Wow mate, that does sound easy when you mention it like that. We'll give it a go and report how it goes. Thanks again Tim.

Yep... The idea of the rpm switch is that it makes it entirely standalone...

Cheers,
Tim

Just thought I'd update this. I flushed the heater core and lucky i did because there was lots of crap in there, I also installed heater hoses and tap etc, looks factory



I also installed the throttle cable but unless it can be modified, I may need a custom cable as this one seems too short to mount on the AU rocker cover mounting point. See how that goes.

I had the dizzy regraphed and modified, it came back looking brand new (forgot to take pic), I also got a new MSD coil to go with it and had the car towed to my auto elec last week. He will install and wire up dizzy and coil, as well as thermo fans, alternator and clean up a couple of small things.

Turns out we could not use the AU oil pressure and temp sensors to read on XE cluster (different ohm readings) so I had to buy an XE oil pressure sensor (no biggie) but the temp sensor was a little trickier. I need to use an XE temp sensor which normally goes in the XE thermostat housing, therefore I had to tap the XE sensor into the bottom thermostat housing of the AU engine, here it is



I also provided the auto elec with RPM switch to wire up the VCT which he is very comfortable doing afters I explained how the VCT actually works (he thought the VCT was constantly changing the cam timing but i explained it only changes timing after 3000 rpm and used some of the info Timmy provided here), couple of AU horns and couple of other bits and pieces. Car will be done in a couple of weeks and when I get it back, everything should be wired up and operating with the exception of the gas system. Can't wait.

Sounds good... The BA uses continuously variable cams which are probably controlled by PWM... Looking forward to seeing the finished product... Other thing you could have done was get an ED lower thermostat housing as it has a few different taped holes in it for the up to 3 sensors it runs...

AU has a run hot strategy by default... This means the car will still run with no coolant... Because it has no coolant the sensor couldn't be in water as it would not read and hence was relocated to the hottest part of the head, screwed into the aluminium... If the temp sender goes above 120degrees C the computer begins shutting down cylcinders to use them as air pumps to cool the engine... While this is probably not good for the motor it is a little known feature and should get you somewhere in an emergency... But you will not have this feature if you don't run the AU PCM...

I made a custom cable for my EL cruise control on the ED style manifold years back... Was tedious but got there in the end... We have a motorcycle shop that sells inner and outer cables and you can get whether lengths you need... I then had an end turned up and crimped onto the cable...

Alternatively... What we did with the old man's cruise cable was send two to flexible drive solutions and say we need the the ED throttle body end, the EL cruise module end... Inner this long and outer that long and the made one from the two... You could send the whole cable and say lengthen both inner and outer by 2" or whatever...

Goodluck with the rest!

Cheers,
Tim

Cheers Tim. I'm aware of the AU temp sender not sensing coolant temp, rather true engine temp which has many benefits the most important of which is it enables the gauge to read correct temp even if the car drops all the coolant, where as conventional in-coolant sensors give false reading in that circumstance and engine will just get cooked.

I wanted to utilise this feature and even went and bought new AU sender but unfortunately this will be near impossible to work with XE temp gauge, so a normal sender will have to suffice. One question though, do I still need to install an AU sender just to block that hole, or as there is no coolant in that area the hole doesn't need to be blocked?

Regarding the throttle cable, the gas guy says there is a bracket which can be used to mount the cable on the rocker cover which should solve the problem, if it doesn't there is a guy here in Melbourne who makes custom cables which I will have to use.

Got a call from the sparky today telling me car is done so went had a look, he did a great job. Car cranks and just needs fuel and a tune to start and run, It's coming home on Monday morning, I'll take pics and post then.

Got the ute back yesterday morning, all wired up and ready to go, only thing not wired up is gas system, which gas guy will do, here is a few photos

Thermo fan relays, there is also horn wiring there you can see but haven't put in horns yet as I don't know where to mount them, I think some kind of air filter will need to go in that area so I'll wait until that's sorted.



Dizzy is in, sorry for bad pic..



Coil and oil pressure sender all wired up..



Water temp sender, you can also see VCT wiring there with the white plug, RPM switch is mounted under glovebox.



Wiring going to battery includes AU alternator wiring, fusible link for fans, new earth wires etc..



Overall a great job which didn't blow the budget.

I also sorted out vacuum hoses, two hoses come out of the firewall, one goes onto heater tap the other goes on the BBM.

I am waiting on the GRA carb and converter to arrive so I can install them then off she goes to Gas shop so she can get fired up and tuned.

In the meantime, I'll put the bonnet and headlights back on and wait, have run out of things to do.

it doesnt go to water so you can leave it out

Cheers mate.

Not much of an update but I put the bonnet on so I can drive the car once it's running, The bonnet is still the old s**t Falcon one but has all the shiny zinc plated hardware I'll swap it all back later when I have a painted Ghia bonnet.





