wagoon

I will try and get the saddle out first which Im guessing will make a big difference. I dont think there was a massive amount of pressure on the selector shaft as the spring action on the gear stick would return pretty quick once I started winding out the nut.

 

Those bushes you mention Dean, if they wear will they cause gear selection issues?

 

If I have no joy after I remove the saddle then I guess my only option will be to remove the shifter housing and have a look. Its always bloody something isnt it, Im suppose to start the car in just over a week.

Don't work on that car when pissed. Your likely to try and fire it up. Lol.

Dont worry I was way to pissed to try and start the engine...... but it had nothing to do with how much I drank. Turns out I dont feel like getting pissed mid week as I just didnt want any more, man I would make a pathetic alcoholic.

 

When I did try the stick in my box turns out that I could spin the XE shifter 360 degress when the nut was fully seated in the housing, it is just way to short.

 

So to figure of WTF was going on I did some acurate measuring with a pair of needle nose pliers and found that the gear stick that came with the box looks to be the right one.

 

When I bought the box there was no saddle on the shaft so I put the reddy brown one from the known XE box in. I do remember reading on the old site something about some boxes just not needing saddles. So now I will try and remove the saddle I put in there, all the grease I have in the housing isnt making it fun though as the saddle just turns and seems to have a suction effect onto the shaft. The one thing Im worried about now though is because I wound the alloy nut shifter all the way down have I damaged something on the selector shaft cause the shifter would have been pressing quite firm against it?

 And I prefer to hear alcohol assisted thank you    

Case in point. Right now I am celebrating (several whiskey's down and several to go...maybe this belongs in the drunk thread???) as I have not long returned from Tafe where I handed in my final assignment for "Apply Mathematical Techniques in manufacturing, engineering or related environments". This shit covered Linear equations, Quadratic equations along with Trigonometry, Geometry and Algebra. Even the Tafe teacher said he was glad he wasn't the one doing this shit...WTF!!!

Once I have consumed several more whiskey's I will be heading off to the shed to play with my gear stick and gently slide it into the hole that I have lubed up nicely to see how well it fits

 

Have a good night all cause fuck knows I will

I went and had a look at that bodgy thread and thought it was a problem solving thread....most of the time.

And yes its genuis cause it will fix my problem. I didnt want to put the plastic nut in there but also didnt want to destroy a factory intact shifter. So yes you have helped me. But dont worry alcohol will assist from now on.

Dean your a legend mate thank you.

 

Ok silly question time.

Is there any specfic bmx bearing cup I need? As in a specific size or are they all the same?

So to get it right in my head, nothing is removed from the gearstick or replaced by the bearing cap, you have just added the bearing cap for extra security?

 

That SIR is fucking genuis

Ok cool.

I know removing the alloy nut would save me some cash, but I dont know that I want to destroy a shifter with factory alloy nut that someone else might be able to use.

The shifter mod sounds quite interesting though, would you happen to have any pics or know where I could find a pic. Doing the mod would probably cost less than the $50 for the aftermarket alloy nut as well.

I bought an XF single rail a while ago to use on my roller sedan, looked great inside and got a gear stick and clutch cable with the box. Now that the box is in the car and reassembled I can't get it to select reverse. There is no spring movement in the gear lever and it just wont move up or down when the retaining nut is wound all the way down. When I wind out the retaining nut the spring movement returns gradually until the nut is nearly all the way out, but I still can't select reverse even when the gear stick has full travel back in the spring.

 

So I was trying to figure out what was going on and noticed that the gear stick that was originally in my car which is factory XE manual looked differently to the apparent XF gear stick. Can someone shed some light on what is what here?

In this pic the known XE gear stick is one the right. To me the only thing that looks the same between the 2 sticks is length of spring travel.

