PhilMeUp

Serves you right for not going with a ZF. Make amends.

The rear ones (ie shackle bushes) are piss easy. Do the front ones need replacing?

Yep, first one to find the Volvo's oil. Stupid ^%@ Volvo.

Oh dear. The girls just crashed on lap 16. RIP pussy wagon. Bugger.

This stuff is half price for today only at SuperCheap Auto. http://www.supercheapauto.com.au/#PR_On_Sale http://www.supercheapauto.com.au/catalogue/default.aspx#page=catalogue&params=happy-bathurst-day-1-2-price-deals%2F545s74giq&additional=pid%3DpromotedCatalogue&pageNo=0 Direct PDF link: http://images.lasoomedia1.com.au/imageicon/sca/prod/j00568711/c_002/sca_prod_j00568711_c_002_r01.pdf

They can also be fibreglassed from the inside.

Problem that I haven't mentioned yet: Blue ute was driven home at an average of about 20km/h. Used my taxi knowledge to use every backroad possible between Maylands and Como. It's in limp mode (ETC light is on). Diagnostic error is P0221, which has to do with the throttle position sensor. Pulled the crossover manifold off last night, sprayed carby cleaner everywhere and had a general poke-around. Nup. Left the battery off overnight. Started car this afternoon. Nup, still in limp mode. Bugger. Two FPV Tornados here. One that runs... usually... but is now out of rego (my attempts to get a dodgy inspection last week failed). The other one is licenced but wants to barely move. Bugger. I also haven't mentioned that the transmission in the green one might be stuffed as well. It was slipping like mad one night last week and eventually wouldn't move. After a while it got moving again, but is doing its own limp-home mode - stays in 3rd gear all the time. I'm hoping that a fluid flush sorts it out, but not enough battery voltage could also be the issue. Soooooooooooooooo much time and effort on two cars... so little success.

The dashcam that I ordered recently arrived a couple of days later. Lesson from that night: start putting dashcams in every car I own (ie taxis).

Monday, 5th October, 2015 Today I picked up the Tornado from the panel beater. After spending two weeks in a dusty environment it was due for a wash. The cracked sideskirts have been fixed but the replacement Tornado badges haven’t been put on yet. I had also swapped the previously incorrect thermofan for a correct one. The one on the left is the broken one, with cracks in the plastic. I put the replacement thermofan in. The mounts for the crossover manifold are broken and will need to be replaced. The front yard. The motorbike tie downs have been holding an old taxi motor in place in the back, but the engine (on its side) has been leaking oil into the tray. I’ve left the tie-downs soaking in water and Napisan for the night, and will flush them out with the pressure washer later. No more paint chips on the bonnet.

Monday, 21st September, 2015 Today I finally took the Tornado to a panel beater to get the paint chips sorted out, the front bumper painted and the cracked sideskirts fixed. Within minutes the old paint had been scraped off the bonnet. There was a HQ Expensive Daewoo ute that one of the staff was rebuilding for his 16 year old son. The car was parked in the corner for the night.

I put the first intake pipe back on. And then the second intake pipe. That job was finished. I noticed that the rubber mount was broken. I’ll replace that another time. Coolant had gushed everywhere a few nights earlier when the car ran warm, leaving a coating everywhere over my normally clean engine. Then it was time to replace the driver’s side mirror. I removed the black plastic front cover from the replacement mirror so that I could put the blue-painted one on from the original mirror. The front cover is held on by three tabs. I removed the driver’s door trim to get access to the three screws that hold the mirror on. Within minutes the broken mirror was removed from the car. The replacement one in place. I clipped the blue plastic cover back in place. An easy job, and it didn’t cost me any money because I got that mirror for free from a wreck last year. To clean the engine bay I sprayed CT18 everywhere with my weed sprayer bottle. After rinsing the engine, I left it idling for a while to allow the heat to dry out the engine bay. Then it was time to go for a drive and make sure that the cooling system was going to work. I’m going to replace the radiator and cooling fan once I find suitable secondhand ones. 4:29am - time for a quick photo at a local 24 hour servo before heading home to bed.

