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......

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...

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!,

Hoping to get some advice here. I've abrasively blasted the floorpan of my XA and wish to prepare it further for an epoxy substrate. I'm planning on using Protec Epoxy AP-4110. The literature for this material suggests the use of a phosphoric acid cleaner/metal conditioner. I was planning on prepsoling the floor then using the metal conditioner as suggested. I did a test patch using the metal conditioner. this is what I got : or more diluted : Is this the effect I'm after? Looks suspiciously like corrosion...ie. iron oxide. I assume phosphoric acid reacts with the iron component of steel to produce iron phosphate...which in the case of a metal conditioner should be a useful ultra thin layer. Googling "iron phosphate" produces images of a material that's a similar colour to iron oxide (rust) - so perhaps this is the effect I'm after. I've used metal conditioner before on much smoother metal and it produces a blueing effect. The floorpan is more keyed because of the use of 30-60 grit to abrade it....is the different result because it's not as easy to remove the conditioner from the micro pits created by the sand blasting? Am I on the correct track? I don't want to apply this stuff to a huge floorpan and engine bay area only to find I've screwed things up royally. It seems a shame in a way to convert my yummy bare metal floorpan to this orange stuff. Ando76...if you're around, what do you say?

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.

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!

Abrasive blasting - if you've access to one or know someone who does is the best way of removing corrosion without removing much parent metal. I'd chuck some epoxy primer on the treated metal straight afterwards...are you in Melbourne?

Was thinking about this. We've got a new scanner that uses some smart algorithms that reduce metal artefact. The machines I use scan people, they're designed to scan things that are kinda mushy and contain around 75% water. Some people have metal in them...artifical hips, bullets, metal poles etc and this metal really screws with the scan because it absorbs heaps of xrays. This new scanner does a really good job of correcting for heavy metals so it may be time to re-visit the "Webber carby scan" (I've lurv to do a cylinder head too!) I'll give it a shot again next time I'm rostered on the weekend. If the pictures work and I can figure a meaningful way of displaying them...I'll post.

Testing a component to characterize it is easy...but potentially expensive. You could test for the chemical composition of the component and make inferences regarding the quality of the metal used in manufacture. The presence of certain chemical elements confers certain characteristics on any alloy - steel included. Steel's been around for thousands of years and it's pretty well known what happens when you add removed components from it. Steel, by definition contains carbon.....but too much embrittles it. The presence of sulphur and phosphorus indicates a poor refining proces and can reduce its strength. This analysis would not be destructive of the component and requires a small physical sample to be taken. You can only infer certain 'qualitative' things from this line of inquiry. Rigorous testing would require other methods. The microstructure of the metal is important too. The size of the metal 'grains' and the distribution of carbon within the steel (as well as other stuff) has an impact on the physical characteristic of a metal such as its strength and resistance to chamical attack (corrosion). Scanning electron microscopes can be used to do this....they're typically found at universities....there's one at Monash in Melbourne. Fatigue...especially important to suspension components can be tested by setting up a custom rig that exposes a component to cyclic loading and unloading. By its nature fatigue testing is destructive of the component. X-ray is a good, cheap, widely available method of examining for manufacting/physical defects such as gas voids. It doesn't involve the destruction of the component either. Testing is prone to statitistical issues. Test one component and you run the risk of testing either the good one of a batch...or the bad one - resulting in incorrect assertions about the item. Manufacturing complex items...no matter how good the process is prone to some variation. Good manufacturers aim to reduce this variation...but you can never fully remove it. Proper testing requires numerous samples, can be quite involved and expensive. It's part of the reason why R & D costs a bomb. I have some experience in this - one of my previous jobs was in an analytical laboratory (sounds brainy but it's not really!) and the missus worked in a joint that used to characterize materials that had all the smart guys and expensive testing toys.

Nrap is 'around the corner' from me. Operates from a small warehouse on his property. I bought from him before and he seems pretty genuine. He used to operate North Ringwood Auto Parts on Oban Road in Rinwood when "nrap" was a storefront. Had been there since I started driving but move on around a decade ago. Must've figured, overheads, being as they are - it was more cost effective to operate from his property. So...he's been in the game for a while. Seeing the opening post motivates me to x-ray my next set of suspension components just to see what's in them...or not! I work in an x-ray department and have x-rayed and scanned all manner of shit that isn't people! Webber carburettors don't CT scan well! The cast aluminium bodies are okay but brass and steel components flog out the scan...as does metal stuff in people. They'd x-ray alright though. I scanned one to to see if I could split it into 0.5mm slices - was interested in what goes on inside....fun really!

