blu xe

What was the temperature like while you were spraying? Have to have the panel warm before you spray or it can stay tacky and may not even fully cure cause the top has skinned off before the first coat that's directly on the substrate has had a chance to cure. You'll know cause as soon as you try to sand it , it'll ball up and start pulling away from the metal. If you can pull up an edge with your nail your going to have to strip it and start again. Also need to give it enough time to flash off between coats. I generally do my first coat then wait till it looks eggshell like. Then once you can lightly stick a finger on it with out it actually being wet go the next coat. If you go a third coat then the wait time is even longer.

Sorry if this offends anyone but I'm going to say it anyway. LOL. Slotters belong on xw's and xy's and even then there are probably 1000 different wheels I'd put on them too before slotters. Sorry but just not a fan of em. I'll go get my flame suit on now before it starts to get to hot.LOL

I looked at the 3 in 1 cigweld units and in the end decided as nice as it would be to have a tig 99% of the time a mig is all I need. I also waited and kept an eye out on gumtree for what was coming up second hand. I ended up with a cigweld 200 transmig for $600 bucks. They are a pretty simple welder with no flashy settings so theres fuck all that goes wrong with them. We have the same one at work which was also why I bought it cause I've been using it for years at work with out any problems and am familiar with it. I agree with what Sly said earlier bigger is better. Without getting ridiculous a bigger welder will weld smaller stuff but it doesn't go the other way. Mine is actually really good to use on panel steel and can still weld 8-10 mm plate with out giving itself a hernia.By the time I'd payed for a bottle of gas and a new helmet I was still well under a grand.

I'd assume it can be done but doubt there would be any factory mounting points. Looking at an xg ute to play with but need to know if you are allowed to even put a kids car seat into a 3 seater ute in Qld.

Yeah I know that if an anchor point must be fitted it needs to be mod plated. Had to put two in my Navara cause they didn't have any and they needed to be blue plated. Just wasn't sure bout the legalities in regards to single cab utes.

Set the stoppers so that the bonnet is sitting flush with the guards without the catch. Once you've got that sorted put the catch back on and set it with just a touch of pre load on it. Too much and it'll be a bitch to open and you'll have to slam it shut. Too little and your bonnet will continue bouncing at speed. It also pops open easier with a bit of load on it.

In my case the nolathane ones turned to dust and shat themselves after I parked the ol girl up for 6 months. Luckily it was only spring saddles cause I'd have been pissed after replacing all the front end bushes had they all turned to shit if I'd gone nolathane everywhere. Would have only been 18 months old tops.

It looks like something that could be fabbed up easily enough from what I can see in the pics. Unpick it and keep it as intact as you can and go visit your nearest sheet metal joint. I reckon it'd be doable.

When I did the front end in my xe the only bits where I used nolathane on was the spring saddles and they were the ones that fucked out first. I'd go rubber again. In saying that the blue super pro stuff is meant to be pretty good a bit firmer than rubber but not as stupidly harsh as nolathane.

Yep the screw driver gauging is fun. Put the stuff on pretty thick and lay plastic over the panel onto the stripper. Helps keep all that stripper goodness sealed in to do its thing.

Excuse my ignorance but what does TFI and HEI stand for. Often heard of them mentioned by you blokes and since I haven't owned a cross flow powered falcon in the last 20 years I'm a bit out of touch. LOL. Lost interest in them when the one in my 6 banger efi xe ESP developed an insatiable appetite for distributor gears and gave me the shits enough to get out of them altogether.

You got a Windsor in yours don't you NZXD? Might be mixing it up with someone else's car on here. Sounds good mate.

You look like you been busy. Really need to call round to your work and say hello one of these days.

Yeah I've heard that's the best way. You use a lot of trans fluid before its coming out clean but is the best way to guarantee your not just contaminating your fresh fluid with left over old crusty one.

Hey guys I've recently bought a series 2 au xr8 with an auto. Everythings doing as it should and is healthy but I'm hating the sluggy/unresponsive and generally slow shifting of it. Even manually changing it , it tends to take ages for it to register that you've changed and will just rev its ring out before it shifts with the boot stuck in. 2nd to 3rd is probably the worst for it. I've heard mixed reviews with the electronic shift kits and one of the local trans shops say they can do a shift kit that will firm up and quicken the shifts for around $500 including a flush and fresh oil. Says it definitely isn't too harsh and still liveable for a daily driver. He also said not to bother with the electronic shift kits and there a waste of time. In saying that I've never really dicked around with late model auto stuff before so I'd like to know whats available. Just need it to shift quicker and give me the next gear when I want it to not when it feels like! The auto is probably the biggest let down of how the car goes and I think if you could actually get the thing working nicer it would make the car heaps snappier cause once its up and going it actually goes alright for an old Windsor.

I think everyone gets all too keen to chase the big HP numbers and forgets that you still need big bucket loads of torque to get things moving. More so when you shifting a heavier car from standstill in a hurry! Kosteki had some interesting reading on their website before they closed shop with 20 different clevo combo's. The first 10 were some pretty basic combo's and highlighted the difference between a good torquey motor compared to one that made the power but not as much torque and explained how in real life driving how much quicker the stump puller ones would have been plus how much nicer manners it would have.

LOL. Sorry my bad 260 000km!!! Not 2.5 million!!

