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A petrol EF might get 9 litres/100 km maybe on the open road, but my manual EF got 11-12l/100km in suburban stop/start driving. So lets not compare apples with beetroots. 15l/100km around town on gas is what cabbies generally talk of, but due to the crudeness of most gas systems, open road economy isn't much better, as I've found. That is unless you have the more sophisticated feedback system. Even better than that, a modern liquid injection setup is the ultimate. More power than petrol and much better economy than with vapour mixers. In my experience, LPG economy around town is largely dictated by vehicle weight, whereas open road economy is mostly dependent on the efficiency of the gas system. My 4-speed brick-shaped Corty shat all over my EA 5-speed, (which was much more aerodynamic) on long trips because of the gas setup. The EA was dual-fuel and had an inline Impco mixer. Best I got was 390. Best in the Cortina was 450.

TF Corty, 4-speed, 2.92 diff, 15" Saab wheels. Had a freshened XF 4.1, mild cam and 6-2-1 extractors. Had a Nolff's NCA-300 mixer and simple converter. Best economy was about 13.5l/100, worst maybe 16l/100. Went well, had bullshit torque but breathless above 4500. I think your mixer is too small. Your diaphragm might be maxing out, and your engine has nowhere else to suck from except the fuel supply. In other words, the restriction is causing pressure drop and sucking too much gas under acceleration. I'd actually get a bigger mixer and go from there.

0.020" sounds about right, if a bit loose. I'd go 0.010" - 0.015", depending on whether the gears are new or old. You should check your tooth contact patch too, a bit of cheap spray paint will suffice. Preload also depends on whether you're re-using your carrier bearings or not. I say load up the carrier bit by bit till you feel some turning resistance, and a bit more if your bearings are new, to allow for bed-in. I've done a few Borgies this way and all worked fine. This is all of course if you don't have the actual specs handy. To actually set up your preload, get your backlash and tooth contact right, then in equal amounts, wind the adjusters in gradually toward each other till you get the right resistance in the bearings.

I'd say the difference was in the hub face thickness, not bearing placement, otherwise your caliper bracket would be rubbing on the inside of the disc. Sounds pretty shoddy in any case.

I'd like to see your work Slydog, no I'm not going to copy it (I don't have a Crossy any more). Although my brother's using my old one to build a 200 turbo EFI Donk for his XP ute. The stock manifold does the job on a stock engine, but yes it is poo for anything more than stock. I'm sure that the Ford engineers would never in a million years think that somebody, somewhere would try and get better performance out of a Crossy. It's ridiculously reliable, torquey, and resembles a scaled-down truck engine. All I can say is hats off to the folks that squeeze the amounts of power out of them that they do. I always wondered how a twin carb setup would go, one feeding 1-2-3, the other 4-5-6. Some Jags were like this. Much better balanced that's for sure.

^ + 1 for that comment. AU-onwards on the front use just the wheel studs to locate the disc, no screw. That said, RDAs are pretty rubbish. I put a set on my EF and they warped very quickly. Cast in China so not surprised.

Well there you have it. I always looked at my Redline Torker and thought it looked bad, particularly at 1 & 6. However it did the job on a mild LPG motor, but ran out of puff at 4500. I quite like the manifold on the single point EA. It looks like they actually made some effort to make the runners simlar in length. I've seen one welded to a cross-flow flange, and I wonder how much better that would be over stock.

Does the discolouration occur further up into the inlet manifold? If so, how far up? It's not something funny going on with the EGR gases is it?

Mine sounds like a silly stocker compared to these. All these meaty cams are making me jealous!

