Gav

I'd read the " extra tips" in the installation notes. They explicitly state that improperly cleaned ECU contacts are a cause of fuel pump priming issues. Make sure the contacts are clean because it's the first thing they will tell you to do when you make contact with them. I've used their product without issue. I made sure the ECU contacts were fastidiously prepared before I inserted the chip......give it a go and see how things run then...

I've found getting into paint correction quite bewildering. Heaps of websites deal with it, stacks of machines are available that all do essentially similar things and the products - perhaps unsurprisingly there are fuckloads of them as well. I've got a Bosch GEX150 Turbo. I bought it a few years ago because it seemed to be highly regarded. Since that point in time heaps of other machines have been made available. Firstly the machine has to be comfortable to hold - it has to have balance so you can use it with one hand if necessary and an extended handle if two-handed operation is required. The Bosch I have takes a six-inch (150mm) foam pad that adheres to vibrating plate via velcro. The plate has the "hook" component of the velcro adhered to it and the pads sport the "loop" component. The pads never come adrift during operation. The 150mms size in my opinion is a great point from which to start. Plate vibration speeds are infinitely variable via a rotary dial on the handle of the machine. Another setting switch enables a selection to be made that gives the machine a rotary setting as well as a fine orbital one. I also have a rotary buffer that I rarely use nowadays because the Bosch combines the functions of two machines. "Lake Country" is the brand of foam pads I use. They are colour coded according to the amount of "cut" they deliver. Other manufacturers do the same with colour coding. There is no correlation between pad colour and "cut" between manufacturers. Making things more confusing is the lack of correlation between older pad colours and newer issues or ranges within the same manufacturer's lines. Lake Country do offer substantial online resources that attempt to enable you to quantify what kind of cut you're gonna get with what pad. This all becomes somewhat meaningless and is defined by whatever compounds you're using. At least Lake Country offer tables that quantify the effect their pads have with certain brands of compound. You really have to suck it and see...experiment with stuff. I use Waxit to source a lot of my stuff. https://www.waxit.com.au/ They're based in Tullamarine (Melbourne) and seem to provide a reliable service via the post. My process is generally as follows - works for me on home sprayed 2K paint : 1500-2000 wet sand with half sheet paper. The half sheets available with a light grey abrasive compound have a "blunted" grit profile that leave less fine scratches than the full sheets (brown or black compound) with the same grit rating. The full sheets have a more angular grit profile that leaves more scratches that need to be buffed out later. Sanding removes deeper scratches and peel. I'll use Menzerna Heavy Cut 300 or 400 on a yellow Lake Country pad with the Bosch set on rotary. I'll next used the same compound using a Lake Country orange pad on an orbital setting. You get a pretty good finish after this point. The new issue Menzerna compounds apparently "reduce" as you polish. The offer more cut at the start of the process and reduce the amount of cut over time. You can go further with polishing if you wish - depending on your fussiness. Blue or black pads from the manufacturer discussed offer little cutting ability and are more designed to finesse your paints finish with finer polishing compounds or to machine smear a finishing protectant (a natural wax or synthetic compound) onto the paint....

Driveline Services at 4/15 Burgess Rd Kilsyth do a good job for reasonable money and turnaround time. They balanced a tailshaft for me in the past and I'm getting them to do a shortening and re-balance again soon....

My money is on it being from a V8 Commodore (VN-VS)......

The "5" cast into the side suggests it's a five speed. I had one of those behind a 4.1 in the late eighties as T5's were way too expensive back then. Dellow converted Celica boxes were the only other feasible overdrive gearbox options available and seemed fiddly to my 17 year old brain. These were the only option I gave myself - lasted a while then broke. I feel they only came behind 3.3's for a reason......

Does anyone use "isolator" anymore to avoid fry-ups? When I sprayed acrylics onto an unknown substrate I'd use this stuff. Back when "Dulon" was a brand of acrylic paint you could trust. I believe it's methylated spirits based and provides an impervious layer to whatever you spray on top. Ando's correct though regarding two-pack...since I started spraying 2K those issues are in the past. It's a bit naughty outside the industrial domain but possible with the correct care, attention, equipment and acreage!,

Gold, young fella! Gold! Thanks heaps for that....I did think the sedan ones were pop-rivetted ..reps pour vous!

Thanks for the offer but I've largely created a solution - A photo would be instructive, though. Just looking at attachment methods for the drip rail... I've enjoyed the intellectual challenge of working through the various repair dilemmas this car has offered - making repair sections is part of that deal. It's not a show car so absolute adherence to original design is not imperative. That being said I've made effort to adhere resonably to original design. Save for the specialist shapes of the exterior panels, the "bones" of these cars are a fairly simple design that can in part be adequately recreated with some thought. The fact they weren't put together in state of the art facilities makes this more possible.

