Bloody Hell

All the painting I have done on my car so far has been from pressure pack cans from Supercheap.

LOL

BenJ

Yeah, I've done a few motorbikes with spray cans, but a car... Getting all the panels to match... And. Well..

NN....NN....OOO
NNN..NN..OO OO
NN. NNN..OO OO
NN....NN....OOO

It ain't going to happen....

I once sprayed my first mini with spray cans from K-Mart. 15 cans and paint all over the place.
Looked great though.
Fire engine red with a white roof. The white roof was the best. In fact white is the easiest colour to get a good result with at home.

Oh come on Rick... Seriously.

I used more than 15 cans on getting a real nice gloss finish on a motorbike... Came up bloody nice, even scored becuase of it, but doing a car that's damn near longer than the average garage with a bonnet larger than my garden shed...

And I'm really sold on this silver with a bit of blue through it - Don't think SuperCheap, K-Mart or even Bunnings have paint of that particular colour.

And, even if they did......



NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO


(although thanks for your inspiration)

oi mate good luck with everything sometimes i forget how lucky i am to have a fairlaine with all the bells and whistles

I really don't remember how many cans the mini took.
Actually I think it was 15 for the red and about 8 for the white roof and minilite mags.
I do remember having paint all over my hands, arms, Dad's garage, up my nostrils. Red is a very strong colour.
The problem was, I used Kilrust which came up great. But after 18 months it oxidised a bit and lost it's shine.

BUT I DEFINITELY WILL NOT BE USING CANS FOR MY BONNET AND BUMPER.

There is not the finish I want.

Dude, you're quite right there. The Futurlaine may never get the instrument cluster from your Realaine... All those door sensor bits sound like a long weekend... And then there's the gearbox telling the dash what gear it's in... Hmmmph. I don't know - would be nice, but may put energies into something else first (like re-doing the left rear door window electrics which were dodgy as it was the first one I'd ever done - Futuras were manual winders in back after all!).....

And the bloody Fairmont rear seat (from sedan) are different to the wagon models, so have to settle for the slightly marked Fairmont Wagon rear seats. That put me in a bad mood..!

But yeahp, lucky you with the Fairlaine. Although, could be lucky me in another year for having a Fairlaine StationWagon!... One day!




Ahem, no surprises there...!

I am pretty keen to do this to the inside of my Fairlane grill too...



Have made up a replacement air system, which works better than the original - motor goes way better without that silly snorkel and air box with a 2" restriction in it.

Any tips on cutting into the plastic there ge2589?

Always interesting to see your work mate.

I don't necessarily like or agree with what you've done... but it's sure as hell different!

Quack quack.

<ahem, sorry>

Dude - I'd love to hear more about what you agree with (or otherwise) as I am admittedly a complete novice at this sort of thing. I had never even taken a brake pad out of a caliper on a car before buying my first EF Fairmont early last year, although have always had ideas on how to do things better on motorbikes, and turns out things aren't that much different (......)

The air flow thing works great now - That photo of grill (above) is not my work, but I have done similar tonight... Angle grinding in the dark is okay, but as soon as you stop you have to touch it on something in order to see where you're cutting again. Hehehehe... Anyway, will post a photo tomorow or the next day or something.

The airflow now goes straight through right hand side of grill and then gets deflected by my metal housing into an "air box" that is open at the back (about 50mm between bonnet lining and shock tower where the original airbox used to sit)... The airflow works quite well in pushing hot air from radiator away from the black plastic ducting from pod filter to intake manifold. I am still considering putting a XR6 vent above the intake manifold to promote this flow even further.


Today I started pulling apart the doors (AGAIN!) and getting all the electric windows going properly again. Have put three additional pairs of 5amp wires into each rear door through the original ducting and am still deciding on what to add to the front when I get there.

