PhilMeUp

Years ago when I was looking for a secondhand washing machine I figured that I'd start by calling a few washing machine repair places. They all said the same thing - buy an old crappy one. They used to have metal gears in the gearbox and lasted forever. Then, manufacturers realised that their stuff was lasting too long, and therefore costing them sales. So they started putting plastic gears in them, which eventually wore out. These days washing machines electronic push button panels. The problem there is if/when the panel fails then the whole machine gets thrown out. These things aren't designed or made to be repaired. These days I've got a 1999 Maytag Quiet Plus II (model number LAT9806AGE) that I bought for $200 on eBay in 2008. No frills, industrial looking thing. 7kg. Will probably last forever, and if it doesn't then I'll get it rebuilt. Basically, get a low frills one with less bells and whistles, but a more solid infrastructure. For a replacement washing machine, call various repair places. It might be more viable to get an older rebuilt one. Or, do a search on Gumtree semi regularly for Maytag and see what turns up (ie Maytag stuff is actually built to last).

Removing the thermo fans. This is the belt that I wanted to replace. If that belt breaks then the car can’t be driven. I used my AmPro extendable 1/2” drive ratchet with a 3/8” adaptor to rotate the tension arm so that I could remove the old belt. This is also why I put a belt routing decal on any Falcon that I deal with. The last thing I need when dealing with a drive belt is trying to figure out how it goes back on. Putting the new belt on. I finally figured out to start at the tension arm pulley and route the belt from there. The new belt in place. Then it was time to replace the two radiator hoses. I figured that I’d get the more difficult one (ie the lower one) over with first. However, some clown had put the hose clamp on the wrong way around. It could only be accessed from underneath the car. The hose on the left is the one from the coolant tank to the radiator. The hose in the middle of the photo goes from the radiator to the water pump. I jacked up the front of the car and removed the black plastic splash guard. That silver bit in the middle of the photo is the hose clamp. I removed the lower hose and watched the new coolant that I put in a few days ago flow out onto the carport floor. Another brain fade moment - I should have had the new hose ready to immediately put on the radiator outlet to stop the coolant from flowing out. And, waited on replacing the coolant until I had the new radiator hoses so that I could have done both jobs at once. Getting the new hose into place was difficult - there wasn’t the usual space because of the large turbo intake pipe. Because of the large intake pipe being in the way I had trouble with getting the new hose onto the water pump intake. Eventually I got the new hose secured on properly at each end. And put the lower hose clamp on the right way around. The old upper hose. It was in good condition but I wanted to replace it anyway. The new upper hose in place. This took seconds to do. After sitting on ramps and axle stands for a few days the car was back on wheels and mobile again. I’m starting to make some decent progress on this car now - there’s still quite a lengthy list of things to do, but the list of things that I’ve completed is also growing. Tonight I also went out and bought a set of replacement rear leaf springs that were on a brand new XR6 Turbo ute for only a few weeks before they were replaced with lower ones. The car is sitting lower than it should, so those and new front springs will get it back up to an acceptable height. Its lowered state also explains why there is so much damage underneath the front bumper and on the splash guard.

Wednesday, 1st July, 2015 After bombing out with getting the bearing hubs off the spindles late last night I took them to a taxi workshop this afternoon. The mechanic used a gear puller to pull the bearing hubs off, but it took a few attempts. The bearing hubs put up one hell of a fight. The studs on each spindle had corrosion. My usual drill and wire brush didn’t have any effect so I got some wet & dry sandpaper and rubbed the stub smooth. Then I tested it by sliding one of the bearing hubs on. All good. The other spindle had even more corrosion. After I had cleaned it up with the wet & dry. Then it was time for the drill and wire brush to clean the insides of the disc rotors. These discs will be replaced with some brand new DBA4000s later on Putting the passenger side spindle back in place. I bought this Snap-On TECH3FR250 a few years ago specifically for this task - it has the capacity to tighten nuts and bolts to 300Nm. After two nights on what should have been a half-hour job, I finally had one of the bearing hubs in place. After putting the calipers back on I put some grease on each of the wheel studs and inside the wheel nuts. I also put new wheel nuts on. This is how I tighten wheel nuts. I let the trolley jack down enough so that the tyre is in contact with the ground. This stops the wheel from rotating when I tighten the wheel nuts. However, I don’t let the suspension compress. I took the car for a test drive. After accelerating to 60km/h I put the transmission into neutral and let the car coast along. There was no bearing noise that I could hear. Back to the engine bay again, to replace the radiator hoses and drive belt. When I topped up the power steering fluid last week I put too much in and it has overflowed. I drained some of the power steering fluid with a syringe and cleaned up the area. The new drive belt and two radiator hoses. The existing parts don’t look like they’ve got a problem, but these parts are cheap and replacing them now will hopefully ensure that they won’t fail in the future.

Photos: Photos of 6-piston calipers for BA/BF and FG: http://www.fordxr6turbo.com/forum/topic/90499-photo-essay-swapping-brembo-calipers-between-babf-and-fg Rebuilding 4-piston calipers: http://www.fordxr6turbo.com/forum/topic/90508-photo-essay-rebuilding-brembo-calipers/ The 4-piston calipers are all symmetrical. Have a play around with swapping brackets, nipples and crossover pipes around and you'll see that you can have them in the correct place. I was doing this at home here a few weeks ago when someone was looking at buying a set of 4-piston front Brembos for his FG.

