I decided to finally start a thread on my car. It won't be a very interesting or outlandish one, but just a basic list of my mods as I do them.

To start off, my car is a 97 EL GLi. I bought him in August 2010 for 900 bucks and then spent about 2.5 getting it on the road. New front calipers, pads all round, front bearings, a bit of panelwork as it had a scrape down the drivers side, new windscreen, new filters and oil, new tires, new catback etc. Just all the things that need to be done on all 13 year old cars It doesn't sound like much but it was a fair bit of work.

It has a limited slip diff, 15 inch PCW rims with 205s on them. Interior wise it has 6x9s in the back and 6s up the front, and a DVD player screen for the rear seat mounted on the ceiling with the DVD disc drive underneath the passenger seat. Pioneer MPH-1350 or some such for audio.

After I drove her around for about a year down in Brisbane for uni and it got a bit of wear and tear. Mirrors broken (one from a drunken spook and the other from dad clipping it on the post as he backed it into the shed), headlights faded (we did a restoration on them but it went cloudy again.) Picked up some aftermarket headlights, indicators and mirrors for about 210 all up on ebay. I also gave the old falc all new slippery stuff and filters where applicable, in the diff, gearbox (that was a bastard to change all the fluid in, I hope I never have to do it again) and engine. I also installed a tripmeter that I got off Ebay for 20 bucks, it took about...half an hour and was well worth it, I highly recommend it.

Up till now I didn't really have enough money to do any more mods since I was at uni and all my money went towards rent and such. Now that I was home for the holidays I have a bit of extra cash, and my mate bought an SV6 and started to mod it a bit so I caught the modification bug.

First was the extractors, I'd been dying to get some. I shopped around and found some Pacey 4480 comp extractors about 300kms northwest of me on Ebay, so I collected my pennies and won them for 315 dollars (I was ecstatic to say the least, luckily I was the only one prepared to drive to get them ) and took a roadtrip to grab them. I put them on and modded the cat off the old EA family car that I'm slowly pulling to bits (the idea being I can chuck my original exhaust system back on whenever). I decided to be a stubborn bugger and instead of taking it to the exhaust shop, made my own 2.5 inch flange to go onto the extractors, I still can't believe it all sealed up. It's still only on the stock 2 muffler 2 inch system but that is soon to be changed, as well as a new high flow cat. Take note, when installing extractors make sure you measure how much thinner the flanges are compared to the stock ones...mine were about 10mm where the original was about 15, so I needed to space the bolts out 5mm or the shank of the bolt would dig into the first few threads.

A few days ago I bought a Wade 1636 cam, a BA intake and a 3 inch chrome and silicon intake for it off a forum member. I put the chrome intake on today, and will hopefully be putting the cam in ASAP after I get some shims for it. I would like to get some wider rubber for the wheels at some time, but since I live on a dirt road, I really shouldn't put any rims bigger than I have on now. I would lower it but the same reason stops me. I will probably get it tinted some time in the near future, and it needs a repaint some time. Clear taillights and front indicators soon too hopefully. I will also grab an AU2 XR8 snorkel asap. My plans for my car is to not be a lowered street car but something that I can drive with a bit of speed on the dirt too.

Pictures soon, I don't have any handy on my computer! Cheers to anybody that read this rolling block of text, haha.

A few adventures on my car since my first post...

Took it for a trip down to Brisbane to go to Soundwave (which was f**k awesome ) but my alternator s**t itself. Lovely, it just had to happen when I was a few hours from home, didn't it?

Anyway, I saw Steel Panther up close so it was kinda worth it.



Anyway, I was with 2 mates, one of which p****d off to his cousins house as soon as he found out we were stuck in Brisbane for another night due to both my car being buggered and the road home was flooded, leaving me to find a place for me and my other mate to stay (thanks a lot man.) I had a look and my alternator was covered in oil...BLOODY POWER STEERING PUMP! I thought I'd fixed it but I only stopped the leak at the back on the adapter, the front main seal was still leaking. I degreased it in a last ditch attempt but no go. f**k. Rang up a few wreckers and every man and his dog was looking for an EL alternator so that was a bust. Since I had a good Bosch alternator (higher amps than the stock Sh!tsubishi one) I had to get an Auto electrician to come fix it, $380 dollars but they fixed it in about 2 hours which was really awesome. Sims Mobile Auto Electrician, I strongly recommend them if you are in the Brisbane area. The oil buggered the diodes in it. Darn. Anyway, got home safe after a lot of phone calls and cigarettes but it was an adventure.

