2006 Fpv Tornado F6 Ute - Cleanup & Resurrection

[PhilMeUp]

Tuesday, 31st March, 2015

Since I started driving the Tornado I’ve been hating the dark tint on the back window. Also, with a motorbike background, I’m used to maintaining a constant awareness of everything that is happening around my vehicle. The dark tint means that even in daylight, seeing things behind the car requires a split second of hesitation, instead of seeing and identifying things instantaneously.

The photos don’t show it, but it’s extremely dark and rear vision at night is almost nothing. When parking, I always reverse in, including reversing the Tornado up my long driveway at night.

The black plastic tray also makes it hard to see where the ute ends when reversing.



At first I couldn’t tell whether the tint was the usual stick-on stuff or part of the glass. Then I saw the clear part and realised that it was definitely stick-on.



I assumed that it was going to be difficult to remove, so took the car to a windscreen place. The girl at the front counter gave me a price of $77 to remove the tint from just the one window. One of the workshop staff questioned her on this, and when she said that was the cheapest that she could quote, he went out to the car and peeled off one corner so that I could do it myself at home.

He said to peel it off carefully and slowly. However, once at home I found that the whole lot peeled off in seconds.



Then I went over it with some eucalyptus aerosol spray to remove the remaining sticker residue, before finishing the job off with some Windex.



I’ve now got a clear back window, and can see behind the ute at night.



Then it was time to go shopping for some parts. There’s a guy that I know who buys crashed Falcons at auction and wrecks them from home.

He is extremely disorganised and the place is always a mess. But he’s cheap and usually has whatever I’m after at the time.

I bought a BF cup holder, another station wagon switchgear (so now I’ve got two spares), an airbag with side buttons and a seat mount bolt. This all cost me $80.

















The cup holder got washed with detergent and water.



I don’t like the standard BA-style cup holder with the flip-over lid. It doesn’t hold drinks in place properly, hence the mess from a previously spilled drink that I cleaned up on Sunday when the carpet was cleaned.



The BF cup holder stands out because it’s a different colour to the gear lever surround. I’ll paint the top of the cup holder once I figure out what paint to use.



The turbocharger gauge doesn’t work so I unclipped the holder and checked to make sure that the wiring is plugged in properly. It all looks correct, so I’m going to have to look into that further another time.



I removed the side buttons from the airbag that I bought. I used a Torx T25 socket for this.



The cable for the side buttons has this connector, which sits on a plastic mount. You can see the small plastic bump near the blue dot - to remove the white connector from the black plastic mount, lift the white connector at the rear (where the yellow and brown wires come out of) and slide the connector off the black plastic mount.



The connectors on the back of the airbag were difficult to remove, so I used some needle-nose pliers to firmly jiggle each connector side to side to slide them off.

[PhilMeUp]

Here you can see the difference between the two sets of audio control buttons. The lower ones are the old ones, and the top ones are the ones that I’m going to replace them with.



The two sides of buttons are on the same wiring loom. However, the cruise control buttons on my new set were showing signs of wear.



With a flat-blade screwdriver, I removed the cruise control buttons from each set.



Once I had both sets of buttons off, I was able to pick out the best ones to keep.



I put it all back together. I tried cleaning the old airbag, but the pre-existing one was in better condition.



The two airbags. The bottom one is the previous one, with the best of the buttons. I’ll resell the one above.

[PhilMeUp]

Wednesday, 1st April, 2015

Tonight I wanted to replace the station wagon switchgear that I had put on with the original ute one - the difference is the switch for the rear window wiper on the station wagon set. This isn’t required on the ute, so I wanted to put the ute switchgear back on.

I had replaced the ute switchgear with the station wagon one because the indicator self-cancel wasn’t working on the ute one. When I was shopping for parts I looked at another switchgear and compared it with photos from this thread.

I figured out what was wrong with the ute switchgear, and it turned out to be an extremely easy fix.



This photo shows the ute switchgear on the left, and the station wagon one on the right. The difference is the white plastic ring in the centre. It turns out that this is what controls the self-cancel, and that plastic ring was missing on my ute switchgear.



Here’s how it works - the white plastic ring rotates with the steering wheel and and steering column shaft. The switchgear stays stationary. You can see the two plastic tabs on the ring - one on each side. It is these tabs that control the self-cancel.

