i didnt spray the XD in my photos but it couldnt of been anyworse then the bloke that did it.

i resprayed an ed xr6 stripped the doors out and pulled them off took the boot off and sprayed the jambs did the engine bay satin black. put the doors and boot on masked up the jams and sprayed the car i had some body work to do mine took 3 months from strip down to completed i had to wait a week or so for bad weather to clear up when mine was ready for colour and those occasions of no motorvation to do anything to it.

i agree with you there nothing better then standing back and looking at your hard work nothing beats the look off fresh paint. 2 pac is definately more durable but all the gear you need to spray it makes acrylic the way to go for a back yard job and you can get some good finishes out of it.

That's a great bit of work. I love seeing the custom metal craft. I've welded many things but car panels scare me lol.

Nice job mate. Your ute looks great, good work. Enjoy the fruits of your labour.
Cheers,

Looks great and the results would be very satisfying. I find myself staring a lot more at my XG after reading your build. Great work mate.
Ray.

Well its been a long time between posts but once again I have still been a busy fordmods member!

I managed to get my wade 1673 regrind cam in with the help of the forum. I had a little problem to do with shim thicknesses but I worked out what all the markings on the top of the shims mean. I then was able to go down the local wreckers, rip off a few rocker covers and find the 1.9mm (standard shims that I needed). Here's a link the topic if anyone is interested.
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and also the link for me being a n00b and trying to find out all the info I could before the cam change.
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I didn't get as much power as I expected out of it. I still have yet to have it tuned and still have the old tune on the j3 chip in my ecu so maybe that might be a reason. The idle sounds tough now though and the exhaust note is way better! The only tuning I had to do was one complete turn of the idle screw so that it would catch itself without stalling when I pushed the clutch in. I'm gonna make an appointment with the tuner maybe for next week. I got 109 RWKW before the cam change and mandral bent 3" intake system, so it will be interesting to see what I get up to. I am hoping for 140rwkw or above, but I think this can only be achieved with some head work.

When i get my dyno print out I'll scan it through and put it up on here so I can get a few pointers of where to go from here with my utes performance.

I have found a few more cosmetic mods to do. I polished up my old gitsham bullbar with some autosol and for the time I spent on it, it came up really well. I havent taken a decent pic with it on yet, I'll post one on the weekend when I fit my new bargain purchase



Thats right TWIN HEADLIGHTS BABY!
I looked for these a long time ago and I could never find a set up for sale, when I did they where all crazy prices like $400- 600 bucks and then some. But today I had a win. I managed to pick up these XD-XG XR Headlights for...... wait for it...... $50 BUCKS!!!!!!! Good price????

So I'm cheering, this weekend I'm gonna clean them up, sand them back, prime them and then paint them blueprint like the rest of my ute. Hopefully to be completed by sunday night.

Here's a pic of one of the lights trial fitted to my ute. What do you think? Better or worse than standard lights????



I was going to through my EF Thermofans in this weekend but I have suddenly found something more important lol. I'll post back when I have them all resprayed!! I can't wait for the weekend!

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Good pickup on the lights - while you have them out, knock up some plastic protectors for them.
A good rock hit will make you cry otherwise.

Yeah I was thinking about that, rocks and bugs.

What do you mean by making a plastic protector? I have seen a ute around my area with this clear lense thing over the top. Can you buy those from supercheap or autobarn or something???? If not where do you get them from?

Over the front wouldn't look great IMO.
AFAIK the factory ones were a circular clear plastic disc with a seal which held it between the light and the front fascia cover.
Factory ones are pretty rare - best to make your own - maybe make out of an old set of XF/EA/EB/ED std protector covers.
I have to make some myself for my XR6 wagon. I had intended to make the seal out of black urethane - mask up the clear covers accordingly, smear some oil/grease/mask up on the inside of the XR front, apply the urethane, fit the covers, let urethane set, then hopefully peel off to have the rubber seal. Trim the seal if need be.
The lamps in your pics look like both reflectors each side - XR's have a projector low beam.

Well its been a while since my last update but boy have I been busy!!!

Got my twin lights all painted up and installed! What do you think??? IMO they are such a better light, they take up less room behind the light in the engine bay and they seem so simple. I can't believe people pay 400-600 dollars for these. There's really nothing to them apart from some fibre glass and one light for low beam and one for high! One big benefit though is that since they don't take so much room in the engine bay I reckon I'll be able to sneak some intercooler piping through into the engine bay when I turbo charge!!!!!

Oh yeah and I polished up my old nudge bar and I have that on there at the moment. I have a feeling though that its going to have to come off eventually because the brackets behind the bumper when hold it to the chassis are blocking the path for the intercooler piping, I guess I'll cross that bridge in February when my mrs gave me the okay for the turbo project!





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After having my EF thermofans sitting in my shed for over 12 months I decided to throw them in. First I got the thermo relay box out of an EL at the wreckers which is just behind the passenger headlight. I then decided to grab the plugs off the thermofans and modify the wiring on them so my EF thermo's would work with the EL plugs. Doing it this way rather than using spade connectors is first of all less dodgey and second of all it allows me to drop in some EF thermo fans or EL thermo fans without having to modify the plugs at all if I have to in the future.

After I had done all the wiring thanks to the technical documents section on fordmods I had to get the clutch fan off. I thought this would be the make or break of the exercise because I didnt have a 32 mm spanner. I grabbed my trusty shifter and managed to jam a screwdriver between the bolts on the clutch fan pulley. 2 bent screw drivers later I managed to get the clutch fan off. I was pretty happy with myself so far.

