yeah swapping internals is piss easy. not worth paying for respray... a few hours of swapping vs a couplela hungy to respray but then you still have lighter red insides

More progress for the night....

In car airbag sensor fitted and plugged in:



the airbag module in, pedal box in, brake booster fitted but not attached, wiring junction box attached plus the wiring harnesses connected together (cabin to inner dash, front loom to main junction):



My snazzy airbag module mount turned out to be in the wrong place, it was between 5 & 10mm too far to the left. Getting the damn thing just right took too friggen long tonight, had to fit and refit the pedal box 5 or 6 times while getting everything else to line up as well!

I have a lone plug that I cannot remember what connected to it:



It's the little bugger in the photo, comes off the inner dash loom. Can't find a picture of it anywhere in my pre-dismantling shots so unless someone with knowledge has a clue, I'll have to visit PnP to see what/where it goes on one of their cars on Saturday.

Need sleep now for tomorrows round.

Cheers
RD

Last edited by racedirector on Tue Aug 30, 2011 3:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Just had to show you my cool hole I made in the front for the wiring to pass through, pretty damn proud of it! Yea, I know - get a life A bit of rubber around the edges and it'll look factory!



Back to it.....

Cheers
RD

Last edited by racedirector on Tue Aug 30, 2011 3:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

RD

You the MAN!!!!

Great progress there buddy. That is some nice work with the hole for the wiring.

Re the C Pillars, that is cool. Tailgate is the important piece.

I have a spare header tank with sender in it here, so we may be able to talk turkey re a trade of some sort.

Keep up the good work.

BenJ

So tired.... so tired..... need a weeks sleeeeeeeeeppppppp........ <- me with matchsticks!

"Your" tailgate will be ready in the next day or so, just gotta get Rach to give me a hand taking it off and fitting the EL one.

Hmmm, coolant sensor...... might talk $$$ with ya buddy, I have a suggestion of swapsies for the tailgate, has to do with your ability to source cheap parts and what I need for Rach's EB Will chat later.

Cheers
RD

looking good mr.RD looking foward to some more progress pics

double post.. and taking 20 seconds to submit posts.. fk this new fordmods is s**t

Still going, running out of time to do little updates. Mass update from yesterday and today a little later, probably when it gets too friggen hot to be outside.... did I mention I hate the bloody heat?!!!!!!

Cheers
RD

Isn't it the key barrel from an EF / EL plug? At least - a few of those fat cables with those colours on them remind me of something in that area....

Your not the only one, not so much the heat Bruce but the bloody stupid Sydney Humidity. By the way Top effort, watching this build closely.

Well, it's that time of the day again - the kids are home from school and it's about 100 degrees in my backyard. Paulc, you are 100% correct on the damn humidity, I have spent most of the day soaking wet just from sweat (smelly!) and the bottles of water I took outside were warm within 30 mins!

Anyways, on to the update. First up I have to say I feel like a NSW politician spouting that the western rail link will be finished this year. My 4 day prediction on this build was SO far off the mark. Here we are at day 7 and I am not even half way through what I need to do. I have myself of blame on some things but I just want completeness in the whole project....

So to yesterday.

First up was the final install of the brake booster:



This may look like every other brake booster you have seen but it's not - his name is Bob and he has been rehomed. This is the EL's booster and front brake lines to replace the ED's booster and lines after the extraction of the ABS system.

Next up is a little mod I did. After cutting the cool hole (see above) for the wiring, I moved the harness to enter the engine bay through it and started to work out where things went. In the EL there is a block of relays that use the shock tower as one mounting point and the rear of the battery box as the other. Of course the ED doesn't have these relays in this position or mounts so I set about working out the "front" mount for the relays. I decided that rather than come up with a mount, I would use what the EL had. After a bit of staring at the problem and thinking I came up with a solution:



What you see here the the rear of the EL battery box attached to the ED battery box. I cut the ED back off so a lip remained and then cut off the EL back off, also with a lip attached. Currently I have the two screwed together as a "proof of concept" but being happy with it I will clean up joint and pop rivert them into 1 piece.

