2007 Fpv Tornado Ute - Tinkering & Setup

[Specs]

Hey mate great thread I enjoy reading your posts as they are so detailed. A little tip for removing the rear axle bearing put your rotor on back to front and screw 2 nuts on the studs a couple of turns then use the rotor as a slide hammer against the wheel nuts works a treat on my el

[PhilMeUp]

Hey mate great thread I enjoy reading your posts as they are so detailed. A little tip for removing the rear axle bearing put your rotor on back to front and screw 2 nuts on the studs a couple of turns then use the rotor as a slide hammer against the wheel nuts works a treat on my el

That's what I did... except that I used the whole wheel instead of a disc rotor. The wheel is heavier and has more clout.

Had a bunch of fun last year trying to get some axles out of an old diff. Took over an hour of thumping with disc rotors.

[PhilMeUp]

Wednesday, 8th July, 2015

Today’s job was to replace the suspension. Although the car looked like it had the same ride height as my other Tornado it kept nudging the road whenever I pulled out of the driveway.

The other Tornado had been lowered by a previous owner, and I set it back to standard FPV/XR6 ride height with new front springs and rear leaf springs from an FG XR6 Turbo ute.

Although I can’t exactly go jumping up kerbs, with the XR6 ride height the other Tornado has been reasonably practical around town.

So, I wanted to do the same with this car.

Knowing that this job would possibly involve making some noise I actually started it during daylight, instead of my usual procrastination and starting late at night.

I bought a secondhand set of front and rear Bilstein shock absorbers with a bunch of other stuff last year. They had previously been used on a BA FPV Super Pursuit ute.

The springs that were on them (ie the yellow ones) were too low, so I went to WA Suspensions and had the springs replaced with XR8 Lovells springs. I’ve had King Springs on two previous cars (including my other Tornado) and find them to be harsh on small bumps, so I decided to see if Lovells springs would be any more compliant.

I bought a set of front and rear springs that were from an FG XR6 Turbo ute. They had been replaced with lower springs a few weeks after the ute was new, meaning that the leaf springs were still fresh. The set of springs cost me the bargain amount of $60. I’ll resell the front FG springs on Gumtree later. As the FG ute back end is the same as the BA/BF back end, the FG springs will fit perfectly.

Whenever I drive out of my driveway the front bumper is nudging the road and collecting sand that is there. I haven’t had this problem with the other Tornado, so although they both look the same height this was confirming that the green one was too low.

You can see by the various scratches and cracks that the car has been nudging the road regularly over some time.

This is where the front bumper is nudging the bitumen and collecting sand. It’s not exactly a huge dip, but the front end is too low to get through it.

So, off to work I went. At least the disc rotors came loose easily enough, after I replaced the bearing hubs last week and cleaned the rust off everything.

Dropping the original strut on the left side of the car.

I got a bit concerned when I compared one of the original struts to the Bilstein that was going to replace it. The Bilstein was a tad shorter, and I was doing all of this to increase the ride height, not decrease it.

Fitting one of the Bilsteins into place. Notice how the bottom mount doesn’t line up with the holes on the lower control arm? Yeah, wrestling that into place was a bunch of fun.

After various wrestling with a crowbar I managed to line everything up and get the lower bolt through the control arm and strut.

Once the strut was bolted in then I could move on to the right side of the car.

One the right side, the old strut dropped out easily enough. Gravity is useful sometimes.

Once again, there was wrestling with the crowbar to rotate the bottom of the strut so that it would line up with the lower control arm.

Everything back in place on the right side. Just the disc rotor and caliper to go back on, and then the wheel.

The left side also reassembled easily.

I got the wheels back on and was finished with the front end for the night.

Then it was time to move on to the back end of the car. I jacked up the car at the diff with a trolley jack and tried putting my new 4,000kg axle stands in place.

I bought the 4,000kg axle stands a couple of weeks ago to replace the 2,000kg ones that I’ve been using for the last couple of years. I bought the bigger ones because I wanted something more stable (ie with a bigger base) than the smaller ones. However, the 4,000kg ones are often too tall to fit under the car - it depends on where I want to put them, and even then the car must be jacked up to the maximum height with the trolley jack.

