Haha, I paid $250 for the wheels 2nd hand, about $100 in paint and prep materials and a couple of days work getting them re-painted. Add another $300 for decent 2nd hand tyres, plus $40 odd for fitting and balancing and they were ready to bolt on.

Worked out pretty good, saved me a lot of money going out and buying a new wheel and tyre combo that's for sure.

I black vinyl dyed mine years ago. Looked good for quite a while. Easy enough to fix as it deteriorates ... Just buy another from PickAPart and repaint.

Nice! Yep, very true. It's a simple as un-doin what, 3 screws from memory and whole console lid pops off. Will definitely give it a go tomorrow and maybe chuck a photo or 2.

Now have to do something about the rear door trims, went to fill up the gas bottle tonight, came around a corner a little too fast, the gas bottle tips over and the handle went straight into the passenger side rear door trim leaving behind a decent sized crack . Time for some Ghia door trims all round I think, then transfer my satin black and carbon fiber combo over to them..

I don't have any spare ghia door trims but I've still got a couple sets of cappa fairmont ones if you need some.

The cars looking pretty good now.

Cheers Arron

You don't happen to have any rear cappa door trim's with the map pocket piece at the bottom by any chance?

I don't think so, I can't remember what door trims were fitted to my v8 when I got it. They had stick on wood grain spears but I can't remember if they had map pockets in the rear. They were quite simillar to el ghia ones. Could be fairlane ones maybe.

No worries bud

Would love to have a rear pair with the map pockets, the standard Fairmont one's look so plain and boring with the blank bottom section.

bloody nice man!

Thanks oze-ford

Managed to actually get something done today in between the on-off rain..

Pulled off the console lid, pulled it apart and dyed the vinyl black, turned out quite well!

Pic's:





Also pulled the rear door trims, removed the armrest parts so I could dye them finally. Turns out the crack in the door trim wasn't as bad as I first thought, it did crack the trim, but the covering didn't tear, so just pushed the cracked section back so it was flat again, and you can't tell anything ever happened.

Looks a lot better now that the armrests match the front. Have been driving around for a very long time with front armrests in black and rear armrests in off coloured cappa lol, so all in all, the interior is now looking a bit more 'complete'

Went out for a drive today and grabbed a shot..

Innovate MTX-L wideband kit arrived today


Hopefully, that'll be all installed soon. Just need to get time to get down to an exhaust joint to have the bung for the wideband sensor welded onto the exhaust somewhere. Once that is done, I'll wire the kit in, and get straight onto some DIY road tuning to get the AFR's sorted out once and for all.

Finished off my stopper bracket for the brake master cylinder/booster assembly. It seems to be working pretty damn good. It doesn't make the car stop any better, just makes the pedal feel a bit firmer compared to before, but then again, it did have a fair amount of flex which is no longer there.



Also got a oil catch can to hook up. Should be good for keeping oil out of the intake manifold (well reducing it anyway) and add's a bit more to the bling factor.

Bling is always awesome.

Always good to see more progress, KWIK.

Nice pickup on the wideband, I too need to get mine welded up and wired in. Are you wiring it into the EGR feed for data logging?

Cheers mate


Cheers Mason

Haven't yet got a datalogger, will need to buy one separately (SSI-4). Haven't even looked into what needs to be hooked up yet. I was assuming all I'd need to do was hook it up the wideband controller connection, hook up power, ground etc and then hook up the feed for RPM etc..

Sadly I don't have a 5.0, so no EGR here haha

Oil catch can is in now. Just mounted it to the rear part of the airbox. Have rigged it up to 'catch' the oil vapours from the rear breather on the rocker cover.


Was initially going to try hooking up the PCV and the rear breather straight to the catch can and then block off the fittings that the hoses lead into on the intake manifold, but was worried without manifold vacuum, oil vapours may not be drawn out, so have just left the PCV side as is, and added the catch can inline with the rear breather tract. The breather filter there right now isn't in use, have sealed that port off and put the filter on to cover it. Seeing as the can is hooked up back to the intake manifold, having a breather filter venting to atmo would create a vacuum leak. Something I didn't think about when buying the catch can, should have got a sealed one instead, anyways, we'll see how it goes..

Also finally bought myself my first helmet as a motivator for hitting the track... lol.

There was a big drag event on Sunday/Father's Day which I planned on going to so I could put the Fairmont down the 1/4 and get some figures - unfortunately I broke the 5th metatarsal bone in my foot on Saturday night which put an end to that plan..

Luckily there will be a Ford Muscle Car Club drag event happening in November so will most likely getting the Fairmont prepped up for that. Beforehand though, I might be hitting up the Pukekohe race track testing/open days so I can play around with road tuning without having to worry about getting stung on public roads.

Last edited by KWIKXR on Sat Sep 22, 2012 3:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.