 

This is the "XF gear stick" lower section measure to the bottom of the nut

 

This is the known XE gear stick measured to the bottom of the nut

 

I measured the difference between the 2 U-shaped ends and the width is within 0.5mm of each other. But the length of the U-shaped section is 5mm different with the XE one measuring 11mm deep and the "XF" one measuring 16mm deep

 

I'm guessing the "XF" gear stick is not an XF gear stick at all, but the nut which is the metal not plastic nut does screw down into the threads on the box fine. The XF stick does select gears but is quite firm to do so.

I had a 1990 60 series gxl that had factory rear lsd only. I dont believe the cruisers had factory front lsd, but wouldnt be the first time I was wrong today.

This one will always be all motor. 13:1 comp not very turbo friendly.

It's meth mate she'll be right

I know there are countless threads on diff and handbrake installs so if mods don't think this has anything new happy for it to be removed.

 

I am unsure of the exact e series diff that I have but when comparing it to the ED and EBII diff I have sitting on my shed floor it looks pretty much the same, I was told that this diff is possibly an EF diff. Now the diff install was as per all the threads covered before regarding needing to change one end of the lower trailing arms to suit either the body end if you use E series arms or change diff end bush if using X series arms. I was lucky enough to pickup a full set of virtually brand new nolethane arms ages ago off gumtree for $20 so these are what I used for my trailing arms, these nolethane arms are to suit x series

 

Now with the brake lines I did not buy the "required" brake line adapter as I'm far to cheap for that. What I did was remove all the hard lines, diff breather and flexible line from diff to body from the original XE drum brake diff and I fitted them to the E series diff. The only real drama I had was the hard lines are bent at a 90 degree angle where they go into the drum brakes on the x series diff, but the disc brakes on the e series diff have a straight flexible line coming from the caliper. So I gently straighten the drum brake 90 degree bend till it lined up with the flexible line from the disc, now I wont win any show contests with the sort of "mod" as it doesn't look pretty but I took my time and very gently and very slowly bent the hard line around and it meets up fine.

 

 

Next was sorting out the handbrake cable. I used an EBII handbrake cable which I believe from what I've read the ED cable is the same. So I started hooking up the handbrake cable from the caliper on the passenger side and moving forward all the grommets that fit into the body brackets where exactly the same, every single one fit perfectly into the original brackets on the body with even the clips lining up perfectly(this happened on the drivers side as well) . This pic is a bit fuzzy but you can see how the hard grommet on the cable fits perfectly into the original body bracket (just past the axle stand)

 

 

In this pic you can see the hard plastic grommet once again fitting perfectly in place on the far left of the pic. Now one problem I did encounter was the body bracket which is just to the left of the gearbox was to large and the hard plastic grommet just pulled straight through it when I applied pressure to the cable. Now since these hard plastic grommets are bullet shaped I just placed a steel washer over the end of the plastic grommet so that grommet wouldn't pull through the washer and the washer sits against the flat surface of the body bracket. I have no idea how long this will last but I will keep on eye on it.

 

 

The major problem I had fitting the handbrake cable to the car was that it just wasn't long enough. No matter what I tried I just couldn't stretch the cable far enough to connect the entire system together. So modification time. This pic shows the only things I had to remove from the EBII handbrake cable to make it fit, the pivoting arm. The pin was through one of the holes with the washer on the other side stopping it from coming out. The dome head was sticking through the U shaped cable guide at the top of the pic. All I did was grind the end of the pin so I could remove the washer and pin and separate everything.

 

Then I put the original pivoting arm back in position  and slid the original u Shaped cable guide over the very long thread bar (this is the original undercar adjustment system for original handbrake setup). This original setup was the perfect length to make the e series handbrake fit. I did make up some washer to go onto the long threaded rod, they were not in the original system but I wasn't sure if the e series disc brake handbrake needed more tension applied so just in case I put the washer on.

 

In this pic you can seen the original adjuster in the background and the e series adjuster in the foreground. When I put the original adjuster on there was a heap of slack in the cable so again for safety sake I wound the e series adjust down about a 1/4 of the way on it's thread so that it wasn't near the end and couldn't pull off. I then used the original adjusted to tension the cable properly, or at least what I deem to be properly. I did try pulling on the lever inside the cabin a couple of times and it worked fine, and I just kept adjusting the tension of the cable till I was happy. I will rechcek the tension once the car is back on it's wheel.

