Now you know why I decided it was actually easier to do the whole EF/EL interior conversion LOL.

Cheers
BenJ

I see where your coming from Ben... The EF/EL interior does nothing for me... Love the door trims... Hate the dash... So I am one head strong individual and I am determined to make this damn thing work one way or another... If somebody can make a DOHC run in an e series and custom wire it to work and be integrated into the system than dammit I can make this T/C work... Surely...

Cheers,
Tim

Ok...

Changes have been made...

I got sick of the T/C beeping at me telling me I had 60km to empty...

I buggerised around one night and tried diodes and the sort and couldn't fix the problem... To do it would take ages because the T/C is so slow to update any significant change... So I think the T/C will not work with no cluster plugged in... Works correct with the ED and low with the EL... Diodes cause the NL cluster to go into error mode... And I think the T/C just sat there and displayed the last amount and didn't change... So hard to do in that respect and without any info on how it senses the fuel sender and whether it does or does not work in conjunction with the cluster... Still the best way to do it would be to drive the ED LCD with the EL board and I may keep probing around with it and see if it is at all possible...

Currently I'm running a clock... And it runs rings around the annoying T/C... Like it so much it may just stay there...

Still chipping away with the NL cluster conversion...

During the week I made up a body loom to run in beside Ford's for the door ajar and the bulb out functions... Last night I spent til midnight pulling it in and fitted off the pins for the doors and plugged them in and done all the plugs up for under the dash... While I didn't get any photos it turned out alright and worked great... Used 7 core trailer wire and just dropped the wires out where I needed them with figure 8 running under the console for the left hand doors... and figure 8 running into the boot for the fuel flap and boot switches... And I separate figure 8 for the tow pack wiring to bypass the shunts in the cluster for the bulb out indication...

Today I fitted the fuel flap switch spliced the wire in for the boot ajar and made up the dash loom for the bulb out... Swapped over the pins in the trailer plug behind the tail light... Plugged the pins in before I clipped them back into the plug and got them the right way round first go... Went and unplugged a bulb and a couple of seconds later I had a chime and "bulb out" on the inst cluster... Works tops...

Other thing I did was the plug for the bulb out from the body loom to the dash loom I used a BA airbag plug which has 4 pins and when you unplug it two pins short out and so do the other two... So I wired it up that when I unplug it from the dash loom the pins short out and cause the brake lights and tail lights to still function as per normal... This way if anything ever happens when I'm not home it is just a matter or reach up above the accelerator and unplugging it... So not bad for a spare connector I had in my wiring box...

Tomorrow I may start the tedious task of putting the switches in doors and that'll pretty much wrap the mod up...

Cheers,
Tim

Slowly getting there mate.

Well worth it in the end.

Cheers
BenJ

Yeah mate... Poking along...

I love that cluster... I don't even think I'll put white dials on it like I did the ED one... That is just one classy cluster... And to utilise all its features will be great... All that has been modded to it, is I pulled the orange filter out of the LCD and change out the globes with blue frangas to white SMD 5050 LEDs and some slightly different ones behind the LCD which I found on ebay and had a bit wider throw on them... So the whole lot lights up white... Hi beam and blinkers are blue and the other jewels are white LED's but with the red or orange filters still in place so they light up accordingly...

4th button on the FG wheel will be picked up off the ODO reset button on the cluster so I can enter diag mode more easily and scroll through the screens without having to lean forward while driving and try and reach through/around the wheel to get to the other button...

We've ordered ourselves a bottom ball joint tool:

http://www.ggtechnics.com.au/products/g ... installer/

So when it turns up we'll give it a whirl... My Falcon needs a driver's side one... Little bro's needs two... SO it should pay for itself straight up... The genuine Ford one the old man has at work is crap... We broke two genuine ball joints whilst trying to install them... Third one's a charm... So hopefully this will be better...

Off to the snow next week... Traveling to bright for 4 nights... So changed the coolant today to try and drop the freeze point of it... Because it wasn't real flash before... Gotta tighten my driver's wheel bearing tomorrow... Maybe fine tune my headlights... Check her over and top up the fluids etc in preparation for the Monday departure...After all it is a Ford so there wont be any issues... But always just in case...

May report back tomorrow with the progress made then...

Cheers,
Tim

Home today

All went well... It is always nice getting up at 9am everyday... Certainly a nice change... Done some sight seeing... Got hundreds of pics... So uploading some now and will tag them in at the end... The old girl clocked up 1057km and used around 112L of fuel (guessing by the cluster in diag mode)... So my calcs come back with something like 10.58L/100km of juice... Considering I went up Mt Buffalo until there was no more road and spend half of today in Albury and the rest in and around Bright speeding up and slowing down through all the small towns... I feel this isn't too bad with the current mods...