Two methods : mechanical and chemical. If you want to remove small areas, a common or garden variety paint scraper or spatula will do the job. That's the "mechanical". You can use a heat gun to soften it some more if necessary. As the stuff is bituminous/oil based, you can remove the residual with oil/grease remover (prepsol) - but it can get a bit messy. My method of choice is to remove the bulk of the material with a scraper, abrasive blast the remainder, then prepsol the remnants. This provides a paint-worthy surface. If you're not aiming to repaint the surface with anything else except the same stuff, your degree of prep can be scaled back. If you just looking not to set fire to the stuff whilst welding...scraping and cursory clean should be fine.

If no-one has mentioned it already, get one of these chaps for $25-$30. Makes getting angular torque simpler and more repeatable. I've done a few E-series heads and guesstimated what 90° looks like with an ordinary protractor and things have worked out fine though. One of these guys will eliminate the guesswork and get the job done properly. Whilst I'm not looking forward to my next scheduled head gasket change....I'm looking forward to using one of these..

Just re-reading the posts in this thread.....and something came to mind that may be of use to folk here. Anyone noticed that PROTEC have considerably rationalized their product line-up? Seems PPG (Protec's owners) are pulling Protec's expansive, duplicating product offerings into line. My local Protec rep has said as much. Anyway, they offer two epoxies. EPOTEC 408 is apparently their industrial coating and AP-4110 is more oriented to the automotive sector. Reading their product literature...each has slightly different prep and curing behaviour. The EPOTEC is supposed to be applied to bare, freshly blasted metal - within 15 minutes apparently - although I don't see how this can be practical in a lot of cases. With the AP-4110 it is suggested to apply it over a metal prepped surface. I suppose though...it to could be applied over a freshly blasted surface too. Has anyone noticed when it comes to certain issues....such as underbody prep...there are so many opinions? Trawl the internet and you'll find so much conjecture...as much informations as misinformation. It's often difficult to arrive at a firm conclusion on a lot of issues. Thanks for your input chaps. And...geez...everyone says the southern states have got the shitty end of the stick as far as weather is concerned...we got it good in comparison to the Queenslanders who've helped out here it seems. I reckon it's far easier to control for "cold" (thanks "Jetfire"!) than it it to control for "humidity".

I think you may be correct here. I'm normally quite cautious by nature when it comes to things like this. I typically like to sit back and consider things...as the answer to any problem usually arrives quite naturally after some quiet research and consideration. Funny really. What's caused this rush in a way. Last week, one of my compressors that I use to drive the sandblaster packed up. The remaining two, by themselves are insufficient to drive the blaster really effectively. So I hired, at considerable expense one of those trailer mounted (130cfm) suckers from Kennards. Suffice to say with that much air (and money on a per-day basis!) I tore through the paint on the underbody without a lot of consideration as to what was to follow. I have also scheduled this project and have set deadlines that appear a litle unrealistic. So time to settle back and relax. What I think will do is mask of the underbody with builders film in an effort to limit atmospheric damage. I can expose smaller areas at a time and keep other areas sealed off. that way on re-blast, I can limit the amount of re-cleaning etc that needs to be done cos sand and other shit get everywhere when blasting. I'm feeling more content already! A solution of sorts. Now I can sleep a little better tonight.

I finished blasting the pan on Friday...still looks okay...but I know corrosion is already taking place on a microscopic scale. Actually..it's macroscopic cos when you scuff the metal...you can see that freshly exposed metal is a little brighter than the surrounding metal the corrosion process has already begun. My thinking on this lurches all over the place. This morning, after Ando76's input, my thinking was that I was all set to resume the phosphoric acid metal prep, post prepsol. Now I'm beginning to believe it may cause more issues than it solves because there are a lot of seams and double panelled areas that will capture metal prep, water and other crud. There's a greater probabilty that this will cause issues rather that the microscopic flash rusting that occurs over two cold Melbourne days on a vehicle that is a dry, well sealed shed. Gonna go and have a poke at the car tonight. Hopefully the answers will come to me. The big day for painting is supposed to be tomorrow. One of the kids looks like she's getting "pink-eye". Can you believe it? Bare assed car, semi-confusion about what to do, a day off work tomorrow, a kid child-care will send home quicker than....feck knows what....I am living the dream!