Now, what that allowed me to do was to install all the EL electrics exactly where they would have been in the EL:



The coolant tank is just sitting there to make sure it still fits.

Another little project I am working on the the inclusion of the EL's power steering cooling lines. The ED doesn't have these so again a bit of thinking was in order. Coincidentally, the ED has hole on the lower front thingo to cover the lower mounts for the lines. The uppers will have to be extended as the EL has a smaller hole on the front.



The biggest issue is getting the lines to run back into the engine bay and, as you probably guessed, the ED has no provision for this. So I cut another one of those cool holes for the lines to pass through and not foul anything else:



I have some subtle bending to do to get them to sit right but it should all work out just fine. Now I do not have to change any of the power steering lines on the rack, it will just be plug and play (so to speak).

No direct photos, but another little sub project that keeps me from other things is the fitting of the EL's air con condensor. The top mounts are TOTALLY different and will require custom version but I have a plan in my head for those. The bottom mounts will effectively just need redrilling and a couple of spacers so no problems there.

And that was it for the daylight. After dinner I finished up the 12 pin plug for the door ajar sensors as I have an NL Fairlane cluster.

Now, today.........

Today was dash install day and the single line of "Install Dash" on my to-do list just does not do justice to the time involved! First up was the EL steering column install. One gotcha with that is the fact that they have 4 studs and two self tapping bolts on the firewall plate whereas the ED has 6 self tapping bolts only. So I had to drill out the 4 holes before fitting the column. No pics, a column is a column!

Before I installed the dash itself I replaced the windscreen vents with the EL ones as the ED's were full of silt! While I was up there I also installed the tweeters under the windscreen and bloody lucky I did as you will see later.

On to the dash.... after manhandling it into the car, juggling it on various things while I connected all the plugs and finally getting it into position, I started to screw it down only to find......

I had forgotten all about the bottom mounts BenJ had told me about. You see, for the uninitiated in installing EF/EL dashboards into EA-ED cars, the lower mounts on the kick panels are different! So, with thinking cap on plus looking at what the EL had in that area, I came up with these:



30mm x 30mm x 6mm aluminium angle suitably modified into lower dash mounts. The captive nuts are from the EL. One trick with these is that the hole attaching them to the car is higher than the hole in the front where the dash screws in.

After sweating like a pig in my garage making these I continued with the dash install and a few hours later (until about 3pm actually) I had this:







Lotsa little things to do to button this one up (screws missing etc) but it is getting there. Now, why I said I was glad I installed those tweeters is because the EL's dash harness has the earth strap in a different place than the ED. While the ED's is in the centre, the EL's is on the drivers side and of course the ED has no place to screw it to. I got around this by using one hole from the tweeter location - I hope it works as intended.

Those wires you see hanging down under the dash are the door ajar wires. They will be extended from there into the various bits around the car.

So, that's it for now, I am going to rest inside now until the sun goes down and then go back out and pull the diff out. Ha! Another one of those one liners on the the to-do list!!!

Cheers
RD

Last edited by racedirector on Tue Aug 30, 2011 3:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

hello..

ive been sitting back watching your thread and all the hard work your putting into it.
its coming together now..
the best part is when its all done and you can sit back and look at what you had and what it has become..
the satisfaction is the best part...

thats some good work there bruce...well done so far.....

damn thats looking good... when are you coming to do mine? winter time?

I too have been discreetly watching your progress, and i tip my hat in approval.

Certainly makes the early E series a much better car, being fitted with the later gear.

Andrew.

Thanks guys for the kind words, it certainly helps! My wife just said she was grumpy last night because she's sick of it but as we all know doing things on our own takes time, even the most mundane job. Of course other half's usually don't give a damn about cars, they just drive them....

Had my Nana nap now (had a terrible headache after cooking outside all day) so will be continuing under floodlights later....

Cheers
RD

Last edited by racedirector on Sat Jan 31, 2009 12:42 am, edited 1 time in total.