On the Sunday before I departed the old man and I installed all the door ajar sensors and wiring into the door looms... Works great... I discovered if you have small hands like mine you can install the sensors without needing to take the locks out of the door (PITA)... The back doors I drilled the actuators and the anti-tamper plates and about 2 mins of fiddling around and I had the sensor clipped in... Using the pics from the tech docs helps because you can do it by feel easily enough when you know roughly where that hole is... Front doors it was just unbolting the window track so I could get my hands in there...

Drivers door lock came out anyway because the mech was binding (most used door) and replaced with a one out of our spares car... soaked in solutions to clean the crud out of it and then hit with lithium grease... Its nice... discovered then my doors wouldn't unlock... it behaved the same as though you had a door open and tried to lock it... except it tried to unlock and couldn't so it re-locked... discovered the outside door handle rod was set too "fine" and something inside the lock was hence making it too hard to unlock and the actuator sensed the load and locked the doors again... So reset the rod and head off to my holiday destination on Monday morn...

Despite not cleaning the car and encountering some dirty places... The car looks good in some of these pics...

















Cheers,
Tim

Car is looking sweet Timmy.

Nothing like cruising the country in your E Series.

Cheers
BenJ

Nothing like a bit of car trouble to make the world go by...

So the history to this problem start on holidays... Every morning I would start the car and it would stall... Start it again and away we went... Never happened twice in the same day, but happened every day... Thought it weird but it was of no major inconvenience...

On the way home with the cruise set twice I felt it drop power for a fraction of a second as though it felt like an auto going down a gear...

Ran as per normal all last week... Drove home from work on fri... Went to go up the bank and started the car and it stalled... Had all sorts of trouble starting it again... Off I went... Came out of the bank and started it and it stalled... Had trouble starting it again... And got it going... Got home, went to head to the g/f's in Griffith and it stalled one starting... Same story... First intersection to Griff I had right of way... So I went round the exceptionally corrugated corner in second... Put my foot down to accelerate back up and I had no power at all... very very slowly it climbed rpms... Got to 100 set cruise and kept on... Second intersection is a stop sign... Went to take off and car was as normal... Had power back again... Got to the g/f's... Inside for an hour... Went out to go up to the pub... Car started and stalled... Got it going and off I went... Into the pub, out of the pub 5 mins later as our friends weren't there... Went to check there house... Same troubles starting the car... Took off up the main street... Griff has numerous pedestrian crossings up its street which are speed humps... So I clutched it to roll over one and it stalled... Pulled into the curb and it wouldn't start at all... There she sat... Other thing I'll note with Friday's events here, when it was running it idled really really low...

got the code reader out of my toolbox and done the KOEO test as it wouldn't run... Got the usual BBM code (I don't have it) and the EEC internal fault (J3 chip does this)... And then in memory there was a host of transmission codes... Thought the J3 has failed it thinks it is an auto again... Pulled out my original ED computer... Put it in... And car started easily... Went back to her house and bridged the thermos on as the EEC-IV can't control them...

Drove round all sat starting first time and it still idled really low... Drove home fine... Only issue was the lack of info on the NL cluster without the data line... No litres/100km or temp or anything like that...

Went to head to work on sat night and it started and stalled... Thought "What the hell... "

So today...

First thing was to check the base idle to make sure the throttle wasn't slamming shut and stalling it... Couldn't get it to start with the ISC disconnected... So screwed it in a bit and started it... Set it at around 700 and all was well... Turned it off and started it and it tried to idle at 300-500 for around 10-15 secs... On the odd occasion it didn't stall during this period, at the end it would rev back up to 700... This seemed super weird as the ISC was disconnected...

So me and dad who has worked on these cars since day dot (Ford mechanic for 30 years) were scratching out heads... Why would it idle at 500 on start up and then go up to 700 after a short time with the thing controlling idle disconnected???

Pulled no.2 spark lead off and put it into my HEI test plug which proves the coil which a massive gap and it chirped away quite happily... So it isn't the cap or the coil...

Came to the conclusion the AFR must be wrong and not what the computer is expecting start up... Hence it struggles to run... Then the computer compensates and fixes it and idles at base idle...

So we got the master fuel pressure gauge and put it inline... started it up... Heaps of fuel pressure and behaved normally... The proved the fuel pump could deliver pressure and the the regulator wasn't stuffed... So thought maybe fuel volume... Pulled off the gauge and cranked the car... Had heaps of fuel volume...

Back to scratching the thinker...

Lifted the rocker cover... Just so I could eye the vernier cam gear... Still set at 1 degree retarded which is where we dialled the cam in at... So it wasn't crank to cam timing... Vernier gear hadn't slipped...

Decided it must be something in the dizzy...

Dad when to clean up a spare dizzy... I said I haven't done a code test while it is running... I'll just give it a whirl... Wound the base idle up so it wouldn't stall... Off I went to test...