Got a part number?

I've got something like that here, but figured it would take forever for the heat to get from the outside of the bearing hub through to the inner race. And then the heat has to get past the actual ball bearings. I took the spindles to a taxi workshop this afternoon and watched a mechanic have a go at it with his gear puller. Both bearing hubs put up one hell of a fight! I actually had some spare spindles put aside for this exact possibility, but threw them out a few weeks ago. I'll be keeping a spare pair in the future. It has become more work than I expected, but it's all just common everyday BA/BF Falcon stuff. And I know that particular series of Falcon pretty well these days, so I know what parts to check and replace. That's the blessing and the curse - I can make a list of things to check easily enough, but pretty much all of those things on the list will need replacing. At least I get the parts cheap enough, and the labour isn't costing me anything. Will be a bloody good ute once I've finished the list.

Do a search for FG on Gumtree and then navigate to the Parts & Accessories listing. http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/mirrabooka/wrecking/ford-falcon-fg-2009-white-/1082463435 In addition to Wiggum's list, try Bianca Automotive in North Perth. If you're going to buy a new one then send me a part number and I'll see what price I can get.

Tuesday, 1st July, 2015 Tonight it was time to get into some mechanical work by replacing the front wheel bearing hubs. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, this car is making huge amounts of noise on the road and I’m pretty sure that this noise is coming from worn front bearing hubs. The wheels still had the original FPV lock nuts. The matching socket was in the glovebox, which defeats the point of having lock nuts in the first place (ie that’s the first place that a thief will look). The amount of rust on the disc rotors indicated that removing them was going to be a challenge. You’ll remember the wheel bearing hubs from earlier that were covered in rust. I dropped them off at Aeroplate in Welshpool to get cleaned up. I don’t know how used they are so I’ll put them on and see if they make any noise. I couldn’t get the first disc rotor off so figured I’d remove the disc rotors and bearing hubs together first, and then separate them after that. Rotating the bearing hub confirmed the source of the noise. Even rotating each hub by hand was making noise. It was the same on both sides, which explains why there was so much noise when the car was being driven (ie both bearing hubs are extremely worn). However, starting with the passenger side, the bearing hub wouldn’t slide off. I kept wrestling with the disc rotor and eventually that came loose, leaving the bearing hub behind (which is what I was trying to do in the first place). I couldn’t get the bearing hub off. I tried various things, including two different crowbars, and couldn’t get it to budge at all. This is where a gear puller would have come in handy. I’ve survived until now without one, and if I was going to buy one then it would need to be big enough to pull the 355 front disc rotors off. Finding something that size that I can justify buying (ie they’re expensive) is a problem. Stuff it, I decided to remove the complete spindle (ie what the bearing hub is on) and have a go at it with my hydraulic press. I bought that ball joint separator from the US last year via mail order. I was looking for something that would separate spindles from ball joints late at night, when I can’t use a hammer to shake it loose because of the noise. Although I got the ball joint separator last year, tonight was the first time that I actually got to try it out. It’s an SPC Performance 37985 4-Way Ball Joint Separator. To separate something like a tie rod end from the spindle normally requires thumping it with a hammer. The resulting vibration shakes things loose. However, late at night I can’t do this because of the noise that it makes. Hence my search last year for a ball joint separator that could separate things quietly. Why this particular ball joint separator? I wanted something that was adjustable to suit different requirements. This one can be pulled apart and reassembled in four different ways, so it will fit into more situations than a normal ball joint separator. YouTube clip: Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/SPC-Performance-37985-4-Way-Separator/dp/B00I5KPACK The ball joint separator pushed the tie rod end out easily. Then it was time for the real test - to see if the ball joint separator could separate the spindle from the ball joint. Much to my surprise, it did it easily. Finally, something went as it should tonight. I removed the upper control arm bolt and removed the spindle with the bearing hub still on it. Then I tried to come up with some way of pushing the bearing hub off the spindle with the hydraulic press. This idea was no good. Another possibility was to push a chisel or some sort of wedge between the spindle and bearing hub but I couldn’t see that idea working out either. Putting that spindle aside, I had a go at removing the spindle on the driver’s side. The separator separated the spindle from the ball joint surprisingly easy. Everything disassembled on the driver’s side. I was determined to finish replacing the bearing hubs, so took the spindles to a nearby shopping centre carpark at 2:30am Various thumping with a hammer achieved nothing. The bearing hubs were well rusted onto the spindles. I put the spindles back in the car and resigned myself to the fact that this task was going to beat me tonight. I’ve only replaced front wheel bearing hubs a handful of times but they’ve slid off the spindles easily each time. I sure made up for that tonight, and I’m definitely going to have to look for a suitable gear puller. At least I’ve got the spindles off (ie mobile) so that I can take them to a workshop with a suitable gear puller. However, getting rid of the bearing hub noise has been something that I’ve wanted to get done since the first time I drove the car. I was extremely frustrated at not being able to get such a fairly easy job finished tonight.

I've gone off the Coke. Pepsi is cheaper. It's on special more often than Coke at IGA.

