Hiya............Remember me? I guess it’s about time I updated my thread to include what's been happening with my car over the last few months. I have named the car Roxy coz the name means 'Bright' but the slang term - according to the urban dictionary - means 'sexy' and she sure is that. First up, Tyres -- -- OMFG has the Limo gone through some tyres. I noticed that the rear Nexen N'fura tyres were just on the wear marks - 8630km's, basically the same kilometres as the Toyo's but half the price…sweeeeet so I opened up the wallet, didn't find much money in there at the time so I bought a couple Goodride 265/35/18's off of one of the guys in the Drift scene here in Adelaide for $125 each. There's a bit of stretch on a 9 and a half inch rim so I dropped the pressure on them a bit and I really did like them during the summer. They're a bit 'wobbly' when cold but once they warmed up, they gave pretty good grip and if I wanted to have fun - which I don't of course coz I'm a good boy, Roxy smokes them up beautifully. I guess that's why this bloke likes them on his R35 Drifter. They are really quiet on the Freeway as well and I like that but a couple of weeks back, I had to swap them out for some more Toyo Proxies for winter.....damn rain making the roads all wet but at 7000km's with 1.2mm of tread left on the Goodrides, they were very 'skatey' in the rain. I reckon I'll buy another pair when spring time rolls around this year though. Back in February, I realised that I have killed the front tyres big time. The pic below came off the right but the left was almost as bad and yes, I had swapped them over and checked balance every 5000k's but still, I destroyed the front Toyos within a 5000k window - big time………bloody lowered cars with big brakes…….grrrrrrrr. I’m not sure of the k's on them -- I'm thinking 25 thou 'ish. ^^^ oppps I put some real cheap yum-cha tyres on the front until I could get a wheel alignment done but Phil the taxi man suggested that a bush or two may be to blame and the big Brembos stopping the front wheels whilst the rest of the car tries to 'drive over' them doesn't help so I took it to SA Suspension and got some great service from them. I booked Roxy in for a "FREE" check over and the bloke doing it got me under the limo and went through everything with me and it ended with the suggestion that I replace 4 bushes - front Radius Arms and rear Control Blades. We had a good chat about my driving style and my comfort needs and decided to go with Whiteline bushes in the Control Blades (stronger than standard but softer than Nolathane) and Nolathane on the front of the Radius Arms as he said that they will help hold the car still if/when I jump on the Brembos so I booked it in for the following week. When I got back there, the guy grabbed me and said that he had a chat with (someone (forgot who)) and HE made the decision that they will fit Whitelines to the Radius Arms as well. Holly crap am I glad he did coz the boat is much better on the road now........not Rab and his coilovers comfortable (I’m guessing) but pretty good. They had to add - iirc - 8mm of shims on the front left and 7mm on the front right just to stand the wheels up straight and it's lucky there was enough thread on the bolts for it to get spaced out that far so that saved me some money. While we're on wheels and tyres -- let me tell you all a little joke. Some of you may remember me saying a while back, "it's fine to make a car go faster but you have to make sure that it stops better as well" and this is the reason for me buying and fitting the Brembo kit before I touched the power side of things. They fit nicely in my Koya Bathurst 18" wheels so I figured that it would be a good idea to piss off the pizza-cutter spare tyre and put one of the original wheels in the boot to use as a spare if needed --- anyone picked up where I'm going with this yet??? Coz of the way my brain works, back in January some time, I woke myself up in the middle of the night and was laughing my head off. You see, I had to be careful with my purchase of the wheels to ensure they fitted over the brakes (or was it Brakes that fit in the Wheels I bought.....whatever) --- surely you've worked out by now what my cockup was. Welllllllllll, there is NO WAY that the standard 18" Ford rim (that weighs a ton btw) will go close to fitting over my brakes, either front or back and it only took me 9 months or so to figure that out and I’ve had the bloody heavy standard wheel in the boot for all that time. EPIC FAIL DON lol What was next? Oh that's right...... I was at a mates workshop having lunch and a chat one day and as I was about to leave, he made mention that the coolant is supposed to stay in the cooling system and that it shouldn't be on the ground..........Bloody hell Roxy. What NOW? We put the Limo up on the hoist thinking that the bottom hose may have split but - you guessed it - dang water pump - so I went up to my closest Ford dealer at Mt Barker (50km) to grab a new pump, drive belt and coolant while Rob (he's a 4wd mechanic and has always said that he would never work on my car) pulled the old pump off. On the back of the pump where the heater pipe goes (make sure you put a new O-ring on the heater pipe - opps), there is a little bracket that holds the pipe in place and this is secured with a self-tapping screw/bolt. If you need to swap out an FG water pump in the future, make sure that you start cutting the thread for this screw on the bench........coz easier........hang on, I'll mark a pic so you know what I'm talking about. ^^ Spend the time and make sure it's clean for the new pump and spend the extra money, buy the water pump pulley as well and ask your Ford service center to fit it….again, coz easier. They fitted it for free for me. Oh and I also pulled apart the thermo housing and fixed up the leak it had that was leaving white stains (lol) on the rocker cover while we were at it. ............................................ OK, please allow me a bit of time for a 'small' rant if you would as I want to have a quick bitch about my $3000 piece of crap Nizpoo exhaust. A few of us have discussed this at length in another thread but I can’t remember which. There are two things that I absolutely hate about it, well, three if you include the 2 holes that blew through the weld where they installed the Resonator box when it was only a couple of weeks old (I really should ask my favourite tig welder to fix that sometime soon). 1/ The cheap as crap V-bands that I have to re-tighten each month AND, Nylocks were used on these bands ---- I mean, how hot does a fuggen Stainless exhaust on a turbo get FFS and you use Nylocks!!! ---- so I tried new nuts and they came loose so I put lock nuts on to try and hold them tight but two of the bands still leak. I have removed each and refitted them hoping that this will cure the problem but no. It was suggested in the other thread that I look at V-bands from Cummins but I decided that I'm not gunna spend money on it. and 2/ As most of you know, I had a valve installed in one of the trumpets and the sound of it at idle is shyte coz that flapper that I paid quite a few hundred bucks for - doesn't go anywhere near closing properly. I HATE the sound of Roxy at idle and before anyone says anything, it is NOT because of the extra work that Ratter had to do to get the rear box and trumpets to fit in there with my H/D tow bar, it's just a bad design I reckon. It's not even 12 months old yet but I reckon I might get rid of it :( Seriously, when I first looked at this exhaust -- /End Rant ............................................ ^^^ I'll put this here to lighten the mood... Love this pic OK, on to the power plant. As most of you know, I didn't go to Melbourne back in October last year. A few days before I was meant to head down, I took a fall (coz old and a bit silly) hurting a couple of Ribs so I sent an email to let the workshop in Mexico know that I wasn't coming down and to cancel my booking and because of that – and a couple of other things -- it made me think that it's time to sell the G6. I went onto Carsales that afternoon and got to the very end where you submit it for sale and for some reason, I stopped. You see, when I bought the car, the purchase felt like it was the right thing to do 'without' having to think about it but when it came time to hit that friggen button to sell it, I just couldn't go through with it so I said to myself, "Self (I said), think about it for a couple of days because there is obviously a reason for the uncertainty even if you can't see it at the moment". Over the next few days I spoke to a few people about the idea of selling it and back at the beginning of November, I got an SMS from a bloke in Sydney (somewhere) which said that he had heard I might be selling it and that he had read up all about my car (on here) and he made an offer to buy it..................obviously I turned him down coz Roxy is still sitting in the driveway. It amazes me how quick 'word of mouth' is in this country..........especially when only a handful of people knew that I was thinking of selling it. I'm sure it will be OK to share something that was said to me by a knob (<-- see what I did there lol) back then. We were speaking about my thought to sell it and he said something along the lines of "Don't be a farken idiot Don.....look at what you've built already and you're not done yet.....you're only a turbo swap and a re-tune away from having the 10 second street car that you really want". This response was somewhat typical from the people I spoke to so I sat for a cupla more days thinking about it all and I ended up doing a Ted (HIMYM) and making a Pro's & Con's list and the Positives for keeping the car farrrrr out-weighed anything else. Number 1 was - I really do love Roxy. ^^^ How could you not love that -- and check out the sticker on the quarter window So, where did that leave me? I still had a brand new GTX snail sitting in a box on the coffee table but still wasn't totally sure whether or not I wanted to fit it so I spoke to a few friends (again) and another decision was made. FIT THE FRIGGEN THING ALREADY but it still took me 4 months to get it done...lol. Make Haste Slowly is my motto. A bit before the '76 was installed, I grabbed the (un-needed) PW Muffler Delete pipe from Bizkets -- cheers mate as it looks heaps better than that big ugly plastic cone I reckon. I did a video in an attempt to show the difference (if any) between the standard muffler and PW delete pipe but as you will see, Roxy lost a bit of traction (she has a mind of her own sometimes) when recording the section with the PW pipe installed so it's not really a very good comparison – fun, but not very informative.
I then bought the other parts needed to fit the GTX from MTQ and a few weeks ago I took the old girl for a drive to meet up with Jon (Stigmata) at his workshop and I --- yeah that's right --- me (standing there, doing absolutely nothing) had the snail fitted and the car started in about 3 and a bit hours -- once you take off the time lost by me chatting far too much and getting in Stigmata's way all the time while he was working....sorry mate. How easy was it to replace the standard GT with a new GTX?? Friggen - nah - that doesn't express it enough -- farken -- yeah that's better - easy. Stigmata has swapped out a few turbos in his time and he made it look so very easy to do and having all the other bits that would be needed for the fit-up at hand, well, that's just a friggen logical thing to do. I bought a 'Universal' Actuator Bracket - ^^bottom of the pic - from MTQ ($19 ‘ish) to keep the front housing up-right as Roxy still runs the x-over and it was a 5 minute job to bend it into the correct position, chuck a tack weld on it, put the