2007 Fpv Tornado Ute - Tinkering & Setup

[sixman]

Yeah, I was talking generally, not involved and dont know what happened with Phil's dealings.

Was not aimed at any business, but can see how it looked that way. Apologies

[Tocchi]

Pics of AVS rims

Also if you want the cheapest option...just plastidip them black.

But powdercoat would be better....the cheapest I found was a mob in Malaga who will sandblast and coat for $380. that's supplied to them with tyres stripped....but im sure you'll find some hook up for cheaper

Did you end up finding a mob that wasn't a rip ?

[PTR_NITRO_FG]

me or phil?

I haven't yet....but TBH haven't been doing the super ring around or store visits yet. Tried the jap car parts page, but only got one hook up....but then was accused of being a jew for trying to get the job done cheaper than $100 per rim

That guy did say $70+ each.....then said well usually its $70-80 max....but then says in a post that $100 each is a bargain for the amount of work done (saying you need to do paint stripping AND SB??). What pisses me off is he admitted they forward those jobs out, so there must be someone close to them that does it cheap.

With the mrs birthday coming up, bulk bills and the two speeding tickets I got....priority has been pretty low ATM

[PhilMeUp]

Monday, 21st September, 2015

Like just about every other FPV F6, the front bumper has various scratches.

The plastic grill insert is also damaged and is flopping loose. 

I took the Tornado to a panel beater to get a price on getting the front bumper repainted.  However, he was booked out for a while, so I didn’t book it in.

I’m glad that I didn’t.  I had a job done there on another car and the quality of the work is not good.

Those white spots are paint chips.  I’m assuming that this car has spent a lot of time on country roads. 

That corrosion on the heat shield irritates me.  Some day I’ll remove the two heat shields and polish them.

At a later time I’ll remove the front bumper and get it re-painted properly.

Edited 12/02/16 05:55 PM by PhilMeUp

[PhilMeUp]

Wednesday, 23rd September, 2015

After bombing out at various workshops with getting the Tornado through a licensing inspection, I figured I’d try going to a country town to see if things were a bit more relaxed there.

There are two places in Northam that do inspections.  Both said the same thing - any changes in the exhaust require an emissions test.  Bugger.

There was a third place that used to do inspections.  However, he recently passed a car without even looking at it.  The car belonged to a friend of his, who then sold the car unlicenced shortly afterward.  The seller didn’t give the buyer the inspection paperwork, so the buyer presented the car at a Dept of Transport (ie government) inspection place in Perth.

As the car was full of rust, it was immediately rejected.  It won’t ever go on the road again.

However, when the DOT checked the VIN it showed up that the car had recently been passed by someone in Northam.

That mechanic is now being prosecuted by the Dept of Transport.  

Hence, the remaining two places in Northam are doing everything by the book.  

At one workshop I went to there was an immaculate HZ Expensive Daewoo ute out the front. 

Complete with the 5.0 litre badge that was so common on Holdens in the 1970s.

Square lines on the Expensive Daewoo ute, versus the more rounded lines on the FPV.

Look at the sizes of the wheels on each car.  

At one workshop there was a Expensive Daewoo HG Brougham.  

The HG was immaculate.  Apart from the engine, it was almost the same as the day it left the factory.

The HG also needs to pass inspection.  It is illegal to have an uncovered hole in a bonnet, so the tunnel ram and air filters will be removed, and another bonnet fitted for the inspection.  The car will later be freighted to another town, where the tunnel ram and bonnet will be fitted again.

Come closing time, there was some useful informal discussion with the mechanic.  Things have changed a lot this year - Dept of Transport have cracked down a lot on what is permissible in inspections.

On the right side of the photo is a BFII ute wreck with 64,000km.  I bought the two front seats to go in my taxi.  Good condition BA/BF seats are hard to find.  

Originally established in 1833, Northam has a lot of old historical buildings.  It is roughly 100km from Perth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northam,_Western_Australia

More old buildings, including The Riverside Hotel.

With nothing more that I could do in Northam, it was time to start heading home.  

Out on the open road.

By the time I got to Midland, on the outskirts of Perth, the windscreen was covered in bugs.  Due to cheap petrol pricing, there was a long line of cars lined up down the road.  With almost no petrol left, I went around the line and went to the bowser on the left.

One of the other reasons I went to Northam was to buy a set of AU XR6 wheels to go on a taxi of mine.  I’m going to replace the standard Falcon XT steel wheels and hubcaps with the AU rims.  The AU XR6 rims and the BFIII rims take the same size tyre.  As well as looking better, the AU rims will mean that I can see how much is left on the brake pads without having to remove the wheels.  

The seats from the BF ute wreck were also folded out and put in the back with the wheels.   

After all that, my attempts at getting the car passed at a relatively relaxed country town workshop were unsuccessful.  