The one on the right is the original thermofan. The one on the left is the replacement, and wouldn’t fit. I tried putting the original thermofan back in. Although it was cracked and bent, it slid into place easily enough. It will still need to be replaced, along with the radiator, but it meant that the car could at least be driven again. One thing that I never got around to was re-torquing the manifold bolts. I figured I’d have a go at it. I started by removing the two pipes and steering pump cover. I removed the upper bolts, that also hold the heat shields in place. Some of the bolts were only finger-tight. With removing the bolts, I put them in a magnetic tray in the order that they were removed. The rear heat shield was easy enough to remove. The front heat shield took a bit of wrestling, but it came out fairly easily. I set my Snap-On TECH3FR100 torque wrench to 27Nm. The Snap-On TECH3FR100 torque wrench vibrates as it approaches the pre-set torque, and then beeps when it reaches the required torque. I wasn’t able to access to front lower manifold bolt, so used a 1/4” ratchet setup. I estimated how much to tighten it after going over some of the other bolts to get a feel for how tightly done up they were. I put the front heat shield back in place. Each heat shield had a small bolt that attaches its heat shield to the outer manifold. I had bought a new cordless Dremel 8220 a few days earlier, and was keen to use it on something. Using a small wire brush on the Dremel, I cleaned the threads on each bolt. The bolts cleaned up well. The Dremel with the wire brush and cleaned bolts. Work in progress - 3:01am. Putting the upper bolts in before using the torque wrench to tighten them. I used a ring spanner to put the side bolts back in. Then I was done with the torque wrench. I bought that on eBay US a few years ago, when the exchange rate was much better than it is now.

Thursday, 17th September, 2015 I was driving through a quiet suburban street last night when someone decided to stand in the middle of the road to block my path. I stopped, put the high beams on and figured that I might as well just go around him. He was holding an empty milk crate in one hand and swing it at the car as I drove past him. It turned out that he broke the side mirror. This wasn’t a huge problem - I already had a spare mirror at home, and they’re not hard to fit. However, there was another problem to attend to first. Last week I decided to jack up the front of the car with my trolley jack and clean underneath the engine bay. However, the trolley jack slipped forward off the crossmember. I didn’t realise at the time, but the top of the trolley jack ended up under the beam that supports the radiator. This lightweight beam, along with the radiator, had ended up taking the entire weight of the front of the car. I didn’t realise that there was any damage until a few days later, when the car started to run warm. I opened the bonnet and saw that the thermofan plastic frame was broken. Oh dear. I removed the thermofan and confirmed that it was fairly well broken. Sure enough, the radiator was also well bent. This is the new genuine Ford radiator that I spent two nights putting in back in January. You can start to see where the support beam under the radiator has bent upward. Time to get the car up on ramps and have a look underneath. You can see the marks on the black plastic splashguard where the top of the trolley jack slid forward. I started by removing the bolts on one side of the support beam. I also realised that also the radiator is well bent, it wasn’t leaking. I had been trying for the last few days to find a secondhand radiator but hadn’t found one yet. The bend in the bottom of the radiator. I bought a replacement secondhand support beam. You can see how bent the old one was. Another photo showing the bent support beam and its replacement. I had done a pretty thorough job of cleaning underneath the engine on the day that I got the car home, but there was a slight oil mess on one of the front corners of the sump. I went through a bunch of aerosol carburettor cleaner to clean up around the front sump area. The rest of the sump area was clean after blasting it with water last week. I made sure the entire sump area was clean. I’ll check it for a leak in a few weeks. I’ve had a leak in the same area on my taxi as well. The proper solution is to replace the sump gasket, but that involves the time consuming task of removing the aluminium cross member to get the sump off. On the bottom of the radiator, the black plastic part in the centre of the photo plugs into the support beam. The replacement support beam in place. You can start to see just how bent the new radiator is. I bought a secondhand thermofan during the week, so decided to give it a rinse with CT18 and water before putting it in. One cleaned thermofan, ready to be installed. Problem time - the replacement thermofan had different mounts, and wouldn’t fit in.

