have just about finished my build ,but i have gone over my budget by about $5000 .it ended up costing me $11000 .so my ba xt ute has cost me about $27000 -$28000 over 3 years .and its still a 10 year old car .why do we do it ?

All I'm doing is a restoration, honestly wouldn't bother restoring a 15 year old European car and I'm pretty sure that if my Fairlane was in Australia it probably would have been wrecked already but I've always wanted an Aussie Ford so had to take the opportunity when it came up because they simply don't exist here.

yes,i would have been better of buying a new car .to late now

No way man, in my opinion, Id rather fork 10K into my fairlane or my own car and have a sweet cruiser that I can truly call my own than have another standard XR6 /8 or whatever..

I totally agree with that. Besides I would never buy a brand new car anyway, in Europe they lose 40% of their value as soon as you slap number plates on them.

My daily driver is an 11 y/o Audi that I've also forked a load of money into. Was is worth it, from a reasonable point of view it never is, but as you say I can truly call it my own.

yes thats true ,its not what everyone els has thats for sure . its a sleeper that will get a lot of people by surprise . just found out that i have to change the abs module to suit traction control (extra brake line )thats why the car is in limp mode .

G'day MGDriver! the issue on your heater not working is actually a very common problem, not just on your model but across the entire Falcon/Fairlane range & it still haunts the Falcon till this day!

anyway you came to the right place, ive found a few pages about the problem which can give you some insight into it you might also want to check out http://www.fordaustraliaforums.com & http://www.fordforums.com.au but right here is were i have found the most help & almost zero smart a*** replies!

anyway Heater not working!!

http://www.fordmods.com/documents.php?d=9

http://www.fordaustraliaforums.com/forum/showthread.php?41271-Heater-not-working

http://www.fordmods.com/ford-4l-and-6-cylinder-f1/au-heater-not-working-properly-t83739.html

http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=3204514 - (might have to be a member for that one)

all those are AU Failanes heaters - good luck!

This is one of the coolest topics ever! Aussie lux-muscle in Deutschland!

Tolle Leistung. Ich bewundere deinen Ehrgeiz. Bleib dran!

Cool build thread MGDriver. Fairlane love is now truly Global

Hey Marvin looking good there mate hope its still behaving itself!

It's time for another update, last month I was over in England again to continue work on the car. We've replaced the broken sway bar links (hat tip to fairlane6970 for sending me these parts totally free of charge) and finally got a clear pass on the British rego! Next step: rust removal and paint refresh. I've placed an order for under seal guard, paint and lacquer materials (original Ford paint code LD, Liquid Silver. Now hoping the European stuff is actually the same colour.) Also looking into getting a fresh set of brakes because the current ones don't do much anymore, been told to replace them rather soon because although they didn't fail inspection just yet, there is not a lot life left in them and could therefore become a hazard in such a big barge.



The Fairlane also celebrated its birthday a few weeks ago on the 26th July. On that date, 15 years ago, it rolled out of the Broadmeadows Assembly Plant in Melbourne. It was loaded on a ship and delivered to the Australian Embassy in London where it served as a diplomatic vehicle until 2002 when it was replaced with a newer BA Fairlane and sold on to private owners in the UK. I got this information directly from the Australian embassy, it took me a few attempts until they let me talk to someone who knew about it and he was very careful which information he would give out because normally they want to hide their cars identity (which is a bit silly because Aussie cars in Europe simply stand out) if you look at the cars records there is a gap between the built date in 1999 and "first registration" in 2002. I assume the story of their BA is the same, sold off to private owners after they phased it out so I'm sure it's still in the UK somewhere, maybe I need to track it down one day to join the lot. They currently run an extented wheelbase FG Falcon which I see driving around London sometimes.



Another hat tip goes out to Esteven8 for sending me this Ford Premium Sound head unit, which was discussed earlier in this topic, in trade for some toy cars from Germany for his kids to play with. Although I have done a lot of barter deals before, this is certainly marks the oddest one of them all! The previous owner has installed some crappy aftermarket radio and also did a very poor job in wiring it, took a first glimpse at the wiring the other day and it seems that he totally messed it up. I can see this giving me headaches already but we'll see how it goes.

how did you go with the radio .did you have to get it coded to suit your car ?. if you need any parts give me a pm , i am close to wreckers in my area .would love to help you out as much as i can

gunna

the au radio will not need to be coded, all he will need is the radio code for the radio
and it will work

MCdriver
have you got yourself a workshop manual for the car yet?
as it will have the wiring diagram for you
did you get the plug in the back of the radio?

Hi MCdriver - This thread has been a great read this morning. I'm so thrilled that you have this old girl in your possession.

I can see though that your last post was August 2014 - We hope everything is all OK.

No, the 1998 AU onwards weren't OBDII fully compliant until after the 2003 BA.

With the pre AU cars, it was easier, you just have to use the common plastic body controll adaptor, and then pull the codes using the Australian scan gear, or one of the adptors one of our members muzza

member1564.html

here described a while back.

Those are EECIV or EECV, but, unlike the German made Colgone V6's in my old RHD New Zealand 98 UR Explorer XLT, or even the German Scorpio Cosworth, the AU system has had a frontal labotomy, with proprierty codes, and lacks the scope to run the car code dash board or normal 100% compliant OBDII code reader.

You have to use this:-

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/MaxiDiag-US7 ... 0396645333




and its got some limitations to what it can do. But its better than nothing.

On my Explorer, the German 205 PS 4.0 SOHC was fully mapped for a U$ 129 kit from CarCode by Alex C. Peper.