81CJH

Amen.

Well, let me see. Fave Tune #1: XR6T, 2nd gear, 3000rpm, 70km/h & climbing - rapidly. Fave Tune #2: XR6T, 2nd gear, 4000rpm, stationary. With the fog lights on. (Dey look purty through da fog) Of course it's not very often I play track #2, but it sure is fun when I get the chance. All joking aside though, that's my top 2. No, really. I think Geea hit it on the head with some 'tallica. That said, A goodly dose of Disturbed & Seether finds it way through the ICC on a fairly regular basis as well.

Name: Chris Hermann Age: 24 (25 soon - check my birthday and send me money) M/F: Male, Single. From: Look left. Occupation: Telecommunications Tech, Queensland Rail. Car: 2004 MK1 XR6T, Lightning Stirke, Auto.

I can't see much markerting potential in it. I mean how many poms are going to fork out their superior currency for a national icon that's powered by some "Orrstraahllian" engine? "I mean blimey it's missin' two bangers innit?!"

Damn straight. Neat & clean. Personally, I don't mind the sticker there. It kind of over states the obvious, given the plates, but I think the location's good.

Ok, so I was wrong on the suspension.

Well you're on a winner mate, you won't be dissapointed. Nice choice of colour too by the way

It had better brakes and suspension, they would have been madmen to attempt that with stock suspension. It also had an xr8 diff, which is how they got it to 307km/h

Hey guys, Finally got off my slack and made a donation. Great info, Great members, Great site. 50 smacker's comin' at ya.

PWR also do water - air intercooling kits: http://www.pwr.com.au ...and if you're into icy intake temps at the strip, check this out too: http://www.alldayperformance.com.au/category144_1.htm That'll get yer motor running! [edit] By the way I did some research on the whole CO2 idea, and you can get into an exchange program with BOC Gas & Gear for around $10 per month and $20 per 10lb bottle. I think. This was a while ago and I'm not exactly sure on the bottle size. Anyway I remember it was cheap as chips for an exchange bottle and you could probably even get a sweetheart deal with your local home brew shop if you were on good terms.

Sort of on the topic, This morning I got into my car a little hastily after shutting the garage roller door. As I closed the door it hit my knee which in turn whacked the key in the ignition. The car stopped dead, no dash lights or odometer. It was as if I had no key in the ignition at all, yet it was still in there, and in the "ON" position. I turned the key off then started it again - no problems. This is the first time anything like this has happened (except when dufus forgot to put it in park before starting ), and it ran fine the rest of the day. Weird, man.

Well it's about time Ford got behind more than just V8 Supercars. Not that there's anything wrong with that series, but as we all know V8 Supercars are just like the afore mentioned bathurst 24hr "Monaro" - anything but. It will be far more exciting watching a car compete that really is a falcon, and what's more is within reach of the average joe. There are plenty of guys here with 300rwkw, and the fact that these guys are showing the public at large just what these vehicles are capable of is fantastic. I really hope that this project lasts long enough for Ford to realise the marketing potential in what these enthusiasts are trying to do. Wouldn't it be nice, amongst all the rice supporters in the drift crowd, to hear the resounding cry of a fan... "GO THE FALCON!!!!"

Nice thread Dingah, I'd like to my T to end up in the general vicinity of 300rwkw once it's out of warranty, and you've given me (and no doubt many others) some good insight as to what it takes to get there.

My T revs up to 2k rpm and then down again in 2-3 seconds, but as has been mentioned already, it only happens on a dead cold start. I also notice that the thermo fans seem to run a lot more frequently with edit, but I haven't noticed the temp gauge reading any higher than normal. I assume this is to try to reduce some heat soak in the intercooler? This is with Capa 8psi generic on an auto T sedan.