Imagine that the car was turning to the left. If that centre ring rotates just a fraction more then it will push the plastic rod on the left, forcing the indicators to cancel. It’s actually very simple.



This time I have lined up a tab so that it is about to self-cancel when turning right (ie rotating the steering wheel clockwise). The plastic rod gets pushed, which builds up tension in the spring (there’s a ball bearing ball on the end), which forces the indicator stick to go back to its central position.



In this photo, if the centre ring continues to rotate clockwise (ie turning right) then it doesn’t push the plastic rod far enough over to force the indicators to self-cancel.

It had taken me some time to figure all this out, but now I know how to fix any future self-cancel problems that I might have with my taxis in the future. It’s all about that plastic ring in the centre.



By now I had pulled everything apart and re-assembled it all several times. I learned that the clockspring didn’t have to be disconnected and completely removed each time, so just left it hanging there.



I removed the plastic ring from the station wagon switchgear.



As the plastic ring will be regularly rotating within the switchgear, I added some grease.



I pushed the plastic ring into place and made sure that there was also plenty of grease where the ball bearing is (on the end of the spring).



Doing all of this with wheelie bins made it easier. Putting the cable between the handle and bin meant that the switchgear couldn’t slide off and onto the ground.



You can see here how the steering column shaft rotates the white plastic ring when the steering wheel is turned. The black plastic of the switchgear remains in the same place.



The switchgear is attached to the top of the steering column at three mounting points. One of them is at the end of the screwdriver. There is another screw on the left side and one on the top. A ratchet screwdriver made it easier to undo and tighten the screws, and a magnet made it easy to remove them without them dropping onto the floor and bouncing into some corner where they couldn’t be found.



Finally getting somewhere. The switchgear and clockspring are in place, and the next step is to put the steering wheel back on.



Then I got curious and wanted to check the headlight switch wires. When the headlight switch doesn’t work then it is because one or more of these wires has broken. This is what had happened to the original switchgear that was in the ute when I bought it. Although those wires can be easily soldered back together, I had a spare working switchgear at home so put that on. I just didn’t notice at the time that my replacement switchgear was missing that plastic ring in the centre.



I finally got it all back in one piece and went for a test drive. I was pretty pissed off when the headlights wouldn’t work at all - only the high beam would. It was night, and the ute was also low on petrol, so I made my way to the nearest servo via some backstreets. Then I had to go home, pull it all apart again and try and figure out why the switchgear that has been working for the last few months (except for the self-cancel) was now not working.

I had well and truly had enough of all of this by now. Over it.

That black plastic box in the centre of the photo is held in place by two small plastic brackets (one on each side). This gadget is the switch for high beam. I clipped it back into place properly and much to my relief all of the lights then worked as they should.



Time to put the steering wheel back on, hopefully for the last time tonight. I did a bunch of testing of indicators and headlights before doing this.



I had removed the steering wheel a couple of days ago to have a look to see if there was something obvious that was out of place. I put the bolt back on with my Ryobi battery-powered impact gun, which I thought had tightened up the bolt enough. However, within a short distance there was slight movement between the steering wheel and steering wheel column (ie the bolt had come loose). I didn’t expect this, and wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t happen again, so put a drop of Loctite 222 on the bolt.



To further make sure that I put the bolt back in place securely, I looked up the torque setting in the service manual. I then used a digital torque wrench to tighten the bolt to the specified 38Nm.



During re-assembly I had accidentally touched something on the back of the switchgear with some metal on the steering column. Sure enough, the indicators now weren’t working at all. I figured that it might be a fuse, so looked up which fuse was for the indicators - it’s the bottom right one, which is a 10A fuse.



On the left is the blown fuse, and on the right is one that I bought from Jaycar last year. The Jaycar fuses have an LED in them which lights up if the fuse blows, making it obvious that it has blown.

[PhilMeUp]

I also tried a different seat mounting bolt, in the faint hope that it was the bolt threads that were damaged instead of the floor threads. I was very pleased when the replacement bolt went straight in, meaning that I won’t have to re-tap the thread.