My xr6t has done 2600000km on its original auto and only started playing up maybe in the last 5-7000km's so maybe they are a bit hit and miss. I think just by firming and speeding up the shifts would have to help rather than hinder reliability because of less slip between gears I would assume would mean less heat?

Yeah I read about changing the s5 to one from a commodore firms em up. Just comparing the way the AU xr8 shifts to the way my BA xr6t shifts. The Ba manually shifts when you want it to up and down gears and while its not a firm shift it is more responsive than the Au's mushy slow shift and will change while its still making decent power not where its about to hit the rev limiter and the power has gone away. I mean they are basicly the same box and if I could get the Au one working like the Ba one I'd be happy with that for a daily driver.

Oh how I love reading these threads. Where to start? $5000 paintjobs are long gone and if you find someone that will do one at that price I guarantee that you will be unhappy with the result. If your not when you pick it up you will be when it all starts playing up in 6 months time cause ol mate cut corners and used shit products to try and make a buck out of his tight ass quote. I know your saying that its only going to be a daily but IMO your prep and products need to be of a decent quality and even more meticulous for this reason. Its being exposed to the elements day in day out. Shit prep and product will f**k out in super quick time when exposed to the elements as opposed to a show car that barely sees the light of day humidity and moisture. Paint and panel rates are pretty cheap really compared to lots of the other trades. Some might argue that 15000 dollars is expensive but even at a conservative $50 dollars an hour its still only 300 hrs work. 7.5 weeks with a 40hr week .Charge it out at $80 and that's only 190ish hrs and that comes in at 4.5 working weeks. Having a car blasted and primed PROPERLY, not by a monkey who will f**k your panels and cause even more damage will cost at least $1800 at a minimum. The shop has overheads and staff to pay out of this too. So really I cant see how a panel shop is any more of a rort than any other business trying to survive. Fuck me I got charged 15000 to have a 7m X 5 M patio extension done and the builder was done in 5 days. I've found that on a good clean rust free car that comes in stripped of everything and sand blasted with no to very minimal rust repairs and not banged up everywhere you need at least 350 - 400 hours to get a job that is done to an exceptional standard. READ covered by a paint lifetime warranty. Gaps that are nice with panels that fit properly and probably better than factory. Painted in and out and the undercarriage finished in a nice durable epoxy texture coat. These cars are the standard we stick to at work. We haven't had any customers that have been unhappy with the end result or the price they paid at the end of the job and many have paid ALOT more than 15000 to have paint and panel only done. That isn't put back together either. That's a rolling shell with hanging panels back on and gapped. I've got a mate who had his mustang painted by us and the paint on its 7+ years old and still looks as good as the day it rolled out of our shop. Its not what we call a show car but has won awards at the local shows it been entered in, as has any of our other quality jobs. Painting isn't hard but the man hours leading up to the shiny stuff going on is where your dollars will go. Fact of the matter is its a labour intensive trade nothing more nothing less. The only way to reduce costs is in the labour. Which means corner cutting. You have to be upfront and realistic with whoever you get to do your car and everyone needs to be on the same page before a hammer and dolly go anywhere near the car. Give them a realistic budget of what your prepared to spend straight up and they will tell you if they can do anything for that price and what standard of work they will deliver at that price! Have a weekly payment plan in place. Your panel shop will love it and you will too. Call in weekly to see where the hours are going and pay as they go. If your short one week they don't work on it simple as that. If it goes to shit and they fuck you over then you've only paid so much and you can pull the car at a moments notice cause its all paid up and its not to late that you need to redo everything again. We keep in regular contact and encourage the owner to come in when ever they like to see how its travelling. Also remember a good smash shop doesn't always make for a good resto shop. If they don't do regular resto work and aren't keen on doing it walk away. If they can't show you any examples of their work or put you in contact with some of their happy customers to back their claims then they aren't worth dealing with. Again walk away. Not digging at anyone but just trying to explain there is much more to a good paint job than meets the eye.

If they've got someone there who can actually colour sand and buff a car properly it could be saved. I've saved some pretty shit house finishes that have come up awesome with a good colour sand and buff. If theres solvent boil and is only just at the surface it'll be sanded out. If its deeper than that they will need to re clear it. I doubt that it'll need to be based again unless the painter is in la la land while rubbing it down and gets rub throughs everywhere. Make sure they actually do strip the car down as per the first time and they don't cheat and leave trims handles lights ect on there and just mask the shit up or they are going to make an even bigger mess than what you got now.

For the price of a new front screen installed there's no way I'd pull and refit an old one in a freshly painted car. A new windscreen looks a million times better and lifts the whole appearance of the car.

I may be proven wrong but I'm not a believer of paint protection. I think regularly washing and waxing will do the same thing without the bullshit price that some of these bunches a charging for paint protection. No paint protection will protect your paint from stone chips and birdshit that's left to sit in the sun for ages is also going to mark your paint. If someone in the know can prove me wrong I'm all ears.

Holy crap that shits expensive! I for one am not sold on any of the paint protection stuff. Quality paint that's regularly maintained should hold up better in my opinion than something that's been paint protected once and not touched for the next couple of years. Agreed with the complimentary blowie at that price!

Go the globes mate I'll cry if I see this thing cruising on 12 slotters!