2006 Fpv Tornado F6 Ute - Cleanup & Resurrection

[Ralph Wiggum]

Brake bleeding post reeeeeeeeeeemix

I stand corrected, Fraud say outer then inner. Convential wisdom (and google) say inner then outer.

206-03B -FPV Performance Front Disk Brake.pdf

[discostig]

Line joining the two halves is at the bottom so the air should all be at the top near the nipple unless it's bone dry I'd think? I must go read.

[PhilMeUp]

  On 05/01/2015 at 12:19 PM, Ralph Wiggum said:

I stand corrected, Fraud say outer then inner. Convential wisdom (and google) say inner then outer.

My objective is always to flush the fluid... by pushing out the old stuff and pushing new fluid in.

I don't have any air in the system because I'm only pushing fluid through (ie not removing brake lines).

The brake line that supplies the fluid connects to the inner half of the Brembo caliper.

So, I flush the inner half first.

Then I flush the outer half.

That way, the inner half has fresh fluid, which is then pushed over to the outer half.

But, as mentioned, I flush a lot of fluid through when I do all this, so I'm flushing so much through both sides will get flushed properly.

Heck, with speed bleeders, it might be possible to loosen them both off and flush/bleed both sides at once.

One of these days I'm going to set up a pressure bottle that will feed brake fluid into the reservoir under pressure (already got the bottle, just haven't sorted out an adapter).

Instead of speed bleeders the brake lines will have pressure from the bottle. Then it's just a matter of loosen each nipple for a few seconds and watch the fluid flow through the clear tube into a bottle until it's 100% clean.

[PhilMeUp]

Monday, 5th January, 2015

A couple of phone calls today got the car booked in for a wheel alignment at 2pm tomorrow and a licencing inspection elsewhere at 3pm. It’s starting to come together. Crunch time.

After bailing out last night on compressing the springs, I took the lot to a suspension place and paid $40 to have the springs fitted.



Fitting the shock absorbers became a problem - when the bolts in the top of the strut were in their holes the bottom of the strut wouldn’t line up with the hole in the lower control arm.



A bit of wresting got the bolt lined up. I used a mallet to knock it through and then had to push the strut around until the holes on the other side lined up and allowed the bolt to slide through. Luckily, the threads on the bolt weren’t damaged by doing this.



On to the other side.



The passenger side one was even harder as the bottom of the strut was even more out of alignment.



I tried rotating the base of it with a crowbar, but the amount of force required also risked damaging the ABS cable.



After a bunch of wresting with the crowbar and thumping with the mallet I managed to get the bolt through.



The driver’s side completed.



The passenger’s side completed.



This is how I tighten wheel nuts - I’m a tad extreme about this. I lower the car enough so that the wheels are in contact with the ground enough to prevent them from rotating when I tighten the wheel nuts. I don’t lower the car fully because I want the wheel nuts to properly centre in their respective holes in the wheel.

I then use a torque wrench to tighten each wheel nut to 125Nm. This ensures that the wheel nuts are done up tight enough, but also tightened up with a consistent amount of torque.



I finally got to lower the car to the ground. The car now had front and rear springs that should get it to a legal height.



Something else that I wanted to sort out before the inspection was the sagging roof lining. I had bought a can of Kwik Grip aerosol spray a while ago for such a task. I put a rubber glove on my left hand so that I could hold the lining out whilst spraying and not cover my hand with glue.



Once I’d sprayed a bunch of glue in there I used some drawing pins to hold the roof lining in place until the glue sets. I chose these drawing pins because the plastic heads on them will make them easy to remove later. If I was to do this again I would probably use some bulldog clips as well.



The lining was also sagging on the passenger side.



More drawing pins, on the passenger side.



Another photo of the drawing pins on the driver’s side. I don’t know how well, or for how long, the glue will hold. Hopefully for a while.



The interior of the car is looking a lot better these days than when I originally bought the car.



It actually looks quite tidy now. I just need to get that floor cleaned, which will happen once I get the car licenced and mobile.



When I originally bought the car I took it to the mechanic that will probably be doing the inspection. One of the things that he pointed out was that the small hole in the driver’s seat would need to be covered up.



Hopefully my 10 second band-aid solution will suffice.

[PhilMeUp]

I rolled the car out onto the road to check the ground clearance. Time to see if the suspension springs that I have fitted are enough to get the car up to a legal height.



Previously, the exhaust was the problem. It’s the lowest part of the car.



That part now clears, with about 15mm to spare.



However, the exhaust near the rear muffler is borderline.



The driver’s door handle is broken. I will replace the actual handle when I can find one, but I needed a short term solution for the inspection.



I removed the door trim from the door.



I had previously bought a door trim from a taxi wreck. I was going to use the handle from this trim to replace the FPV one, but the handle turned out to have damage on the inside of it. But I figured that I might as well just put the whole trim on the door for the inspection.



