Awesome work man very nicely done. Can't wait too see your next 1/4 video.

Couple of outside shots, pretty happy with the look of the cooler behind the bar so I'll leave it as is instead of spraying it black like I was going to for stealthness.
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Here's a quick video of the sound it makes haha, tried to slowly creep it up onto boost for a nice dose/flutter, but the 'gate sneaked in there also hahaha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivZLky28VK8

With a bit of luck with getting time to road tune it a bit more this arvo, it might be hitting the drag strip this Wednesday night if I can get off work early enough to make the trip down for a couple runs. Should be interesting to see how it goes!

Love your work brother!

Nice sounding car there.

Read your thread backwards and saw the 15 second 1/4 mile times and thought geez WTF is wrong with your turbo setup,
Looks good with the black wheels

Cheers bro . Loving the look of your EL on those 20's man, looks killer!


Cheers mate

Haha, I'd be in the midst of burning it to the ground if it was running 15 second passes with it being turbo'd . Hopefully it'll have enough traction to run somewhere into the 13's now. Should know for sure when it hits the 1/4 mile again.

Didn't get much of chance to work on the tune over the past weekend, but took it down to the drags anyway as the tune seemed decent enough to do a couple of runs. Would mean I could also have a nice stretch of road to use to get some AFR readings at WOT, legally haha. Turns out it's still a bit rich on boost, especially up around 5000rpm so will lean that out and try keep it around the mid 11's.

Ended up having problems with the trans not shifting up gears under WOT. Would get to the top of every gear and just bounce off the rev limiter until I let off the accelerator completely to get it to change up, then pull through the next gear only to do the same at the top of that gear too. This obviously soaked up a fair bit of both ET's and trap speeds in all my runs. Up until this point I had never done a WOT run going through the gears so I had no idea this was going to happen and freaked out a bit during the first run when it wasn't going in to 2nd gear lol

Anyways, ran a PB of 13.8 @ 102.6mph, 2.24 60'. Guess it wasn't too bad considering the shifting issues, but it p****d me off big time as I couldn't get a single clean run the whole night. I knew it had a lot more in it, but couldn't do much about it at the time. Couldn't find much traction off the line either as the track temp was pretty cold and I had cheap Kumho tyres on the rear which never helps.

It was way too dark so I don't think anyone got any photo's, a mate got a quick video of me warming the tyres before running the 13.8, the screamer is a bit of a laugh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xei0RckWeug

After a bit of thinking on the way home, I remembered I lowered the rev limit in the base tune I started with to 5500 down from 6000rpm (just to save the engine a little as it's nearing 300,000km's, lol) but left shiftpoints as is, so it was hitting the rev limiter before the trans wanted to shift gears. Will fix that up tomorrow and go for a bit of testing to make sure it solves the problem.

Should be going back to the drags when they start up again mid June, hopefully will have some in-car action cam setup or something by then. Hoping for mid-low 13's and higher trap speeds this time round once the fueling side of the tune is 100% sorted, the trans is shifting normally again and I've got some sticker tyres on the back. Still have to upgrade the exhaust to full 3" (still running 2.5" exhaust from the dump pipe back at the moment which would be restricting the top end a bit) and work on a better intake for the turbo so hopefully it won't be too far off a high 12 once that is all done.

Hey man good time considering all the niggling issues and first time out! Also the 2.5" exhaust will be very restrictive now!

Change that to a 3" sort the shifting issues and you will be straight down to a very low 13. Maybe better with traction

Cheers mate . Yeah, that 2.5" definitely could be holding back a fair bit of mid-top end power, just have to save a bit of $$ to get everything from dump pipe back re-done in 3" piping with a decent flowing muffler.

Managed to fix the shifting issue, had the rev limit set in the tune to 5500rpm so it was hitting the rev limiter before the trans wanted to change gears . Bumped rev limit back up to 5800rpm, altered shiftpoints to suit and all is good again. Also leaned out the tune in the areas where it was really rich so AFR's on boost under WOT are now around the 11.5:1 mark, goes a fair bit better now.