The extra wires in back doors are for ;

extra lighting from courtesy lamp circuit (ie - door handles and door lights)
extra sensor in the external handle for security purposes
possible installation of 6x9 speakers run from 55 x 4 watt head unit (leaving a small AMP to drive the big ones in the boot...)

Since I have a couple of spare rear window electric switches from the second Fairmont I am thinking of installing one into the front passenger door as EVERYBODY who is new to the car starts looking around awkwardly for the "fresh air" button!


I am now 50/50 on installing a laptop in the spare wheel cavity - I've run 15AMP wires, a video wire, some nice quality audio cable and the AMP wires there...

First there's going to be a storage rack made for all my work gear... Hopefully I'll start on that tomorow and get that new left rear power window in.

I pulled the LHF power window from the parts car the other week and discovered why it was sluggish.
The stupid plastic sleve was broken so i will have to turn up a new aluminium one on a lathe like I did for the drivers.

Ahah - They suck... I actually tried to pull one apart and got fed up with pulling on a taut piece of wire so found something better to do involving angle grinders and large hammers.

... Never mind, all good - I had to order a new (fake) mirror from Hong Kong via Aussie... Someone totally cleaned my drivers one off the car whilst I was driving. Honestly - I turned around and tried to find it. The biggest bit of plastic was about half an inch triangle shard and everything else was spread over a 20m area... Very small layer of Ford covering the road in a shotgun pattern. The guy didn't even stop, and it was night time so all I saw was two headlights... Amazed he didn't hit the side of my car at all --- other than the mirror.


I got the left hand rear door glass sliding up and down electronically again today and also pulled the front passenger apart and cleaned it out of years of brown / gray sludge that meant I did dangerous contortions shutting the window whilst driving - steering with knee, one hand on the UP button and one hand pulling the window back... Fine on the drivers side, but when you gotta take your seat belt off, lean over the otherside of the car and maintain use of brake... Well, glad I fixed it... It'll die slowly again, of course, but is fine for a little bit.


Painted the door pillars with a black non glossy bumper colour paint (Plastic-cote product once again - much better than that Septone rubbish another Fordmods guy recommended... He said "it's tougher than plastic - I am scratching my plastic before the paint chips"... What a load of crap. It hardly works any better than using a quality BLACK ETCH PRIMER with no top coat at all...!)

Anyhooooo

The "bumper colour" works a little like the plastic or vinyl paints so I used it for the boot pillar trims and the ugly bits of plastic between rear windows and doors. I then decided to pull off all the old rubber, metal and plastic trim, wash it all down and paint it all.... Looks primo! Very happy with it - Brings the quarter windows in the back up like new. Awesome.

Putting all the trims back on was easier than taking them off ---

ALTHOUGH....


There are five or six holes along the sill under the rear right and rear left windows that the trim pushes into with pastic spreader clips. It rained heavily and I ended up with water in the boot (which I never used to get much of - maybe a little around the boot latch recess on occasion...) I have a funny feeling that although the original seals around these holes had perished and rust had set in that they were still sealing. Now they ain't.


Hey Rick --- Do the wagons in Aussie all rust out in front of the rear wheel arch? Wellington gets hit by salty southerly winds (it's famous for it - ask any touring Aussie sports team) and I am currently spending time at wreckers convincing them to allow my power tools in to cut the panel from rear passenger doors around wheel arch out...

No rust in my cars at all.

Salt does tend to eat bodywork.

I was looking at your door speaker instal and saw you had put big speakers in the rears.
I put some giant 6x9 Pioneers in my tailgate years ago and got tired of the thing bashing me on the head.
Anyhow when I tried new struts it helped but on cold days the door still hit my head and I got this huge cut from the latch. I was also getting water in the bottom of the boot area.

I found another tailgate at the wreckers for $100 whilst looking for parts for the projects so I grabbed it along with the boot seal. 4 problems solved, broken number plate surround anr reversing lights, water leaks fixed, faulty wiper and dented tailgate replaced.