In hindsight, I should have bought 3,000kg stands, and will probably do so in the near future.

The leaf springs are attached to the rear of the chassis with hangers. The bolts were extremely tight, and even my extendable ratchet was being pushed to the limit to loosen the bolts.

With enough force the bolts came loose.

[PhilMeUp]

With the car on axle stands, I used the trolley jack to support the diff while I removed the leaf spring.

I removed the old leaf spring and put the Bilstein strut into place.

I also replaced the shackle bushes - there are four on each leaf spring. Ford has been using the same shackle bush since the 1968 Falcon XT and is still using it on the last Falcon ute, the FGX. The part number is XT5781A.

Although I was working at a fairly slow pace, at least I was working and getting through it all.

And then it was drama time. The thread on one of the shackle hangers snapped off.

I was rather angry. This meant that I couldn’t finish the car and have it back on wheels for the night. I did some homework on the computer and quickly learned that the broken shackle has been used on Falcons since the XA. This meant that I could get a secondhand one off pretty much any old Falcon wreck. But, by the time I figured this out it was 10:30pm and too late to call people.

I figured that I might as well keep working and get as much done as I could before giving up for the night.

I dropped the leaf spring and removed the strut on the right side of the car.

Bolting the replacement Bilstein into place.

I decided to finish reassembling the left side of the car and leave the right side until later (once I got a new shackle hanger).

For some reason I just couldn’t get it right, and it took me about 40 minutes to get it all to line up correctly.

I was completely over working on cars by now. There was plenty of swearing and cursing going on.

Massive amounts of frustration. I was hating working on the car by then.

At least I had one side in place, but knowing that I couldn’t finish the car for the night made it all feel like I was wasting my time.

Temperature check - 11:24pm:

Once the left side was done I wanted to get as much done on the right side before giving up in frustration for the night.

And then I realised that somewhere around the place I had a set of leaf springs from a BF wagon that I wrecked last year. I found the springs and was rapt to see that I’d left the hangers on them last year, and those hangers were the same as what was on the ute.

I grabbed a hanger, put new shackle bushes in and started work on swapping it over.

It was looking like the Tornado might end up on four wheels at the end of the night after all. Huge relief.

After the time-consuming battle I had with getting the left leaf spring back in place I was dreading doing it all again. However, this side went right.

I later figured out that one of my mistakes was to remove both leaf springs at once. This meant that there was nothing holding the diff in place, and getting the u-bolts to line up with the corresponding holes on the left side of the car took way too long.

If I was going to do the job again then I would just do one side of the car at a time.

I used my main trolley jack to control the height of the diff centre, and a smaller trolley jack to control the height of the leaf spring.

Once the Bilstein strut was mounted to the leaf spring then I moved the main trolley jack to the leaf spring - the smaller trolley jack didn’t have the height to support the leaf spring high enough.

I used the large trolley jack to raise the leaf spring high enough so that I could get the hanger bolts back in and through to the threads in the chassis.

Temperature check - 12:15am:

After way too much time I finally had both replacement leaf springs and Bilstein struts in place. It was all starting to come together.

Now that I was in the home stretch I was able to put some tools away and be a bit more organised with putting the brakes and wheels back on.

The end was in sight. About bloody time.

The old suspension. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, it’s just too low for general use and I had the Bilstein struts to use.

The old shackle bushes weren’t completely finished but they were definitely due for replacement.

The insides of the old shackle bushes. Yep, they definitely needed to be replaced.

The car was back on wheels and drivable. I am absolutely not in any hurry to do any of this sort of stuff again in the near future. Over it.

After poking around with the cigarette lighter during the week I hadn’t put everything back together so figured that I’d get that done before going for a drive.

That, and it was freezing cold outside and this was something that I could do while the engine warmed up (and got the heater working).

I really hate the facia panel that holds the cigarette lighter. It is one of the stupidest designs in the history of the universe.

It extends over the top of the gear lever plastic surround and makes it difficult to get the surround back into place. Both the facia and surround need to be moved into place at the same time.

