G’day folks
Been a bit since my last post on this, but she’s going great.
Before the big trip I put in some fresh gearbox oil (only half the required amount drained out...) and put in new brake pads. Easiest brake pad job I’ve ever done.
Wasn’t sure how it would go hauling 3 Harley’s and a trailer but it crushed it, Adelaide to Melbourne and return, all up about 1700km. Wasn’t particularly fast but sitting on 80/90kmh made best use of fuel. Did use a lot of coolant unfortunately but since the motor is unopened by me it could be anything. I have since noticed slight weep of coolant coming from a right side freeze plug. All will be addressed in a future freshen up, doesn’t pose an issue for now.
Popped the rocker cover off to have a look and everything looks very nice in there. No caked oil and plenty of good crankcase ventilation evident. I know this motor isn’t original to the car, but no other history. I know this because the motor has a disconnected power steering pump on it , but the car has a manual steering box. I think this is much more likely than the alternative of someone swapping a power steer box for a manual unit. Either way the shell has well over 350,000km on it and the motor seems to run much too good for that.
Whilst poking around I discovered a crack through the cast exhaust manifold. Last time I was at the local self serve wreckers there was a 80s Pajero (Shogun in the UK?) with some nice aftermarket tube headers. Went out today and of course the car was gone. I’m not gonna bother swapping the manifold for another cast one, I’m sure I’ll find another set of headers around.
Alas, the trip was not a waste!! There was a Triton there and although battered and beaten (as most are) it was an up spec model with nice dash cluster, giving me a tacho, volts and oil pressure. Almost forgot to get the oil pressure sender with it but remembered at the last minute. If your car has a just an oil light, these are usually just an on/off switch and don’t send any signal, so you need to replace it with the appropriate sender.
Before installing it, popped the front panel off to clean it and repainted the needles. Cluster comes out of the dash in 2 minutes (Aren’t old cars brilliant), new one in and looking great. Volts and oil pressure working great no tach... curse word! I’m hoping the looms are all the same and a wire might not be hooked up to the coil, but it’s dark now and this is a job for another day. Need to order a workshop manual and have a look at wiring diagrams.
Also scores a groovy brown dash mat too, covers up the haggard dashboard and adds to the grandpa flavour.
I also scored another item on the longer term Wishlist whilst at the wreckers.. Fuel injection throttle body from an Australia-only Ford Falcon. Specifically an EA model, they were the only ones that used single point fuel injection, even then it was an optional upgrade from a carburettor, before everything naturally went to multi point FI. Essentially this has the footprint of downdraft Weber, two progressive throttles and a pair of injectors right above them. Built in TPS and fuel pressure reg, some sort of enormous solenoid bumping the idle for cold start.
I actually found two of these in the same yard, this unit was much cleaner and better looking that the other. The injector wire rubber is damaged so got the other one of those too. You can see how the wires run through out of the carb body and seal under the air cleaner.
Yes, this is the first part of FI upgrade for the old Triton. The Falcon is a very boring 4L straight six boat anchor so there will be no shortage of fuel for the 2.6L 4G54 in stock form. But it’d sure be great to find a pair of 1600cc injectors that fit in there, to supply A LOT more fuel... hint hint!!!
Researching Speeduino ecu’s and Microsquirt/megasquirt to a lesser extent. Budget build and whilst MS has the popularity, majority of the features won’t be used and they still fairly expensive $300US for an assembled Microsquirt, (almost $500AUD by the time it arrives!!)
I’ll be running fuel only to start with, retaining the stock distributor. Once I hopefully get a bit of confidence in all this electrickery I would add in spark, probably toothed wheel crank trigger firing individual coils.
Cheers, until next time.
There’s gonna be plenty of car tinkering going on around the world in the coming weeks/months I think!!!