On the clutch subject, my T is a Mk1 4sp auto, and given the firmer shifts you get with an edit I'm hoping it should hold up ok for the time being. Of course once the car's out of warranty and I start modding, the auto will have to be strengthened. That will most likely be when I upgrade injectors etc and get around the 300rwkw mark. Cheers again for the input fellas, keep it comin'

Thanks for you replies guys As stated in the first post, the car is bog stock at this stage. I want to get a custom tune for all the reasons Steve mentioned. I went with the 8psi generic because I feel uncomfortable about running a generic 10psi tune on 95RON fuel. When I get it custom tuned however, they'll crank up the boost a bit, so It'll be making the most power it can in stock form, but I won't have to worry about any comprimises a generic tune would have, and I'll know the AFR's will be right. Then it will be Tee Ewe double eFF TUFF

Hey guys, I've just received my flasher from CAPA, and I'm as happy as a pig in $h ...well, so to speak. I ordered the 8psi, valet and fuel economy maps, not the 10psi. We don't have 98RON PULP up here, and I'm hoping to get it custom tuned in May when I'm in brisvegas anyway. So the custom tune will replace the 8psi generic tune, and since I won't need a 10psi generic when I've got a custom, I figured I may as well get a fuel economy map instead. The car is absolutely stock for now, and will remain so until the warranty expires. Still, the 8psi generic is pretty impressive over stock, and I can't wait to see what a custom will do! So that's about it, just thought I'd chip in my two cents. Nice one CAPA! -Chris

Sorry to be the voice of reason, but didn't you just answer your own question? If you've got an extra K kicking around, why not spend it on a malwood now, instead of spending it 6months from now, plus another $300 in towing fees when you fry it on a cruise day or something? I'm getting a flash tuner in a couple of weeks myself, so I'm looking forward to it too. Just gotta wait until I get to Brisvegas for a custom tune, until then it's 8psi tune all the way (no 98RON up here for the 10psi map )

Best of luck with that, I hope it's something easy that I missed.

I must admit I wasn't paying too much attention when I looked inside mine, I was more interested in tapping off the LED for my idea. I did however take the main board off the heatsink and flip it over for a look, and from what I could trace without a diagram, the non-power pins (they're easy, just follow the REALLY WIDE tracks) seemed to go in the general direction of the main control IC for the switch mode. It's a little 16 pin surface mount job. Infact pretty much everything on the under side is surface mount. That's kinda why I didn't try too hard to follow it, since even if you did find something usable, you've had to pull the whole amp apart to solder something very onto the very delicate surface mount components. Then you'd have to reassemble the amp, applying new heatsink compound. This might work really well, but it's hardly something the average enthusiast is going to undertake. I think unless you can discover a way to adapt the existing loom so you can eliminate the factory amp altogether, you're pretty much stuffed.

Matt, I just read your previous post again, and realised you were actually talking about a converter box so the factory loom could be used to run any given aftermarket amp having removed the original. Sorry, I thought you were still talking about a different way to do what I've already done. My mistake. One question though, didn't we establish that the +5V you get on the ACC line was generated by the amp? I know I measured everything in that loom with the amp unplugged and got nothing on that ACC wire. It was only when I had the amp plugged in & ICC turned on that I got +5V between ACC & ground. I think we're relying on that factory amp to do the switching for us, unless you buy an amp that has an input sensing circuit like the one posted in the Sub Woofer Replacement thread.

Sorry guys I have been out of town & offline for about a week. A converter box might be a little bit of overkill. All you need to do with mine is tack-solder two wires onto the power LED. No cutting, drilling or modifying. If we were to set up a kit form PCB with fly leads ready to go the whole job would take 15mins to install. Of course you'd be running your own power cable, that's not what this is about. If you're going to all the trouble of putting in your own amp, wouldn't you want it to turn on and off with the ICC? Most guys I've seen here have just run a wire off their cigarette lighter, but that IS going to a lot of trouble if you're not already pulling apart the dash. It's not nearly as easy as what I've done, and not as effective. The cigarette lighter is accessory power, which means it's only on when the key is in the ignition and turned to the first click - the accessory position. Your ICC however has 1hr keyless play... and when that hour's done, you push the button again and have another hour keyless if you want. If you've switched your aftermarket amp from the cig. lighter, you won't have any subs during keyless play now will you? My method is cheap, quick, easy, and most importantly USEFUL. Don't knock it 'till you've tried it! I haven't checked it with an oscilliscope (CRO), but if you look at the wiring diagram matt posted (top of thread), you'll see IN+ is a yellow wire and IN- is the shield wire for that multicore lookin' thingy. That is your incoming signal pair, which I assume to be low level, probably equivalent to RCA voltage levels. There's only a single pair for the input because this is a mono amplifier. You may well be able to join some wires to that and feed it into an amp's RCA inputs, but I'd check the voltage range with a CRO first to be safe, as it could just as easily be speaker level. I'd recommend a using a CRO instead of a mutlimeter, prefferably whilst playing a CD that has a single tone on it, like the bass mechanix CD's have. This is so you can identify the waveform on the CRO and make sure those wires do have a usable signal on them. After all the ICC might be sending a digital datastream rather than an analogue signal. Unlikely, but possible. Also, I would advise against hooking up a speaker to those wires until you've used an oscilliscope to find out what's coming out of them. If you hooked up a 4ohm speaker to a low level output you would almost certainly cause serious damage to the ICC. More specifically, the RCA inputs on any given aftermarket amp probably have an input impedance of ~10000 ohms. If you hook that signal up to 4 ohms, it's like shorting the wires together. Not good.