Haven't updated in a while, so may as well do it while I'm here lol

Picked up some different wheels for it, ROH RT's in 17x8. 245/40 Bridgestone Potenza RE002 tyres up front, 255/40 Bridgestone Potenza RE001 tyres on the rear
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Didn't really want to waste the Bridgestone tyres at the drags, so ended up buying some new wheels for drag use. 17x9 steelies, 0p offset. 5mm slip on spacer on the rear just to push them out that little bit further. Used up the last pair of Goodyear Eagle F1 tyres I had left as they worked well for me at the drags before going turbo
Diezel D-window 17x9
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Took it back to the drags about a month ago now and tried it out again. Everything ran great, but zero traction because the drag strip surface wasn't prepped . Best I could manage was a 13.8 @ 105mph, 2.4sec 60' . Easily has a low 13 in it as is, just couldn't stall it up and leave the line on boost as it would just skate down the track through 1st and 2nd gear. Had to roll the throttle on slowly off the line and ease into WOT.

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A mate got a few vid's of some of my earlier runs and some burnouts..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93_wrkS ... e=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SE9tk16-K4

Was going to go back out and try again, but it spat the dipstick out on my 13.8 run which scared me off a bit. Rings are on their way out I think as blow-by is a bit worse than normal haha. Still goes pretty damn hard, doesn't feel like it's lost any power either. Took it for a quick spin this morning after being parked up for a week (just bought an EL Ghia as a daily so the EF is the weekender) and it still feels nice and strong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdmxcSl ... Ub6NzZDK4w

All good though, engine rebuild is on the cards around August/September. Sticking with the EF bottom end, ACL race bearings, decent rings, drop compression back down to low 9:1 and up the boost to 10-12psi and see how we go. Hoping to make the change to a proper turbo cam and open up the ports a little more. My local cam profiling guy just got a flowbench, so he'll be able to flow the head and grind a cam to suit which will work out nicely.

I've found you can adjust the top of the dipstick where the retaining bend is to keep it in a little firmer.

Also make sure your breathers are not restrictive?

Will give that a go, cheers mate . It's pretty weird, have driven it a fair bit since the drags and given it a hard time and it hasn't popped the dipstick out again. Hoping it was just a once off lol.

Breathers are probably on the small side for sure though, only running -8 fittings on the rocker cover and a small catch can, so it probably makes the blow-by look worse than it really is. Will probably be upgrading to -12 fittings and a much bigger catch can with a 35mm breather vent when I get to work on the motor again.

Just read tbis whole thing. Andi can say from personal experience of seeing this car run the quartermiles and at the ford days. She really is a beauty man. Has to be one of the top contenders in best looking and build cars in my books. And im also nit a fan of the el/ef series either.. the head lights look weird. But nath you surely have done something truly awesome with what resources you have in little NZ. Heres hoping she will crack a 12 one day

Hey matey

Just noticed in your incar vid you have changed the steering wheel. Can you tell me what fits in place of the standard EF/EL one? I have a full EL interior in my ED and don't have airbags so the big wheel in not needed really....

Oh, and awesome EF, one of the nicest I have seen in a while....

Cheers
RD

Hey mate, cheers

The current steering wheel I have is just a cheap deep dish 'OMP' style 350mm wheel. As you'd know the EF/EL steering wheel has a square drive fitment steering wheel, as far as I'm aware, there isn't an aftermarket wheel out there with the same square drive fitment (apart from options from AU/BA/BF). I ended up buying an aftermarket boss kit with the square drive, and then buying a generic 70mm PCD bolt steering wheel to bolt onto the boss kit. Should be able to get the boss kit off ebay, and then you'll have a huge range of different steering wheels to choose from

Cool, thanks for that. I'll search out a suitable boss and go from there....

Cheers
RD

KWIKXR, Check out my tribute to you here:

the-garage-f53/1995-ef-gli-father-son-project-t127597.html

Keep up the great work.