I transferred the mirror adjuster switch over and connected it before attaching the trim into its place.



It’s ugly, but legal. Just like me.



The seats will be removed to clean the carpet, but I had to put the plastic back on the cover the wiring.



I want to have a look under the engine just before the inspection. I had the sump area perfectly clean a few weeks ago, but there were signs of a possible oil leak when I did an oil change a few days ago. I will hopefully do a quick last-minute check under the car to make sure there are no visible oil leaks.




The toolbox and electric drills went in the front. I mix up radiator coolant with some concentrate that I’ve got, but I’m out of distilled water. I’ll get the 20 litre water tank filled up hopefully after the inspection.



And that was it. Apart from the wheel alignment, there’s nothing more that I could do. The carport is a mess but as far as I can tell, the car is now in a roadworthy condition.



Time to knock off for the night. 2:30am - an early night.

[FiftyOne]

I might just leave this here for anyone who needs to know anything about fixing your ford. Your welcome

https://mega.co.nz/#F!loVQwT5D!a_eVD1oUflY1DMd1Gq_MRw

[discostig]

That's where I snip my pics from! A great resource, the official workshop manuals. Even if they are backwards on a couple of things hahaha

[PhilMeUp]

Tuesday, 6th January, 2015

The car didn’t pass inspection but was very close. Two things:
- The centre bearing needed replacing. Although I had climbed under the car to have a look at it previously, there was a tear in the rubber at the very top. This couldn’t be seen until the car was on a hoist.
- The headlight switch on the switchgear stopped working.

I stopped off at the taxi workshop that I deal with to get advice on why the headlight switch wasn’t working. Even at XR6 height, the front bumper still scraped on the way in.



Behind the taxi workshop is Farmer Street in North Perth. This road has the highest speed bumps that I’ve ever seen, and driving on this road is a nightmare. Even when I parked the car at the start of one speed bump, it was almost at bumper height.



This road is more like a supercross track than a road. Hit one of these at speed and the front suspension will compress, smashing the front bumper on the top of the speed bump.



Numerous scratch marks on the road.



And matching scratches on the speed bump. This is one of the reasons why I will be keeping the ute at least XR6 height, and not lowering it again.



As the ute had been parked and not moved in six weeks while I did various jobs on it, it was covered in dust. Now that it was going to be used regularly it was time to give it a quick wash.



It cleaned up quite well.



Then it was time to get to work on the car. This is the centre bearing, which helps attach the tail shaft to the car. The bearing is surrounded by rubber, and the rubber on mine was perished and torn.



Once I pulled the tail shaft up and down the tear in the rubber got bigger.



I recently bought a Draper 19494 Extra Long 18mm Metric Ratcheting Combination Spanner, which will probably get used once every couple of years for replacing the diff on my taxi. However, it turned out to be useful for loosening the bolts holding the tail shaft to the back of the transmission. The 385mm length of this spanner gave good leverage on these bolts.



The sump pan on the ZF transmission.



The bolts on the diff end were on extremely tight. The head on one of them started to strip when using a normal 12-sided socket, so an extended impact socket had to be used.



The tail shaft come away from the transmission easily.



At the diff end I had to get behind the car with a flat blade screwdriver and mallet to push the end of the tail shaft out of the diff.



After removing the two bolts on the centre bearing, I was then able to get the tail shaft out of the car.



Luckily, in amongst the collection of junk at home, I had a spare tail shaft and switchgear.



The rubber around the centre bearing was well and truly perished.



The rubber on the centre bearing on the spare tail shaft was in excellent condition.



And then I realised that the mounting brackets didn’t look the same. Definitely a difference in the widths of the two brackets.



Yep, definitely different. I wasn’t able to see the different lengths of the tail shafts until I got them on the ground, side by side. I thought about removing the centre bearing from the mounting bracket and transferring that across, but decided to buy a complete new centre bearing the next day.

[PhilMeUp]

Wednesday, 7th January, 2015

Today’s mission was to buy a new centre bearing and get it fitted. And then sort out the broken headlight switch, which was hopefully going to be a matter of replacing the switchgear with the spare one that I had.

Although there was the option of buying the bearing without the bracket (ie transfer a new bearing to the old bracket), I chose to pay the extra and get the complete unit to ensure that it was all going to work properly the first time.



When replacing a centre bearing, it’s important that the tail shaft sections are re-connected at the same place to ensure that the tail shaft stays balanced. Drawing a line with a white marker pen is one way of doing this.



As I don’t have a bench or a vice, I put the tail shaft in my hydraulic press to hold it while I loosened the bolts. I used an 8mm allen key socket and ratchet to loosen the bolts, and then a cordless drill to remove them quickly.



