Howdy all,

Its been quite a while since I have really posted much on here, and even longer since I went crusing with you guys (I think it was 2007ish), so I thought I’d share what I’ve been up to since then.

So heres my story, After months of looking I finally purchased my EL XR8 back in late 2006. Had a bit of a stereo in it, 18” BA XR Rims, Pacemakers and 2.5”exhaust.




After I rebuilt some cash reserves I put some lovells sports low springs all round along with Koni yellow dampers, fixed up the splits that the previous owner had blown and got some custom plates.





One of my first cruses with xfalcon, thats me peeking in from the top right.


Then sometime mid December 2007, whilst driving to a Formula SAE race been held out in Werribee I pulled over to answer the phone (tied to do the right thing), as I pulled back on to the road I was too busy watching my rear view mirror for a spot to merge, then as I looked forwards all I could see was trees. Photos of the crash are courtesy of my bro, I wasn’t really in the mood for happy snaps.


Luckily I only managed to kiss one tree before spinning along the road, if that tree wasn’t there I would of ended up going up an embankment and probably rolling.



It took me a long long time by I eventually stripped the car down, trucked it to a panel beaters where they welded in a new front end and check the car was straight. Then I got it back and took even longer to put it back together. I didn’t really take photos of these steps as everything was pretty standard.


I drove the car around for a while with it looking pretty second hand, it had a gold right quarter, black bonnet, a grey bumper and sitting on a set of old borrowed 16”.
Then my brother offered to help spray my car back to life. So to his garage it went.
Following are some pics of prepping and spraying the car.
After Sanding the car down we found a perfectly round hole in the centre of my roof, previous owner must of had an ariel or something, Had to weld a bit of panel in and bog it smooth.



My bro laying down some etch primer.





Had to pull the front window out as we found a heap of rust starting to spread under the rubbers.


Then the High Fill was applied.


Masking the car up to spray door jams and all those awkward places.




The Paint I used was all Baslac, from primer and thinners to colour and clear.


First taste of the colour, The base coat.


And the pearl, T colour we chose to spray was based on atomic (VE green) but my bro added some extra herbs and spices to bling it up.


Door jams all done.




Prepping to spray the outside of the car took us way longer than expected, We started taping up the car, cleaning and sealing up the garage around 9:00am.



After a long day it was finally time to start spraying.


We had the garage sectioned in to two parts. I hid out the back and mixed paint behind a plastic sheet while my bro did the hard work spraying. I had a small hole in the plastic where I passed the fresh paint through and took a few shots of the colour going on the car.






As you can tell from the photos we had a massive issue with overspray in the air. This caused us to replace the filters on our masks every coat until we ran out. then I ended up mixing paint in the fetal position trying not to breath while my bro tried to spray for the next hour without breathing.
After a whole day of prepping and spraying we ended up getting out of the garage around 2AM Monday morning and we both had a mean case of solvent poisoning, Not fun. Thanks to the neighbours as well for not bashing the door down with the compressor running all night.
Just when we thought everything was done we pushed the car outside and noticed that it had come out stripy, turns out the paint we had got was wrong and didn’t cover properly.
So we had no choice but to sand the shine off the car a spray it again.
The colour looked awesome after we took the shine off it prior to the second spray. Matt Green.





Was all funny to write my number plate in permanent marker when the car was in undercoat, the solvent brought it through the colour when it was sprayed, luckily the respray covered it.


And Finally it was Green, But no badges or door molds yet.






Then Peak hour while stopped in traffic coped a VS that decided to use me as a brake. Atleast this time It wasn’t my fault and insurance would cover the damage.


To add insult to the already damaged car, one day later I lost all my water thanks to some well rusted welsh plugs,


Finally I got my car back thanks to autoshine, who also painted my door moulds ego (FG charcoal).


Upgraded to a 30mm whiteline swaybar in the front, Best handling mod I’ve done.


The car in its current state.










A before and after shot.


Their is still heaps of things I want to do to my car and will hopefully get around to them sooner rather than later. But for now this is my ride.

I have to give a big thanks to my bro for the hours spent on it, His wife for all the dinners and the bed and to my fiancé for letting me disappear to my bros every night of the week for quite some time.

Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think.

Simo

Farrkking awesome mate, I love it.

looks awesome man i like the green!! i dont know what the previous owner was thinging sticking the badge on the bonnet.... lol looks funny with 2 ford badges on the front hahahaa, needs abit more low but and a tikky kit would set it off or to go with the plates go with a venom kit? but all in all looks tough.

Cheers guys

Thats all on the to do list, I was looking at the venom kit but had already gone over budget fixing it and I do already have a tikky, but havnt had a chance to fit it up yet. As for lowering it I would love to for the looks but (A) the speed humps that i have to go over dayly already scrape my guts and (B)at the moment its got some really nice handling and im afraid dumping it might take that away. Also once the kit eventually goes on it will (hopefully) give the impression of been lower.

this car is awesome, you guys should really see it in person. it really captures the eye. great job mate

hell nice car man, gotta get mine looking like this one day.