Well i've been having a bit of a boring end to the holidays so i decided to do a bit of work on the old man's XR.. Took off the extractors and heat-wrapped them to keep heat down as he has the same issue i had with the Fairmont before i wrapped mine.. Came out looking quite good in the end, and gave the block a well deserved coat of black. Also had the chance to have a sneak peek at the difference on the ports (well the exhaust side at least) between normal heads versus the tickford spec ones. Tickford heads didn't have any bosses around the guides (same as the AU) however i found the shape of the port to look a bit different. Where the normal head have a rounded shape short side, this Tickford head has a flat floor, d-shaped port. It also looks to be a bit wider than the normal seeing as the floor has been flattened. Cool discovery for me, maybe not for others




94DT exhaust port..



Anyways.. I started getting stuck into the head this week..

Right now the exhaust side is about 90% finished. So the seats have been blended in, the throats opened up a bit (around 85% of the ex. valve diameter, based on a 41mm valve which i now plan on using), the short side cut back and smoothed to flatten out the radius a bit more and widened the turn a fair bit to make up for the way the port turns off to one side and to get some more cross sectional area back around the guide area. All that's left on the exhaust side now is to streamline the guide bosses a touch more, not really too fussed about grinding them down to much, just enough to let the air flow past them more smoothly. May also look at flattening the short side just a little bit more and give it a bit of a D-port shape, but we'll see how it goes. Will probably get the exhaust side finished off tomorrow and start on the intake side..

A few pic's comparing one of the ports i worked on versus one of the ports i left untouched to use a reference..




Before..

After..


Here's a slightly clearer shot of the throat leading up to the short side, there is quite a noticeable lip where the original machining marks from the seat are, this is also what causes the short turn to be so sharp. I blended this area into the short turn and cut it back a good 3mm or so to get a good transition out into the rest of the turn and widened it a bit.. Still have a bit more work to do in this area (mainly widening and flattening a tiny bit more) but the above after shots show what i have done to fix this..


The other end of the short turn also got cut back and blended in a bit more so that should free up the flow on the way out.. I'll have to get it flow tested when its all done so i can see how much it's flowing after a bit of work.

Tomorrow i'll be taking the head in to get the guides removed, that way i can start on the intake side. So far all i have done is blend the seats in and started smoothing and laying back the short side raduis but the damn guides are in way of the grinder so i can't touch the bosses yet.. Will get some more comparison shots up when it's all done..

Good work on the head. I wonder if my 96AT is any better on the exhaust than the 94AT?


Wink wink, nudge nudge.

Just what are you hinting at there fiend?

Are you saying that the dipstick should be ditched along with the rest of the auto in favour of a T5 perhaps?

Speaking of dipsticks, i really do need one for my EF, luckily the old man's XR has one so he can easily check the fluid whereas i have to jack mine up to get underneath it to check the fluid level

Anyways, just went and picked up the head from the cylinder head man, he got all the guides out for me, but they put up a good fight alright. Yesterday when i was grinding down one of the bosses, i found a short hair line crack on the boss which i though could have easily been ground back, welded up and then reshaped again. Told the guy about it when i took it in and he said they usually do crack around the area especially on the exhaust side. Well, this particular guide which had the cracked boss did not want to let loose, he got it out eventually but the guide took half of the boss with it in the process

Oh well, i always wanted to grind the bosses down even more on the exhaust side, now half the job has been taken care of so i can do what i want with them

Normal boss..


The aftermath..


He offered some advice while i was there and suggested to grind the right hand side of the boss right down and shape whats left of the boss around the sides of the guide so that the air flows around the guide smoothly, not a bad idea too so thats today's job..

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damn i forgot the ef's dont have dipsticks and i was thinking about buying one thats put me off tho lol

It's hard to say, you see some EF's with them and some without so im not 100% sure with model and series they stopped including the dipstick. The theories on them are pretty mixed, i have read that they stopped using the dipstick when the series 2 EF came out - but that doesnt add up, when my series 1 EF doesn't have one and Dad's EF series 2 XR does

All the EF's and quite a few of the EF2's have had dipsticks that I've seen. Maybe someone had blown the auto and put an EL one in before you bought the car?

According to Ford, the Dipstick was removed from Production from 01/02/1996 6 months before the end of the EF. Which is strange, a friend of mine had a 02/1997 EL that came with a dipstick from NEW. I was with him when he picked it up and it did have one so, Ford, like all the other manufacturers, make mistakes?

Love to know the brand of these things, I found that STA mob had them for $5.40 each
Would be nice to know where I could get them here..

I tried to get my mate that works there to let me know where they come from, all he knows is that they are from Aussie, still unsure of the actual supplier though.. Will let you know if he gives me a name though

I wonder if shiftkits.com.au is getting them from the same supplier? They are the only other place i have seen that is selling them a a fairly good price.