To be honest....I reckon it's easier to make something. Tally up the time/kilometres driven to see all manner of fucked up forty year old Falcons owned by (commercial) interests who don't want to cut their car up as you would like to, versus an afternoon in the shed making something out of brand new metal and cost/versus benefit swings in favour of fabricating something. The corrosion in my car wasn't visible - it'd royally piss me off to pay for an original section to find it FUBARed when I get it home. Take a picture of your car for me?

As you say (gerg) that last picture looks as though the drip rail and the posterior surface of the A-pillar are a one piece item that is curved and spotted to the roof and the medial aspect of the A-pillar. I'm getting the impression that with sedans the drip rail is a separate pressing that is either spotted or both spotted/pop rivetted to the posterior section of the A-pillar. It is the posterior section of the A-pillar that is rolled into the roof and medial component of the A-pillar. I'm just trying to get this repair looking as original as I can cos I'll see it each time I get into/ out of the car. If I can pop-rivet my repair section on - it'll be less messy than doing a whole lot of plug welds. But if spots was how it was done...I'll plug weld.... Thanks in advance to the lads who get around to posting more pictures of this part of the car to this thread.

Thread hijack! I've made a seperate thread on XA-XC a-pillar corrosion....have a look and post there!

That's really odd....I was under the impression that a larger fluid tip was required for acrylics when compared with 2K. I've used a 1.8/2.0 tip in the past and haven't had a problem with runs. It's possible I tailored my technique to suit the rate of material deposition.....when the opportunity arises I may just try a 1.4 tip with acrylic to see how it goes.

Hey chaps.... Still chipping away at the corrosion in my XA. Was fitting the doors to make sure all the lines on the car match up and found that I couldn't adjust the drivers door any further forward. The A-pillar on the car seemed inordinately "thick" - like extra layers of metal were preventing forward adjustment of the door...anyway I started picking away and found "repairs" that consisted of bog and extra metal layers. This is a partial dissection of the A-pillar on the driver's side : Looks bad....but after all the corrosion I've encountered I'm quite confident of an elegant repair. In fact it's largely done. Had I struck this when I began the resto...I woulda freaked! This car has been a sheetemetal welding apprenticeship so I'm reasonably confident where ever basic fabrication and welding are concerned! I've fabbed up a replacement drip channel. Had to. The owner of Grand Tourer died and they scaled back their business. When I last checked their parts facility had closed. They were the only place that sold repro drip channel pressings. So...what I need to know is are the drip channels forward of the front doors on XA-XC's pop rivetted on or spot welded onto the A-pillar? My are pop rivetted but I don't know whether that's because they have been comprehensively fucked with in the past. I'd be rapt if any XA-XC owners could check out their cars and let me know...

I recently bought two Star SG4000 GF guns - a 2.0mm tip for primers and acrylics (if I ever spray them again) and a 1.4mm gun for 2K top coat. I bought two because I was told buying the internals to swap between guns would cost almost as much as two separate guns. They replaced a Workquip thing. I think they were around 150 bucks each and they put the Workquip unit into the shade. Really nice paint atomisation in comparison to what I had used without a killer price. Built nicely as well. Recently sprayed up a panel for my EF XR6 in 2K and was really impressed with the finish I obtained. I would consider my self to be a fairly competent beginner painter and would recommend these guns to someone of my skill level for whom an Iwata or whatever is overkill. Secondly.....hendixhc.....could you take a look at your XC thread...gotta question for you.

A word about devices that use the mobile phone network to track your stuff. There have been two recent occasions when I investigated these items. Firstly, "GPS car trackers" that SMS the physical location of your vehicle when I was considering parking a car or two in storage. Secondly a "trail camera" that sends, night or day, footage of the pricks nicking your stuff to your phone as they are doing it when I caught a nuffy red-handed in my back yard. Of note, while I was doing some digging, is that Telstra is switching off the 2G network in 2016. Optus's 2G network already has very marginal coverage. A lot of these devices are only enabled for the old 2G/GSM network and will be of little use in the near future. So consider whatever you buy, buy carefully. Some vendors...especially the Ebay ones mistake the fact that because the 3G network uses similar frequencies to the the 2G network (850MHz, 900MHz etc) that 2G devices are compatible with the updated network. My understanding is that they are not....different protocols are used and therefore the 2G devices will cease to function as intended in time. The major carriers are "refarming" the frequencies used on the 2G network elsewhere... So do your research before laying out the readies!