 

 

So putting the e series diff and handbrake cable in my car cost me absolutely nothing apart from the cost of the diff and handbrake cable itself. And thanks to Ando76 who gave my the idea of making spacers to suit the trailing arm I didn't have to fit wider bushes to the diff side of the x series trailing arm, so I made them out of stuff I already had and that cost me nothing other than my time.

After a big chat with Mick at Northside carbs and weighing up the cost benefit of webers over efi I decided to go efi.

I can tune it without expensive jets

I have the ecu and loom already

I have the swirl pot already

It will have a big crack to it

I might lose some HP up top but I'll get more mid torque

I can sell my webers to recoup the spend

I can confidently hit my intended HP target

 

All good things

And leaves room for a BIG windmill when shit gets boring

Can't help with which is better but I'm using the weekend warrior setup Sly mentioned, its an electric fuel pump with fuel reg and a pressure relief valve with return to tank line between fuel pump and pressure reg. The relief is actually attached to the engine side of the fuel pump and sends fuel back to the tank once fuel pressure raises above relief valve pressure rating. Doing it this way I am told it saves the pump as apparently pumps die due to making excessive heat or something like that when they have to constantly use their internal reliefs.

This is the fuel pump and reg combo I'm using (they come together as one "kit")

 

here's a link to their website http://www.trickflow.com/parts/tfs-25013  One thing I don't understand is why it says its for drag racing applications only?

 

 

Why would it worry the boys in blue? I was always told if you went smaller in engine capacity then it was an ok modification. Eg going from 4.1lt to a 4.0lt motor. I thought that was the law in Victoria anyway.

Still needs to comply with newer engine into older cars laws ie newer engine needs everything out of donor car including stock computer, cats and any other pollution gear. Plus if you add a turbo I believe that changes the capacity of the engine allowed.

 

That is a very ugly pic there Thom, must have made a hell of a noise when it let go. On the bright side at least you would have one extra beer coaster

Well now the only real limiting factor is how you want to use the car. Is it going to see a drag strip once a month, once a year or every week. Do you prefer racing that involves corners like sprint or hill climb events or is it more 5-10 laps of a full length circuit. Or is the car only going to be used on the street for stuff like traffic light drags or highway rolling starts or just general tear around hooning sort of stuff.

 

5-6 grand is a really good budget that will get you a really nice crossflow that will produce a fair bit of power. But depending on how you want to use it is where the power is made as this will suit the application and make for a fast car where you want it to be fast

I was told the air flows from the aircleaner into the rocker cover, then out the pcv into the inlet manifold or catch can. If it is routed to a catch can to keep it legal you have a return line to the inlet manifold so the (hopefully) clean air re-enters the combustion chamber to be re-burnt.

Ryan - I actually stood on my mounts to get them to bend down a fraction. I'm over 100 kegs so I'm thinking that a full radiator, spread over 2 mounts will not cause an issue.

Wow I could flex the lower mounts just be hand, I actually lifted the driver side a couple of mm's just using my hands. The xe mounts looked like 1.6mm thick at best.

The lower radiator mounts on my XE were bending quite easy when I was looking at moving my radiator forward. Do you know if the XF ones are thicker/stronger? I was worried the brackets would give way under the weight of the full radiator and bouncing vehicle.

I'm a little bias as I work with steel for a living (and I did make it) but I like this- used the charcoal canister as an oil catch can with drain and scourer pads. Don't know exactly how it would go with a boys in blue check but I have it plumbed mine so it looks like it goes back into the engine(although technically speaking that's not how the charcoal canister operates anyway) at least there is a factory charcoal canister in the engine bay.

 

Details of how I made it are in post #352 here http://www.ozfalcon.com.au/index.php?/topic/4428-solid-roller-cam-xe-spak/page-18  If your interested I can take pics of how I plumbed it up on the engine, I also drilled the bottom of my aftermarket aircleaner base to put a fitting on it that the hose you talk about that is just sitting lose can connect to.

