Last of the V8 Interceptors.. my XB Falcon Coupe

Next up for a test fitment where the shiny new adjustable coilovers that I have, again everything is from RRS so my assumption is that all of this kit should play nice together.







Now these do require a tiny modification to the top of the shock towers, here you can see the existing holes that hold the top of the shock mount







Well these existing holes aren t used, so a 5/16 hole need be drilled in the end of the slot so like so











Then you can bolt the coilover in, now the kit comes with a plain steel top collar to spread the load of the bolts across the whole mount, but I won t be using them as I have also bought the strut brace kit & because I m a flashy git I also went of the bling tops to cover them











Installing the coilover is as simple as a 3 bolt installation of anything can be really







Then it was time to see how much effort it takes to install the strut brace, it s a fiddly for a one man job as it s under tension the whole time, you can t adjust the tension once its installed

Ok, so my threads can be found on a few forums & someone on the Falcon Coupe forum asked me for weights of the shiny new RRS stuff & the old stock XB stuff now to be honest the weight loss wasn t really a big factor for me but I did take what they (RRS) said on their website for it all being lighter as being true so in the interest of science & answering your question I took all the new parts off the car again (he owes me a beer) & weighed them & then I weighed the matching original XB bits to see what the difference was. Here are my findings



The RRS power rack (they make a lighter manual one too) complete end to end with tie-rods is 11.4kg.



My stock XB power steering box is 11.9kg, then when you take the end to end links & tie-rods, idler arm etc they are 6.4kg so all up the steering is 18.3kg, so a weight saving of 6.9kg.



The RRS Coilover weights 7.9Kg.



The stock parts that that replaces are the upper arm 6.4kg, the spring 5.6kg & the shock 1.5kg for a total of 13.2kg, so a weight saving of 5.3kg



The RRS knuckle is 7.2kg.



The stock XB spindle is 5.0kg, so the RRS piece is 2.2kg heavier.



I ignored your comment about not weighing the caliper & disks



So the RRS Disk is 9.5kgs.



The stock smaller XB one is also 9.5kg, so no change there other than the fact that the new RRS unit is larger.



The RRS six piston caliper is 4.9kgs.



The stock XB unit is 6.3kg, so 1.4kgs heavier & a lot smaller too.



So if we take the steering out of the equation, the total weight of the suspension per side less the wheel & tire is:



29.5Kg s for the fancy RRS stuff & the stock XB stuff is 32.2kg s so 2.7kg s lighter per side & all up the total weight reduction for both sides & the steering setup is 12.3Kgs

First job was to remove the old drums, there is so much meat still on these shoes I wonder if the adjusters where actually working & if I was even using the rears towards the end







With the internals removed it s a very simple job of just undoing the 4 nuts through the access hole & then pulling the axle out











With the axle out you then remove the drum backing plate







Then you try to slide on the fancy new backing plate complete with new integrated handbrake shoe mechanism







Then you slowly start to realize that no matter which way you wiggle it, or what angle you start from it s just not going to fit .







Ok, so top tip seems with the Ford had two different ends for their 9 diff s .. what are known as the Small Ford & the amazingly cleverly named Big Ford







So the bracket I have is the larger Big Ford type







But the 9 diff I have is the Small Ford type







Bugger so I ll have to contact RRS & get the backing plates swapped over to suit my diff size now

I decided it was time to test fit the engine, so that I could then test fit the new much bigger extractors & make sure that everything was going to fit ok or find out now before the car is painted if any body modifications need to be made.



I was never going to use the old thick rubber engine mounts that came out







I have a new set of Tough Mounts (that s the brand, not just a description) for the replacement of both the engine mounts & the gearbox mounts











With the mounts bolted up it was time to swing the engine in











After a little bit of time I decided that whilst it might be cool to own the world s only transverse mounted V8 XB it was probably going to be easier to just mount it normally











It looks nice to have an engine back in there again & it s a great looking engine, even if I do say so myself the driver s side engine mount bolt just slid in, but the passenger side one just wouldn t line up for me & it was getting late & I was getting tired, so I just left it sitting flush on the car mount

The driver s side extractor is always more of a pain to get in place, I had thought that with the steering box out of the way it would be easier but the brake booster still makes it a pain compared to the passenger side . But no clearance issues







It clears the uni-joints for the steering well too







Clears the rack nicely too







They are bloody wide pipes, it might be fun yet getting them fitted in when they have to wrap around the transmission too







With the engine & extractors all in I decided to refit the brace kit & fit up the carb to see what the top of the engine bay will end up looking like & make sure that it will all fit under the bonnet line