One Powerball.... Pretty please? I'm also considering permanently carrying a shovel and several bags of lime in the back of the ute. For quick disposal of the body if any arsehole ever crashes into the damn thing. This one looked sooooo good in the Pickles photos... and it's turned out to be yet another big fixer-upper job.

Nah, not a whole lot of motivation this time around. It's been a week and I haven't even finished the list of things that I was going to do on the first night. With the blue one last last year and early this year, I couldn't get enough of it. Every spare second was spent getting that thing cleaned and ready for a licencing inspection. This one... can't be stuffed. Not really into it that much. This one's definitely more of a "get me to the ^%#$ destination" rather than "enjoy the ride". It's also bloody cold outside - 7 degrees late at night is common at the moment. And I wear shorts and t-shirt every day of the year. Huge problem: I know from my taxi background what goes wrong with these cars and what wears out. Which means that I know what work to do now to ensure perfect reliability. But it would be a hell of a lot easier to be naive about it all and watch tv inside the house instead... I wrote a photo guide for cleaning seat belts last year: http://www.fordxr6turbo.com/forum/topic/89678-photo-essay-cleaning-seat-belts Basically, it's the lubrication from the silicon spray that makes it retract properly. I just go one step further and clean the grime out of the seat belt webbing and plastic guide to try and make it work for longer (ie slow down the build-up of grime in the plastic guide). It's worth removing the outer plastic and having a look at the plastic guide (ie underneath where the webbing slides) to see how much grime there is. If there's heaps of mess, and you've got a Torx T50 socket, then go to a car wash and blast water through the seat belt there. Take vise-grip pliers and let the car heater dry the belt for 10 minutes. Easy. I recently ordered some little polishing discs that I'm going to use with my Dremel to see if I can polish the bottom of the plastic guide. Dunno if that will make any difference or not but will have a go.

Tuesday, 30th June, 2015 I urgently needed a driver’s window regulator for another car last night, which resulted in some hunting on Gumtree and a bunch of phone calls. The house that I ended up going to had a BA XR6 Turbo sedan being wrecked in the back shed. I noticed that the driver’s seat belt was still in the car, which is quite rare. The driver’s seat belt is one of the first things that sells from a Falcon wreck. I asked how much he wanted for the seat belt. $20. Sold. Heck, they’re generally impossible to find for $50, and this gave me a quick and easy solution to my seat belt stuff-up last night. I was extremely pleased. I actually ended up buying a bunch of stuff from that wreck - the six CD/colour screen ICC, the blower fan (ie under the glovebox), the driver’s door interior handle, the driver’s seat belt and the driver’s window regulator. Total cost - $150 for the lot. I’ll probably resell the ICC for twice that later on - I have no use for it, but it was too cheap to pass up on. This also results in the seat belt replacement costing me nothing. Much better. Falcon seat belts won’t unwind unless they are mounted in the car - I’ll figure out how to get around that one of these days. I removed the stuffed seat belt from the Tornado, put the replacement in, pulled the belt out and put some vise-grip pliers on to stop it from retracting. Time to get the Ryobi pressure washer out and use the exotic $44.70 garden hose that I bought after screwing up this very simple task two nights ago. The old garden hose had two tiny size holes that were squirting small jets of water everywhere. In winter (ie cold). After stuffing up the other seat belt I was nowhere near having the temperament to put up with cold water being squirted onto the backs of my legs when I tried doing this again. The hose with the tiny holes will be disposed of by some sort of ritual involving fire. In front of the new hose, to show what happens to hoses that squirt cold water onto my legs. The guide wasn’t anywhere near as grimy as the guide on the previous seat belt. The other side was also quite clean. This is the setting that I used to stuff this up on Sunday night. Do not ever use the Ryobi RPW3200’s zero degree setting on a seat belt. Being consistent, I still couldn’t do the job correctly. Next time I do a seat belt that is out of the car I might actually think to put this end of it in a plastic bag to keep it dry. Spraying water through the webbing. I waved the wand up and down each side of the belt and then through the middle section. One cleaned seat belt. That I hadn’t ruined yet. Now I was on a roll. The guide now looked like new. The other side of the guide, also looking like new. Although I ran a towel back and forth along the webbing it was still a tad damp. And I’d gotten the roller end soaking wet. I put it on the front floor of my taxi and left the engine idling for 20 minutes with the heater on full (aimed at the foot area). After that amount of time the whole seat belt was perfectly dry. My temper began to improve. Just a tad. Mounting the base of it back into the car. In the home stretch - not really much left for me to stuff up now. The plastic was already pretty clean, but as I don’t foresee any passionate enthusiasm for doing this again in the near future I decided to give the plastic a quick clean in the laundry. The taxi was still warmed up from drying the seat belt, so I put the plastic in there for a few minutes to also dry off. Once I put the seat belt back into the car it was retracting reasonably well, but I squirted some silicon spray into the bottom of the guide to make it work better. This helps to lubricate between the seat belt webbing and plastic guide. If your seat belt isn’t retracting properly and you don’t have the tools or inclination to remove the seat belt and wash it, then do this first. The WD40 brand of silicon spray has that oh-so-useful nozzle that flips up, instead of looking around for one of those little tube things and then spending 10 minutes going nuts while trying to jam it into the nozzle (and watching it flick away into the distance when it doesn’t slide in). I have seen these cans in SuperCheap Auto and Bunnings. Buy one. Amongst other things, use it to lubricate the seat belt guide and window guides. It is one of the greatest injustices in the world that every single aerosol can ever made doesn’t also have a flip-up nozzle like this. At last, it was time to pull the seat belt out and see if it retracted properly. It did. Very quickly. It was good. I did this numerous times, giggling like a psychotic idiot. After two attempts, and way too much time, I had actually gotten a seat belt to retract. With overwhelming euphoria I stood back and marvelled at the fact that I now had a properly functioning seat belt.

