Background. Car in sig: eb2 fairmont 4L. Pacies, high flow cat, 2.5" redback, thermofans, enclosed pod filter with big snorkel, wade 977b cam, 5spd manual conversion, EL manual ECU, j3 chip (dyno tuned), running a s**t sprintgas duel fuel setup.

Car has ~300,000km on it, odometer frozen at 288,502. Previous owner was a 50year old guy, had full log books from Ford dealers for the entire life of the car, single owner since brand new. Was completely stock when I got it so I assume it has had a fairly easy life before I bought it.

Changed oil+filter a couple days ago with proper flush and added nulon lifter-free tuneup stuff too. Using Penrite HPR30. Old oil was black but defs not milky or anything, headgasket done about 50,000kms ago according to previous owner.

Problem 1.
On cold startup, makes a horrible loud screeching noise for about 5 seconds. Oil pressure sits right down in the red for the first 5 secs, after 5 secs oil pressure jumps to normal and noise disappears.

Problem 2.
On cold startup, about 50% of the time after about 10secs running it will blow EPIC amounts of white smoke for about 1 minute. I mean EPIC. EPIC!!! It's actually ridiculous, a mate was driving past the other day when it was happening and he said 'it looked like you had just ripped a burnout up your entire street'. It's actually a joke, the amount of smoke is just stupid, can't see a thing behind the car and any cars behind me have 0 vision until it stops. Plus it stinks, pretty funny when I leave my gfs place in the city in the morning, and drive past a large group of cyclists, they have to all stop due to unable to breathe and unable to see lol, car gets a lot of looks...doesn't help that the front of the car is kinda crushed too from a minor crash that I can't afford to repair yet

Problem 3.
Car randomly stalls when I put clutch in, just happens every now and then I'll put clutch in while approaching red light and car will just suddenly stall. Also put clutch in on a downhill on freeway the other day and it just stalled at 100km/h. WTF.

Problem 4. Fuel usage reads as 99L/100km with clutch in and reads ~58-59L/100km when sitting at ~1900rpm. However actual fuel use appears to be normal (get just under 400km out of 60L gas, and I have a fairly heavy foot)

Problem 5. Sometimes at low RPM if I put my foot down the car will hunt badly, like cut out constantly? On both LPG and petrol. My lancer was doing this a while ago, replaced coilpacks and problem disappeared. Similar thing on the fairmont?

There's probably more too lol, I'll add to the list after I drive it today.

edit: While I'm here I may as well also ask, my other car an ED xr6 wagon (stock except for 2.5" catback stainless steel exhaust, only got ~140,000kms on it) has the ABS light on constantly, took it to a dealer and they quoted $1500 for repair wtf? Not sure exactly what's wrong though, any ideas?

Well thats nice to know. what happenes when you leave the petrol station?

On cold start only, after filling gas/petrol the engine is still warm when I leave so no smoke.

oh. pity then you could really piss some people off

have you tried the old standard eb ecu? may be the el one playing up

paul there all small problems.

the squeal is ya alternator belt. it needs to be tightened

the smoke is probably stem seals but im not 100%

the stalling and s**t on gas is prob a blocked vacuum line or a dirty mixer/ converter not too hard to fix.

fuels reading 99l per 100kms f**k if i know what that is but i wouldnt worry bout that.

and what do you mean bout 5? with the hunting and cutting out?

the odometer is repairable, guy on ebay sell the gear (they go brittle and break, or people reset the odometer whilst driving)
the white smoke is steam, blown head gasket , if the smoke was blueish, then valve guides/ stem seals
screaching noise on startup could be belt adjustments, tighten the alternator belt
stalling, maybe worth looking at the tps switch, clean throttle body and isc also
and the hunting, have u ever replaced the coil and leads? could be the time to

i know the odometer is repairable, but cbf taking whole dash out

i heard white smoke is from water entering cylinder. But I doubt head gasket it blown, oil was not milky at all and previous owner said he had head gasket done only 50,000kms ago.

dunno about coil and leads, I've owned the car for about 3 months and haven't changed them in that time, no idea when they were last replaced.

you dont have to take the entire dash out, someone on here that specialises with boxcars should know how to as i only know ef's and el's

problem1, sounds like belt adjustment and the oil pressure thing could be the oil is to thick on cold start taking longer to pump oil through the engine.?

problem 2, i would say the rings are just about done, my original ed engine blew s**t loads of smoke for the first few mins after start up in the morning,(rings not sealing untill heat expansion) and the head was reco at the time..

problem 3, could be many things, is it on gas or petrol when it stalls ??

problem 4, is your using an el ecu with a eb trip computer, the signal for the trip computer is different from eb to el. so its no longer accurate, this can be fixed by running the trip computer signal wire to pin 58 on the ecu(pwm injector pulse) instead of the original eb pin 34...

You dont have to take the dash out, only the cluster which is about 6 screws and two plugs. You can have a blown head gasket and not mix oil and water. If it blows between the water jacket and the cylinder the water will go straight out the back.
I drove mine for 6 months like this. 50k is not a lot for a reco head if it was not done properly or severly damaged the first time.
Tighten your alt belt.

As troy said for the trip computer, this does fix it, bit its still a little out, but not as bad. I did this to mine, my average says 15 around town, but its actually better than that as i am getting close on 420 to the tank. My car doesn't see highway use very often soi i am happy.

Brett

Not always, water can be leaking into cylinder only, does it use water at all? Or does it stay full?

i say the smoke is valve seals........

valve seals would be oil and the smoke would be blue