woops

Last edited by TROYMAN on Tue Apr 07, 2009 8:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think he is putting the V8 in Troy?

Good score with the diff EVL, this car seems to have a few surprises. Looks like Mick done you a good deal.

Josh

oh i must have missed that post??

oh i must have missed that post??

Actually, now that I think about it, as the car is a Fairmont Ghia, it 'should' have the 3.27 LSD from factory.

BenJ

Got back last night from a weekend 4x4ing and camping. Had a tops time and since the missus is at work today I decided to have a play.
Mainly spent time swapping some trim pieces over for unbroken ones and fixed the passengers side door lock. The buttons would pop up and down as per normal with the keyless entry but the door still needed the key to unlock it.
Found that the plastic latch on the door mech was broken and part of the locking mechanism was held together with cable ties. Good thing Mr ED is still here so I could steal the mech out of him and make it work properly again.
Have to swap over the hood linings between the cars tomorrow. Any pointers on making the job easier? How do you get them in and out of the cabin without stuffing them?

Put a couple of bits on too.

There was a set here on my old project car come spare parts car so I decided to use them.
What they do? Dunno
What they are? NFI
Reason for doing? Dunno. BenJ fitted a set so I did too.

Not a real great pic but one of the front slotted rotors fitted and painted up. I cant be stuffed taking the wheel off again to get a pic.


Just a quick pick down at the new industrial area near my place.
This will be the stance once the V8 goes in too. Im thinking I might need to get some super lows for the back.

The plan of attack has finally been sorted out. Will kill a few birds with one stone.
Thats the idea anyway.......................
At the moment the middle of the year is a pain in the a*** but the RTA loves us. This will tell you why.
Box Trailer. Rego due in May
My Fairmont. Rego due in June
My Maverick. Rego due in July.
Missus's 4Runner. Rego due in August
Camp trailer. Rego due in August.
Good luck hey........................

So the plan is to leave the Fairmont on the road doing little bits and pieces until the rego runs out.While I am driving it if it doesnt crap itself again I will be collecting bits and building the V8 for it. Once the rego runs out the V8 and 5 speed will go in , the bodywork be fixed and I will blue slip it sometime around September/October and put it back on the road. At least then I wont be wasting rego with the car pulled into a million pieces not being used and I will be able to move one of the regos away from the middle of the year. I will have to get a blue slip for the V8 conversion so I might as well just get the one and rerego it at the time.
Also I will be due to be able to claim another gas conversion come September from the government man. So at this point in time I reckon the V8 will be put back in setup old school on straight gas so I dont have as much wiring to make neat and stuff around with. Win Win situation!

Thanks for the kind words Josh. As far as good deal goes well thats open to interpretation. Im by no means saying I got ripped but pretty much the car is a piece of s**t in my opinion. You dont expect very much if anything for $500 but its certainly not the car it was made out to be.
The list of issues that have reared their head in the happy two weeks of ownership.

The paint that had just gone off is actually full of crows foot which spreads across the bonnet, roof , boot and the top half of the front and rear guards. Back to bare metal to fix that.

Brakes failed the first time when the front pads fell apart as there was no meat on them at all. New set of pads there.

Brakes failed the second time when the master cylinder dropped its guts and sent fluid back through the booster. New master cylinder time.

Rear brakes had pads worn at a 45 degree angle as someone had fitted new pads but didnt turn the piston around so the locating tab sat in the recess and the pads sit flat as they are meant to do. The pads were in crooked and worn that way , down to metal at the bottom. Another set of new pads.

Replaced the dodgy inhibitor switch that was meant to be causing starting issues only to find out at 3am in the carpark at work on my way home from a night time service call that the car still didnt want to start. At 4.15 a mate from work come down when I rung him and we got it running once he showed me the trick to getting them running when the BEM is playing up. Still have to change that over.

Thermo fans not working properly. I always knew they were running off a toggle switch but I didnt know until I looked one afternoon that only one fan was hooked up. Rewired that with new relays and replacement thermo switch. They now both work automatically.

Ball joints totally flogged out.

Every bush in the front end is rooted.

Its latest party trick is it has a fairly good amount of coolent running out of the bellhousing. Its leaking enough to nearly empty the coolant tank every second day. It has only been doing about 10k's a day.