I thought it was 28mm and minimum of 26mm? Do a lap around the outside of one of the discs with a drill and wire brush - it might be written on the outside.

http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/tuart-hill/brakes-suspension/territory-f6-bf-mkii-fg-rda-rear-rotors-328mm/1091031219

Can't be bothered finding the right thread for these.

Long weekend. Anyone interested in a cruise for either Sunday afternoon or Monday afternoon?

Ditto. Went looking for a charger a while ago. Battery shop staff kept mentioning the Ctek stuff. Managed to find a new/secondhand/unused MXS25 on Gumtree for $270. For keeping track of battery wear in my taxis, I bought a new Midtronics MDX-700 on eBay for $A300. The seller did a crap job on the listing, so no-one else bid. Useful gadget - prints out the CCA rating of each battery and I can monitor how they wear over time. http://www.upsbatterymonitoring.com/shop/products-1/battery-and-electrical-system-diagnostics/mdx-series-conductance-battery-and-electrical-system-analyzers/midtronics-mdx-700hd-battery-tester It's overkill for car stuff, but the price was right...

Instead of having is own thread, just combine it with another thread instead...

This. Someone should get a BF wagon and put a turbo motor in it...

The pulley after it was removed from the tension arm. I put a finger through the bearing and rotated the pulley. I could feel movement in the bearing, indicating that it was worn. I then put put the new pulley on the tension arm. I also added a drop of Loctite 222 (ie mild) to the bolt. Re-routing the belt back into place can get fiddly, so I was careful to leave it in place when I removed the tension arm. There is a metal lump on the tension arm that goes into an indent in the front of the engine block. Where the bump on the tension arm goes. Because I had kept the belt in place, I was able to fit the tension arm back into place without having to re-route the belt. Then it was time to put the belt over the top two pulleys (steering pump and idle pulleys). When putting the belt back on make sure that it fits properly into the ribs on each pulley. Once everything was confirmed in place I ran the engine for a few seconds before starting with putting the thermo fan back in. Once the belt was back in place I had a look around before putting the thermo fan back in. There was a bit of grime around the connection for one of the transmission fluid pipes. I used my high pressure water sprayer to clean up the transmission fluid connection. If you’re ever doing anything in the engine bay of a BA or BF Falcon then check the area around the steering pump. There is an o-ring in the top of the steering hose that can fail, resulting in power steering fluid leaking out. The problem with power steering fluid leaking is that it drops down on to the alternator. This will eventually wreck the alternator, which is not cheap to replace. This is why I check this periodically (eg when checking the engine oil level). There is a mount on each side of the radiator that the thermo fan mounts on to. The part on each side of the thermo fan that slides over the mounts. The top of the thermo fan holds the hose in place. People often forget to reconnect the power cable for the thermo fan. I’ve done it. Mechanics do it. I’m a lot more conscious about it these days, but write a note and put it on the steering wheel if you want to make sure that you don’t forget. Although the engine later running hotter than it should might be a bit of a hint. I did the same job on another taxi of mine, but was frustrated to find that there was still a rattling sound after replacing the two pulleys. I eventually figured out that the tension arm was making the noise. I ended up grabbing another tension arm off a wreck, and that car is now rattle-noise-free. If you want to be cheap (like me) then just do the pulleys. If you want to be thorough then spend the extra money on a new tension arm as well.