[PhilMeUp]

I got everything back into place and was pissed off to find that the cigarette lighter wasn’t working again. There was obviously something being pushed or pulled out of place when the facia was being slid back in.

I pulled it apart again and saw that the power cable for the cigarette lighter was being pulled off the back of it when the facia was being pushed back in. I figured out how to fix this and was able to get back to putting it all back together.

This is the problem with how the facia and gear lever surround have to go in place together - the two side pieces of plastic normally get screwed into place before the surround clips in.

You can see at the end of my fingertip where one of the screws goes for the side plastic. Getting a screwdriver in there was tricky, and I was concerned about cracking the irreplaceable plastic surround with the Tornado ID number.

Temperature check - 1:07am:

I got it all back in place, and the green light on the GPS socket indicated that I now had current there. The black USB cable goes to the TomTom and the white cable charges my iPhone. The iPhone charger will be replaced by one of the cables in the Parrot MKi9200 phone kit that will be going in the car soon.

At long last I was ready to go for a drive. I was anxious to see if all of the drama for the night had actually achieved anything. The engine was warmed up, the heater was working and it was time to drive.

I pulled out of my driveway and then realised that was the problem that I had spent all this time to solve.

I reversed up and down the driveway end a few times and found that the front bumper was no longer hitting the bitumen. Excellent, that was the result that I had been needing.

I was relieved. Very, very, very relieved.

Time to hit the road - stopped at a set of traffic lights.

Another set of traffic lights. The blue backlighting for the dashboard and speedo cluster looks good.

The good thing about parking at a 24hr supermarket at 1:25am is not having to get too particular about parking straight.

The homeless people would have been cold.

My Canon G16 camera can take some sharp photos at night, so I had a go at this in a brightly lit carpark.

A bit after 2am and it was time to grab something to eat before heading home.

Temperature check - 2:14am:

[k31th]

nice work, Phil.

Good to see you made some progress - handy to have so many spare parts lying around, I guess...

is it just me or does the back now look way too high?

[PhilMeUp]

Good to see you made some progress - handy to have so many spare parts lying around, I guess...

Yeah, I got lucky. Who the hell has spare leaf spring shackles sitting around at home?

They came of a BFIII wagon wreck that I had last year. I kept the leaf springs because I figured that I could get them reset to normal height and put them on my taxi (which I haven't gotten around to).

I'd forgotten that I had them until late last night. They saved the day - meant that I could get the ute back on wheels and driving. I hate leaving things in pieces - there's the risk that I'll procrastinate and not finish it for days or weeks later.

is it just me or does the back now look way too high?

Looks it in the photos.

Those leaf springs came off a 2012 FG XR6 Turbo ute. The guy bought the car new and then replaced the front and rear springs after a few weeks. Which means that the leaf springs are just about new. I was very pleased to get them.

The front springs are new Lovells that I got from WA Suspensions. They're XR8 height, which is 5mm above XR6 height. They didn't have XR6 springs in stock and I didn't want to wait a week for them to come from east. We looked up the specifications and the spring rates are the same - the only difference is the 5mm height. No big deal there.

When I drove the car late last night it first felt like I was in a 4WD. I couldn't pick any visual difference in the height. With new front springs and almost new rear springs it's now back to the original factory height - I'm guessing that the old springs had compressed and lowered over time (ie 130,000km).

The main thing was keeping that front bumper safe. It was scraping on the road every time I drove out of the driveway, and that's only a very minor dip. That bumper and plastic insert are in terrible condition - dodgy repairs have been previously done on the insert. Might have a look at that next week.

[k31th]

yeah, I hate scraping the front bumper... with any stock hardware you really shouldn't be hitting on a driveway that shallow. Must have been something else going on there...

[PhilMeUp]

yeah, I hate scraping the front bumper... with any stock hardware you really shouldn't be hitting on a driveway that shallow. Must have been something else going on there...

Yep.

Suspension that's too low + that low-hanging FPV front bumper = pain and suffering.

[Tocchi]

Do what I did ... Cover your ears and keep going haha