First time round:
Got engine temp sensor out of range... Fair enough, I had no temp gauge still (EEC-IV) so was probably cold...
Got goose test not performed... Silly me, bad timing...

Second time round:
Got low idle speed fail... Sure I had it idled up... May have been not low enough...
Got MAP sensor out of range... Seemed weird... Usually they blow a black smoke when it goes bad...

Third time is a charm:
Got low idle speed fail
MAP sensor out of range...

Alright then... We'll roll with that... Almost new MAP sensor I carry round in the boot... Pulled it out and plugged it in... Seemed to run OK... Not there was much to go on with the problem once it was actually running...

Dropped the idle speed a bit...

Tested it...
All faults gone...

Cool... Sorted...

Dad said alright we'll try the old MAP again just in case...

Tested it...
All faults gone...

Put the J3 EL computer back in it...

Started fine...

Back to looking like this ->

Alright then we'll try it... pulled all the tools out from the engine bay... Set the base idle to 700rpm again... Turned it off... Started it... Slightly lumpy as the do for a second and then came good... Tried again... Worked fin... Connected the ISC and it started fine... Disconnected it... And it started fine... Connected and went driving...

rolling along and clutched it and the rev's dropped slowly back to 700 - 750... Nowhere near stalling...

Tried numerous times...

Pulled up in yanco and turned it off and let it heat soak the dizzy for 5 mins or so... and started it... Worked fine...

Drove back to Leeton again and tried again... 5 mins later it started fine...

Came home and put it back together so we'll try again for this week now...

All I can put it down to is a slightly dirty connection in the MAP sensor... And pulling it out and plugging it in again fixed it... So I filled it up with contact cleaner this arvo and gave it half a dozen operations to remove any surface corrosions on the pins...

It is just one of those truly strange things... And I am still in a state of "I think I fixed it ? "

Anyway... with the EEC-IV ED computer in it I think it felt like it had more pull down low in the rpm range...

So I have been thinking about putting a BBM on it and going with a manual ticky computer...

Benefits here is I can run the stronger EL throttle cable, and cruise cable... I can go away from the J3 chip for the time being... I can extend the rev range... I'll stop getting the BBM fault code on the computer... Can run the bigger EL intake gear... Downside is the cables wont bolt the ED rocker cover and I hate the EL one... Fix for this is to drill the holes in the ED cover and tap the threads for the screws...

So... my mate BenJ...

I have been reading your info on the BBM conversion on the old and current cars...

The parts list you wrote up will be very helpful... May try and by a pranged EF/EL I know of locally here... so this way I have everything... Not looking forward to changing that steel pipe over behind the motor...

With the loom, you said you had to lengthen the TPS and the ISC plugs? I thought they would have need separating and shortening from the temp plug because the butterfly was at the centre of the manifold and not the front? Do the wires not just pop up between cyl 3 and 4? I know the ISC plug will be different, but I'd lean toward the TPS plug being identical?

That is about all I'm stuck on with it currently...

All fun and games this weekend... On the plus side we did achieve a bit with dad's ED... Got all the power windows loom into it today... Got the power mirror plug conversion for the EL trims done on the drivers door and power window wires into the door looms... My illumination mod for the BA switches didn't work... So I had to pull the loom back apart a bit and will finish fixing it tomorrow... Other than that the power windows work great and dad is stoked... Being a GLI without factory cruise it had none of the power window wiring in the body loom... So I made a power llom to run beside the existing one... Have also added EL cruise to it as it is easier to implement than ED cruise... SO same as the mod to my car... Made up the loom and added it into the ABS grommet in the firewall which wasn't used... Will get some pics up of it at some stage...

That's my life story for now...

Cheers,
Tim

Yep, you have it pretty much sorted I think.

I added extra length to allow me to route the TPS and ICS wires out of sight as much as possible, in addition to making sure they actually reached. I didn't have a BBM engine to measure it up against, so I thought it prudent to over estimate as I was going to be away from home.

I found later that I also needed to lengthen the the coil wiring when I was installing the loom on the EL Engine.

Re the steel pipe, yep it is a PITA, as you have to remove the exhaust manifold/extractors, and the top right hand bellhousing bolt. But if I can do it, so can you.

Good luck, and if there is any thing else please ask away.

Cheers
BenJ

Cheers Buddy...

Yeah PITA I know... It has been changed before because it corroded out... So it is only 4 or 5 years old... One of those things that if you curse and strain enough eventually it happens...

RE: the coil... The coil mounts in the same spot on an EL? Just the wiring routes different? Or vice versa?

Still a good band for buck mod you reckon?

Cheers,
Tim

Yep, a good mod to do, especially as you need to run the EL/NL ECU for the cluster anyway.