If you're going for all-out performance, then the 650 DP is a no-brainer. Getting the most out of it is what will have you tearing your hair out. It takes 10 minutes to bolt one on, but may take months to get it right. I found this out with my EBay 600 vac I bolted on. It turned out to be a bit of a Frankenstein made up of mongrel parts that didnt match. Very quickly, an old, worn-out $80 carby turned into a $200 kitted, manual choked, worn out carby. The car goes ok but I do wonder how much better a 600 Edelbrock would go, particularly with economy. I personally like the idea of spreadbores. It's business up front, party out the back. Dont be scared of looking into a reco Quadrajet or Thermoquad, they're both up around 750 cfm but are superior in economy to any equivalent Holley. Yes it's possible to get performance with efficiency, just look at the GM LS1, etc. Horsepower is easy, but horsepower with efficiency is the challenge.

I'd start on an inconspicuous area first, say an inner guard or floor panel. To weld in a patch, use a series of tack welds at each corner. Then go around the piece tacking halfway between the last lot of tacks you did. Then go halfway between those all round and keep doing this till all the gaps are filled in. You can't do a continuous bead on sheetmetal because you're concentrating too much heat on one spot and that warps the panel. A gasless MIG is ok, but the welds will be quite messy and a bit porous. I'd be reluctant to use gasless on anything structural that's for sure. My little SIP is a cheap, transformer type welder and I've mostly used gasless in it but once I used a disposable CO2 bottle with 0.9mm MIG wire and it turned from a pretty ordinary machine to an excellent one. The difference between gas and gasless is chalk and cheese. If you buy a cheap machine, you'd be improving it greatly by pissing off the standard pissy little earth lead and clamp and chucking on something like a 25mm2 cable and a beefy clamp. You can tell if you need to by seeing if the standard one gets hot. If it does, you're losing power through it.

"my" industry isn't just your local shitbag service station or theiving pricks at the nearest dealership. My industry is also in the mines, defence forces, fixing your fire engines and ambulances, keeping farm equipment going, and in my case, fixing the machinery and trucks that keep your power on. It's even much more than that. So don't go lumping us all into a narrow field of shonks and ripoffs just because it's all you've seen of our trade. We're a bit like doctors, except they don't bring out a brand new, completely different human body every 3-4 years. All this and we're paid less than the people that drive them for a living. As for the ridiculous cost of LPG conversion, the Howard Government slapped a $2000 rebate on gas conversions not to help you out, but to get more consumers on board so they could then tax it just as petrol and diesel have been for decades. And guess what? Now we're paying more for LPG (in comparison to petrol) than before this rebate came along. I can remember LPG being around 30% of the petrol price, now it's closer to 50-60%. And once the rebate came in, overnight a $1500 conversion became $3500, surprise surprise. Everyone raves about the pink bat "scandal" but nobody remembers this scam of a setup. The rebate should have been conditional on the conversion price being fixed or capped, not having the "market sorting itself out" which translates to "charging whatever they fucking like". We're still living with the legacy of that today. I heard all sorts of shitty excuses for jacking up the price too, like "we can't get hold of any cylinders, they're in too much demand" (like APA couldn't ramp up production if they wanted to). I do agree with the comment that this particular "industry" is keeping the money to itself, but just don't go throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Polson those white connectors wouldn't happen to be scotch-locks at all would they? If so, banish them to hell! They are the root of maybe 90% of all problems on trailer wiring. They are pure evil.

Better check what alternator you're running too. You don't want to overload it, particularly at idle when you need the fans on but it charges the least. I ran mine on a dash switch for a while and it gave me the shits. Trust me, a temp switch means one less hassle while driving your beast.

Actually, no.I am a mechanic, but I would like to get my ticket one day. In the meantime I'll have to pay for it to be done, just like any other mug.

Fitting a gas system when not qualified to do so is illegal. Mounting the tank, sufficient bracing, placement of the gas line(s), ventilation of filler hoses and proper matching of gas converter to mixer and engine are all things that need proper training and experience. As the saying goes: if it was easy it wouldn't be a trade. If you can get your licensed fitter to sign off on your work, then that's up to him, but I would be reluctant if I was the one signing off on the work.