I wash my engine bays regularly as I like to keep them clean and easy to work on. However, on the Falcons, water can get past the coil cover bolts and then down into the spark plug holes. This then shorts out the plugs, resulting in the car running on less than six cylinders.

On my taxi I tried some heat-proof o-rings a while ago. They have worked well, and I can now wash the engine bay without risking water getting past the coil cover bolts. I went and bought a bunch to use in the future.



From the factory the coil cover bolts have a fibre washer on each one. However, on secondhand cars those washers are often broken or missing. I only removed the front five bolts because I couldn’t be bothered removing the intercooler piping, but two of those bolts were missing the fibre washers.



I checked under the head of each bolt to make sure that the o-rings would seal, and found corrosion on some of them.



I recently bought a Dremel, so had a go with that and a small wire brush to see if it would clean up underneath the head of each bolt.



This worked much better than expected, resulting in clean surfaces for the o-rings to seal against.



I put an o-ring on each bolt.



I use a Ryobi cordless drill all the time for this sort of job, but for coil cover bolts I set it to the minimum torque setting to ensure that I don’t strip the threads in the head (ie where the coil cover bolts screw into).



Once the bolts are in place I use a small 1/4” drive ratchet to finish tightening them. Using something so small helps to ensure that I don’t overtighten them with a full size 1/2” ratchet.



Finally, I had gotten done a few odd-jobs that I had been meaning to get around to for a while. I’ve spent the last three months driving this ute around Perth without the indicators self-cancelling when I exit corners. This meant that I had to manually push the indicator stick back into place each time, which has now become subconscious. Now I’ve got to re-learn to leave it alone.

The audio and cruise control buttons look as close to new as I’m going to get without buying actual brand new ones. The airbag is clean, and the steering column plastics are finally back in place - the bottom plastic had been left at home for the last few months because I knew that I would be pulling it apart to figure out the self-cancelling problem.

However, I’ve since noticed that some of the Territorys came with silver buttons. They look good - I want a set of them. There’s some on eBay for $200, which is insane. I’ll start looking through Territory wrecks for a set of silver buttons.

Although the steering wheel looks worse than it actually is because of the camera flash, I will be replacing it sometime in the future. I’ve got an original Momo wheel that is looking very worn, and I’ll probably get that re-covered at some point and put that in the Tornado.

After not really making any more progress on the car since I got it licenced in January, it was good to have some motivation to get back into it again. I’ve improved the interior by a lot this week, and for not much cost. Getting the carpet cleaned cost me $100 and the parts that I bought cost me $80 (airbag, spare switchgear and cup holder). I’ll hopefully get some money back by selling the spare airbag on Gumtree or eBay.

[FiftyOne]

Fyi, boost gauge doesn't work in mine either. Intermittent at least. Could be a common fault in the canbus

[Ralph Wiggum]

Boost gauge is a dodgy Fpv tack on. Not connected to the can bus.

[m1rkz]

Mate, such a great write up.

Makes me want to go and start doing things to my car straight away haha. Love it.

[PhilMeUp]

Saturday, 2nd May, 2015

So far my efforts with this car have been focused on cleaning up the interior and general mechanical areas. There are exterior cosmetic issues, but the first priority was to get the car licenced and running properly so that I could enjoy driving it.

There were various chips in the paint when I got the car, but it wasn’t until this week that I became aware that this has been a common problem with the Shockwave colour on BA and BF Falcons.

Ford has been respraying cars over the years. Some cars got a full back-to-metal respray and some cars only had the affected panels done. This has depended on the number of panels that needed respraying.

I rang Ford Australia on Friday afternoon and spoke to someone familiar with this. She said that they had stopped the respraying program a couple of months ago, but would create a case file for a Case Manager to look at. I acknowledged that this now a nine year old car, but the fact is that the paint chips aren’t due to bad luck on my part or mistreatment by a previous owner, but a manufacturing fault by Ford. And if any previous owners had been made aware of this then the car would have been resprayed years ago.

I’ve got the case number and will be calling Ford almost daily. There’s a possibility that I’ll buy another Tornado next week and end up selling this one, so time is critical.

One of the major problems is that I am now aware that it’s a manufacturing problem, so even if I spend my own money getting the paint chips sorted out then paint will chip off the car in other areas in the future.

