Indeed

Went out and got some snaps this arvo once the sun came out..

looks good but the pure black wheels just look too cheap

at least a thin white wall to break it up would go well

but regardless thats the only thing i can fault in the car, the rest looks f'kn wicked, love the effort you put into your EF when others (like me) have long given up. Are we gonna see this thing boosted soon ?

Thanks mate

I'm happy with the wheels, but I do think they look a bit bland, especially given the style of the wheel. I agree, definitely needs something to break it up a bit. Was going to get the tyres whitewalled, but then heard some mixed stories about the company I was going to get them done by. Put the idea off for a while and just haven't really considered again. I have been looking at those Rim-Skin things and may give that a go with the light grey or white ones just to get an idea of the look, although I think they'll probably make the wheels look small as they sit on the rim and not the tyre.

Sadly, I doubt this will get boosted, even though a basic turbo setup would do this thing wonders. T'was a dream I'd love to turn into reality, but I don't think it'll ever happen . Will just try get it to make a bit more power N/A and then that's it. I'll be happy once I get 160rwkw out of the current setup, it pulled a best of 152rwkw with a rich AFR and a pretty modest spark map, so a bit of work on the tune should see it reach that target. Once that's done, it'll be time to get a spare stall converter modified to suit around the 2800rpm mark, and then diff gears. Losing confidence in the 3.89's I bought after hearing all the issues with stripping teeth, so may go look for a new set of 3.91's instead.

So yeah, boost is out of the equation.. That is unless I get tempted again . A couple of guys over here have boosted 4.0's, and they'll be coming up this way for a drag day happening in November, will be good to run up against them and see first hand how well a boosted 4.0 goes, hopefully it won't tempt me too much though, don't want to go through all that s**t again lol..

Decided that I'd finally give the undercarriage of the Fairmont a good underseal, something Ford was reluctant to do with these models it seems - the lack of underseal under these things is appalling, no wonder the inner sills rust out so bad.

Luckily the rust on mine wasn't too bad, so got away with grinding it back, hitting it with some rust converter, then some very thick coats of the rubbery tar type underseal to seal it all. Sanded back the sills, rails, any bare sections of the floor pan, driveshaft tunnel, exhaust piping, mufflers, driveshaft, fuel lines, spare wheel well etc etc and gave them a coat of hi-temp gloss black and coated as much of the sills, rails and floor pan underside as I could with the thick underseal.


Only thing that hasn't been touched underneath with paint at the moment are the rear suspension arms, watts link bars etc and the diff. Will save all that for when the diff comes out for a nice tightly built LSD centre and the shorter diff gearing, eventually lol.

Had this morning free, so decided to get my wideband kit installed. Took it into the exhaust shop earlier in the week to get the sensor bung welded into the exhaust, then got to work fitting the sensor, gauge and routing the wiring from under the car and into the cabin.

Took a while to run wiring and work out where and how to mount the gauge. Did notice that it lights up orange so didn't want it somewhere where it would clash with the blue dash lighting, also didn't want the gauge in close proximity considering it'll be constantly changing and might become an annoyance whilst driving.

Best place I could put it was down in front of the auto shifter, just under the ashtray piece. Picked up a chrome gauge cup for it to make mounting easy. Have left the black face and bezel on the gauge, combined with the chrome cup and matches the auto shifter quite well so doesn't really stand out too much. Good thing is it's out of the way but still easy enough to monitor every now and then.

Wiring from the sensor runs along the side of the chassis rail, up under the brake booster and through the big grommet beside the booster. Bought some heat/fire proof sleeving to shield the wiring as it runs close to the extractors for a short distance before entering the cabin. From there, it runs in behind the drivers side kick panel, under the carpet and in behind the dash centre before connecting up to the gauge.






So far, the gauge is ready pretty accurate according to my AFR readout on the last dyno sheet. It'll be good to finally make alterations with the fueling side of things and know what's happening now that I have the wideband kit to monitor it all.


Now it's time to finally give the interior a well deserved clean up, then next weekend, more road tuning begins

Hey mate, good stuff there, nice idea with giving the undercarriage some attention and I see you run on Normal mode .

also were can I get that shifter knob?

Thanks mate . I always leave the auto in Normal mode, Economy mode just feels crap, lol.

The shifter knob I'm a little unsure of where to get nowadays. The brand was M-Sport from memory (some cheap Jap import type accessory brand), bought it from an importer over here who no longer stocks them. At least that's what I was told when I bought it, as it was the last one they had in the country.

It's basically a rip-off version of the Momo automatic shift knob.. Difference being that the genuine Momo one is wrapped in black leather and has the MOMO logo engraved on the push button, where as the one I have is just a satin black textured coating and the button is plain.

