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Colour is actually attempting to be the silver blue that appears on Suzuki Swifts... Similar to the silver blue Nissan Micra or Honda Jazz or Mitsi Colt (in order of preferance)

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Last edited by fiend on Wed Sep 03, 2008 9:12 am, edited 2 times in total.

looks like a complete Bitsa... would look neat all one colour..... keep it up... don't want to offend but stop puting them in them bloddy buble s**t.

cheers

enjoyable thread...wagons rock!!!

love the graphics...good to see a right brain creative type here, goes against all the logical (boring) left brainers...proves cars can be fun without being the fastest...

what was the cause of the low oil pressure after the head gaskit change?

You should be able to get some cheap u-bolts from the exhaust shop.
They will probably a bit thin though!
The respray idea look likely to blow the budget!

BITSA - It is, my friend, it is. It's got bitsa Futura, Fairmont, Fairlane, VN (ahemm), EB, ED, EF, EL, NF and even IBM.




Wagons do rock me old bean - But this boat like annoyance is helluva better with 1 tonne and sway bar rear. Need a fatter front sway bar now to go with the 235/45/17's that stick out almost to the guards.

Went for a real fast drive up Mount Vic last night and the first couple of off camber corners got me - The car doesn't understeer and wobble, so I almost drove of the INSIDE of the first corner whilst having to step off the gas! The second corner was a bit dodgy too --- I set the car up by turning in a touch early and loading the suspension up as I would have had to before... I found myself going around the corner before the apex so had to straighten up and then hook it in again... It was totally controllable the whole way once I realised to stop thinking of it as my car and re-learn the EF Rockin Wagon code of practice.



Thanks for the comments re creative VS boring. Even I possibly wouldn't buy a technical manual written by myself, but I know a lot of people who have drawings and posters I've done on their walls! Some are even advertising tourism operations that have been out of business for over a decade but are still on backpackers and hostels walls.

No idea to this day about the head gaskit change. I had the head machined and somehow outlet port 6 valve got bent. When I took the rocker cover off myself I noticed it had been replaced with an older EA style unit. Possibly the oil cavities work differently? More likely I would say something was dropped into oil cavities which worked its was into the pump or something. The pressure dropped slowly over 500k until the car started beeping and rattling from top end. When I revd it hard the pressure went up but it drained out the top end faster than I could get it there. Result - very rattly top end, possibly dodgy bottom end, and a shell of a car which I am still waiting to get the gearbox back from.









The U-Bolts from exhuast shops are thin alright - and they never seem to have a 73mm. They have 80's and above and 60's and below... Which is fine, but they are awfully fragile looking. Will continue to hold out for something perfect below the $30 each mark! Something will come up, and it is an easy swap...


Respray will blow budget, for sure. That's why I'm going to do it with spray cans from Supercheap...



KIDDING. I am *not* going to respray the car with spray cans from Supercheap. Promise. No matter how tempting the cheapness is.

There was a spray painter who wanted me to work on his house (being a builder, I figure I may be able to accommodate that) in exchange for doing a bit of a paint on the car. Just where his number went is beyond me, but I'll dig it up when I finally sort out my worldly possessions.

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.