................RUSHED'S BUILD THREAD.................

Ok ive decided to make a thread on my car, as im bored, and ive been doing ALOT of work on it recently, so there will be many an update. ill try to make it slow interweb freindly with small size pics

PLAN.
basicly i want a 13.99 pass out of the car, and just to have fun tinkering, i enjoy doing all the work to my car myself, that and i dont like mechanics, they charge too much


HISTORY.
I got this car as my 2nd car after getting my p's, 1st was an EL sapphier wagon factory gas, i got that on the cheap, it was clean and strait, all i did was some tidy up, paint some bits and sold it off, paid my loan off and used the left over cash to buy this.
When i got it, it had; FTR's, country pack suspension, and gas.


FIRST MOD.
Within a week, i had the High-tech headers, highflow cat, and catback system fitted (forgot the muffler we ended using, nice and raspy though). check the epic ride hight in the pic.



OOPS + RIDE HIGHT FIXED
A few weeks after some spirted driving at a mates farm caused some damage to the car (sorry no pics), so i booked it into a panel shop to get all the nice scratches fixed, while it was there i got a new front bar, and got the mirrors and the dash spear done body colour.

After i got it home, it had two boxes waiting for it, one box with with ultima short shocks and king superlow springs front and lows for the back (had gas tank and ive never been a fan of the slammed rear end look), the other box contained DBA slotted rotors and lucus sports pads.
This made a huge change to the car, in both looks and feel, no longer was i embarased to park it in the uni car park.
This photo also shows the matte blake brake calipers.



INTERIOR WORK.
Next up was some interior Recolouring, i decided to paint the upper interior pieces in matte black.
The basics are you spend a few mins spraying, and HEAPS of time in preperation.
ill just show a pic, as i'll be redoing it all (inc lower section) next week i preperation for my new interior.



i'll update later, when ive typed up the next bit, with some of the mechanical upgrades: cam, manual etc etc.

THANKS FOR READING

Last edited by rushed on Fri May 08, 2009 10:56 pm, edited 5 times in total.

good to see a build thread... love the tractor suspension:D watches closely

you have my attention sir.

ill be watching for when boost becomes an issue

thanks guys.

boosting is on the cards in the future, once the new interior is done and repaint the front, but with my ordered throttle body, a tune and some semi slicks, i think im getting close to my desired time atm.

cheers,
Rushed

ok that was 2007 over and done with.

Onto 2008 (im tring to speed through to get to all the new mods, while not forgetting stuff, im spinning my mind around tring to remember the order i did things in, and worse find pics, especially during this time as i lost a fair few pics, around the cam install time, so that section will look a lil like a book sorry.

As i grew up with a father that was into cars (hot 202 torana's, XE falcons etc etc), the bug was going to hit soon enough, and i'dd well and truely been suckered into this wonderfull place (fordmods).


LITTLE MODS.
but being a uni student that had just moved to the city from the country i had little money to spare, so i did the little mods around.

First was the obligitory "POD in a Box" and spent a day making a nice shiny red rocker cover. all in all i was pritty chuffed, the pod did have a noticable effect but probably due to my stock filter being covered in more crap than a mangy dog.

For the attentive amung you you may notice the hole in the front of the airbox, i did it for more airflow, my plan was to get air from the bonnet gap, pod stays cool so it doesnt get hot air at least, and gets lots of loos when the bonnet is open.
p.s. ill use this pic as a referance later when i get to how the bay looks now


Next up was a shift kit, that someone put a guide up for, and i thought why not, i ended up making a few for mates as well while i was there, not sure if the car was actually quicker, but sure gave a better "shunt" when changing gears, and occasionaly chirped the wheels, which when your 18 is the s**t


FIRST DRAG DAY
i attended the Victorian fordmods drag day, one run and i was instantly hooked.
i did a best of 16.08, and won an award for "drag whore" i got the fever and just kept lining up, conclusion, I NEEDED POWER.



CAMMAGE.
( this bits a lil long)
Right about this time a little company called "jay's RPD" was starting up, and they were getting rave reviews, and i thought, "this could be a good idea", HAH, famous last words.
Long story short it took 4 months to get the cam running right, and a few 1000 dollars, im not going into details on this as i dont want to bring any bad memories, old fights or bad blood with people that were involved with the proccess, so ill keep to mechanical details.