The CV joint then came apart easily, and I was careful to prevent anything from falling out of the CV joint end.



Then I removed the circlip on the end of the shaft. I bought these circlip pliers about 10 years ago, and finally used them for the first time. They made it extremely easy to remove the circlip.



Then I removed the metal clip that goes around the rubber on the outer edge of the CV joint.



I used a large flat blade screwdriver to push the rubber up the shaft.



I was then able to separate the tail shaft into two pieces. This meant that I now had the required access to remove the centre bearing.



To ensure that I remembered which way the centre bearing faced, I had marked it with a couple of arrows with the white marker pen.



As the old centre bearing was going in the bin, I didn’t have to concern about damaging it. This meant that I could use a hammer and chisel to knock it loose and slide it off the shaft. It only took a few firm taps to do this.

I also had the new bearing in place on the floor, so that as soon as the old one slid off I could just lift the shaft and put it in the centre of the new bearing. This ensured that I had the new centre bearing lined up the correct way.



Then I had to push the new bearing down into its place on the shaft. I had heard that people try doing this with a centre punch around the middle of the new bearing, but this often slips and damages it. I got lucky and had a section of metal pipe in amongst my hydraulic press stuff that was perfect for pushing the centre bearing along the shaft. I gave it a few firm taps with a mallet.



I then had the new centre bearing in place, and it was time to re-assemble the tail shaft. However, in amongst all this, I had smudged the white line that I originally drew on there. It was fortunate that there was a small bit of that marking left on the bearing end of the shaft.

Scratching a mark on the tail shaft sections with something sharp would be another option to consider next time.



Then I tried to push the CV joint section back on to the shaft. I later realised that I should have worn a disposable rubber glove for this.



I got the CV joint back on and the circlip back into place.



Then I had to slide the outer rubber along the shaft. This took a bit of mucking around, and I ended up spraying some silicon spray on the inside of the rubber to help slide it along the metal shaft. When the rubber had slid down enough I put the metal clip back on to create a seal between the rubber and metal shaft.

Once that was done I used some aerosol brake cleaner to clean off the greasy mess that I’d made.



Before re-joining the two tail shaft sections together, I put a few drops of Loctite 222 on each bolt.



I lined up the white lines and bolted it all back together.



Before the completed tail shaft was fitted I made sure that the three bolts attaching it to the front rubber were tight enough.



And finally, the job was done. The new centre bearing was fitted and the car became mobile again. I hated doing this job on my XR6 Turbo ute, so was extremely pleased that things went much smoother and quicker this time.



Having completed the first of the two requirements for licencing, it was time to sort out the headlight switch. I unplugged the one in the car and plugged in the spare one that I had.

[PhilMeUp]

Sure enough, the headlights and tail lights then worked as they should. Previously, the head lights would switch on when switched to Auto (which is what I use all the time), but wouldn’t switch on when turned on manually. I hadn’t noticed this because I always use the Auto switch (and hadn’t driven the car at night).



Once I confirmed that the replacement switch gear would solve the problem I removed the air bag. This was done by loosening the two bolts on the back of the steering wheel with a Torx T30 socket.



I loosened the steering wheel bolt about half away before attempting to remove the steering wheel. This was to ensure that it wouldn’t come loose too suddenly. I used a Torx T50 socket to loosen that bolt.



The steering wheel came loose with a bit of side-to-side wrestling.



I wanted to remove the cable for the old switchgear so that I could put the cable in place for the new switch gear. The plug sits on a metal bracket, which can then be bent down toward the floor to access the plastic part that affixes the socket to the bracket. Some poking around with a small flat blade screwdriver eventually got the socket to slide off the bracket.



A photo of the socket and the metal bracket that it mounts on to. You can see how I bent the metal bracket down to help with removing the socket from it.

By now I was on fire… literally. It was 34 degrees at the time and the bitumen that I was sitting on was boiling hot. I didn’t have anything to sit on, and didn’t have any spare time to go looking for something.



I was extremely pleased once I got it all back in one piece and had everything working properly. Time to head to the inspection workshop and get this car cleared for licencing!



I was cursing the low front bumper when I was stopped at a red light on the last corner before the inspection workshop. I was only a few hundred metres away and couldn’t take a shortcut up the kerb to turn left at the Give Way sign. I had to wait for the traffic lights to cycle through to green, and then wait for the truck to move forward enough to give me the room to turn. It felt like hours.



The car passed the inspection. There was plenty of jubilant cheering and yelling in the car as I left there. It was a massive relief. The turbo gauge doesn’t work - that’s on the list of things to do later on.



I had left the stuffed spare wheel winch with a place called The Lifting Company, which is in Welshpool. I got there just before closing time and picked up the winch with a new cable fitted.



I reassembled the winch and bolted it to the underneath of the ute.