Also got a few goodies for later on





Currently still waiting for the gas gear to arrive, should be next week.

Gas research gear finally came in today so went and picked up the carby and converter




Interestingly the converter has to be mounted horizontally flat which will take a fair bit of room so most likely position will have to be between PS shock tower and fire wall, so I have to move a couple of things around.

Over the next few days I will mount gas carby and converter, plug injector holes, need to have throttle cable modified so that it is longer, also dizzy cap doesn't fit under manifold with the XE rotor button on so will have to get XF injected rotor button and see how that fits.

Will post any updates.

Last night I got busy doing a few things, first task was to install the GRA, this is important to do first because once the carby is in place I can measure how much I will need the throttle cable lengthened by and can get the ball rolling on that, took off the AU throttle body, there was lots of gunk and black soot and the gasket was fu(ked, so i got a new gasket and did a bit of cleaning.




Then I remembered the carby has a few threaded holes which won't be used for my application and need to be plugged so decided to wait until I got the plugs and then I would install it.

Next I wanted to plug the injector holes, earlier in the day I bought different sized brass welsh plugs to try out in the injector holes, the 14mm fitted best



Then with the help of some exhaust cement and a fat centre punch and hammer.



She was in and not going anywhere, very solid!



Today I'll get 5 more plugs and finish off plugging all the holes on the weekend.

Next job was playing with the dizzy, I read somehwere that an XF EFI rotor button combined with XE dizzy cap will fit under the BBM, so I bought the rotor button and tried to fit it but DOH the XE dizzy shaft is too big for it so it wouldn't fit, so that theory is wrong. So I thought I'd give the XE rotor button button another go and after much stuffing around and fiddliness I managed to get the cap on properly with XE rotor button also on the dizzy. A tight fit but it fits. I also had to VERY SLIGHTLY bend the VCT oil line to accomodate turning the filter, I have tried capturing the clearance in the following pic, it's very tight.



I then tried to fit the leads onto the dizzy cap but the clearance is very tight under the BBM and I may need to revisit this and maybe buy some ignition leads with smaller end heads as the ones that came with the motor are huge.

Today I'll buy the welsh plugs and the threaded plugs for carby then do some more work on the weekend, not sure how much I'll do considering Bathurst is on, but the aim is to at least plug all injector holes and fit GRA.

So as predicted I got nothing done over the weekend because Bathurst happened but I did find a very handy LED under bonnet work light which will make things much easier.

Here is the under bonnet lights, lights up the engine bay like a xmas tree, love it.



And on



And I got a little bit done tonight

Plugged all the injector holes



Fitted gas carby




This pic shows how short the throttle cable is and how much longer it needs to be about 100mm longer on the outer sleeve and 170mm on the cable itself, I removed the cable tonight and will take it to auto cables tomorrow to weave their magic on it.



And this pic shows how massive the boots on the ignition leads are



Also removed the LPG lockoff from its current position as the converter will most likely sit in its place




Tomorrow I'll try and sort out a bracket for the converter and figure out how I'm going to mount it.

Got to work on the ute a bit today.

I got a new longer throttle cable, here is a pic of old next to new to compare length, had to stand on the old one to keep it straight haha



But when I put it on, it seems I don't have full throttle travel on the carby as the cable is a little too long now haha, needs 25 mm taken off it and the adjustment range is too narrow so I'll try and have that fixed tomorrow.

I also got a converter bracket which i modified a fair bit to suit my application, here is the end result



After much measuring, trial fitting, measuring again and drilling it's finally mounted



Nice and level





So I was happy with that, took it off and gave it a coat of primer



Tomorrow morning I'll give it another coat then after work I'll paint it in Bionic and a couple of coats of clear. And hopefully I'll have the throttle cable sorted so I'll install that too.

Need to finish it ASAP so I can get it out of my garage, the fact it doesn't move under its own power is annoying me.

Starting to gather a bit of pace now, the aim is to have the car ready to be towed away by the Weekend. It is actually booked for next Wednesday to be towed to the LPG place. So couple of little issues will need to be sorted before then, I'll get to that soon.

Today I had the throttle cable trimmed a little and when I got home I fitted it and it works perfectly now with full range of throttle from the GRA. So that's all done, one less item on the list. Here's a couple of pics.




Next I painted and fitted the converter bracket, looks good and blends in well with engine bay.




Converter in place only hand tight for now, fits well with plenty of room for the lock off to be connected to it as suggested






So as you can see, I obviously need the right fittings to fit the lock off onto the converter so I'll get the converter out and get those fittings tomorrow.

But the main problem I'm having at the moment is the clearance with the dizzy under the manifold. The dizzy itself fits fine and the XE cap and rotor button fit with a bit of stuffing around, but the issue is to get the leads to fit on top of the cap and under the manifold, there isn't much room. So tomorrow I'll get some XE leads so I can trial fit them and hopefully they do fit because if they don't it will delay things a fair bit. I'll make them fit