Next job is the fun of trying to fit all the accessories to the front of the engine, so because this is not a stock block or stock heads & because I ve gone with an electric water pump & not the factory style & I currently have some fancy aftermarket mini power steering pump . Well there are just no off the shelf brackets that will bolt up that I can find, I have some choices (as you can see) so I decided to see just how close to making this work I could get

The power steering bracket needed the sort of shaving that the alt bracket needed to be able to bolt onto my water pump







Now the passenger side head has all of the same threaded holes you d see on a factory head, so another option could be to look at mounting the alt on the wrong side of the engine







Then I opted to bolt on the new shiny twin pulley as I knew that this would be easy & that would be a shallow enough victory for the day to make me happy







No doubt there will be fun & games setting up the power steering pump too, but that ll be another day now

I didn't mind it at first to be honest either, but there are two main reasons that it won't do...

Firstly it's just too long & the result will be a bracket that can flex under load, I had a simular issue with the old power steering pump in my Dodge & it used to drive me nuts as it was fine when at idle or constant speed but when you accelerated the bracket would flex under the load & the belt would squeal.

Secondly it is actually in the space that the battery tray would be taking up, so I'd have to cut a section off the battery tray to fit it back in & then that would make battery placement an issue too.

So an underslung bracket it has to be

Forgot to say, they are Nitto NT555's.... didn't have a lot of options in the 315/35ZR17 range oddly enough....

Next job is to remove the diff from the car, for two reasons.. one so that I can get better access to the rails to work out what to & then to actually do it & secondly so that I can send the diff away to be worked on & toughened up so that it can take the torque of the new engine.



Top tech tip here, it s super easy to remove the diff if you cut the back off your car first . See you don t get tips like that from those US restoration shows now do ya







Should be simple enough, unbolt the brake lines from the diff where connector block mounts







Then unbolt the shock, the sway bar & the tramp rod from where they connect to the car







Getting the tramp rod nut off was hard work, the bolt was worn smooth from years of rubbing on the chassis rail







With all of that undone I just undid the rear shackles & let the diff sit on the wheels pivoting from the front spring perches







Pop those two bolts out & then just wheel the diff back out of the way















Last job of the day was to strip everything off the diff that wasn t going to be needed anymore











Now I just need to make some final decisions as to which way I go fixing the rear rails & the rear Qtrs.. The plan is still to get this car to Hardtop Anniversary in Bathurst next year.. so I need to pull my finger out & spend some long nights in the shed, all of this body work has to be finished by Xmas a tall order but I need to set myself a deadline.

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve been in this thread. What have I been doing I hear you ask… the answer is a LOT… it feels like I’ve been working on this thing forever now, but the sad truth is that this project is nowhere near where I wanted it to be by now, there are multiple reasons for this but it simply boils down to the fact that I travel too much for work including weekends, add to that the fact that my panel beater can’t always get to me on the weekends I am here. Plus we did make some big decisions & changed the way we went with this & as such made it a bigger job, but if something is worth doing it’s worth doing it half-arsed I say.

 

Now to save you re-reading the above thread, where I ended up was trying to decide how to fix the bent chassis rails of my XB & how to fix the rear qtr panels that had been butchered to make them fit a car that had bent chassis rails. So hard decisions needed to be made, I had hoped to simply fix my XB & keep my “parts car” XB intact so that I could make a track car out of it, but the harsh reality was that we couldn’t fix the rails, it’s been on a real body shop puller rig & how they are now is as good as they will ever get really… so hard decision number one was to sacrifice my spare XB & take the rear Qtr’s & Chassis rails off it. Hard decision number two was to let my panel beater work on the car without me, he had two weeks off work when I would be away, so I gave him a set of keys to the shed & told him to knock himself out… not I did ask that he take lots of progress pics but that never happened, so there are some stages of the build that I don’t have pics off now… but such is life.

 

Here is the last time this XB was a complete car… que sad face emoji

 



 

Now the chassis rails in this car are perfect & believe it or not the rear Qtrs are really good, the sections that are badly rusted are the common sections & as such repair panels are easily available so fixing them will be a lot easier that sectioning my original qtrs. & reshaping them. Also the rear light panel is in pretty good shape on this Coupe too so the plan will be to reuse that too.

 

The rear floor had to come out to give us access to the chassis rails so that they can be unpicked from the car

 



 



 



 

Another new toy was going to be need for this build (can & will be used on the Challenger too) so I bought a rotisserie to allow me to do this properly.. I wonder how the hell they manage to get these things packed into such small boxes?