A rattling or whining sound from the engine bay could be originating from worn bearings in a couple of the engine pulleys - the idle pulley or the tension arm pulley. A noise that sounds extremely expensive could be as simple as just a worn bearing in either of the idle pulley or tension pulley. My taxi was making whining noises from the engine bay all weekend, which I figured was from one of these pulleys. Replacing these two pulleys is easy and cheap to do. This is the engine bay on my taxi. It looks quite clean, considering that it’s done 489,000km. All I do is give it a spray with CT18 every few months and rinse it out with a garden hose. Because this car is dedicated LPG there is an air pipe to remove first. Then I removed the airbox snorkel. The thermo fan is held in place by one bolt on each side. Each bolt has a 10mm head. I also disconnected the power cable for the thermo fan. A 10mm ratchet spanner removes each bolt in a few seconds. There isn’t room for a ratchet and a normal spanner is slow and cumbersome. BA Falcons had two hoses running from the coolant tank - one overflow and one routing back the thermostat cover. My BFIII didn’t have the hose to the thermostat cover so I bought the thermostat cover, hose and two-outlet coolant tank. This helps to ensure no air locks in the cooling system. The hose to the thermostat is held in place by the upper plastic of the thermo fan. My BFIII has had the standard heat exchanger removed and an external transmission cooler kit fitted. This places a radiator-like cooler at the front of the car. Instead of using rubber hoses my car has aluminium pipes from a BA Falcon as these are sturdier. Once the two bolts are removed and the power cable disconnected the thermo fan lifts out with a big of jiggling from side to side to get the sides of it past the radiator hoses. This leaves a suitable gap between the engine and radiator. To remove the belt the tension arm needs to be rotated - there is a 3/8” square hole in the tension arm for this. I don’t use a 3/8” ratchet so I used my normal 1/2” ratchet with a 1/2” to 3/8” adaptor. Lifting the ratchet upward rotated the tension arm, allowing me to remove the drive belt from the top two pulleys (power steering and idle pulleys). On BA Falcons Ford put a sticker underneath the bonnet which had a diagram of the belt routing. Later Falcons (including mine) didn’t come with this decal, so I bought one and put it in place months ago so that I would have the diagram handy when required. The part number for the decal is BAF9C485A and it retails for $6.32. For removing the pulley bolts I used a six-sided socket to ensure that there was no chance of rounding off the bolt heads. I then removed the idle pulley. The front of the engine after I removed the idle pulley. Part numbers: Idle Pulley: BA8A617A (This includes a new bolt, internal plastic spacer and front washer) Retail Price: $33.55 Drive Belt: SX8620A Retail Price: $54.70 Tensioner Arm and Pulley: BA6B209A (This is for the pulley and complete tension arm) Retail Price: $130.00 Total to replace the idle pulley and tension pulley/arm: $163.55 However, this can be done a bit cheaper. The bolt, plastic spacer and washer for the idle pulley don’t need to be replaced, and the pulley is the same as what was used on the EL and EF Falcon. The tension arm also doesn’t need to be replaced. The pulley on it is also from the EL and EF Falcon. Idle Pulley - EL & EF Falcon: EF6T217A Retail Price: $23.35 Tensioner Pulley - EL & EF Falcon: EF6B217A Retail Price: $26.25 Total for the two pulleys: $49.60 I then removed the bolt that holds the tension arm in place. You can see in this photo the 3/8” hole that is used to rotate the tension arm and loosen the drive belt. The other side of the tension arm. The pulley is attached by a bolt with a 13mm head. I held the tension arm against the ground with one hand and loosened the bolt with a ratchet in the other hand. I also used a six-sided socket for this bolt.

Found a BF ute wreck with 64,000km on it. Bought the seats for $120. The driver's seat in my BFIII wagon taxi has done 996,000km in two cars. Might be time to chuck a new seat in, which will prevent my fat arse from hitting the floor 60 seconds after I get in the car each time. Currently kicking myself for not thinking to buy the suspension while I was there.

Taxi dramas meant that I didn't work tonight. Tonight's income was gonna go on the blue Tornado next week (paint & panel). That's bad. Got some other stuff done. That's good. Thought about life (I'm hating this year, taxi business has gone to sh*t). Need to get into something different. That's good. Just about over the line with buying another business (ie indecisive). That's good. Rang the bloke, had a quick chat and I still can't figure out why no-one else has bought it. Just gotta figure out how to pay for it without selling the green Tornado. Not giving that one up.