Oohhh, purty box. Well my amp's finally mounted properly now and looks kinda proffessional, and that only took about four months (I've only owned the car for six) More importantly everything works exactly how it should and my premium sound finally does sound pretty premium. Oh I had another look at that factory loom too - That +5V on the red ACC wire only appears when the amp is plugged in. If the amp is unplugged, no juice. I tried measuring between it and the two gnd wires, it and the shield wire, even it and the yellow constant +12V supply wires. Funnilly enough, when you do that last one, red probe on the red wire, and black probe on either of the yellow wires, you read -12V. Go figure. Anyway, it seems that you don't get that +5V unless the factory amp is in and working, so there goes the idea of pulling the factory amp and putting an aftermarket one in there... and I think it my idea's still better.

IH8PORK, I used a line level converter from the factory sub connector. So the factory amp is still switched on & doing it's thing, but instead of driving the sub, it's driving the input to my Rockford amp. I just parallelled up the inputs on the line converter so both the RCA's output the same signal, and both inputs on the rockford amp are driven. Kinda like monoised stereo. After all, Your subs aren't working in stereo are they? Phantomchic, you mean like put a 12" sub where the factory one was, then build a box underneath to enclose it? Man you couldn't pay me enough to build a box like that! Something you might need to consider is whether such a box would enclose the rear speakers inside the same space. That would not be cool. The pressure generated be the sub would be fighting the movement of the rear speakers, and I know which speaker's gonna win... the one that's 12" wide and flapping like an epileptic! I don't know that it would harm the rear speakers, but it wouldn't do the sound reproduction any good. Besides, once you get a 12" sub under there and put a panel underneath, it's gonna take a huge chunk out of your bootspace. My 10" is in the factory spot just freeair, and it hangs down a fair way.

Cheers to aumatt for the schematic of the factory loom, it seems if I had done a bit more searching I could have saved myself a whole bunch of trouble. I metered out the red wire shown in the diagram as ACC, it does indeed become live when the ICC is turned on. It's not your conventional +12V, but only +5V. This is not sufficient to turn on your aftermarket amps, but can be used more readily than my method to provide a switching source. I think the reason I missed this the first time around is because I was metering the loom without the factory amp plugged in. This was because my meter probes were too big to fit into the back of the plug. ...excuses excuses. Well now that we've found an accessory wire, would somebody else mind seeing how usable it is for our purposes? Since I've already found a method that works, I'm rather loathe to rip it out again just for the sake of it. Another reason I'm a little hesisant is that to tap into that wire you'd have to use a scotchlock or strip back some insulation & solder onto it. That's fine, but if & when you sell the car (removing your sound system, of course), the next owner may at some time have a problem with the factory amp. I imagine if Ford was to discover their loom had been "cut 'n' shut", they might be a little reluctant to fix the problem. With my method however, you just tack solder two wires onto the power LED, which is easily undone and if you're careful, will leave no trace of any dodginess. If you look closely at my pictures, you will see there has been no physical modification to the amplifier. The cable coming into the amp is garden variety 2 pair phone cable, which slips nicely between the casing. So how about it aumatt? You up for the challenge? It doesn't seem that difficult really. You might be able to use a 6V relay, or the "universal voltage switch" kit from jaycar, but then why wouldn't you use my method? It only has two components and can be built for around $5. The biggest concern is using the signal, but not interferring with it. The last thing you want to do is accidentally back-feed +12V into a +5V output from your ICC. Anyway, I'm rambling. BCR01, each to their own. This is kinda what I do, but If I ever need to upgrade my brakes, I'll come talk to you.