I then dropped in the EF thermo fans and they didnt fit!!!! They where too wide and they wouldnt even get past the clutch fan pulley!!! Feeling defeated I came inside and did some research. I found out that if you cut out the bottom section of the thermo fan where the bottom radiator hose goes then it fits....... This didnt make sense to me at the time because it looked like it was too wide and wouldnt work.

I grabbed my angle grinder, cut out the bottom corner of the fans and to my amazement they fitted straight in there. The passenger side lines up with the normal bolt hole for the thermo's and the the drivers side just needs a hole made where the bolt hole on the radiator is and away you go. Fits a treat!!!! I was a bit worried about the bottom not being secure where the bottom radiator hose was so I used some cable ties and went around the radiator support panel so it wouldn't rattle around. It would have probably been okay, but now I can sleep a bit better at night!!!

I controlled the fans with the EL ECU I'm running. I ran 2 wires through the firewall and to the ecu. I connected them to pins 33 and to pin 53. One for each fan. I Started the car and heard the solenoids clicking like crazy!!! I was like WTF!! Turns out I got it in pin 32 instead lol. Those pins in the middle row of the ECU connector are a pain in the a**. Once I had this rectified everything worked like a dream!!!! High speed and low speed both work and work correctly when the A/C is on as well.

Only thing I want to do now is make a high speed override because when I was going up the freeway in some hotter weather the temp goes pretty much up to half before the high speeds kicks on. Its got me a bit worried so I want to make an override switch which I can use on hotter days, I dont particularly feel like doing a headgasket if I don't have to!



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I got excited and shortened my shift. I was going to buy an actual short shifter from the states but I decided I would just do a hobo mode and shorten my current stick. I know it doesnt shorten the actual distance between gears but it makes me feel less like I driving a bus!!!!!!!!Especially since I put the AU console in which for some reason made me have about an inch of stick showing between the boot and gear knob.

I grabbed my trusty grinder and got to work. I just guess how much to cut off and then ground down the stick so I could fit my aftermarket gear knob I had lying around. It just uses grub screws so I didn't need to worry about keeping the thread section.

This is what it looks like now!!! I love it, definitely wouldn't go any shorter though as when you rest your arm on the centre console it ends up that your shifting with just 3 fingers and not your hand anymore! Still less bus like so I'm happy!!


This is how much I cut off.





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Hey guys, now I am finally up to what I am doing next weekend!!!! Big performance mods. Well more like big drive train mods.

I have had a EA T5 sitting in my shed for about a year as well lol. My current gear box is making heaps bad shaft rattling noise and I have been waiting for it to call it a day. I havent serviced it for almost 6 years now because I have been waiting for it to drop its guts and throw in the EA T5 with better gear ratio's. Well its still going but I have had enough so its coming out. While I'm there I'm going to make my drive train turbo friendly!!! I went and got myself an Extreme Cushion Buttom Ceramic clutch after reading about troymans trials with organic clutches. I have driven a few cars with extreme cushion button clutches and they have been pretty good and very streetable so I decided I would go down this path so when I reach my target figure of about 250rwkw I know my clutch will be okay. I might smash t5's but I'll keep my old one for emergencies and if I still have problems I might go auto. But who knows the EA T5 might be alright. We'll see when we get there.

Oh and I bought a 3.45lsd from my mate at a wrecking yard. He used to have it in his XG and swears that the lsd is still good and was pretty tight when he had it in there. It's been sitting for a year now and I'm hoping its all going to be alright. The only problem is that he used one of the axles in his car and put the one with the crap bearing back in the diff. So now I have to remove both my axles out of my 3.23 lsd and put them in the 3.45 lsd. This means pulling out 4 axles and putting in 2. I havent done anything like this before on diffs but I hope its not too hard. I'm gonna get my nephew who's a mechanic to give me a hand so between the both of us we should be right!!!

So with the EA T5 and the 3.45lsd I'm expecting the car to be a heap quicker!!!!!!!!!!! I'm looking forward to it. I'm still a bit worried about the driveability of the cushion button clutch but if I don't like it I guess I'll have to man up and deal with it!!!!!!!!






I got some castrol transmax Z for the gearbox oil. Is this the right stuff???? When I searched it on the net it was in a gold bottle??? This ones white though. Is this stuff okay for the t5? Only comes in 4litres though damnit. I only need 2!!!! I'm planning on running Penrite SIN80 in the LSD as I have read on here that this stuff is pretty good! I'm just trying to find someone around Adelaide that stocks it! Oh and I also got a rear main seal while I was at it. Because as if you wouldn't do that while your there!!!!!!



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Hi mate, google castrol Syntrans B. It was made specially for the T5 gearbox in the BA,BF Turbo's. I use it in my ute and it is noticable straight away with easier changes.

Hi razza01, wow i didnt know about syntrans b. I was searched fordmods aend everyone was raving on about transmax z and definitely not using normal gear oil as it buggers up the synchros. When i bought the transmax from my local auto parts store and told them it was for a ford T5 they looked at me funny about using auto fluid lol. When i change my oil again ill definitely look into syntrans b. I unfortunately already purchased the trans max z. so did you use to run transmaxz in your t56 and when you changed to syntrans b it was heaps better????

Hi mate, my ute is only an xg with a t5. It has an au motor with bbm,thermos and el ecu. Syntrans B made such a difference i'm sure you'll love it. I've read a lot of your posts and im a fan of your mods. Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing.
Cheers, Ray.