Anyway. I got home and took the power steering pump off. Ordered a seal kit off ebay. I made up a puller to pull the pulley (I must have pull on the mind eh) and it was TIGHT. I was bending 4 mm box steel trying to get it off! It was locktighted on. I had an old EA power steering pump but it was easy to get the pulley off it. Anyway. I rebuilt it and then got the f**k pulley jammed halfway on. I was actually afraid I was going to break the high tensile bolt I was using to push it back on with, it was the f**k tight. I soaked it in wd40 and left it overnight. The next day I cut the front of the pulley off and it went on, whether it was the heat from cutting it, the wd40, or the lowered resistance because there was less surface area rubbing on it, or all 3, it went on. I was stoked because I didn't really have 100 bucks for a new one.

If anybody needs it I'll draw up a schematic of my puller tool that I used to get the pulley off, it's a handy little thing (just make it out of heavier steel than I did ) so let me know if you would like me to.

Got it all back on and it worked and didn't leak. Bliss. Also...don't use the wrong oil in your power steering pump as it makes the internal seals go so hard that you will snap them trying to get them out. Rubber o-rings shouldn't snap in half, should they?

I FINALLY got the shims for my cam the other day, I got the whole rocker assembly for 20 bucks, and also these badboys for 20 bucks.



Popped them on the other day, I dunno how they make the interior look so much better but they do! They are the metal ones which was even better. Also gave the interior a good clean and it's looking a lot better, it was getting a bit dusty and such.

I ordered a Lukey 2.5 inch exhaust for it on Tuesday but no-show so far...bugger. I had to get it shipped to a mates house as I only have a P.O. Box, I'm pingin' for it to arrive!

I also installed my 3 inch intake, I dunno whether it's my imagination but it seems to have less torque down low now than the stock one, bugger.

That's about all the updates for now. Once again, for everyone that actually read my slab of writing, cheers!

Looks to be an interesting read so far. You should put up some pics of the car. Its good to have another Brisbane based build a well. If you ever need some cheap parts, Wacol wreckers, IMO, are the best for price out there. Keep it up!

one thing to mention is I got 1 of those Lukey cat backs off ebay and yes its a killer setup for cheap, but the tail pipe dont sit centre on my Ef. Just in case you want to go an oval tip, you might have to fiddle a bit with it

Cheers man. I'm up north for a few more months as I took 6 months off uni but I'll be back down in June, so I'll be on the lookout for other modded Falcs around the joint. Wacol wreckers you say? I'll have to give them a look.

Here's some pictures from last year...the only difference is now I have higher shocks as my front springs were either lowered or sagged like crazy, and I have nice new, clear, non-yellowed headlights. I'll see if I can hunt some up of the car in it's current trim.







Ah, nuts. Hopefully it won't be a problem for me but I should be able to get around it. My tailpipe now had a dodgy clamp on it that allowed the pipe to fall/twist enough to touch my diff when I went over bumps. It was damn annoying to hear a knock every time I went over a speed bump.



Nah, I still have the lame stock snorkel, which is something I need to get on, I'm thinking I might shell out and get an EL GT one from Ford. For a home job CAI I think I'll do as Autospeed did and put a pipe coming from the front bumper up to in front of the snorkel. I thought I might keep a cap in the car in case I need to put it on if I'm driving in water or such.

Yeah, the ECU learning thing is kind of crummy as my fuel economy goes up while it's figuring it out, I aim to get a chip for it when I have the exhaust and cam in, but I might do an ECU reset to get it going until then.

Cheers for all the pointers guys!



This is it with the extractors, painted tappet cover and intake. For those with the keen eye you may notice it is sans power steering pump.