Monday, 29th June, 2015 - Part 2 After leaving the car up on ramps and axle stands last night I made sure that I bought a new transmission mount today so that I could get the car back on wheels and drivable. At least I already knew what tools I would need - it’s all 13mm for the transmission mount. No repeatedly climbing out from underneath the car to get yet another spanner or socket. There is a crossmember that bolts to the car body. Between that crossmember and the transmission sits a rubber mount, which supports the transmission without transferring vibrations into the car. When the rubber separates from the metal the transmission will transfer vibrations to inside the car cabin. Despite being almost identical to the rubber mount for the BTR 4 speed transmission, the mount for the 6 speed ZF is almost twice the price. Both are made my MacKay Rubber, in Queensland. The two nuts at the top weren’t particularly easy to access but a 13mm ratchet spanner got in there. Those nuts were on tight and I was a bit concerned that they would strip. And there wasn’t room to fit a 6-sided socket and ratchet in there. It took some force but each nut eventually came loose. Once I had loosened all the downward facing nuts and bolts I used a cordless drill to quickly remove them. The old transmission mount, about to be removed. Yep, definitely worth replacing. The back of the transmission area, before putting the new mount in. The new transmission mount in place. With removing the two nuts at the top, I would have had slightly easier access if I had have removed the crossmember completely before undoing the two top nuts. I then bolted the bottom of the transmission mount to the crossmember. To finish off I had to push the crossmember upward so that the bolts would reach the threads in the car body. This is where the cordless drill was also handy - once I got each bolt lined up I could just pull the trigger on the drill and watch the bolt fly in, instead of stuffing around clumsily with a ratchet. However, I had to be careful with making sure that the bolts and threads were lined up properly before spinning the bolts rapidly with the drill - I didn’t want to risk damaging any of the threads in the car body. Even without trying to bend the rubber you can see how it is starting to break apart. Now I was finished with being underneath the car. Then I decided to check the spare wheel winch. More problems. Tomorrow night’s job.

That’s a nice shiny new fuel filter there. It will look nice in the rubbish bin - I was always going to replace it anyway. I used 14mm and 19mm spanners to hold the filter in place and loosen the nuts. I was pleased that the 14mm nuts on the pipes came loose quite easily and didn’t round off. A 14mm flare spanner would be better for this, but I don’t have one. I put in place a Motorcraft AFG55AA fuel filter (ie Ford genuine part). I was rapt to finally complete the two tasks that I had set for underneath the car. But what the hell, while I’m there I might as well have a look at the transmission mount rubber. I removed the cross member and found that although the rubber wasn’t entirely finished, it was on its way. I didn’t have a new one and so decided to leave the car up on the ramps and axle stands for the night so that I could replace it the next day. Another photo of the Plazmaman surge tank. Whenever I do work like this I always make sure that I get the car finished for the night and back on wheels (ie drivable). However, I made an exception this time so that I could have easy access to the transmission mount. It was about 5am and 7.1 degrees outside when I decided to knock off for the night.

A few solid taps with the mallet pushed the CV joint off the shaft. I made sure that I’d bought the correct centre bearing. Making sure that I had a record of which way around the new centre bearing was meant to go on. It was a bit of a battle, but enough thumping with a hammer and chisel eventually got the old centre bearing off. I put some metal tube over the new centre bearing to tap it into place. I finally had the new centre bearing in place. Getting the rubber boot over the end of the shaft was a challenge. I used some needle-nose pliers to pull it over but was careful to not tear the rubber boot. Sliding the rubber boot on was difficult. I pushed a fairly small flat-blade screwdriver through and rotated it around in circles to help slide the rubber boot along the shaft. Once that half of the CV joint had slid into place I could start bolting things back together. I didn’t want any vibration from the completed tail shaft, so used a torque wrench to tighten each bolt the same amount. Finally, a completed tail shaft with a new centre bearing. As mentioned, I had used minimal pressure with the hydraulic press to hold the tail shaft in place. I decided to get very carried away with being thorough with this tail shaft. I loosened the bolts on the rubber coupling and retightened them to 77Nm. The new centre bearing and the old one, side by side. A huge difference. Finally, I had replaced the very deceased old centre bearing with a new one. When I removed the tail shaft I did it the hard way by wrestling it past the exhaust. This meant pushing the exhaust to one side enough (ie rubber mounts on the exhaust) until there was enough gap between it and the car body. With one hand, while trying to hold the complete tail shaft up with the other hand. At the time, I was directly underneath the exhaust and couldn’t see any other option. However, when it came to putting the tail shaft back in I had a proper look and realised that it could easily be fed over the top of the exhaust at the back of the car and through to the front. Much easier. There was a bit more wrestling to get the tail shaft and transmission to line up properly. Once again the torque wrench got used to make sure that everything was consistently torqued up to Ford’s specifications. Once I had the front of the tail shaft bolted back in it was time to bolt in the back of the tail shaft. The torque wrench was used to ensure consistency. The finished job. At last, a new centre bearing in place.