Where was i, oh yeah cam, continuing on.

I got my shiny new cam, vernier gear and valve srings in the mail, got the car booked in, sent car off (i wasnt confident to do it myself back then, ive now changed MANY cams, see im learning \o/)
i went in to see the car on the dyno, and it spat out 98RWKW, needless to say mouths hit the floor, you could have pushed me over with a feather at that point.

Anyway, we set to working on anything that could cause this, we changed EVERYTHING, knock sensors, fuel filters, i mean everything, and we got it to 103RWKW.

A few weeks went by with the car going back in spartaticly for checkups, having the stock cam put in gave me power, and some forum members having a look at it, i noticed somthing, that the timing would advance nicely if you pegged it in neutral, but running on the dyno would barely move, i said "could it be the transmission", more checks, "nope cant be that".

At the end i had 103rwkw, slightly depressed, but i had a plan.
NOTE: jaysen from rpd, was nothing but helpfull, he's a top bloke.


ADDING A GEAR.
I took my car to a transmission specialist and they confirmed my trans was rooted, his eyes lit up with nice big dollar signs when he was telling me idd have to sell my spleen for a new gearbox. But onto that plan i mentioned earlier

$500 later i bought an EA S-Pac of a good mate, funnily enough the best bit in it was the freshly recod EA T5 Manual, pulled the gear i wanted from that, ebay'd the good stuff and got the car cubed (dont worry the mate was going to sell it to the wreckers anyway)

Fast forward 2 weeks, and after a mid-week fordmods cruise at Crown, during some (ALOT of) spririted driving, the trans overheated and the dash lit up like a bad star wars scene, two corners from home. next day no gear, i mean it would roll backwards in drive.

After talking to arm79 and some others about how best to do the swap, i terfed the 3bolt clutch/flywheel and got a brand new flywheel and an XR6 spec clutch, new cable etc.

and even after ignoring many peoples advice, i got a malwood pin for my auto pedal box, instead of modding the EA box to fit, big mistake, ill get to that later.

Now this was my first "big mod" idd attempted on my own with the help of a mate on his first gearbox change, without guided help or the likes. so i took my time.
took 3 days inc wiring, fitting etc (working in carport in 40' heat). Now i completely ballsed up here, i used my phone camera for the pics (because its smaller and didnt cost a few grand), of the install and none came out, and not getting a shifter cover for the interior. so heres the pics ive got.
p.s. example of how the install pics turned out....



OH and guess what... the car suddenly felt alive, and not just from the short gear... i mean idd got my missing power back, and the Fordmods Dyno day was 2 weeks later, felt soo much better, although bad news was on the horizon. ill give you a hint 340,000km bottom end getting 40% more power. (thats a later more recent episode)

not what i was hopeing for, but for the age of the borrom end, i was happy.



Shift Feel.
after getting sick of the stock sloppy shift that e-series seem to have, i got in a group buy for Billit short shifters.
i must say this was money VERY well spent has made the car feel sooo much better, even when in traffic it feel easier and more fun. ive only missed 3rd twice while going hard with it, both at the drags where my foot was faster than my hand on the shift.

A note to anyone fitting one, use loctite RED, not blue, as it will just rattle loose every 50km (trust me it gets annoying), and to make fittment MUCH easier (and tightening when you didnt use loctite red, and then tightening when you find blue was useless) drill two holes forward of the shifter hole on the floor, above the alen key bolts for the shifter.

its a shame its all hidden away, looks cool. oh and yes i still hadnt got a gear boot



Death of a Pedal Box.
I spose nows a better time than any to point out why a mal-wood pin is a ^^&*#$%@ of an idea (although because of a few of these he has changed the pin, didnt help me get a new pedalbox though...). pedal was squeeking, i thought nothing of it, its an old car, my mates VN did it, so i ignored it... untill the squeek turned into a grind and then the clutch pedal went on a 45' angle.

i will admit the car gods must like me a tiny bit, as this happened while turning into my driveway.

Photos speak better than words, lesson of day DONT CUT CORNERS.
P.S i cut and modded my EA manual pedal box to go into an EF after this, wasnt as hard as i thought pulling the dash out.