If anyone is familiar with legislation that is relevant to this that defines Ford’s obligations, then please let me know.

In other news, the car is normally parked in a carport but was parked on the side of the road for one weekend in early February. That night, a taxi reversed out rapidly from a house across the road, collided with the Tornado and then left rapidly (ie hit and run).

I know the taxi industry very well, including knowledge of the GPS tracking and camera footage that taxis have. The car was identified and the driver was contacted, but he has been evasive. But at least he’s been identified, which means no insurance excess for me. It hasn’t been fixed yet because the insurance company and I are still squabbling about the cost of the repair.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some posts and notes that I found on various forums:

http://www.fordaustraliaforums.com/forum/showthread.php?43209-Shockwave-paint-peeling&p=421597&viewfull=1#post421597

Ford guarantee their paint for a lifetime. The day I saw the pin head bubble on the rear right door I contacted head office.

The rules are if less than 3 panels are affected they only respray those panels. If there's more than 3 panels affected they respray the whole car by their preferred repairer.

---------------------------------------------
http://www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/ford-answers-the-questions-16657#.VUKnUmb_ukM

6. Paint. Carsguide has fielded reports of peeling 'shockwave blue' paint on BF Falcons. How many are affected? Is this actually a problem?

A: We are working with the supplier of our Shockwave paint and have repainted those vehicles that have experienced an issue with no cost for the repair to the customer.
---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordmods.com/ford-bodykits-f15/rumours-about-shockwave-paint-t77351.html

what the ford dealers mite not tell you is that if there is paint missing on 4 or more panels, the whole car is required to be resprayed.

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=2761223#post2761223

Dupont had forgotten to put in some element in the paint that basically doesn't bond the way it should on the metals.. Plastics are fine bumpers etc.

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=3737319#post3737319

I have been in touch with local ford dealer in regards to my shockwave blue ba mk2 xr6 they tell me they will respray the car but there is a catch, they dont do the bumpers,spoiler , skirts or side mirrors, as it is only a defect with the paint to metal adhesion

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=3782705#post3782705

Had all my plastics done when the car went in. Originally they said the lower skirts would be fine, no need for respray (good condition) but when they painted the car it was a noticeable difference and they did them also.

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordxr6turbo.com/forum/topic/49022-ba-mkii-shockwave-paint-problems
---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=2296756#post2296756

it all steams from a bad batch of paint supplied to Ford from PPG.

I have spoken to the guy at the paintshop who had a visit from a PPG rep who explained the problem to him.
the paint goes on fine, the problem starts once the paint is exposed to UV light !!!
UV light causes the paint to delaminate over time (parts company with the primer). then when you get a stone chip the paint falls off.

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=2380468#post2380468

The existing problem is a pigment in the paint that reacts with UV rays and it ends up not sticking to the undercoat.
Dupont paint recognised this problem and have rectified the fault. So yes the paint will stick now.

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=2777334#post2777334

On three occasions now I have been told the same story, Dupont are covering regardless of warranty AS LONG as you phone Fords Customer Care.. Phoning them will update their records ie address, owner etc.. Your concerns (in my case I haven't got peeling yet) and you will get a ref#.

This ref# is your life... Take the car to any Ford Dealer (regardless if you bought second hand at Expensive Daewoo or where ever) with the ref#, they will take pics of the car, send to Fords with the ref# and book it with a local panel beater to have the panels / car reprayed.. I stress, if under 4 panels you will only get the panels done, not the whole car..

This has been told to me by 3 different people at Fords Customer Care, I have all their names and the system has recorded those names also (as I acted like I forgot the previous names on the 3rd occasion).

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=3100763#post3100763

Yes, this issue is above the car's standard warranties. It's like a recall they are not advertising about. Put simply, the paint job is not of merchantable quality, it's not fit for it's task and they are obligated to fix it at their cost.

Whether they recover these from the paint manufacturer or not, it's not your concern who pays, they have to fix it and fix it properly, as seen with the resprays currently going on.

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=3101297#post3101297

Its McInerney Ford, Morley.
These guys are fantastic, trust me... and I dont make a comment like that lightly.
If you've got Daniel or Joe looking after you on this one, you'll be fine mate. They're top blokes in the Service dept. Daniels been there for 15+ years, so has seen it all and doesnt talk BS. Its the only Ford dealer in WA I'll EVER consider buying from again.
Hope that gives you confidence it will be dealt with properly.