After fitting it I found I have fixed the leak and got new 6.5" speakers to reduce weight.

No more head injuries.

Yeahp - I have issues with the heavy speakers shutting the boot for me too! Am going to put in a stronger gas strut, or even put in a third strut! One day, when I get around to it.

Will take some photos of the rust I am talking about - It is coming through in EVERY single wagon I have seen in the Wellington region. Some have even started getting being ordered off the road because of it. Rank...

It's caused by the weather building up a collection of rubbish in the pillars and wet stuff leaking in to the wall cavity and the drainage not being adequate once anything larger than one micron goes in there.

Anyhoo - Took the grill off and tidied up my hole today...






This image is uploaded in my image gallery, but here is how I got there...

You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

Nice work there and I love your graphics work.
I am very inexperienced with picture manipulation.
I am playing around a bit learning to work with pictures for some reports I am writing for work.

Today I chopped the bonnet lining out where it was creating further restrictions and filled all the gaps where air could go up bonnet in lining or bonnet frame.

Also glued the lining up.

Used a fire guard space filler type product. Will do some photos tomorrow.


Arrived today --- The clear tailights that ARE GOING TO FIT... I am sure they'll fit - Just need to chop a line or two here and there and hit it with a sledge hammer really hard in the middle... It'll fit...


Also reshaped the original Ford monsoon shield on passenger side that has been broken and left sharp. Now looks a little like a "bikini monsoon shield"...



As for image manipulation - I've been doing it for twenty five years and am pretty good when I try. Can do stuff that you'll never work out was fake - promise you, even the forensec or professional photographers wouldn't work it out... Not all images can be done like that, you gotta be selective mind you. The stuff you see me do here is all done pretty damn quickly and without much worry about what it looks like, checking spelling or correcting colours to the actual real colour.

I spent a couple of hours doing my instrument cluster design... Usually spend more time looking for the right photos than actually working on them...

The graphic of the airflow took about an hour, and I admit to trying a few different things with it as I have never done a "cutaway" image like this before.

I ain't too sure if everyone else can follow it --- To me it is obvious and I would have made it more visually pleasing but the actual technical aspect of the image was becoming unclear.

Hope everyone can see it and make sense of it.


Very happy with the way the whole airflow thing is going - especially now that the lining is air proof.


Have decided the old XR6 vents I bought are crap and am going to fabricate my own vent that will allow air out and keep water out too. Will be permanently fixed to bonnet, but then again - I ain't likely to sell the car too soon so will just have to do a good job on it.


All good....

The Rust photos --- every single one of these cars over here seems to have the rust in front of rear wheel arch. I have taken the offending area out of a car with virtually no external rust and found rust in the internals of it.

Ford designed it like this and there are drain holes right down underneath the wheel arch at bottom of wheel arch behind the jack point. The drain holes work until they get clogged (spinning up the rear wheels on dirt will clog them with clay..)

At least the problem area stops at about the same level as the plastic trim, so it's simple to hide the join where you replace the panel.

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Last edited by fiend on Mon Jan 12, 2009 7:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

I havent pulled off that cover before but there's none of that rust on my cars.
My rear guards are clean.
I do give the guards a squirt with the hose now and then to release any trapped mud and rubbish.

The rust does start on the inside of the wall cavity (to use builders terms..)- no way to hose it! The V where the external (shiny body colour) meets the inside wheel arch panel (blackish matt colour) starts corroding. Will post a photo of the bit I chopped out another wagon tomorrow and show you. May be worth taking the trims off and pouring some rust converter down there so yours don't go this way in another five years. Obviously NZ being completely ocean and salt air makes this happen more readily than over in your soft country.

I live in the dry inland... funny Its been damp a lot lately.
The paintwork is getting very tired in some places on the old classic wagon. The obviously resprayed front bumper has the clear coat peeling off everywhere along with a couple of other spots that were touched up before I bought it.