Last of the V8 Interceptors.. my XB Falcon Coupe

The passenger side has been fully blocked back now





She’s been spun around now & the top half of the drivers side has also been blocked back…





I do wonder sometimes if I’m just spamming this build thread now with these pics, but I know I’m learning just how much work actually goes into a paint job when it’s done right..

We’re playing with fitting the front bumper now, this is done without the guards on as the process is to get the bumper square on the car first & then the hanging panels will be adjusted to suit





Also working on getting the front guard “eyebrows” to fit, I don’t understand why Ford did this particular design cue.. there is no model of XB in the range that uses a different eyebrow so there was no need to not just have the guard be a one piece design. I assume this design was to give panel beaters & painters something to do as they never fit right





Next job for me will be to lose my temper, throw tools around & learn new curse words as I try to remove & replace the worn door hinge pins that were designed to never come out as they are well worn & cause the door to sag once opened..

I was feeling a little left out of the XB process so I’ve jumped back on the tools & did a thing as Clarkson would say.. I’ve stripped the paint off the scuttle panel now, the metal is perfect so that just needs some primer & it’s ready to go



I’ve also cleaned back the underside of the boot lid… again this is perfect so only primer & paint needed..





On the subject of paint… the final colour paint has been ordered now.. so no going back on that decision without significant finical impact (quality paint is expensive here). Next job for me on the weekend will be to strip back the underside of the bonnet.

I’ve also made some progress on operation gearbox decision… I’m keeping the car an Auto as I had said before, but I don’t want only 3 forward gears as that will see the car revving at over 3200RPM on the highway at 110kph given the rear gearing I plan on running. I had been doing a lot of research into a Gear Vendors Overdrive to bolt to the back of the gearbox & I love this tech that gives an OD to every gear in the box… however my big question was always would it fit in my XB… I finally found a guy with an XB who’d fitted one to his. You can see it’s a bulky item that gets bolted to the back of the gearbox



Here it is installed in the car



Now the thickest part of this bolt on piece of kit (where the black solenoid is) lines up perfectly with the depression in the floor where the front bolts for the front seats go… however that is exactly where the beefy rear suspension torque tube brace is for my fancy multilink rear end set up



This had been my big concern all along with the idea… so now I think I’ll have to go to plan B.. I think I’ll still look at getting one for the Dodge mind you as I don’t have any clearance issues there.

The rear bumper is now almost finished… it’s centred now & standing upright as it should.





The section where it curves under the drivers side rear light panel is perfect



But the factory panel isn’t the same shape left to right so the gap is about 2.5mm bigger on the passenger side between the bumper & the underside of the light panel, so we’ll have to fill this gap in with lead or filler

The eyebrow moulds on the front guards have come up great… no option but to use a thin layer of filler here as they aren’t even close to the shape of the actual guard.



The shell is being masked up as he wants to get the final coat of primer on by next week now



We’re starting on the engine bay now.. this is where I’m a little freaked out as my painter has said that this is the section he loves to get perfect as it really stands out, if by that definition he doesn’t feel the rest of the car is perfect now then I’ll be mind blown by what he’ll do here.

Hmmm... they've changed how I upload pics, let me go find out how to do that again now... normal service will be resumed shortly

Ok.... so it seems that I can't link to my pics that are stored on PhotoBucket anymore & have them displayed in the thread... seems the only way I can get a pic in here is if it's on my local HDD & I upload it. This is actually a bit of a **** for me as I take so many pics I don't normally keep them on my HDD I just upload them to PhotoBucket also the old site allowed me to write up a long post just coping in links to PB & then I could cut & paste the whole update in on the different forums I run these same threads on.. now Boards will need it's own unique way of updating.. I'll give it a day or two to see of they add back in the functionality the old site had for posting images, if they don't I'll download the pics from my camera again to my HDD & upload them all one by one... what a massive backwards step I think that is for the forum.

The underside of the bootlid I’d taken back to bare metal is all primed now

I said a few posts back that I was going to go with plan B for a transmission for this car….. well plan B is an AOD transmission, that’s fancy Ford speak for Automatic OverDrive (not very inventive with the name). They do two types of AOD’s a mechanical version called an AOD & an electronically controlled on called…. Wait for it….. an AODE.

AODE’s are common enough here but the earlier AOD’s aren’t & also stock they won’t take any more that 400HP-450HP but I was going to have to find somewhere that sells a tuff built trans that will take over 700HP. I'd been doing my research & I had found the perfect build, but the Aus$ to US$ is crappy right now & shipping times are very drawn out so I was resigning myself to this not being as smooth as I'd like.

Then this week the car gods decided to shine on me... I was on a FB group & a guy posts up a for sale Ad for the exact build of AOD that I'm after, brand new still in the box & unused & as he bought it from the US back when the $ was parity & he was only looking to get back what he paid for it I've saved thousands... so massive win win for me... got the exact trans I wanted for less that I was expecting & it's only in Sydney so I can get my mate Dru to go collect it & I won't delay the build waiting for a trans to arrive from the US in time… mind you Sydney has just gone back into covid lockdown so who knows when I might get it now.

The trans is a built wide ration unit with beefed up input shaft, full race shift kit, performance clutches etc.. built for over 700HP so that's perfect for me.

It comes with everything I'll need too... 2600RPM stall, yoke, linkages, cables, flexplate, spacerplate etc...

We decided to mix up some of the final colour for the car too & to paint some of sections that will be forever hidden behind other panels etc now, just cause we can & we wanted to finally see some pops of colour on the old girl

We also decided to use the colour for the final sanding guide coat so that gives her a nice pink hue for now...

It was time to rebuild the hinges, you can't get new hinges for the XA-XC yet so a hinge rebuild kit with new bushes, pins & springs is as good as it gets.. The old pins are pressed it & then the ends are mushroomed to make it really hard to ever get them out again... luckily for me there was so much slop in the upper hinges that I could get a cutting blade in-between the two halves of the hinge & cut the pin. 

Then it was simple to drive out the pin pieces 

That’s one cleaned up & ready to reassemble

Pressed in the new bushes

Then the new pin

That's one finished then

Then both

The hinges some other brackets & the inside of the doors then got their final primer coat

The back side of the front guards & the insides of the doors have been painted now in the same Ute bed liner that I'd painted the underside of the car in. Choose this option as it's tuff & has a sound deadening quality built in.  

I've had a change of mind now on the red tinted version of this that I had sprayed the underside of the car in before she went to paint... I've decided that that was a bad idea, so now we're going to black all of that out too.. I think this will look much better in the long run.

With the inside of the doors & the guards done, they have been masked up again & now the next two coats of final colour have gone on..