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=3113824#post3113824

They might give a 5 year warranty on paint in normal circumstances, but the issues with Shockwave are not normal, and therefore the 5 year rule doesn't apply. The paint is faulty, so must be fixed by law.

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=3115015#post3115015

Google things like Fit For Purpose and Merchantable Quality, you will be fine with the paint. Sounds like this guy has had no problems with his paint as per this thread and I bet when you go and see the front you will see stone chips like cars have.

Problem Shockwave paint peels off badly, that's why it's faulty. It may chip like normal paint but it also just comes off. Either way, if it's good, you can buy the car. If it starts to peel, you get a new paint job.

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=3165279#post3165279

He also said the paint warranty on shockwave blue has been extended to an unspecified (pretty much unlimited) time.

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=3199173#post3199173

Just a bit of an update, I spoke to Ford CRC this morning who were very helpful. I was told it doesn't matter that it is outside its 5 year paint warranty Ford recognise this as a problem and that once the car is photographed by the dealer so that a claim can be made and the defect confirmed I will receive a free complete respray at no cost to my self.

I asked about transport during the respray period and was told ford should give me a demo car to drive, how ever if they are unable to do this for any reason I can call CRC back and they will organise a hire car for me though hertz.

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=3940789#post3940789

Its a known defect which Ford have acknowledged. There would be no time limit to the claim time. If the car is 10 years old and it flakes they are compelled to fix it.

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=4084436#post4084436

The car will get worse.. this is only the start... I would not be wasting any time as I have been told Ford will no longer be painting shockwave cars under warranty soon... 5 years from first rego date on paint, they are wiping their hands of it.

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=4309783#post4309783

What I can divulge is that I have been categorically informed by Ford Crc that there is no END DATE for the shockwave respray program. So when it does start peeling - it will get resprayed no matter what the timeframe.

In a way - this is kinda good - I get 10 years out of the car - plenty of stone chips and some minor scratching all fixed up with a new spray job when the time comes.

I do agree however that this paint colour is not really the choice to go for in the 2nd hand arena unless you have proof that its been resprayed. Way too many headaches to deal with if you end up with one. Even dealing with some of the tools at Ford CRC is a challenge in itself......insanity

---------------------------------------------
http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?p=4498478#post4498478

I rang Ford CRC the other day and they told me that there was a 3 year warranty on the respray jobs. If you have issues with your respray, ring them up and they will look into it for you.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photos:

The front bumper was scratched when I bought the car. Getting it repainted has been on the list of things to do.



This photo shows the damage to the front fender panel from when the taxi reversed out and collided with my car.



This has also caused a large amount of paint to come away from the car. The smaller paint chips above were already there.



There are numerous paint chips on the bonnet.







Big chip on the roof.



Close-up of one of the roof chips.



Close-up of the other roof chip.



The tub has a couple of chips as well.



Close-up of the main tub chip.



Several chips behind the driver’s window.



Various chipping around the windscreen area.



Above the windscreen.



Another bonnet chip.



Close-up of the same bonnet chip.



Three minor chips on the passenger side of the windscreen.

[PhilMeUp]

Another chip on the tub.



Another fender chip.

[PhilMeUp]

Sunday, 3rd May, 2015

Having spent the weekend reading through endless forum posts and discussions about the problems with Ford’s Shockwave paint, I’ll be taking the car to a Ford dealer tomorrow to hopefully be photographed and assessed.

Although I washed the car only a few days ago, I wanted to make sure that it’s presented as tidily as possible. So I washed it again, including paying a bunch of extra attention to the wheels. I also went through the interior of the car with my weed blower to blow dust off the dashboard, centre console, speedo gauges, etc.

Most of the photos in this thread have been close-up photos of particular parts of the car that I was working on at the time. Time for a couple of photos that show the whole car.

Even from a distance, you can see a couple of paint chips on the roof, as well as numerous paint chips on the bonnet.





During washing the car today, another chunk of paint came off.



A close-up of where the paint came off today. As you can see, the Shockwave paint completely fails to adhere to the metal bodywork.