Still looks bloody great anyway

Ooh these rocker covers do sound nice, got any pictures of them? The Cleveland lettering would be a nice touch.

Lol no worries man, nah the lettering and fins/lines are silver, not gold, just the image above slightly looked a bit gold from the lighting i supose. I didnt even pick up on it till Papasmurf mentioned it

Anyways.. A few pictures.. And before anyone says it, yes i think the red oil cap has to go, it stands out too much for my liking, so i may spray that black or silver and see how it goes. Overall im quite happy with how it looks

KWIKXR, the rocker cover looks BLOODY s**t hot, I don't think you need to get rid of the oil filler cap, I think it looks good too.

As the the flexible extension you have leading to your Air Cleaner box, is that one off a LPG AU air cleaner pipe?

It's BA isn't it?! Ahhh, maybe not... Hell... I'm going back to do something outside now.

that is definately one neat engine bay! i wanna paint my ED rocker cover now
and leave the oil cap it looks hot. draws your eyes towards the rocker cover

Cheers PapaSmurf, yeah the rocker cover came up trumps in the engine bay for sure, its a keeper this one

Yep as old mate Fiend pointed out its your standard issue BA intake pipe hose, only used it to reach to the alloy pipe i have running from the airbox. May soon get removed to make way for a pipe made out of stainless similar to what Fiend did with his.


Spot on mate, you would know, you've had quite a bit of experience mucking around with the BA intake on EF setup


Cheers Ash, yeah i agree mate, does look a lot better the red hey. Thinking i may leave the red oil cap on for now, seeing as the other standard one doesnt suit it very well either. Gee i wish i was still at the CNC Machining joint i was working for last year, could of knocked up something similar just doing a bit of turning on the lathes, then take it over to the mill to get the edges shaped to my liking and get a ford symbol engraved into the centre - that would of came up nice

As for the BA intake, to be completely honest, i didnt notice a hell of a lot on its own, maybe a hint of better top end response probably because of the larger diameter piping over the EF styled one. One bonus with it though is that the intake isnt sitting over the exhaust side of the engine bay like the EF one was so intake temps would be slightly cooler now. Combined with a larger intake snorkel, secondary CAI duct from the front bar to underneath the airbox, high flow pod filter and a 3" alloy pipe connecting it to the BA intake, it works quite well. Works brilliantly on a cold night, goes so much harder, its amazing what cold dense air can do for an engine


Thanks mate, yeah its pretty neat, i like things neat, bit of a perfectionist in that area, too bad the rest of the car doesnt get as much treatment

I think the oil cap will stay for now until i can find a better alternative

KWIKXR, from across the Tasman you have infected me with the PAINTING the rocker cover disease, you awful man you.

I am looking now at doing that and, I will have to look at getting the BA Air Cleaner tube assembly for something I have planned. Did you blank off the rocker cover vent hole in the assembly or are you looking at hooking it up to the rear of the current rocker cover?

At the risk of repeating myself, you sure have done a bang up job and YES, your engine bay is pristine and there is NOTHING wrong with being neat and tidy.

Yep i just blocked the hole on the intake pipe completely by screwing a big bolt in there and sealing it with some sikaflex. The hose which connects to the little breather at the rear of the rocker cover is connected to the bottom of the throttlebody, which is how it is standard. I think AU models may be a little different as im led to believe that the hose at the rear of the rocker cover runs straight into the intake manifold instead of the throttlebody? Not 100% though as i havent really examined an AU engine other than pictures on here. Either way, i think blocking it off is the best option and by far would be the easiest way.

Thanks for the kind words mate, appreciate it

i say keep the oil cap because it goes with the ignition leads and theres only a small amount of red from then and the oil cap adds that little bit more too it

I suppose your right, doesnt look too bad really and it does go well with the red leads. Lol it will start to grow on me after i pop the bonnet a few times as most things do

Well i got a tiny bit of work done on the head today..


Started working on the intake ports, just gasket matching them, dont really see the need to open them up too much for my application. Still have to get a better air grinder as the one im using now is no where near suited to porting heads, i can get a 3cm into the ports with the bloody thing lol so i cant even make a start on the valve bowls which i was planning to do first. The camera flash makes the ports look polished, but they arent, they have been ported to a ground finish which is how the intake ports will stay. Will try and get a bit more work done on the head during the week and get some more pics up

MMMMM, Looking gooood in Black.

I had considered black for my AU Rocker Cover, but with a black car thought it might be too much.

Then the Polished EL cover popped up.