Looks a mile better than it did stock (well, stock with extractors)

It's pretty filthy at the moment, and needs a good wash and wax, which I will do now as it has stopped raining. Pretty frustrating to get the car all nice and gleaming, to then have to drive through 12 kms of sloppy dirt road to get to town, haha.

I'm considering painting the thing strip that goes around the rear and front bumpers black, I've seen a red XR6 on here with it and it looks great, but I just think it might looks a bit tacky on a white EL...time to crack open photoshop to test it out!

Here's a high res of it if anyone is interested. http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/2724/img1954z.jpg

The rear sits up so god damn high...they are stock springs though. I want to dump it so bad but I really can't as I will scrape on everything on my road, I will lower it when I move back to brisbane though hopefully.

When you do go for it, I've got a pair of rear ultralow kings sitting here collecting dust. Let me know when you're back down this way.

Cheers man, appreciate it. How much would you sell them for?

In other news, I'm being tempted to buy a J3 chip and chip 'burner' as I'd love to be able to tune my car, but I dunno if I have the patience for it...might just have to go for a pre-programmed one to suit my mods when I'm done.

Also, the lock/unlock doors button on my dash makes the doors lock then unlock - I can't figure out why. Does this happen to anyone else? I've checked in the Gregory's manual but it doesn't say anything about it.

The locking and unlocking use to happen to me when a door was open.
Maybe a dodgy door lock actuator?

As long as you're happy to pick them up, they're your's for nothing.



+1

I'll check that out, you're probably right. I've got a few things like that on my car that are a bit dodgy, like the cruise control not working, but I just haven't got around to fixing it yet.



Cheers man! I'll have to shout you a few brewskis for them though.


Today I started working on a CAI for my car...I'm tossing up between running a pipe down to the bottom of the ground vs. Autospeeds way of just feeding it to the snorkel. The downside of the latter is I have to cut the bumper a bit.

Also I was hunting why I have brake shudder...I don't think it is a warped disk as I replaced them with new ones last year. It is a shaking when I brake at about 90-110+ (always on private roads when over 110km/h of course) so I think it's either air in the lines (brakes are a bit spongey), loose bearings (new bearing last year, they aren't burnt or dry or anything) but I torqued them both up to Gregory's spec and also 'Dad' spec (by feel) and it didn't fix it, or a bent or unbalanced wheel. Tomorrow's project will be rotating my wheels, checking the damn bearings once again, and bleeding the brakes.

New tyres on the rear soon, they are still legal depth but chopped out like crazy from the gravel road. I'm pretty glad I have an LSD though, my friend who has my car but in a wagon did a few single spinners, and now EVERY corner, it spins the right wheel. In the wet you have to be verycareful with the throttle. Bloody irresponsible P platers!

Anyway, I'm rambling. I'm off to try to plumb up this cold air intake, photos will be up tonight if I get 'er dun!

Don't feel obligated to; they were on the car when I got them and I had since bought a package of air shocks and springs for both front and rear. No idea why the previous owner had only rears on, maybe he liked to be on that slight angle. Haha.

Once you figure out your shudder problem, let me know. I've got a pretty bad one at those speeds as well -- I've been tempted to just pull of the control arms from my old white EF ford, clean and paint them up, replace the joints, rubbers and bearings and then put new rotors on. The only problem with doing this is I can't really identify the main problem unless its visual.

Ah, it's the least I can do! My car had either lowered ones on the front or sagged badly, it made the car ride on a savage angle, and scrape a lot.

Will do! It's pretty annoying, the shaking in the steering wheel isn't exactly confidence inspiring. Braking at 150 or so, on a private road, it still stops pretty well, but like I said, if you touch the brake at 105 to slow down it shakes and makes it seem like your car is going to self destruct. I gave the suspension a quick lookover when I had the struts off and nothing was glaringly obvious. It's a bit of a mystery.

Your EL must the the previous or next off the line from mine as thats the exact problem I have. I hate going down the Toowoomba range as its rather steep so you build up speed and then get that god awful shudder. Haha.