I've had some people ask me how much space I lost with the way I've mounted my subs, so I grabbed a pic.



The magnets just touch the carpet on the back of the seat.

Also, another sadface for another milestone.

20,000km since July 2012. Not bad.

Sadface?

That's like 1/3 of any other falcon in existence

It's over double what it was when I got it.

I've done over 3 times the original kms since I've owned my XH ute (Mar 2001).
36000 kms x 3

So I finally finished my boot install...
A bit different to how I had originally planned, but much better for me in the end.










Then you look a little closer...


And a little closer...




I cut back the boot linings a little too much, and I need to add a tiny bit of carpet to hide that little triangle of white. But other than that, I'm super happy with how it turned out.
I've also got a trim panel to go in and cover/protect the subs, so they'll be totally hidden. It's getting final fitting adjustments and trimming hopefully tonight.

Who wants some good news? Too bad I don't have any.


While driving last night, I changed down gears in a hurry and grabbed 1st instead of 3rd.
Engine made some funny noises, then lots of bad noises.

It idled ok(ish), but the noises were bad enough that I called a tow.


Got home at 10:30pm and inspected the damage. Took the serp belt off and found the noises coming from the supercharger.
That was good news and bad news to me. Good that I could swap the stock manifold on and be driving again, but bad because a blower is dearer than a wrecker special motor.

The result.... Something, from somewhere made its way in to the supercharger and munched it from the inside out. I found a tiny piece of something lodged in one of the rotors. I have no idea what it is, or where it came from, but it looks almost like a really small flat headed nail (that's be flattened and mangled by the rotors)
I don't know if it is the whole item, or if the rest of it went through the motor.


Not supposed to look like that.


This looks like the end of the blower case, but its actually the roof of the blower case.


So that's it, the car is back to stock again, and will be for a while now.

Capa still have new blowers in stock so that's good, but the money for it is virtually non-existant at the moment so that's bad.


Who wants a one-off set of Fairmont HID projector headlights for $2000?

At least I had a good stereo to listen to while I waited for the towie.

Well I discovered where the metal came from, and it surprised me that's for sure.



I drove it to work like this, the day after it happened.
You wouldn't even now it wasn't firing on that cylinder. It was running great.

The only reason I inspected it was because I felt a little stumble at idle occasionally, and when I inspected the blower rotors closer, after I got home from work, I saw some crushed powder type stuff that looked like it could have come from glass/rock/ceramic.



On a better note...

After being away for work last week, I added the final touch too the boot install this weekend.
It is 100% complete how I want it now, I don't need to touch it or even think about it any more.

How the hell?

Like what the f8ck, how does that even go through the intake port/valve and into the blower all while air is blowing the opposite way?

Haha, you sound like the thoughts running through my head when I discovered it.

No idea what happened in the cylinder to make it happen, but it is possible to throw a rock into the wind.


I've been racking my brain trying to work out what could have happened. I had though maybe it was a case of flow reversion, but I think that only happens at the first instant the valve opens, and seeing that the valve opening would need to be about 5-6mm for the piece to fit through, I don't think it was that any more. (unless it got smashed to smaller pieces in the cylinder first)
Maybe a lean burn that was still burning when the intake valve opened.
Maybe raw fuel igniting in the headers blowing back into the cylinder.
Maybe it was just a lucky bounce.

NFI

Wow, finally. Another person. I think its a bosch trait. One out of six of my bosch spark plugs did this too, was on #3 tho, when it happened it felt like i lost all power, started pulling plugs once got home to find number 3 spark plug done exactly that. The b*tch ate it. I dont know how it happened, or why. So i now put it down to a bosch trait!! Ive gone back to ngk and no dramas. I thought it would have done serious damage but shes all good, i just compression tested it and all was even still so ive continued on,

Those plugs look rather clean on the insulators. They may have been a bit hot.

I'm running ngk 7's in mine, non projected, as I found running 6's they were coming out white even though it was running a bit rich.

When I tested plug temps I found at high rpm decel, the XR6 spec plugs were getting up around the 450º mark outside the cylinder, so inside would have been even hotter.
Going to the non-projected 7's dropped temps by nearly 100º and put some color back into the insulators.
Also allowed me to add an extra couple of degrees of timing in the higher rpm without pinging.

Only noticeable downside is that if mixtures are too rich below 3000rpm it will stumble a bit.
Have never had a problem with flooding though, even down to 11.2/1 AFR at idle.

Good news!!!
I visited my tuner to discuss the future of my blower (repair/replace/bin) and after cleaning up the gouges on the case, and filing the high spots on the rotors, it's not that bad after all.
Well it is bad, but it will continue to work.
He thinks it will only suffer a little boost loss at very low rpm after which it will be very minor loss but for what I'm chasing I don't think I'll miss it.
After all I'm trying to work within the limits of the T5 here. Not keen to spend thousands on a gearbox yet.
Unfortunately he talked me in to some ignition upgrades so while he saved me money, it's costing me also, but less. And the money will stay in Australia instead of heading to the US for a good condition second hand Magnuson MP112.

While it's off it also gives me a chance to clean up, and inspect, a couple of things I have been meaning to do, but have been too hard while it's on the car.
I will be doing up a much neater wiring loom for one thing, and getting the SuperFMU checked out to make sure it's working as it should be.

Hopefully sooner than later it will be back on and going great guns.



In the meantime, I ordered these before I lunched the blower.
They're LED fog lights from the latest BMW X5 (F15)
They have two LEDs inside. One firing up ward, and one downward.


In this shot they're aimed roughly at the red dot. The two LEDs have very different jobs as it shows.
One is aimed mostly forward and the other out to the side.
When used in a pair the fog lights have a insanely wide output.


I have had ideas for the NF/NL cornering lights in the back of my head for some time, but haven't been 100% sold on the ideas. Then I saw these and I knew I had to do something with them.
They are so damn wide, bright, and white that I couldn't say no.


Though now I have other priorities for the money so I will put them up for sale and see what happens later on. If they don't sell I'll work with them eventually.

I actually reckon I could fit these in an FG headlight high beam spot. Upgrade the low beam to HID bi-xenon projector and you'd never miss the aux high beam.

Been a long time between updates....

I bought a chunk of aluminium from one friend


Gave it to another friend and had it made in to this



When I first got the supercharger kit I was bored and decided to measure it up and draw it in CAD, mostly just because I could, but partially because I saw room for improvement in aesthetics and a little bit of function.
While it was off from this incident I noticed a crack in a weld on plenum about 10cm long (explained the high idle after the bang and bad noises), so I refined the computer model and got it ready for machining.
Here's hoping I got all the measurements right.
The large holes are still very undersized because they are not round in real life so I will match port them when I get the plenum back.




Nothing much else to add except I'll be getting a new front bar in the coming weeks (thanks to a small case of inattention on my part)

I also picked up a Fairlane rear seat that needs a good clean, but otherwise in very good condition.

That is so awesome.

The thing with shiny new engine parts is, you don't want to use it because it'll get all covered in carbon. You just want to sit there and look at it while it's still pristine.