Ah well, back to the drawing board.

[PhilMeUp]

Wednesday, 4th November, 2015

Not long after I bought the Tornado I bought some Advan AVS T7 wheels from someone in Queensland - pretty much the exact opposite side of the country to me.

These were 18x9 and 18x10.

I suspected that the wheels wouldn’t fit, but I got them cheap enough.  I figured that I’d try them out, and resell them if they didn’t fit.

The first wheel was removed.

The gold colour on the AVS rim looked good against the green backdrop of the Tornado.  

I like the idea of having Australian colours (ie green and gold) on an Australian car, particularly as Ford is about to cease production in Australia.

However, the front rims didn’t have the required offset to clear the spindle.  There was only a few millimetres gap between the rim and spindle, which didn’t leave enough room for a tyre.

The 18x9 inch rim fitted within the mudguard, but only just.

I advertised the wheels for sale on Facebook and sold them the next day for what I paid for them.  Nothing lost.

A couple of days later I bought another set of T7 wheels (ie same shape as these) in 18x8 and 18x9 sizing.  They’re badly scuffed, so I’ll get them repaired and painted or powder coated.  Unless I can find another set of 18x9 and 18x10 wheels that fit.  

[PhilMeUp]

Friday, 13th November, 2015

Over the last few months I’ve been taking the Tornado to various workshops to see if anyone will pass the car with the larger dump pipe and hi-flow cat in place.  It’s been all bad news so far.

However, one mechanic wanted to also check the tyres, and commented that he would also knock back the front tyres because of some inside camber wear. 

I didn’t think that the tyres were a problem, but I decided to make sure that I’ve got some tyres that are guaranteed legal for when the car eventually does go through an inspection.

I want to end up with 18” tyres on the Tornado, so will be putting the existing 19” FPV wheels on to my other Tornado, which will be sold with those wheels.  

I have a set of 18x8” ROH Flare wheels on the blue Tornado.  I’d love to use them permanently, but this car will need wider tyres than what an 8” rim can accommodate.

The ROH wheels will go on the ute temporarily, until I sort something out permanent.  The problem was that the tread was getting low on those tyres.

As I’ll only need the ROH wheels until I get some other permanent wheels, I didn’t want to spent a bunch of money buying new tyres.  So, I checked Gumtree a couple of times each day for a suitable set of secondhand 18” tyres.  They also had to have a minimum load rating of 95, which is the legal requirement for Falcon utes and station wagons.

It took me a couple of weeks, but eventually I found a suitable set of tyres for $200.  I drove 36km to the seller, and was extremely disappointed to find that his tyres also had a lot of camber wear on one side of each tyre.  So much for them having the “80% tread” that I was promised. 

I was pretty pissed off about this, but kept quiet.  Then someone else at the house showed me some wheels that he had.  And the tyres on those wheels were suitable.

They are Pirelli Zero Nero tyres, with almost all of their original tread.

I bought the lot for the same price as what the other tyres were going to be ($200), on the understanding that I would return the wheels to him once I had the tyres removed.  The lengthy drive turned out to not be a waste of time after all.

The date stamps on the sidewalls indicated that the tyres were manufactured back in 2012, but they still have almost their entire original tread.

I bought these AVS T7 wheels for $200.  These are 18x8 and 18x9”, so will fit.

They are badly scratched, which is why they were cheap.  I’ll look into getting them repaired and either painted or powder coated.

Lots of scratching, but no signs of hitting anything particularly hard.

These tyres will be going on my ROH Flare rims, which are currently on my other Tornado.

A photo of the inner camber wear on the existing 19” front tyres.  It hadn’t previously occurred to me that these might not pass inspection.  Needing a set of wheels with 100% legal tyres, I had spent a couple of weeks looking for either a suitable pair of 19” tyres for these rims, or a set of four 18” tyres for the ROH wheels.

I don’t know yet whether that camber wear is because of a bad wheel alignment or worn front lower control arm bushes.  I’ll probably end up replacing the bushes to ensure that I don’t get camber wear on whatever tyres I end up buying (ie they probably won’t be cheap).

[PhilMeUp]

Monday, 16th November, 2015

Tonight’s job was to swap the wheels between the two Tornados.  

The green one came with the original FPV 19” rims, but I’ll be replacing them with a higher profile tyre (ie 18”) and something wider at the back to handle the power (ie 18x9 or 18x10 instead of the original 19x8).

There was also some inner camber wear on the 19” tyres.  This will be an issue at a licencing inspection.

I’ve got 18” ROH Flare wheels on the blue Tornado, so I’ll be keeping those wheels on the green one until I sort out something more permanent.  The FPV rims can get sold with the blue Tornado.

