Hi everyone.

I would like to tell you all about myself. I was born. I started smoking cigarettes. I went to school, gave up cigarettes for a couple of years and now I am 35 and have quit for two years and smoked for 27 years of my life. I am male, 6 foot tall and like long walks on the beach. I...... 15 pages of s**t deleted by Admin

Any new mods planned BENJ?


Now now... Froudey, that was classic but.

Last edited by fiend on Fri Apr 17, 2009 11:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I know, that's been used up but I could not resist.

Josh

my fairlane has a camber kit in it, i have 12 degrees of camber with no shims, and i have one wheel perfect, the other needs another shim or 2 as im getting inside wear...

definately worth the cash. i actually just scrapped a set with the fairlane i bought but ran out of time to remove them... ohwell lol

Hey All.

I thought I would do a little bit of a before and after comparison.

Exterior






Interior






Quite the transformation. And still more to come.


Cheers
BenJ

you must be happy with it...does look quite nice...

hows it drive now? are u happy with the performance/economy...

what do u reckon it owes u so far? did u have a budget in mind when u began this?

You have achieved a great deal in a very short time with this car.
I am very impressed.

Come up all right hey.
Cheers to you Ben!

Cheers gogetta.

It drives really nicely. For a Wagon it handles better than I expected, and that can only get better when I add a rear swaybar. The six is very tractable on both LPG and Petrol, and is proving to be very economical on LPG. Performance on LPG is OK. Can keep up with late model machinery and is not embarressed at the traffic lights. I am yet to have the LPG tuned, and I stil have a BBM conversion to complete.

What does it owe me? Well, we bought it for $400, sold parts off it for $600. The exhaust was probably the main expense at a tad over $300, and I already had everything else from the Red Car. The T5 was obtained with a bit of horse trading of bits and pieces, but there were things like setting up the clutch etc which would have been around $300. If I add in the new Wheels, and materials cost for the bonnet, the tally would be getting close to 2k. But I did sell the Red EBs diff for $750, so change over value after selling other odds and sods, is close to $1000.

Not bad really for a unique daily driver.






Thanks guys!!

BenJ

good idea with hte before after shots Ben

cheap at twice the price!!!

I reckon I have spent about $3k but I have bought a lot of surplus stuff and tools along the way.

I will have to sell the extra parts when I have finished the job. Spare doors are handy only if you need them. I am going to swap the cargo area of the Classic as it is a real mess. Who knows? I may get a reasonable price for the workhorse when I sell it. Andrew wants it to be his but that is 10 years away and I don't plan on keeping it that long.

The true cost of the cars is too complicated for me to work out.

If you buy the original car for a grand, and then you put all your good bits into it from a previous car (as I, BENJ, Mr Rick, and 100's of others do each year) then shouldn't you add the cost of the donor parts to the price tag? I mean... Really... You buy three parts cars for, let's say, $400 each and then sell parts off most of them so you actually make a grand or two on the purchasing and selling of these spare parts. Does that mean your car is now FREE?

That sort of argument is fair enough, and it's one I use regularly when trying to get away with buying more stuff like LSD's when the missus finds out.

Really, I don't think it really means your car is free when you make money selling other parts. The two financial streams should be separated. You should really be paying yourself to purchase the parts from yourself. We all know you are no good for credit to yourself, so you'd better pay yourself cash, and ask for a receipt in case of yourself supplying yourself a faulty part. I'd laugh at yourself if you had a disagreement with yourself and took yourself to court. You could then represent yourself, meaning yourself had a fool for a client.

Move on please.

I mean, I could go and build a house and use the money to buy car parts and say "the car is free because I used all this money someone just gave me for my time".

Admittedly, that is a little far fetched, but you should see my point... You can't really say you got something for free when you swapped it for something else. The "something else" has a value, just like my time building a house has a value.

Long ago my builds financial status was lost to the world. I bought a $400 Fairmont that made me $2000, but owes $300 on garage fees. The carpet and linings and some engine parts are in my car. But I wouldn't really be able to take $1700 OFF the cost of my build as I made that much on the car bought for parts.

Obviously if the car had cost me nothing once it is all worked out I would have no qualms selling it for nothing other than my time.

And that would mean my car is worth twenty five thousand.

I couldn't agree more.

If I put a price on my time then I would have spent a ridiculous amount on cars over the years.

Did I enjoy myself, learn something, improve something, achieve something, make new friends, spend time with my father and my children working together???

The answer is YES to all of these....

Was it worth it?
The answer is the experience has been priceless and I will continue to do it over and over again.

OK!

Had a bit of a set back with the bonnet this week.

I had a good start last Saturday. Mixed up some bog and layed it on. Sanded it back after it set. Was quite pleased with my progress.

Grabbed a new tin of bog, and mixed up a larger batch. This time though, I put in a bit less hardner, as the last batch went off too quick.

Long, sad, fustrating, aggravating story short, the bog didn't go off. I left it on for a couple of days to see if it would harden, but no such luck.

I started scraping it off yesterday, and to my dismay, the paint etc underneath the bogged areas has gone soft. AHHHHHHHH.

So after a lot of work, with scrapers and the electric sander, all the soft bog is now gone.

And the bonnet is looking a bit like a two year olds first go at finger painting.



You can see here where the paint under the bog has lifted off. I will now need to refill these areas.




All I will say is, that this is a lesson learned.

I hope to get further along on the weekend.

BenJ

...and that is why I leave body work and painting to the pro's..

Don't knock a man who has a go DIY style, this website is full of such people and who continue to come up with great new ideas with their Fords. Chin up Ben, the hours you spend on the bonnet will give you more experience when it comes to tidying up the rest of the car for a new paint job. I did everything you have with my old beat up Escorts years ago and now it is easy work as is painting cars etc. Time and experience also means that you can and normally do save money for other projects.