I still want to paint my AU cover however. I will give it some further brain time re the colour.

Something bright perhaps.

BenJ

[quote="KWIKXR"Yep i just blocked the hole on the intake pipe completely by screwing a big bolt in there and sealing it with some sikaflex. [/quote]Hahaha... All you need is a little nipple cover like what you use to cover the brake bleeding nipple on the brake calipers.

Thinking of swapping to an AU throttle body to suit, but now I have the 68mm FASTXR model, I'm not going to.

Good work on starting to match up the inlet too matey. I had a quick go at the manifold side before putting mine all back together with the phenolic spacer.

As far as detailing goes --- I also used a spare set of those hex headed bolts that clamp the BBM top and bottom together for holding the BBM to the head and also the fuel rail. They clean up quite nicely on a bench grinder with a wire wheel attachment and then a little polish and a coat of 500degrees clear coat paint. All those little touches add up mate, that's for sure.

Have you removed you bonnet lining by the way?

Cheers BenJ, the AU rocker covers come up a treat when you give them a new lick of paint, especially like the lettering and fins cause it breaks up the colour nicely. Will be interesting to see how you get on with your spare one mate


I know what you mean about those hex bolts mate, they turn out very nice once you give them a slight polish up. Im starting to go down that road too with 316 stainless hex bolts (both normal ones and the allen key ones), washers etc wherever i can put them. So far all ive got is 4 polished hex bolts holding the T/B to the BBM plenum and 2 polished normal bolts holding the ISC down. The bolts holding the extractors to the head will be next seeing as they will be getting removed so i can heat wrap them. Also have a few little brackets that im gonna get chrome plated in a few weeks time so should be looking pretty good once its done.

Haha yeah might as well do a bit of work on the ports with the grinder that ive got, cant do anything other than gasket matching with this thing, definately need to find a good grinder with a longer shaft. Thought id do the intake side first cause i have (had) a spare gasket here. Still a bit undecided on what i should do with the exhaust ports, i dont want to open them up and loose my bottom end torque so i'll have to do a bit more research in that regard and then make a decision. By the looks of things, this head is going to be a long way away from being fitted so i may as well take my time and do things right. I think i may be talking to you sometime in the future regarding one of the phenolic spacers (if you are still getting them made up?), i think it may be a wise idea to do so to try and prevent heat soak from affecting intake temps a bit. Anyways the spare gasket i have has now been hacked away at by the air grinder during the porting so i need something

Yep the bonnet lining has been removed/binned a while ago. The bloody thing had worn itself a set of gills after rubbing against the BA intake hose for so long no to mention it started fading and looking like s**t. Ended up just spraying the underside of the bonnet with touch up paint and it came up a treat - funny how they never paint the underside of a bonnet properly when a lining goes over it, it was bloody half primered, half light green and a few bits of heritage green here and there

[/quote]Yep the bonnet lining has been removed/binned a while ago. The bloody thing had worn itself a set of gills after rubbing against the BA intake hose for so long no to mention it started fading and looking like s**t. Ended up just spraying the underside of the bonnet with touch up paint and it came up a treat - funny how they never paint the underside of a bonnet properly when a lining goes over it, it was bloody half primered, half light green and a few bits of heritage green here and there [/quote]

removing the bonnet lining doesnt do anything does it? i think i might just do that because i have pipes that like to rub on it aswell

Yeahp - My BA pipe created GILLS in it too, before replacing it with the stainless... The pipe at the other end near throttle is constantly arguing with the bonnet lining too.

Bonnet linings deaden sound and are fire rated.

My bonnet has holes in it so the sound and the fire rating are totally up to f**k anyway. The reason I have left the bonnet lining there is that I filled the gap between bonnet and lining with fire rated space invader expandable foam and shut the bonnet. You know, the sort that increases in volume by about five times as it sets... So that has created a slight modification to the bonnet that actually means hot air from the radiators and other sources of hotness has very little chance of getting around the engine bay. It ALL gets sucked out my bloody great big bonnet vents instead.

Trouble with it is --- That when you change intake pipes and the like you really should dissolve the foam somehow and re apply.


Reason for asking about removing lining was due to the fact your BA pipe still looked so perfect... Mine has tell tale signs - Abrasions and the like.

I do have another bonnet to paint and fit at some point. Will chop lining to suit my air intake (direct copy of current one) but will have standard XR6 bonnet vents and will pay more attention to the area above BA plastic from Throttle Body.


All that will be miles away. I cannot afford the paint for the bonnet no matter if I sell the cat to the Asian food market down the road or not.