NEXT INSTALLMENT: new diff, swaybars, nerfing gas, then we'll be all caught up (unless i missed somthing).

Then i can get to the more recent stuff :new head, how to blow up an engine, new engine, alot of paint, and some leather.

Alot more pics in the more recnt section \o/

THANKS FOR READING, any questions just ask

Last edited by rushed on Thu May 14, 2009 4:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Nice car mate ill be keeping an eye on it.

You are right the malwood pin is the stupidest idea I have ever seen.

You might aswell use a bolt with a few nuts.

But seriously what did you do to strenthen your pedal box?

I used a break pedal pin and welded that in.



cheers

Josh

great ride rushed, you have done heaps to it already, nice power you got in the end

Last edited by GT-01 on Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.

what caused the major lack of power?

joshie; i have a plate welded to the inside of the pedal box, with a hole for the pedal pin to go through, yours looks like it could survive a nuke.

GT-01; thats the power with the old 330,000km motor with no head work bar valve springs, its doing much better now (new head, bottom end,bbm etc), i havnt got that far in typing yet , gotta get it dyno'd again.

Fiftyone; when in "n" it would advance fine, when in any "movement gear" it wouldnt advance the timing, the gearbox place, going from memory as i didnt end up getting them to work on it, and it was over a year ago now, said they wouldnt know how bad it was without pulling it out. but assured me it was very close to death, being such a long time ago im stuggling to remember what they thought was the problem, All we know is that when we ripped it out and fitted the manual car advances fine.
i never pulled the auto apart and now it is at the tip.
i can tell you that when we ran an error code reader on the car a week after the manual was put in, it spat out some auto gearbox errors (which im told it shouldnt do with the converted wiring).
sorry i cant be of more help, i know next to nothing about auto gearbox's.

Cheers mate.
That shuld work alright mate, there are a few ways to do it if you have a look at Fiends thread he has come up with a good idea.

commercial-sponsors-forum-f53/futurlane-ultimate-budget-build-t69180-340.html

not to mentoion snaps method in the tech docs section

Cheers Josh

Ok a smaller post, im not liking the last post that was alot more typing than pictures, but tried to stick as much in as possible for those interested, ive been taking more pics of stuff in recent months as i knew i was going to start one of these eventually.

SOME PAINT.

I havnt mentioned it in this thread, but at some time up there ^ the car got the non-accedent side and front sprayed (front is now stonechipped to death, im told he didnt put any primer down on the bar)

Anyhoo the car looks pritty good for a daily driver, but was let down by a common e-series problem, and in my case were really bad, grey wiper motor covers, white washer jets and rear window rubber going funky (for lack of a technical term).



Using the guide in the tech docs section for refernence, and being a fan of wheeler dealers (search youtube) for insiration, i set to it.

first off was the masking and papering (panel beaters all point and laugh now)
***all wrapped up***


Then i sanded the rear window trims untill they were smooth, and keyed (i think thats the term) all the smooth plastics.
I then hanged them on my....um... pro Hills painting rack, for primer and painting.
the pick shows some black and some in plastic primer.


skip to the end and although not super pro, after a sand and cut they came up a treat, a million times better than what they started out as.



seeing as were on the topic of paint, i'll jam this here, as a teaser to whats to come in this thread

i got merry with the paint, on my headers, rocker cover (although i'll be changing to an AU one soon), and bbm after some internal work, but thats later on in the build thread (yes im bending time a bit here).

so was the engine flat spotting or dragging or something? im sort of having trouble figuring this out. how can the box be advancing the timing on the motor?

The motor would advance only a bit in any forward gear (d,3,2,1), but put it in neutral and it'dd advance all the way to what it should (i cant remember the numbers off the top of my head), this is what made us think it was the knock sensor for so long, it was exactly like the motor was detecting knock and backing timing off, often under high acceleration it would just not rev, do the get super loud and not make power deal.

Ive never given it much thought tbh, as i hated the auto and when the problem went away when we fitted the manual i didnt care anymore.
You seem to know what your on about, do the auto's have a knock sensor or similar? is there an error code it can send to the ecu to tell it to not give timing?

um i dont know what im on about and ive never heard of this before. infact your scaring me a little because i have similar symptoms and i cant seem to put my finger on whats causing it.