The problem with these winches is that the cable needs to stay in the grooves in the plastic pulley. Because the metal cable wants to stretch out in a straight line, it pushes its way out of the grooves. Thus, it is essential to keep the cable taught so that it doesn’t go out of the grooves and jam up inside.



I got the spare wheel jacked up into place.



A few months ago I bought some LEDs for the interior lights in my XR6 Turbo ute, and wanted to transfer those to the Tornado. The map light holder just slides out of the roof lining plastic. You need to have clean hands for this to prevent leaving marks on the roof lining.



The standard globes and the Jaycar LEDs.



These particular Jaycar LEDs give out a very bright, white light. Info about them:

Roof light - 42mm
http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=ZD0754
Cat No: ZD0754
Price: $12.95 each (1 required)

T10 Wedge Replacement LED QUAD Globe (White)
http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=ZD0394
Cat No: ZD0394
White Cat No. ZD-0394 
Red Cat No. ZD-0395
Blue Cat No. ZD-0396
Price: $3.50 each (2 required, one for each map light)

Once the LEDs were in place I removed the drawing pins that had been holding the roof lining in place until the glue dried.



I didn’t get time to licence the car, so will get that done tomorrow (Thursday). I need to get my personalised places off the XR6T ute and get conventional plates for it. Then the personalised plates will go on the Tornado.

I had been getting excessively obsessed and stressed over the last few days about getting this car through the licencing inspection. The novelty of cleaning up and working so much on this project had well and truly worn off. I had put myself under a lot of pressure to get the car licenced this week and was extremely relieved when I was able to park the ute in my driveway knowing that it was just a matter of paperwork to complete that task.

There are still other things to be done:
- Get the carpet cleaned.
- I haven’t re-assembled the steering column correctly, and now the indicators won’t self-cancel when coming out of corners. I’ll pull it apart and sort that out later - I saw it done on another car a few years ago so will have to remember what the mechanic did.
- The four-piston Brembo calipers on the front will either get replaced with six-piston ones or rebuilt and powder coated.
- I’m missing a few door trim screws. I’ll get some the next time I’m getting parts from a wreck.
- The FPV door trim still needs a new handle. I’m still looking for a donor BF door trim that I can extract the (good condition) handle from.
- I want to flush and replace the power steering fluid.
- I need to check WA traffic law and see if that mobile phone holder can be used to mount and touch my iPhone legally.
- Fix the turbo boost gauge on the dashboard.
- Remove the tint from the back window or replace it with a window that isn’t tinted.
- Fit a Parrot MKi9200 mobile phone kit that I’ve got sitting at home.
- I have a soft tonneau cover at home which needs the elastic loops replaced (I’ll get that done soon). This cover will be folded up and kept behind the seats, so that I can use it occasionally (eg keeping things dry in winter). I have no interest in a hard lid as I’ll be carrying motorbikes regularly.
- Flush the transmission fluid.
- Get a towbar hitch or replace the towbar with one that suits the FPV rear bumper.
- Get the bodywork polished.
- Get the cooling system flushed.
- Fit a turbo oil return kit.
- Remove the hard lid hinge.
- Replace the coil cover washers with heat-proof o-rings so that I can wash the engine bay without getting water into the spark plug holes (did this on my taxi, it works well).

The list of some of the things that I’ve done:
- Removed and cleaned centre console.
- Fixed passenger door actuator.
- Replaced driver’s door mirror switch.
- Fitted fuse cover.
- Cleaned inside windows.
- Changed diff oil.
- Cleaned rear vision mirror.
- Flushed windscreen reservoir.
- Replaced front indicator globes.
- Fitted battery clamp.
- Attached wire bracket on air intake pipe (wasn’t bolted in its correct place).
- Pressure cleaned driver’s seat belt and got it to retract properly.
- Replaced pod filter with standard Typhoon/Tornado airbox.
- Got seats washed.
- Replaced axle bearings & broken wheel stud.
- Fixed - seats levering forward.
- Fitted 2012 FG XR6 Turbo leaf springs and new shackle bushes.
- Coded 2 x new remotes (from eBay).
- Replaced diff breather hose.
- Put grease on wheel studs.
- Flushed brake fluid.
- Bought and fitted replacement front springs.
- Replaced upper and lower radiator hoses.
- Replaced drive belt.
- Flushed engine oil and fitted new oil filter.
- Replaced fuel filter.
- Glued roof lining.
- Covered driver’s seat hole with band-aid for inspection.
- Door handle - fitted BF ex-taxi door trim (temporary).
- Wheel alignment & steering wheel centred.
- Replaced tail shaft centre bearing.
- Replaced steering column switch gear.
- Re-cabled spare wheel winch.
- Swapped LED lights from XR6 Turbo ute.