Monday, 29th June, 2015 - Part 1 After replacing the front indicator globes last week I wanted to do the same with the rear ones. I dropped the tailgate and removed the two bolts that hold the tail light in place. To prevent scratching the paint, I used an upholstery removal tool to lever the tail light out from its mounting. That’s twice in one week that I’ve actually used the proper tool for something like this, instead of the usual flat-blade screwdriver. Hell is freezing over. Then I realised that the rear indicators have a clear globe and an orange lense, instead of the orange globe and clear lens that the front indicators have. Thus, there was no reason to replace the globes. The front indicator globes are a fairly uncommon BAU15s globe, instead of the much more common BA15s that most cars use. The rear indicator globes are the common BA15s. You can see the minor difference in the bayonets. I have no idea why Ford decided to go with the uncommon (ie harder to find) BAU15s. It had taken a fair bit of leverage with the upholstery removal tool to get the tail light out, so I squirted some silicon spray into the mountings to make it a bit easier if I need to remove it again some day. The hard lid open - I’m going to remove it once I start using the Tornado regularly. The rear tub is in good condition. I’m pleased that the buttons are already in place for future soft tonneau use. I have no regular need to enclose the tub area, but will be carrying things occasionally that I want to keep covered (ie wet weather). I’m going to keep a soft tonneau folded up and kept behind one of the seats for occasional use. Why remove the hard lid? Try carrying a motorbike in the back… I’ll either keep the hardlid setup stored at home (if I can find somewhere for it) or advertise it for sale. If I sell it then the proceeds will go toward a set of tyres that the 353rwkw needs. This thing spins the back wheels easily on dry bitumen, so will require very delicate throttle control in wet conditions. Tonight’s job was to replace the centre bearing. The hard part about doing this at home is getting underneath the car. I drove the car up onto some ramps and then jacked up the back of the car with a trolley jack at the diff. Once the trolley jack was at maximum height I put some axle stands under the front mounts of the leaf springs. I put the yellow chocks under the front wheels to ensure that the car wouldn’t roll backward when I jacked up the back of the car (ie once the back wheels are off the ground there is no handbrake). Once the axle stands were in place I let the trolley jack down a bit to put weight on the stands, but left the trolly jack in place as a backup. After double checking everything I got underneath the car. I started by removing the three bolts that bolt the rubber drive coupling to the transmission. This is where an extra long ratchet spanner comes in handy. I bought the Draper 19494 Extra Long 18mm Metric Ratcheting Combination Spanner for bolts such as this and the ones that attach the tail shaft to the diff on my taxi. The bolts on the rear of the tail shaft were on extremely tight. I used an extendable ratchet and six-sided impact socket, and watched carefully as I applied pressure to each bolt to ensure that none of the bolt heads started to strip. I used a mallet and large flat-blade screwdriver to push the tail shaft out of the diff mounting. Eventually I had the tail shaft out. As I don’t have a bench and vice, I put the tail shaft in my hydraulic press. I was careful to only use as pressure as required to hold the tail shaft (ie not enough pressure to squash the tube). The rubber around the centre bearing was well and truly perished. Anyone want to buy a secondhand centre bearing? Only slightly used... I started disassembling the CV joint with an 8mm allen key socket. I needed to put some markings on each part so that I can ensure that I put them back together in the same way. I didn’t have a suitable white marker pen so tried a fine point black marker pen. I figured that there was a risk of that getting wiped off with my hands so dug out a very old bottle of touch-up paint and put paint dots everywhere. Once the bolts were moved the CV joint came apart. With a pair of circlip pliers I then removed the circlip on the end of the shaft. I removed the boot clamp with a pair of needle-nose pliers. Once the clamp was off I started pushing the rubber boot back with a flat-blade screwdriver. I pushed the rubber boot back as far as I could and ended up using a rubber mallet to knock the CV joint half off the shaft.