actuator on and set the preload (after a bit of mucking around with other bits - lol) so all up fitting the new snail cost me less than $100 (mates rates -- Chears Paul) in parts to install. We didn't end up using the studs or the Boost Nipple that I bought from VPW that goes into the pipe after the turbo, instead we (well......Jon) took the front cover off and it was drilled and tapped and the nipple from the old turbo was installed. It was great to catch up with Stigmata coz I haven't seen him in probably 6 months coz sometimes life sux and throws you a curve ball every now and then but hey, I'm a big believer in Karma and that things turn out just the way they're supposed to mate. ^^^ Willo - you asked once about the bung for the EGT......that's where Pit Lane welded it on my dump pipe...perfect spot. Hurry up and get yours connected so we can compare readings please I took her for a quick drive to make sure the wheels didn't fall off and then we went down the local shops for a spot of lunch with Biz, as he had come down for a drive and a chat. Thank you so much Stigmata I had set the GoPro up to record the swap out as I was gunna edit it and compress it's length (speed it up by 100x) coz I thought it would make a good YouTube video but the friggen SD card shat itself and I only got the last half hour of work..................damn :( I drove Roxy home going through Adelaide as I needed to fill her up and fuel is always cheaper down in town and then I gave her a little bit on the Freeway and even before a retune, I could tell the difference between the standard GT and the GTX. With minimum throttle, she dropped back to 3rd and just pullllllllllllllllled so I backed off when it hit 10psi -- I know I know, I shouldn't do that and to make sure I didn't do it again until she was retuned, I put the Pit Lane Valet tune (3000rpm cut) in the G6 when I got home. OK, so, the only changes done to the car were the turbo swap, muffler delete and a 4" Silicon Joiner from turbo to PW Muffler Delete pipe form the Pit Lane tune she had last year. Hang on ---- I just remembered another change that I made. I took the XR8 bottom Air Box and Snorkel off coz I've decided that I don't like the look of it (the way the snorkel mouth is cut), so I hit the front of the standard box with a 50mm hole saw to open it up and reinstalled it and the original (skinny) Snorkel and it looks so much better now. Besides the PW alloy piping, Roxy’s engine bay looks stock standard. The air box may not pull in the same air as the xr8 stuff (maybe it does, I don't know) but that's fine.......I don't care if it costs me a bit of power.....it looks better. Work of art that ^^^ I shall call it the BenDoCoLimoAirFloBro Finding a decent tuner in Adelaide that has a good name and reputation ‘constantly’ when it comes to tuning these Fords is fairly impossible so all I could do was make a (sort of) educated guess and I booked her in with Graham West (Adelaide Performance Engines) for a re-tune but more on this in a while. The week before Roxy went on the rollers, I had a bit of a chat about fuel flow for the GTX with Bomber (sweet info mate -- thnx) and I ended up ringing John at Herrods (this poor bloke starts work at 3am coz that's when he does all of his work with 'whoever/wherever/whatever' in Florida), and I had a great chat with him and I ended up grabbing a new fuel pump module with a 350lph pump in it and a Bosch Fuel Regulator to suit it. The module is built to run E85 but John said "If you go that way, tell them to pull it back as the pump won't be big enough to run full power with the little GTX". For the time being, I'll leave it on 98 though. OK OK, there's another change -- but that one's just for safety. Whilst we were chatting, John (Herrods) told me to give the throttle body a good clean before it hits the dyno so I took the pipework off the next day to clean it and noticed that the cooler pipe before the TB Elbow was resting hard-up against the inlet manifold and had 'almost' worn through.............WTF............that was lucky. A mate measured it up and it is a bit more than three quarters of the way through the 2mm alloy pipe... Thank fark I caught it before it failed and put alloy through the engine. I reckon that the joiner may have decided to relax and roll over a bit and rolled the pipe over onto the manifold. Huge shout out and cheers to John for telling me to clean the TB. ^^ I've been a bit worried when I pointed the car towards a tree or worse still, a truck coz I'm not quick enough to catch it when the TruTrac grabs a wheel but this really scared the crap out of me. I sent an email off to Process West when I got home that night asking if it's possible to buy just that one pipe or will I have to purchase the entire pipe kit and the next day Kev returned my email saying that he had shipped a new pipe to me. Now hang on a second - he didn't ask for any money........he just shipped it. I think I need to take my contact details out of my email signature coz I couldn't believe that Process West were sending me a new pipe for free --- I thought that Kevin must of forgot to put the details in coz they're so busy atm so I sent him another email asking about costs for the pipe and delivery but he wouldn't hear of it. Cheers Process West thanks heaps Kev brilliant stuff, but let’s not mention my cock-up Hey I know that they're not currently a sponsor of this forum but considering they didn't charge me anything and got a new pipe to my place the next afternoon coz of the danger to my engine (and they put up with my stupidity - lol), please allow me the opportunity to say: Visit Process West Email Process West Phone Process West -- the forum won't let me put a phone number link in so it's 02 4272 8088 I guess if I did a HTML insert it would look like <a href="tel:0242728088">Phone Process West</a> but that's too damn hard Char-ching hehe