Thanks Nathan, I looked at them and they want $9.40 each and no retainers. I like the ones that were mentioned with steel retainers. I hope you can find where they got these. I will try a few people through work and see what I can come up with.

Well here's a little update of what's been goin' on lately..

Have been pretty busy so havent had much progress on the Fairmont other than just driving around and enjoying it lol.. Nothing much has changed engine wise, other than the ISC has been p****d off after constantly giving me the s**t with random rev hang, it just sits there looking pretty now and no longer functions as it is blocked off - absolutely hates cold starts now and zero rev hang . The gearbox feels very close to being on it's last legs and the single spinner is beginning to think it wants to be an LSD so hopefully it doesn't pull the plug on me just yet - all in all, it is holding together nicely.

I am pretty much finished with Round 1 of my DIY port job on the 91AA head .. Just need to finish off a few little things, making sure everything is exactly if not close to being the same, otherwise it's about a 90% finished job ATM. Have been doing a bit of looking around for replacement oversize valves to suit, along with new springs and all that so i should have quite a shopping list when i have the funds to put into it.. Will get some pics up of the head at a later date when im 100% done with the port job..

Have slowly been working away at a boot install too.. Good fun, been a while since i've done any woodwork, the joy of having dust every f**k where .. Still have a long way to go but it's slowly getting there. Here's where I'm at so far..

A few snaps of what it was before..



As we all know the EF/EL boot is very uneven, so i finally decided to do something about it..I am by no means worried about boot space so i really don't care if it takes up quite a bit of room, as long as it looks neat

Went out to Bunnings the week before last and bought myself a sheet of MDF in 12mm thickness. Unfortunately, they were fresh out of 16mm, which is what i was really after, but the 12mm works just fine and might be good for a bit of weight reduction over the 16mm stuff ..

Got it home, took a few measurements, made a few templates, sat the MDF sheet down over a couple of sawhorses, grabbed out the jigsaw and away we go.. Basically cut myself a false floor for the boot which sits perfectly on the raised edge of the original boot floor.. So i left it at that for a week while i thought about how i was going to have access to the spare and fuel pump i.e hinged doors of pop out panels. Today i finally decided that pop out panels would be much more appealing to me. Hinged doors would have been nice, but trying to get the doors to open up enough to get good access to things made me think again about it all.

So i did some measuring, made some templates, drilled a couple of pilot holes and began cutting out the pop out panels. While i was doing this i thought that maybe using the original boot carpet underneath the MDF would work well as extra sound deadening - i did plan on buying a few sheets of trusty Dynamat Xtreme and turfing the original carpet but it would have worked out quite costly in the end. So i pulled out the boot carpet and made a few cuts in it to make "flaps" for the spare and fuel pump cover which can just be lifted up after taking out the pop out panels.

Here's how it looks..


The cut outs in the false floor will have little MDF tabs mounted from the underside of it which will stick out just enough for the pop out panels to sit on so it will all sit flush once in..


Yesterday, went out and got myself a whole heap of wiring and fittings for the boot install.. For now i plan to just run my current JVC amp and sub combo with this boot install, sounds good enough for me and pumps hard for what it is with the right sized enclosure


Today, i made a start on re-wiring the amp cables to reach the extra distance where the amp will now reside. Decided to do things properly this time, and securely mounted my fuse holder by the shock tower - before it just used to "hang out" in front of the battery box lol.. Ducked out to Jaycar and got some corrugated loom tubing to protect the power cable in certain areas and hide the wiring a bit.



Whilst at Jaycar i found out that they had 50% of their Response range of speakers and selected subs.. I think i may just walk away next week with a new set of Kevlar 6" splits, to replace my current cheapo splits, maybe

So once the floor and pop out panel seating are fully sorted out, i will make a start on the walls with some 12mm MDF and make up a new box in 18mm for the sub, glued and screwed, built to specs. The amp will be mounted on the driver's side wall and a compartment will be made up on the passenger side to hold a few tools and stuff.. The face of the sub box will be a flush mount so will extend from wall to wall effectively making the boot install sort of like a box.. Once it's all done, will head of to Jaycar and pick up some grey carpet to cover the MDF and hopefully give it a factory sort of feel..

More updates when i get some more work done on it..

Looking sweet mate, very tidy work as always

Like the false floor giving you access to the fuel pump in the case of it needing to replace it.

Cheers.

You can do no wrong in my eyes....

This is something I have wanted to do for a long time, just don't have the skill or resources....

More awesome work Nathan. Like what you have done there.

XR-Lane, Slo, PapaSmurf - Thanks for the kind words fella's, appreciate it

Will slowly try and get a bit more done on the boot install this week... hopefully