Sunday, 28th June, 2015 This is one good looking car. I’ll be removing the hard lid sometime in the near future. For now, it does look good, though. The driver’s seatbelt doesn’t retract at all. Time to fix that with some high pressure water. I started by removing the bottom bolt with a Torx T50 socket. To remove the top plastic I used an upholstery removal tool instead of the usual screwdriver. I’m getting really sophisticated these days. Then I removed the top bolt that holds the seatbelt guide in place. I pulled the seatbelt out as far as it could go and put some vise-grip pliers on the bottom of the seatbelt to prevent it from retracting. I now had most of the seatbelt outside of the car. This is what prevents the seatbelt from retracting. Grime transfer’s from the driver’s hands into the seatbelt webbing, and then builds up in the guide. The other side of the guide was also full of grime. I recently sold my Ryobi RPW2400 (2400psi) and bought a new Ryobi RPW3200 (3200psi) to replace it. I laid the seat belt out on the ground and blasted water through it to rinse out the grime. The RPW3200 has an adjustable nozzle on the end, so I set it to the narrowest and most concentrated setting so that I could have maximum water pressure to clean out the guide. However, the water pressure was so much that it got into the seatbelt webbing. Ok, I won’t be using that nozzle setting on a seatbelt again. Next time I might even remember to close the car door before spraying water at 3200psi everywhere. Idiot. However, the seat belt guide was now much cleaner. The other side of the guide after blasting it with high pressure water. After I took this photo I also had a go with some eucalyptus aerosol spray and a cotton stick. This removed a bit more grime - there was a bit of black on the cotton stick afterward. While I had the pressure washer out the taxi got its weekly wash and the wheels on both Tornados got cleaned. Once I was done with the pressure washer I ran a towel back and forth along the belt to remove as much water as possible. To finish drying the seatbelt I draped it around the driver’s seat and left the car idling for 20 minutes with the heater on full. Time to enjoy a properly retracting seat belt. Or, maybe not. It turns out that where I had focussed the water with the narrowest setting had also thickened the seat belt webbing, resulting in it not fitting through the guide. Thus, no retracting seat belt after all. Bugger. Lesson learned for next time. Not happy. This means that I’ll have to replace the seat belt, and I know how hard it is to find a good secondhand driver’s seat belt. I also know how much new ones cost (lots). After some brief consideration of this I elected to spit the dummy, swear a lot and storm off in a huff. I went to Bunnings and bought an overpriced garden hose.

Got my attention.... My Tornado version 2.0 is still licenced in NSW. Technically not legal to drive in WA because I am not a NSW resident. Went to a cop shop last night to see what turns up on their system when they type in the NSW plate. Nothing. Turns out that the states don't communicate with each other with car registrations and driver's licences. WA police can't check NSW rego. Goody. NSW rego runs out end of August. I've got two months to save up enough to pay Wiggum to apply a solution (ie emissions... need to get past a 5 gas test). Lesson: Put local plates on an unlicenced car and cops will bust you pronto (ie computers in cop cars). Use plates from another state and they can't check. Likewise for driver's licence. Can't believe that such a loophole exists in 2015. Use out of state plates... get fake licence over the net from Bangkok...

Did't want to get GOTIM PTY LTD?

Photo guide: http://www.fordxr6turbo.com/forum/topic/88405-photo-essay-babf-ute-wagon-rear-axle-bearing-replacement Make sure that you clear out the groove at the of the axle tube (ie where the seal will sit). Removing and re-fitting axles is easy enough. Remove and take them to a workshop if you want to do it cheap and don't have a press. Somewhere that uses a press regularly, eg suspension place. I use Timken 2985 bearing kits. Pay around $30 each. These days I do it at home, but when I used to have it done at a taxi workshop I was paying $130 per side (including bearing). One time last year I replaced the axle bearings on both sides and had an oil leak afterward. Was pissed off at the time, so remove the axle, had a look around and put it back together how it was. Didn't leak after that, so the seal was probably just not sitting properly. So, remove the axle, clean out the end of the axle tube, put it all back together and see how it goes. You'll need an 8mm allen key to remove the bolts that hold the axle in. Edit: Getting the rear discs off can be a nightmare if they are rusted on. There's a solution for that in my Tornado thread: http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?t=11429105

