wheels, 90% of the places I've contacted just never get back to me with a price. Must not need money. The rest are too expensive. Delaying the important part of this build even more too, I'm getting the interior done at the moment. The door cards are being made (6-8 weeks, made to order). Went with ZH Fairlane ones with some wood grain, not that I had any options because apparently they don't make XC ones. Keeping the cream colour, getting rid of the perforated vinyl and switching to normal vinyl. I was going to go cloth inserts but all of the easily available materials looked like poo poo or wouldn't suit the cream vinyl. Selling that 944 I bought as well, going 50/50 with BA/BF ute replacement (will be perfect for when I find a turbo motor to go pick up) as a daily and the rest goes to the barra swap. As a bit of a distraction, I had a big weekend in the XC. Yesterday I left to go to Rockhampton to see my other Grandma who is now in hospital, then after that I arrived back in Brisbane today. 1200km and around 16 hours. The XC went the whole way with no issues at all. I even got a respectable 13L/100km out of it. This was the longest road trip I've been on in it so I was really happy with how it went, especially considering all I did was put petrol in, check tire pressure, and throw in a couple of screwdrivers into the glove box. Was the perfect weather for it, cool and sunny.  This was just outside of Gin Gin after 350-ish KM. Even after catching a bunch of bugs it still looked great. 
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Jun 4, 2017 14:54
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 22:02 |
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I've had an absolute poo poo time trying to sell my 944, had a buyer until he flaked out on me after a couple of weeks of bullshit. Now I've got someone in SA buying it for 3000 less than I wanted. I'm just so far over it I took whatever offer I could. I really just want to take the XC off daily duties. To a bit of an update, I got some temporary wheels for it, the factory Fairmont GXL alloys. 14x6s. These will go on until I decide what I actually want to go with, it's a tough decision.  This was before cleaning, they came out really nice, only a small bit of rash on them. No idea what I'll do about the centre caps or the wheel nuts (looks like they'll take a different type than what I've got). All I really need to do is get some tyres which sucks because of the lovely selection of 14s these days. I do have a big important bit of news too - I have a loom being sent! Was sent this today, after paying a deposit about a month ago. Should get to me on Tuesday.  I was really worried about having the loom done because I bought that flash tuner and then didn't think that the loom might not have an OBDII port on it, which is why I waited so long to have it done. Luckily I had nothing to worry about, as soon as I was told it was included I put down the money. I also contacted Castlemaine rod shop about a gearbox crossmember because that was going to be a pain to sort out. They make one for $230, so once the 944 is gone I'll be grabbing one of those. For the most part it looks like the swap should go smoothly if everything fits.
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Jul 14, 2017 14:21
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