I will give credit to Crazy though as I got my idea from what he did in the first place.

 

 

They did it on the XY GT's.....

Yeah thats the one, or at least rings a bell

On my daily driven xe wagon with bog stock 200ci Ive got generic extractors, 2 1/4 mid pipe with some lukey muffler in the rear position. Then I have 2 inch standard wagon rear pipe with no muffler or resenator. Doesnt drone to bad cause I recon the engine is bog stock. The setup is less than ideal but it cost my $50 for the extractors and the mid pipe was from a ute I was stripping.

Heres a clip of the above exhaust on my wagon http://vid1289.photobucket.com/albums/b507/wagoon1/xe%20wagon/20150623_145018_zpsct8bluls.mp4

 

Im also building a crossflow powered sedan that I will be using a single muffler in the rear position and a moroso spiral flow at the rear of the car. The engine will make a bit of power so pipe size is a little different but Im still stepping down in pipe diameter from the diff backwards. I was told that ford did this step down in size on a car (cant remember which one) and it helped the sound so thought its worth a try. Seems to have done ok on my wagon with only 1 muffler which can sound like arse sometimes.

Agree with Pro that 3.7 gears will just fry tyres. On a street car 3.7's are only good for underpowered car(torque multiplication makes the car accelerate faster) frying tyres and revving the shit out of you engine at 80+km/h.

 

Just cause a tyre has side wall does not mean it will get traction, the really important part is the amount of flex in the sidewall. Look at drag slicks in slow motion vids on youtube and you will see sidewall flex. A 205 tyres on an 8 inch rim will not have side wall flex.

good opportunity to fit an S pack cluster perhaps..

With the so called rust repairs performed by the person that painted the car I will be lucky to get another 4-5 years out of the chassis before it literally falls apart. The dirt back roads in my area are a smoother drive than the bitumn backroads.

The engine still chews oil so I am regularly checking it and I do care for the running gear pretty well so if the standard pressure switch isnt much chop I wont bother with another one.

What about higher diff gears? What diff gears are you running now?

 

Also if you do have 205 60 15 tyres on 8 inch rims that tyres will be very stretched. Even on a 7 inch rim a 205 tyre is less than ideal for traction as you will have no side wall give. If you want to stay in the smaller tyre size you could look at a true R compound tyre. You can get them in 205,215 and 225 widths in a 15 inch and they have a bit of side wall to help with traction. Only problem is they are $300+ a tyre, dont know how that price compares to the straight line tyres.

If the R compound is to expensive you could look at semi slicks. Semi slicks are all road legal(some R compund tyres are not road legal but some are) have a bit harder compound compared to the true R compound and therefore last longer. They do have less traction than the R spec but road driving will rip the R spec tyres up pretty quick. Semi slicks are much cheaper, depending on size and brand they start at $130 a tyre. Federal have a good rep and I know a few people that use them for track(circuit sprint) days. I will be starting with federal tyres myself when I go racing. Look on ebay in the tyre size you want to run for a general pricing and brand guide.

DOH!!!  Spot on Greg, as I read the first few words I said to myself "good on ya of course that's what it is". Yeah Ando your description of the vdo sensor is spot on, that's the replacement one I put on.

 

Guess it's not worth wasting my time and money with getting another pressure switch then. Might just chuck a bung in the the hole and zip tie the connector in the harness up out the way.

 

Thank you once again for pointing out my complete lack of knowledge

Ok so when I changed over the oil pressure switch the warning light on the dash glowed constantly. I cleaned the oil off the connector which did not help. I did notice that there looked to be a rust preventitive coating on the blade of the connector which I have just removed with a file and still the light glows.

The leaking switch was a very low profile switch. The replacement switch is the cylinder type sitting on a long tube away from the block. The replacement switch worked fine in my xe sedan with literally the only difference between the 2 engines being wagon is 200ci and sedan is 250ci.

So what have I missed to stop the oil light staying constantly on?