In the middle is one of the new indicator globes that I used. On each side are the two old ones from the front. You can see how the cellophane wears off over time, making the indicators less orange. As the cellophane wears off the globes flash white instead of orange. I wanted clear, bright orange indicators, hence the new globes. The Falcons use BAU15S indicator globes, instead of the more common BA15S that is used on most other cars. The difference is in the bayonet (ie where it screws into the car mounting). I also replaced the windscreen wipers with Tridon 22” ones. Rather than just replace the wiper rubbers, I replace the complete wiper blades when I first do anything on a new car. This ensures that it’s easier to replace the rubbers in the future, and the small metal mountings for the rubber won’t be bent and allow the rubbers to slide out of place (resulting in the blade scratching the windscreen glass). Now that the car was mobile again it was time for a drive. I’ve been having problems with the car dropping back into limp-mode all week, so have only driven the car late at night so that I can drive home at a slow speed if required. I drove around for about 15-20 minutes and did numerous hard acceleration runs on quiet roads. I was extremely pleased when the engine ran as it should, and the car didn’t go into limp mode at all. After driving around for a while it occurred to me that the diff oil would now also be warmed up. Might as well go and change the diff oil while I can. I bought the Motive Products Power Fill 1740 a while ago via mail order from the US. It makes putting new diff oil in easy - by pumping the handle at the top, pressure builds up inside (similar to a weed sprayer bottle). The hook on the end of the hose hangs off the diff oil filler hole, and there’s a tap also on the end of the hose. For diff oil, I use Penrite Pro Gear 80-140, which is a heavy duty synthetic oil. It’s expensive, but regarded by diff places as being one of the best diff oils available. The old diff oil draining out. As expected, it was black. To get the car on the angle I wanted: - I drove the front wheels up on to wheel ramps. - I jacked the car up at the diff with my trolley jack. - Then I put axle stands under the front leaf spring mounts. - By letting the trolley jack down, the diff was then at an angle suitable for draining the old oil (ie the diff drops as the trolley jack is lowered and the leaf springs uncompress). - For the new oil, I used the pressure bottle to get oil up to the level of the fill hole, and then used the trolley back to raise the diff up to the right angle to top it up. - I jacked up the car to the maximum height with the trolley jack, removed the axle stands, removed the trolley jack and reversed the car off the ramps. The car, off the ground. There is a trolley jack and a pair of axle stands under there - you can see the blue tip of one of the axle stands in front of one of the wheels. I’ve had a pair of 2,000kg axle stands for a while now, but wanted something bigger and more solid (ie safer). I saw some 4,000kg Orcon axle stands in an Autobarn shop for $99.95. They have a deal where you join their Autoclub via their web site and then get a 20% discount on your next purchase there. I did that and end up paying around $80 for the big 4,000kg axle stands. They are tall - the trolley jack has to be at full height before they’ll fit under the car - but they’re solid and safer than the smaller 2,000kg ones. It was a tight squeeze, but I had a look underneath the car. The surge tank is that metal canister and box in the middle of the photo. To the right, with the two pipes going into it, is the standard BF Falcon heat exchanger. This can fail, resulting in a ruined transmission. I’ve got a secondhand PWR heat exchanger that will be going in its place (ie much better construction and more reliable). Dear Diary, I’m currently working on my third ute in the last 12 months - every time I do the work and get something up to my standard I find a better one that I want. After having last minute drama with worn centre bearings each time, I’m so glad that I won’t have to stuff around with replacing yet another centre bearing on a car project. With my large physical size, getting underneath the car to get to the tail shaft is a big challenge (literally). I’m so relieved that I won’t have to go through all that again. Oh. Crap. Bugger. *Sigh.* Hi ho, hi ho, off to Hardy Spicer I go… For anyone that doesn’t know anything about centre bearings: It’s something that is about half way along the tail shaft (ie the bit between the transmission and diff). It helps to suspend the tail shaft in the correct position. There is a bearing, which is surrounded by a rubber diaphragm, and the whole lot sits in a metal bracket. Over time, the rubber perishes (as rubber does), which is what has happened here. That rubber is completely stuffed and the centre bearing should have been replaced a long time ago. The dump pipe and catalytic converter. They are both of a rather large diameter. Huge. There’s a plastic sump on the ZF transmission instead of the more desirable steel one. 4:32am and 7.7 degrees. Knock off time. Having spent my first serious late night session working on the car, I’ve now gotten to know the car a bit better. I’ve ticked off a few jobs on the list, but added new ones in the process (eg centre bearing). There’s definitely going to be a lot more work going into this car than I originally expected. Although the car looks damn good, there are numerous mechanical issues that need to be addressed. Apart from the problems with the car going into limp-home mode earlier in the week, there’s nothing particularly overwhelming - it’s just a matter of keeping a list of tasks to do, and then working through it all, job by job.

This tab gets screwed to a crossmember but the plastic tab often breaks off. That would be why I’ve bought this secondhand splash guard from somewhere. However, a front section of plastic had still come away from the main section. I’ll sort that out with a drill and some zip-ties in a few minutes. As mentioned, the front plastic tab breaks off. Someone has previously prevented this on the old splash guard by making up this metal bracket and bolting it on. I like this idea. I wanted to make a template of this bracket so that I could get some made up for future use. I flattened it with my hydraulic press, took it inside and traced around it on some paper with a marker pen. Once I had an outline of it on paper, I put it back in the press to bend it back into the required shape. I drilled some holes and bolted it to the replacement splash guard. I also drilled holes and put some zip-ties through to hold the plastic sections together. The replacement splash guard is on the left. The previous one (on the right) also had a lot of damage from hitting kerbs and driveways. This is the main reason why I set about replacing the splash guard with the spare that I had. There are plastic hooks that help hold it into place, and one of those hooks was broken off. Rather and have a bunch of Philips head screws to contend with (as well as the original factory screws) I wanted it to be as close to the original setup as possible. About the put the new splash guard on. Before putting the replacement splash guard on I had a look around and saw the pod air filter. It needs cleaning, but that will involve removing the front bumper. I also noticed that I could easily access the driver’s side front indicator globe while I was there. Goody, I could get that done now instead of going in through the wheel arch later. I put a new BAU15S globe in and sprayed some silicon spray on the o-ring and base of the orange plastic holder to make it easier to screw back in. The base of the Plazaman 1000hp intercooler. It’s big and wide. With Falcons, the windows sit in rubber guides. Friction eventually develops between the rubber and window glass, forcing the window regulator (ie electric motor) to work extra hard moving the glass up and down. This causes premature failure of the window regulator. This is why I periodically spray some silicon spray into the window guides on my Falcons. I squirt silicon spray into each guide (front and rear of each door frame) and then run the window up and down 10-15 times to ensure that the silicon lubricant is spread throughout the guides. I wanted to fit new spark plugs, so bought a set of the same that was previously in the car - NGK BKR7E. I read numerous forum posts about different spark plugs, but decided in the end to go with the same model of spark plug that the car was originally tuned with when the engine was modified. Putting the new spark plugs in. The coil cover bolts. In recent months I have been experimenting with some heat-proof o-rings under the coil cover bolts instead of the original fibre washers. This is to prevent water getting past them when I wash the engine bay. However, I wanted to make sure that the rubber o-rings would seal properly against the bolt heads. I did a quick lap underneath each bolt head with a Dremel and wire brush. An o-ring on one of the coil cover bolts. Once the new spark plugs were fitted it was time to drive the car forward. I loosened the plastic splashguard in the wheel area and removed the washer pump. I then ran the garden hose in it for a minute or so at low pressure to flush out any junk that might have been in there. Now that I was finished with the engine bay, I could let the engine idle for a while and top up the coolant.

