Suppose I better kick this thread back to life, been a little while since I've updated..
Not too much has been done other than ticking a few things off the list of things to do that I compiled late last year. Basically, the plans were roughly, sound system upgrade V2, fit my spare AU momo steering wheel, new tyres, a couple new suspension bushes, and then cam + tune.
First up was the steering wheel swap. I had my spare Momo wheel freshened up by a mate and swapped that in. I wanted to go a bit AU 'TL50' style on the wheel with grey handgrips to go with the grey leather in the EL Ghia. This actually turned out quite nice, not a perfect match to the EL grey, but contrasts nicely with it.
Next was onto the sound system. Ditched most of what I had originally upgraded to temporarily, apart from the headunit (Pioneer FH-X500UI) as it does the job fine at the moment.
Bought a pair of Vifa 10" DVC sub's to replace the single 12" sub I was running previously. Wanted a bit more of a heavy hitting sub stage, so opted for a custom ported box this time round. Linked up with a local guy Andrew running DC-Tech NZ (NZ importer of Morel, DC Audio and XS Power batteries) and had him sort me out. Box is made from 25mm MDF, 3.0cuft volume single chamber, slot port length tuned to 35hz
Wired the twin Vifa 10" sub's to a 4 ohm load with quality SP audio 12gauge speaker cable supplied by DC Tech and mounted them in the box ready to go.
Needed an amp to run the sub's, so did a bit of bargain hunting and got a local shop to price match an amp I had seen from an online store halfway down the country. Picked up a Fusion Performance series PF-8001D mono block. Since I was stepping up to around 500-600wrms in total, decided to upgrade the amp power cabling from the 8ga I was previously running to some quality XSPower XP Flex 4ga cable also from DC Tech. It has a nice small footprint, so mounted the amp behind the rear seats easily.
Front stage was always going to be upgraded to my Hertz HSK165 component set I had sitting in storage, was great to finally get these bad bitches fitted up.
At the moment, they are just running straight off the headunit channels, but will definitely be running them off an amp in the future sometime. The doors need to be fully sound deadened (have only just layed down a Dynamat speaker kit to firm up the panel where the speaker is mounted too) so that will happen in a couple weeks time.
I ran the system as is for a few weeks, until the sub's were pretty much making things fall of the car. Within the first 5 minutes of tuning the subs after their run-in was done, the rear 'Fairmont' badge became 2 pieces and fell off and rattled the rear view mirror completely off the windscreen. Was pretty impressed with how hard these subs go only off ~500wrms
Shortly after, I ripped the rear speakers out, and removed the parcel shelf carpet so I could lay down some sound deadening. Rear speakers and factory premo sound sub were easily as to remove, considering all the retaining nuts weren't even finger tight anymore, ha! Ditched the factory stacker too since it's no longer used. Laid down 2 layers of Dynamat Xtreme, refitted the carpet, and then replaced the rear speakers with some 2-way Response Precision kevlar coaxials.
Next up was the bootlid. Tried my best to remove as much of the expanding foam crap that had rattled loose, then laid down some Dynamat here too. All in all, much quieter outside the car with majority of the rattles gone. Sounds much cleaner inside the cabin now too.
Now that the sounds were done, I got to work on swapping out the cam. Dropped in the spare Crow 2222519 profile I had sitting in the garage (cam was ground by Kiwi Cam's here in NZ, pretty much an exact copy since they were a Crow agent). Idles pretty smooth with a slight lope at idle, bit more low-midrange pull now too so should be a nice street cam. Still running off stock ECU, so should come alive once I sort a J3 chip for it.
Stole a few things from my turbo EF since they were being upgraded anyway, so the engine bay ended up looking like this afterwards
With my EF turbo being in bits at the moment, it was a perfect time to steal a few bits that were no longer needed due to them being upgraded to better items etc. Engine bay ended up looking like this afterwards.
Needed new tyres since 2 of my old ones were shot after driving around for about 6 months or so after lowering without a wheel alignment. Ended up getting a full set of Hankook Optimo's and had them whitewalled. Turned out looking pretty tidy along with de-spoilering the bootlid.
Bought an upgraded trans oil cooler and got to work fitting that up since we've been hammered with a fairly warm summer this year, always a good idea to keep the BTR from cooking itself. Upon pulling off the front end, I was met with usual E-series shit, rusted as hell P/S cooler line, clogged up AC condensor, dust/dirt caked everywhere. Was a good chance to tidy it all up!
Also had a mate tidy up a spare set of genuine headlights for me. They got machine sanded down from 800 grit up to 4000 grit pads to remove the original coating on the lense, then clear coated with a special UV protective coating. Turned out pretty fkn nice!
So that's about it for the time being! Got a few things on the new list of things to do this year, so will slowly start ticking those off when I can get around to them. For now, time to just drive it and start putting some $$ into my turbo EF instead