The chrome ROH Flare wheels don’t show up very well in photos, but they stand out well in real life.  

The green Tornado is often covered in dust these days.  Not good.

All of the wheels got cleaned with CT18 and a brush.  Using a weed sprayer bottle with the brush makes this easy.

There are various things that I do to prevent brake shudder on Falcons.  One of them is to ensure that wheel nuts are tightened up evenly.  I use a Snap-On digital torque wrench for this - I bought a TECH3FR250 and a TECH3FR100 from the US back when the exchange rate was good.

I use a cordless drill to initially tighten the wheel nuts.  Then I lower the car so that the wheel is touching the ground enough to prevent it from rotating.  This to ensure that each wheel nut centres in its respective hole properly.  Then I tighten each wheel nut to Ford’s specified 125Nm with the torque wrench.  

The Snap-On digital torque wrenches vibrate as they approach the pre-set torque setting, and then beep when they reach the setting.

Half way through.  The front FPV rims are on the blue Tornado.

Swapping over the back wheels on the green Tornado.

The blue Tornado, with the 19” FPV rims.

The green Tornado, with the 18” ROH Flare rims.

The ROH Flare wheels are a pain to keep clean, but they look damn good when they are clean.  These  18x8” rims will do until I sort out something more permanent (ie something wider at the rear).

[PhilMeUp]

Friday, 12th February, 2016

There were some jobs to be done today that required the removal of the front bumper.  I used my trolley jack to raise the front of the car so that I could get to the screws that hold the black plastic splash guard in place.  

The bumper came off easily enough.  I also had my pressure washer out so that I could clean underneath the engine area thoroughly.

The front bumper has previously been scraped on bitumen regularly.  On each side of the grey plastic insert, the plastic has been ground down so much that it doesn’t properly attach to the main bumper.  Because of this, the grey plastic flops back and forth.  I’ll eventually get the bumper and insert repainted, but needed to put something temporary in place to keep the two bits of plastic together.  

The other side of the front bumper - also ground down.  

This is also why I replaced the suspension springs when I first got the car.  

I had a look at the bumper and prepared for the delicate and intricate surgery that was to follow.

After almost zero time allocated to the planning process, I drilled a hole through the bumper and grey insert, and then put a small bolt in place to hold the two pieces together.

The inside of the bumper.  I used a washer on each side.

Before it got dark I cleaned underneath the car with the pressure washer.  

That is one very large intercooler.

I wanted to do any other possible jobs while the front bumper was off.  I figured that it was time to have a proper go at cleaning the K&N air filter.

The K&N filter was full of bits of insect.

Some time ago I bought a K&N air filter cleaning kit, so at least I was prepared for this.

As soon as I started spraying the cleaning stuff onto the filter various junk started draining out.

I kept spraying the K&N cleaner, and was starting to get through the bottle.  This stuff is expensive.  I went back to my computer, did some Google searching and confirmed that other people were regularly cleaning their K&N filters with CT18.  I got my weed sprayer bottle of CT18 and pumped it up to full pressure.  

I held the end of the wand inside the air filter and watched the CT18 flush junk out of the filter.

I used a nail cleaning brush to try and get more of the insect bits out of the filter.

Then I rinsed out the filter with the tap.  It looked a lot cleaner then.

There were still some bits of insect stuck in the middle, where the nail brush couldn’t reach, but this was good enough for now.

I also didn’t want to wait hours for the filter to dry out, so left my weed blower pushing air through it for a while.  This worked very well, and the filter dried out quickly.

Inside the filter looked like new.

Then it was time to spray on the K&N air filter oil.  

I sprayed on more than I thought I should have, but despite that there were no signs of excess oil.  I’m guessing that it all soaked into the filter.  

The air filter back in place.  There were no signs of the red K&N filter oil before I removed the filter - it was way overdue to be cleaned and re-oiled.  I don’t know yet how often I’ll need to clean and re-oil this filter from now on, but I’ll probably start with six monthly intervals.

I had now done the three tasks that needed to be done - washed under the engine, bolted the two parts of the front bumper together and cleaned the air filter.  Time to put the bumper back on.  

The turbo boost gauge on the dashboard doesn’t work.  With the Plazmaman setup the boost sensor is on one of the pipes on the passenger side of the car.  This is good news - if I need to replace that sensor then it will be easy to access.  

When I was putting the splash guard back on, I noticed that the boost sensor is accessible without removing the front bumper.   On the standard setup it involves removing the bumper and intercooler - a fair bit of work.  I’m pretty clueless with a multi-meter, so I’ll figure out that problem another time. 

Putting the bumper back on.

The bumper went back on easily enough, and it was time to call it a night.  

[turboknapp]

Working on a car with only a jack under the front, keen is all I will say.

 

So I'm picking up a common theme here, you want wider rims on the back???