 



 

The instructions that this came with where a joke, it was like someone had described it down the phone to someone else in a different language… so it was an entertaining morning spent with Mrs. XB putting this together

 



 

As you can see it was getting late by the time we finished

 



 

It’s a very good set up, very adjustable by all counts… & as I’ve been using it for months I can confirm that it was a great buy… very happy indeed

 



 

We needed to melt away the lead that they use as a flexible join for these rear Qtrs so that we could unpick where it joins to the roof

 



 

Here you can see where they have butchered the panel to make it fit a bent car rather than fix the car correctly

 



 

Both sills are rusted on this car too & the passenger side had some interesting repairs done too over the years, so that had to come off

 



 

With that off there was a bit of rust up front that needed to be sorted before the new sill went on

 



 



 



 

Now sadly we came to a point where I was traveling overseas & my panel beater & one of his mates where smacking my car with hammers & welding & grinding & measuring & prepping & doing all sorts of cool stuff except they weren’t taking any ****ing pictures!! Not even crappy iphone pics… so we pick up the story now at a point where the rear chassis rails have been replaced & the two rear Qtrs have been replaced..  

 

I just love this pic, it’s probably my fave pic of the whole restore for me, it just screams Mad Max to me & that’s the whole reason I fell in love with this car & bought it, this one image has helped me make sense of what a massive job I’ve taken on… all the times I’ve wanted to pour petrol all over it & burn the bloody thing or the times I’ve wanted to use the plasma cutter to make small manageable chunks out it that I can take to the metal recyclers & probably make $350 all up on the scrap value, I can’t explain it but I just smile whenever I see this pic

 



 

Luckly they make rust repair sections for all the spots on this Qtr that are bad, so it’s a much quicker & simpler fix that trying to section & reshape my old Qtrs would have been

 



 

Ok, bear with me, we’re almost up to date again….. a bit of an interior strip out was required, ultimately every single part that can be unbolted will be unbolted & it will be an empty shell that I’m working with to ensure that every inch of the car is inspected for rust, repaired & treated. So next out was the steering column





Then I started on removing the dash gauges, I have a few sets of these to pick from when the time to reassemble comes so I’m not sure if these are the exact ones I’ll be using, but as they don’t make any of these bits everything is carefully removed & stored.





The wiring in this car is butchered as you would expect in a 42yro car & the bits that aren’t butchered from countless alarm & stereo installations is simply brittle & cracking, so I think as much as I hate wiring & I really don’t want to do it a complete rewire is on the cards.. I have a few ideas for how I’ll do this but a bit more research is needed before I get to it.. but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

I also removed the front screen… now I’m not sure if you’ve removed a bonded front screen but I can tell you that there is a reason why when you’re watching American TV car restoration shows they just kick them out… trying to pull one out without damaging it as they are as rare as rocking horse poo is a hard & time consuming task… but the window is out & stored safely with the rest of the glass in one of the guest rooms in the house.





Sadly the Australian company who made the glass for all old Holdens & Fords here never had the foresight to keep the moulds so you cannot get replacement glass for these cars anywhere, you have to hope that someone has one in a shed somewhere they are willing to sell & it’s even worse for the XB Coupe as this is a specific window to this body shape, so the XB Sedan & UTE ones don’t fit.

Of course by off it came I meant the whole inner sill, I’m either becoming more confident or more delusional as I go with this as I no longer pause before cutting large sections of the car off, I figure if some bloke could make it in the 70’s then there is no reason that I can’t too







Now with the inner sill off I could see some more major rust sections at the A pillar… happy happy joy joy, I was a little worried that that section wasn’t going to be a bastard of a job already… so this is exactly what I hoped to find….





So more grinder action & I mean the angle kind not the App kind

Even that ****ty A pillar section is starting to come together nicely







Of course I’ll still have to sort out that front floor support section (that for reasons only Ford would know doesn’t actually touch & therefor support the floor) but for now the strength is back in the car as the sill in & the front & rear end caps are on





Let’s see what else have I repaired… ah yes the new boot floors are in, the fuel tank was being used to ensure that the car is actually the right shape.. I swear I’ve taken a thousand measurements & triple checked everyone at every stage of this rebuild but sometimes it’s nice to get the simple reassurance of seeing an original part fit perfectly where it was supposed to go





The floor to bumper support panel brackets are in too



I said earlier that I was able to reuse the tail light panel from the other XB which is a great thing as the ribbed lines in the replacement panels you can get are just not right… I did however have to replace the lower section of this panel using the new shaped metal from the rust repair panel I had bought