That's an XF or earlier pedal ???
E series has a dog leg in it IIRC.

Wow I didn't notice that, I will have to check it against the EL one! It seems to be in the right place once I cut the brake pedal down to size! Got a whole day put aside tomorrow to finish it up, so hopefully this time tomorrow I shall have a manual wagon!

Well the manual conversion is complete and relatively successful! A few little minor things still to fix up, one of them is the clutch pedal.

It is actually an earlier pedal. I compared it to the EF one I have, and they are different. The current pedal sits too far to the left. However the other pedal has a crack in it which needs to be welded up. Once that is done, I will swap back to the EF design

The other major issue is that the thermofans are on flatout once the car is running. I think this must be something to do with the wiring. I was a bit unclear on the wiring colours in the guide that I read, as it talked about violet and purple wires, which to me are the same thing. So I assumed purple was actually pink, does anyone know anymore about this?

Overall though the car feels heaps better! I love the T5 with 3.45's, they seem like the perfect ratio's! The power is still the same, but heaps more direct and controllable, so I am very happy with it!

Since the manual conversion, the whole experience of driving the wagon has been much better. The manual has a huge difference to the car and the level of enjoyment from driving. A few of the little noises and niggles from the gearbox have gone away too. The standard(ish) clutch seems to be holding up for now, but I don't know how long its life will be hauling around such a heavy car. A new clutch cable and re-inforced firewall are also on the cards in the near future.

The wagon has got a bit more attention in the last few weeks. The previous owner had put heavy duty contact over the headlights (to protect them?) The heat of the headlights had made it go yellow and burned it, so light output was terrible. Additionally, despite the contact, a low and a high beam were broken.

I got a set of HID's off TimmyA ages ago, but didn't want to put them into a broken headlight, the light scatter would have been horrible. So I finally knuckled down, and spent a day on the front of the car, removing bumper, changing headlights for unbroken ones, removing the contact from the remaining ones, polishing up the glass then converting them to HID.

Light output is like night and day The light used to be extremely yellow, dim and quite scattered from the contact. Now its much better, light is much closer to white, much brighter, and has a very distinct cutoff. The cutoff shape is a bit old fashioned, rising high on the LHS, but for now it is good.

I wish I had a before, but this is how it looks now

The wagon is going to be getting quite a bit of loving in the next few weeks. Last weekend I upgraded the door trims to match the interior, so it now has EL XR6 door trims. I also fitted a new EL seat belt, as the original one no longer retracted and it was beginning to drive me crazy. So the interior is looking much better now.



I also put it to good work the other week carrying my motorbike. I wasn't sure how it would cope with the extra weight, but leaf spring continue to amaze me and it handled smoother with the bike on there than off!



So now I have decided to take it up to AFD in Sydney, which has given me an excuse to really get stuck into it. I have set of swaybars to fit up to it, 30mm front and 20mm rear. Also planning on getting some 1.5" lowering blocks for the rear and swapping the Pedders lowered shocks from the EL into it, should give a drop of just over 30mm all round. Also scored a EL XR wagon bodykit, so am going to be getting that fitted up and painted. Hopefully it should look pretty neat and clean for AFD!

To do list for AFD
Swaybars
Lower
Fit 19's
New D Pillar cover
Fit and paint bodykit

sounds good, will be a good trip up to sydney. and a line up of wagons at bathurst will be even better.
you going to hang around sydney till wed and come drag racing?

what is it with the passenger side cover on the tailgate goin missing?? mine & the parts wagoon are the same???

Yeah looking forward to seeing the line of wagon heading around, should be pretty good! How many cars are coming along for that, how many wagons? I'm going to try and hang out for the whole week afterwards, might come and go a bit though catching up with some people up there. Hopefully have a cam to pick up from CMS too


I'm not sure, it seems so common though. I was driving on the Calder one day, pulled up at the servo and it was gone, just like that! Hopefully it did minimal damage as it left!

theres 10 cars now and 5 are wagons, so good photo op at bathurst.

The trip up to NSW went pretty well. Sadly, I didn't end up making it to AFD, I ran out of time to get there, but still met the guys at Bathurst on the Monday. We got a few laps in, and got some pretty decent photos of the cars in action, I think all these are by Sean, so credit to him.









It was good to finally meet some of the crew from Victoria, definitely need to get a few more Victoria meets going.

On another positive, I dropped into CMS while I was up there and got a Stage 3 Cam for the EL. Which means the 2A that currently resides in it, should be finding its way into the stationwagon soon!

Well its been a while between updates, the wagon has just been ticking along nicely, slowly getting some things done to it, mainly maintenance, but I finally managed to get a hold of the set of AU XR rims, which I think suit the E-series way better. I wasn't sold on the white, but it is growing on me.



Then the bug hit again and I started thinking it was time for a new engine, as the old one was getting on. With my EL XR6 I already spent a head getting it rebuilt, CMS head and cam etc, so I wanted to take a different path this time. I was thinking about getting an EB/ED XR8 as a fun car. Then I thought, why not just stick to a single car, but drop an 8 into this one. They never made an XR8 wagon, but they really should have, so I will make one instead. So I acquired a donor car, an EL Fairmont to give up its heart.



The swap requires a lot of parts from one car, just about everything is different between the 8 and 6, including the looms. Its been a couple of months of tinkering now, but as of the weekend, the V8 has found a new home between the strut towers of the EF. There's still some wiring to resolve and a few bits and pieces, but progress is going well. I have converted a T5 to V8, fitted a J3 for the manual swap and hopefully it will be firing up in the next few weeks.





I also got a bad case of the "while I am at it's" and decided to do some other things while the car is apart. So it is getting a dual airbag conversion, climate control etc, basically upgrading all of the electronics to Fairmont specs and installing an alarm. So the interior was fully stripped out, body looms replaced, dash swap and a few other bits and pieces.

Pretty radical dude !! Overhaul your airbox while it's out - put a new heater core in, mod the blend door motor arm adaptor, so it doesn't overdrive the shaft.
The shaft twists, and breaks over time. Not a problem on the manual controlled ones, but I've seen this now many times on the motor driven ones.

Yeah it should be good, its more for the sound than the power at the moment, it only gains 1kW by going V8. But it has extractors and exhaust so should sound good with a manual.

I'll check the airbox out then and maybe do some work to it. Prevention is definitely better than cure here, especially since dash out is never a fun procedure

Shame you didn't score an EL2 or XH XR8 185kw. The old HO engines I wonder if they're worth the effort. I want to retain my original block, but run a AU VCT head I was given - after I've done some porting with it, plus the BBM and throttle body. With the extractors and decent exhaust see if I can get close to the BA I6 output.

Do the heaterbox - the core weeps over time (15yrs+?), and you can test the Blend door motor with 12v to see what I'm talking about. The evaporator should be okay if not powder covered corroded - probably plenty of leaves though.

I would have liked a more powerful one, but you don't find them for so cheap. The whole car was $900 running, nothing wrong with it. It's not worth it for the power upgrade at all haha, I totally agree there. Its mainly the noise, and that I want to do something different to last time. The 6 I had in the EL had 165rwkw, so it was pretty good for an N/A 6, I just can't bring myself to go down that path a second time. The idea here is more to get the wiring, aircon, T5 etc, all the V8 systems in the car. Then if this motor goes or the upgrade bug bites, I can drop in an AU 5L and make decent gains straight away and tinker from there. You can find AU V8 engines for a decent price, but to do the conversion you need so much more than just an engine, whereas now I could swap one in relatively easily.