Hey guys, do any of you know offhand what parts you have to take off to get to the timing chain tensioner? I can think of the powersteering pump, but I can't remember if you have to take any others off. I could just try to leave tension on the cam gear but I don't want to stuff up the chain guides.

You only need to remove the power steering pump and the 2 brackets. You can then get to the tensioner. You don't need to remove anything else.

Cheers SWC. It's been a while since I put the cam in that i have now and I was a bit rusty.

Sadface. My sister scraped the s**t out of my left hand front rim when she borrowed my car yesterday, it must have been a rough gutter as there's huge gouges out of it. Good thing I'm only rolling on 15s but it makes them look daggy. Also some moron scraped my car and swapped some blue paint onto my right front wheelarch. Pretty p****d off about that since my real estate claims that I don't get to use my garage that I am paying for and was advertised as coming with the apartment. If it was garaged it never would have happened.

Well, the only mod of late is taking out my cam and putting the gay stock one back in. The good news is EF_Wannabes EA will soon be cammed. I thought I could hack it with the stock cam but I don't like it. The exhaust sounds a lot worse now too after the cam change. I'm working a lot of hours at work so I might have a new engine and trans by halfway through February, at least that's my goal.

Sounds like a good goal to me, don't suppose you want to come out for a social drive with us Aussie day? There will be a few of us this time

Cheers man, I want a bike but i'd prefer to do my car first.

Yeah I probably will come along if I don't head back north for Aus day, nothing else to do in Brissy

Well check out the thread in my sig, should be a few spectators and a few racers... So don't feel pressured into racing, but if you want go for it. Last time we went there was a reasonably stock vs ute. So there will be someone in about your time bracket... If not should be a good social meet anyways... Always passenger seats available :p
Also, if your not racing might be able to get cheap entrance lol

Cheers man, I might give it a go. My car flares from 2nd-3rd when hot so I might just have to redline it in second haha. I'd be keen to go even just to spectate. Really wish I'd gotten work over Christmas, I might have enough for my project build now. Ah well, I guess I'll just have to work harder for the next few weeks and sell a bit more meth to earn the $$

Hey FordAUte, I hope you guys had a good aussie day. Did you go for a cruise? I slept through most of it, haha.

Just a quick query for anyone out there - after changing from my other cam (Wade 1636) back to a stocker, my car has a lot less torque it seems, even less than before. Plus, it has a flat spot at about 1600 rpm-2300, then at 2300 it feels like it hits a powerband, like a 2 stroke motorbike. I forgot to reset the ECU when I changed it, so when it stops raining I'll take disconnect the battery and put it back on to let it relearn. Any other ideas? Fuel filter, injectors, distributor perhaps? It really is peculiar, if I lock it in 1st gear it kinda jumps at the start, then bogs down a bit, then it suddenly leaps forward at 2300 and goes until 4.5 (haven't had it higher than that).

Oh yeah, the old EL reached 300 000 ks the other day, such a proud moment :')

Time for a thread resurrection.

The dirty EL has been off the road for a few years, I gave the boot a touchup with a tree that jumped out of nowhere, so I took her off the road and bought a factory manual, stock XH for a song as the daily.

After leaving her in the shed for too long, I finally got a ticky body kit for it (only EF, ELs are hard to find these days), xr nosecone etc etc. I also snagged an NF LTD V8 for a heart and interior transplant as the original 6 had 6 years of cams and being redlined so it's a tired old boat anchor.

First things first...are the dizzies TI sell for the 302 any good? Somehow the plastic base of mine as been crushed/cracked so I'll replace that.

Secondly, what happened to cappa being the desired interior? I swear a few years back everyone wanted them but I was flat out finding a grey one. I nearly want to repaint this one, the cappa one looks alright but I do prefer the grey.

I'm looking into possible manual conversions but bugger me you've gotta drop some coin for them. I'm a fitter and turner now so it's a bit easier on that side of things at least.

i'm not a fan of the cappa either! .... welcome back!

Thanks mate! It's good to be back, glad to see some of the blokes are still on here.

I was told you can just straight up paint the leather, I'll research more and if I do go down that route I'll test it on the bottom of the seat first, haha. Probably gonna keep the GLi cloth interior, in case the motors die in these.

Never realised how much surface area is on these old girls until I started sanding mine down for paint, haha.

Now for the super important decision - splitters in the front bumper brake vents or foglights?

Haven't made too much progress, basically just sanding and primering bodykit parts, and a bit of cleaning/preventative maintenance on the EL. I noticed under the rubber trim on the firewall/plenum that seals the bonnet up, there was a bit of rust under it. I'm thinking of putting flyscreen under the vents in front of the bonnet to keep all the leaves out.

One of the EF XR bumpers I got had a tow hook hole cut into the brake vent, so I patched that up. I tracked down an EL XR bumper (finally), so if anyone in QLD wants a very cheap EF XR front bumper, let me know. I've got a ton of spares - EF fairmont bumper, heaps of grill supports, body panels off the LTD.

I was playing around with the LTD the other day, the ignition barrel back is loose, hence why I was getting no accessories and no crank attempt. I've gotta sort that out, undecided if I should make a sort of collar to go around it and hold the a*** of it in, or use the ign out of the EL. My BCM then started clicking from the relays, so I have another one of them on the way. It had a blown resistor in it - so if anyone has an EF green (high series) BCM around handy, and you could check the value on the big green resistor (R1) I'd be eternally grateful.

New dizzy cap and base showed up today so I'll be putting that on on the weekend. Kinda considering getting a fibreglass EL XR spoiler as I have an EF one, the EL is slightly higher, but that's a decision for later.

I haven't done too much to the EL, mostly small body repairs, fish oiling places that are hard to reach etc. Ripped the 4.0 and gearbox out the other night, sad to see her go but at 365k kms she served me well. Dash and heater box are out, most of the loom forward of the front seats is out. I suppose I'll just pinch the looms to the doors for the power windows and courtesy lamps.

The only difficulty so far is with the ABS module - the EL has the Bosch 5.3, and the DF has the Bosch 2U. Both 11 wires in the plug (I think), but the fittings on the EL go in the top, and I think the DF one goes in the front. Hoping I can either wire the 5.3 in (wiring diagrams seem to have the same colour wires to the same spot) OR remove the brake lines at their little joins near the mudguard wall and replace with the whole DF module and lines (to the joins). When I get the gear out of the DF and the appropriate fix I'll post the solution here. Pro tip - EF-EL or EL-EF swaps suck, but in my case it was a necessity haha.

I'm thinking of using the DF exhaust and just shortening it, it's twins into 1 around the diff somewhere, I dunno if it is stock but it sounds pretty meaty.

My XH is giving me the s**t, the handbrake cable the other day pulled out of the handle, I had to get under it and undo a connection in it to release it. I'll probably fix everything that's wrong with it and sell it off and just keep the EL.