+1 for EFI rocker cover and RTV silicone.

You only need one wire going to the sender, the rest, including the relay, you can hide anywhere you like. You can wire it up for one speed, like I did with my 302. It's running them at half speed (in series) and as said before, hasn't yet gone over 40% on the gauge. If on yours, the temp still creeps up when you're say towing or sitting in shitty traffic in a hot day, you can simply change the terminals over to be in parallel (full speed). Just make sure your alternator is ok to keep up with the load.

Free spinning is not an indication that it's fine. 2 things can happen to a viscous clutch fan: - constant lockup (seized) - constant freewheel (loss of fluid/drive) To test when cold, rotate blade with engine off. You should feel some resistance. This is because the fluid has collected at the bottom of the clutch housing, causing drag on one side of the clutch. As you rotate it more and more, the fluid is spread evenly around the unit and becomes more free to rotate. This shows that the fan still has its fluid inside. The same thing happens when you run the engine from cold. You'll hear the fan working for maybe 10 seconds then it will slow down to a point where you can't hear it. It should stay that way until the engine is well and truly warm, then should cut in at a reasonably fast rate, and able to be heard. To test it hot, get it right up to temp (say over 2/3) and shut it off. The fan should be locked solid. If not, it's stuffed.

Yep that's the same thermo housing as mine. Good luck getting that plug out though, I broke an Allen key trying to shift mine. For everyone's reference, Bosch relays have a numbering system: 30 - supply 85 - trigger in 86 - earth 87 - to device/load The pin positions can vary, and there are relays that have an extra pin output (87a) for supplying power when not triggered. These are called changeover relays and are used on fog lights, etc when you need the low beam dipped, so it's one or the other. If you learn a bit more about electrics, you can wire up your thermofans to run in series or parallel, giving two speeds. This is how they did it on the EF setup.

I got a set of EF fans in my XE wagon 302, I run them in series (both half speed) and it never goes above 40% on the temp gauge. Without A/C you'll be fine running them at half speed, and much less strain on your alternator. I run a VDO temp switch screwed into a 1/2" NPT port in the water pump. I also ran it previously in my EA and had it screwed into a drilled/tapped hole in the top of the thermostat housing. Temp switches are available in many thread sizes and temp settings, I know on XE Crossy there's an Allen key plug in the top of the thermostat housing, I think it's 3/8" NPT. Temp switches often earth out to switch on, making it very easy to wire up. On a relay, you run fused battery power to the 30 terminal, 87 to the fans, 85 from ignition and 86 to the temp switch to turn the whole thing on when needed. Four wires and you're done. Not so hard is it?

My S-Pak wagon had a 6 in it had the oil gauge in the instruments. I just transferred the sender across to the 302, so the old sender is still talking to the old gauge. I'm pretty sure that Ford would use the same ones for V8s anyway. Dunno why someone would think that a switch would give a variable, analog signal for a gauge to work. That's what a sender does. A switch is either on or off, and an oil pressure switch just turns off the red light on your dash as soon as it sees a couple of psi.

Cable ties are your best friend!

Big bolt: rattle gun if available, if not, breaker bar with gearbox in 4th gear, handbrake on. If auto, remove bellhousing dust cover or the starter motor and wedge a screwdriver in the flywheel teeth to stop engine turning. When using the puller, make sure you put something over the crank snout for the puller to push on. I've damaged the thread in the crank by not doing this. Now's a good time to do your water pump while everything's apart. The new balancer may be a bit tight going on. The last one I did on a 4.0 needed heating in the centre of the balancer to get it to slide on, as I'm not comfortable with hitting a crank end-on with a sledgie. A butane blowtorch is all you need, just so the black paint is starting to smoulder. Obviously, don't go near the rubber dampener. Spray a bit of CRC or something on the snout, and away you go, be quick and concise about it, otherwise if you stop halfway you'll be pulling it back off and starting again.