Thursday, 25th June, 2015 Although I will end up getting the cooling system flushed properly, and learn about other ways to flush engine oil, I had these two in the shed so figured that I might as well use them. The Tectaloy Heavy Duty Radiator Flush and Wynns Engine Flush would at least be a start - I was always going to replace the coolant and engine oil in the first week of ownership anyway. Getting things set up. The Stanfred ramps are from SuperCheap Auto, along with the optional extenders that allow a lowered car to get onto the ramps. However, I don’t like the ramps themselves - the loop at the end isn’t big enough (ie to stop the car from driving over the edge). I had a problem with my previous Tornado going over the edge one night and damaging the sideskirts. At the time I thought that was just a stuff-up on my part, and I’ve been extremely careful with using those ramps since. However, when I reversed my taxi up onto them recently it also went over the edge. After the Tornado drama, I was being extremely careful. I’ll need to take them to a metal fabrication place and get some bigger loops welded onto the end of each ramp. Getting ready for draining the engine oil and coolant. The instructions on each bottle of flushing stuff said to let the engine idle for 15 minutes, so that is what I did. After 15 minutes I drained the engine oil, which came out a lot blacker than what was previously on the dip stick. The black plastic splash guard goes between the front bumper and a chassis crossmember. On the left is one of the original screws, which has a 7mm head. However, someone has added a bunch of additional Philips head screws as well. I reached up and loosened the coolant tap. The old coolant started draining out. I grabbed a clean white ice cream carton and put that under the coolant drain so that I could have a good look at how much junk was in the coolant. It was better than I expected, but I wanted to know that there was fresh coolant in there anyway. I’ve got a bunch of concentrated stuff that I use. I mix it up at a 10:1 ratio with distilled water in some old Tectaloy bottles that I’ve kept. Once the old orange-coloured coolant had drained I poured some of my green coolant in and watched until it drained out. That way I knew that I’d gotten rid of as much as the old coolant as possible. Although I had a big parts order for this car waiting at the warehouse, I decided to change the pulleys then by using a couple of spares that I keep at home for my taxi. Loosening the two bolts that hold the cooling fan in place was easy enough, but getting the fan past the rubber hose was going to be a problem. After some jiggling and wrestling I finally got the cooling fan out. Getting it back in later was going to be a challenge. Once the cooling fan was out I could access the pulleys. I removed the old idle pulley and tension arm. I put the old idle pulley over a finger and rotated the pulley. I could feel how worn the bearing was, and it was making noise even by spinning the pulley with my other hand. With the tension pulley, Ford lists only the complete tension arm and pulley as a complete kit for the BF Falcon (ie expensive). However, the trick is to order the identical pulley on its own from an earlier model Falcon (EL & EF). I reused the previous bolt and washer, and put a bit of mild Loctite 222 on the bolt. For the idle pulley, Ford also lists a complete kit for it instead of the pulley on its own. The extra parts are the bolt, a bit of plastic that goes inside the bearing centre and an o-ring. The wholesale cost difference between the kit and pulley on its own is $3.29, so I order the complete kit each time to ensure that I’ve got a fresh bit of plastic and o-ring. As with the tension pulley, I put some Loctite 222 on the bolt. Once I had the new pulleys in place I could move on to putting the cooling fan back in. A photo showing where the coolant drain tap is (the white plastic thing that is unscrewed). I tightened the coolant tap and put new coolant in. The black plastic splash guard that came of the Tornado was missing one of the plastic hooks that holds it in place (hence the extra Philips head screws). I had a spare secondhand splash guard, so decided to put that on instead. It was covered in dirt and cobwebs so I gave it a clean with CT18 and water.

Update: I put new spark plugs in tonight (NGK BKR7E) and the car ran like it should. No hiccups, except for plenty of wheelspin and traction control kicking in. Can't see how spark plugs could trigger TPS error codes and send car into limp-home mode. Drove the car around for 15-20 minutes, including numerous hard acceleration runs. Car didn't drop back to limp-home mode, but the speedo drops out and stops working when accelerating hard. Speedo works again after engine is turned of and started up again. The car did whisper to me that it would like to interact with Ralph Wiggum in the near future in regard to transmission flush and fitting of PWR heat exchanger.

Thought you'd never ask! It's 2:45am now... can be at your place around 3:30am. C'ya there. Seriously, the minute you've got time and inclination to help me out with this thing just say when and where. Late afternoon onward on a Sunday would be ideal. I know Falcon general mechanical stuff fairly well these days... from doing taxi stuff at stupid hours of the night. I know close to zero about turbo stuff (ie they make whooshing noises and go fast). Current status: The thing actually drove for about 15-20 minutes tonight without going into limp-home mode. I can't see how fitting new NGK BKR7E spark plugs could be the solution (ie what I've done tonight), but I'll be ecstatic if it is... Dammit... diff oil's been draining for a while now. Time to go back to work. Will take the laptop with me and do an updated check for diagnostic codes.