This is the Momo knob
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/MOMO-Automat ... _602wt_952

Oh ok, I've read on here that it ment to be bad to leave it in normal?, I dont mind it either but GF hates it so gotta change it back etc (but switch it back when I'm driving free by myself) and looks like I found me new shifter knob thanks

Shame you dont live in SA, would love to see this in person.

Hmm, I don't know about that . I can't see how it would affect the life of the trans at all really. I don't think I've ever used Econ mode apart from the first time I flicked it on to see what the hell it did and flicked it straight back to normal once I noticed the difference. All it seemed to do was make the shift points earlier in the rev range, and make it hold a gear instead of kicking down when accelerating, or so it felt - didn't like it one bit lol, it was the last time I used that button come to think of it

nice job on the underseal, it's funny all the talk about rust..only had one ford with rust an old xe, but both the ef and el have none.

Thanks Troy . Lol, should have seen the rusted sills on my Dad's EF, f**k terrible would be an understatement . Had to have about 5 decent sized sections cut out of the inner sills and have steel plate welded in to replace it. Didn't look too bad at first before attacking it, but the more you start getting under the flakes of rust, the worse and worse it gets.

Thankfully, that's fixed though; he was pretty keen to offload it once he noticed how bad it was

Much work involved to mount the auto shifter on? I imagine it would be a bit of a s**t fight, considering the T-Bar pushes sideways rather than straight down?

Pretty simple actually, but there did end up being a bit more work than I firs thought. It's not overly difficult, just a bit tricky getting it to sit right on the shaft. May as well detail it for those interested.

The stock shifter has a mechanism inside it that transfers the sideways movement of the button, to an up and down movement onto the shifter rod. The aftermarket shifter I have is a push button from the top, so pushes directly down onto the shifter rod which is perfect.

All I had to do was cut the shifter rod to the correct length so that I could get the bottom of the shifter knob to sit flush with the end of the thread on the shifter shaft. The rod is a bit too long so if you don't cut it, the shifter knob will end up sitting on the shaft with some of thread visible.

The tricky part is securing the shifter knob to the shaft. The bottom of the shifter (chrome little cover piece) unscrews and reveals 3 small threaded holes. It comes with 3 grub screws that screw through these 3 holes in the shifter knob and up against the thread of the shaft, then you have screw the cover back onto the base of the shifter and it hides it all. Problem is, the screws don't hold it on too well at all. There was multiple times where the shifter would randomly come loose and I got sick of it. This is where my ghetto mod comes in, lol.

I ended up ditching those grub screws all together. What I wanted to do, was use the cover piece as a lock-nut so to speak for the rest of the shifter. Took the cover piece, slipped it over the shaft so I could work out how loose the fit was on the shaft. Got various rubber o-rings, slipped them onto the shaft, then slid the cover piece over them until I got one that was an extremely tight fit that needed a fair amount of force to slide the cover over. Once I found the tightest fit, I positioned the end of the cover piece at the end of the thread on the shaft, put the shifter rod inside the shaft, got the rest of the shifter knob and screwed the shifter down into the cover piece. This works perfectly, so essentially, the cover piece being held on via that push/force fit with the o-ring is locking the shifter down over the shaft. I've had it set up this way now ever since, and it hasn't come loose once. Dodgy, but it works

Probably sounds like I was drunk at the time of typing this ^^, but it is what it is. Lol, at all this knob and shaft talk

Nice place to mount the gauge, got mine in the same place, but on the other side, only place i could ever see one fitting really without it being in the way or on the pillar which would just be plain gay lol.

And Troy, your a lucky man, you must of had a good run with your ef/els cause everyone ive seen including mine has had a rust repair in the sills under neath towards the front, bad design or just lack of under seal like kwik said, Primo work on the car bro, must under seal mine one of these days, before it gets worse, already had mine fixed, was just a sand back and convert like yours but my little bros el has been plated, dont want that lol.

One serious question tho, Is the thought of a manual conversion always stuck in your head???? Lol.
Its well worth doing man.

Then on another hand, a auto would be alot better in aucklands great transport system haha

Thanks mate

T5 convo did cross my mind (had a mate who was willing to see me his T5 conversion for about $700), but knowing me, I'd probably break it quick smart. If I was to convert it to manual, I'd rather have a box that isn't prone to committing suicide when pushed hard. T56 would be mint, but WAY out of budget lol.

Stalled and shiftkitted auto with decent diff gears would be quite fun though. Would work mint with the cam I'm running at the moment.

My t5 has had 2yrs of daily abuse, still doing strong. only thing that hasn't broken.
sux in 5 0'clock traffic tho, so thinking hi-stall for the el ghia.

hows ya cam going?