These are just the larger things that have stuffed up. There is a pile of little things that I still have to go through and sort out. I paid $400 for Mr ED and admittedly while he was ugly and looked like he had led a hard life and used more oil then fuel , he never let me down in 4-5 months. This things lets me down in some way nearly every day.
But I have it now , have spent the money on it and on fixing stuff on it and Mr ED has been decommisioned so I have no choice but to keep steaming ahead and make something of the big turd. It just is a right pain in the a*** to be playing catch up to get back to the point of where you were to start again when the reason it was bought in the first place was for the project to be quicker and cheaper in the long run which has been shot to s**t.
Oh well lessons learned hey.

Last edited by Matt_jew on Mon Apr 13, 2009 5:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thats the plan Ash. My old 351 XY was straight gas and was awesome.
Best part with straight gas on this one will be I can get rid of most of the emissions gear bar the cats , get rid of the ECU and come up out of the bonnet!

Sorry to hear you've had so many things fail on it in such a short time, I honestly had no idea about the issues you have had with the brakes and suspension or the BEM for that matter As for the car not being what it was made out to be.........I tried to be as honest as I could in the for sale thread and even added the link to the build thread so potential buyers could read about the issues I had found as well. I never claimed the paint was repairable and even went as far to say that it would be a ground up rebuild if somebody was interested in taking it in that direction.
I never spent that much time going over the car other than what I started out doing in the build thread and would never intentionally let my wife and kids drive around in a car that was potentially as dangerous as you have stated. If things had gone wrong with the car, I would have fixed the issue, not put my families life at stake. My wife drove this car every single day up until I bought the NA and she never complained about it, except for the issue of it not starting, but as I stated, I cleaned the inhibitor switch a couple of times and the problem went away???
I sincerely hope that you don't find any more issues with the Monty and you can get back to it's original purpose.
Mick

Its just one of those things Mick.
I certainly wasnt stating that you ripped me. Im just calling what I see as it happens.
SOme of the things have been pretty scary but.

Get some tyre shine! The wheels look better on this than the other mont.

As for the roof lining, horrible job. Go really slow with everything. I did one in my Old EF, when I was done it was being held up by the plastic trim panels over the doors basically. Yuck.

Headlining....like SLO247 said, a total PITA!!!

Be very careful popping the plastics off, you'll break the little clip stand off real easy. Once that is all off use a pair of side cutters to get under the round black clips and pull them out - don't cut! Be careful with these across the front and rear screen areas as thats how I cracked Rachs screen. The plastics above the front doors have a screw in them to hold that corner and the A pillar plastics in.

To get it in, put your front seats right forward and all the way back - as flat as possible. Carefully put the lining in via the back doors, it will probably need mild bending to get it in. Not too much though as you don't want to crack the under board. Once it is in a spare hand or 3 would be advisable to hold it up there while you put the black clips in. Oh, and don't forget the rear courtesy light surrounds if you are changing them over, they have to be done before putting the lining into the car, and don't forget to put the dome line wiring through it's hole first, just makes things easier.

Have fun

Cheers
RD

Last edited by racedirector on Mon Apr 13, 2009 9:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It did have a fairly big stereo in it and required sound deadener sheeting and silastic throughout the rearend..... there was a custom box containing 2x Soundstream Reference 12" subs (650 wrms each) powered by a Cadence amp running at `1400wrms.... combined with the Soundstream RF60c splits in custom pods in the sealed front doors plus other various bits n pieces it created a rather nice sound

The thermos never worked properly from when I bought it (i'm certainly no electrician) so I just wired 1 of them up to a switch..... nothing was ever done to a professional standard because it was only ever a work hack. I never did the rear pads but I did do the front ones, wheel bearings were done about 18+ months ago and I never had issues with the balljoints.
I actually had it riding on Superlows with 18" rims and Kmac ratchet camber kit.

I never had an issue with it not starting?

I guess for 5 or $600 (not sure what you paid) one cant expect too much but I do know that Mick wouldnt have let you drive it home if any issues were known.

haha gas for fuel econemy... supercharger to blow the econemy out of the water haha