Re the coil, it does mount in the same place, however I would suggest you look at relocating it while you have easy access, and are playing with the loom. I used the top A/C compressor bolt.

And the heater hoses etc, will also need to be replaced to suit the BBM metal pipes. Do any others on that side of the engine while the manifold is off.

Cheers
BenJ

I thought that maybe with a BBM and the airbox out, that because the manifold sits higher, the coil would come out OK?

I changed a coil pack on an EF there the other day with the airbox out without too much drama... In saying that... I will at least make a bracket to turn the coil 90 degree so it sits and bolts down as opposed to bolting sideways onto the motor because of the way the "hang" off the side they eventually crack through the top of the coil and absorb moisture... s**t of an idea...

All the hose are maybe... 4 or 5 years old I guess... The whole cooling system is... Will check them but I think they're OK... In saying that, most on that side will need replacing anyway... And I have disconnected my heater tap so it flows all the time... I am sure that because the water doesn't circulate through the core in summer it corrodes it out... My first heater core lasted 2 years... So as I said the tap is open all the time, as such I may just delete it altogether, easier without the manifold on there...

Here is the current project...

This will be dad's daily so he can do up his old car...

It is a 94 ED GLi...

Came from Melb, had gas in it which was 18 months old... Auto... Runs good...

So mods to it are:

Pull the gas stuff out and repair all wiring
Clear Indicators
Paint the outside door handles
Paint the mirrors
Paint the grill
Replace the cracked front bumper
Fit a tow bar
Fit extractors
Fit 2.5" exhaust
Replace oil stained carpet
Replace just starting to sag hood lining
Fit a rear spoiler
EL door trim conversion
Front power windows w/ BA illuminating switches (custom loom)
Fit EL cruise control and custom made loom and XH cable & throttle body
Hybrid steering column
AU black leather wheel
AU GLi combo switch, modded with ED mechs and plugs
Conversion to clock spring
Hybrid cruise buttons (EL buttons with AU horn pad)
Repair busted re-circulation duct
Replace busted heater controls in dash
Annetts imbolisation method installed
LED conversion
Courtesy light installation
Upgrade to blue BEM
Re-fit the factory stereo plug which has been cut off
Install genuine Ford semi-auto electric antenna
Pull out speed alert and repair/replace all wire that had been scotch locked and was severely damaged
Fit clock
Upgrade to mid series instrument cluster
Electric fuel flap release
16" EL XR wheels
Service dizzy (nearly seized)

I think that is about all...

So some of these mods are done... Some are yet to do and judging by the list I'd say we're halfway...

All the gas stuff is sitting around... It is an entire conversion... Not sure if anybody wants it? Only installed 18 months ago... All wires have been marked where the came from and electrically wouldn't be hard to install... Hardest part would be mounting the tank and running the gas lines... The inlet to fill it up was located inside the fuel flap... Photos of it are attached, I know nothing about gas, but if anyone is interested I'll try to help... We hate gas, and it burns valve seats out as it burns hotter, but anyone who doesn't care about this and is interested in a gas system to suit an ED let me know...

Pics so far:
















Cheers,
Tim

Been a while since I've been in here...

Dad's car is clean and back together... All starts and runs currently... Just finishing off the AU steering wheel... Having issues with faulty cruise modules... And he is modifying an FG auto gear knob into it... Still trialling it out at this stage... Otherwise it mostly back together and has turned out real nice with all the LED's and tricky bits that have gone into it...

Current project is wiring up a mates Gosser car... They're basically just a fun loving class... Race what ever you wanna race type thing and just get out and have fun and don't take it to heart... Old man is doing the brakes... I'm doing the electrics... So got a game plan for that today... Will have to take some photos as work progresses...

My car has been good lately... Last weekend I thought the battery was dying again... Was getting real hard to start last sat... and I got home and she called it quits... But it didn't click like a flat battery... it did nothing bsically... heard the solenoid pull in and that was her... So guessed the starter was d**k... I was away in dubbo all week with work so my old man fitted a reduction drive starter... Used in the BF's and that... Sounds like a whole different car... Awesome starter... Really quiet... And starts it no worries...

That's about it at this stage... Been more busy with the house lately... Got the new AC on before summer rolls in... And trying to get the sprinkler system in now so I don't have to pay as much attention to the grass as I did last year...

Tell you what though... Man have I been running out of time or what lately... I reckon we need 3 days on 4 days off every week... Would make the weekend jobs easier...

Cheers,
Tim

Gotta love those BA Starter Motors.

It really does make cranking it over much more pleasant.

Cheers
BenJ

not wrong... so much easier on the battery... and it actually sounds like a modern DOHC cam as it starts... Sounds real flash... The other one was original so we'll see how many years we get out of this one...

May have to get some snaps of the old mans car tomorrow too... Will get them up... Please can see what has been going on there...

Cheers,
Tim