It's time for the final finishing touches on the Fairlane
We headed to Noosa radiators to meet up with Old Cock
to get the exhaust system made up.
Mark, the owner of the car, has known Old Cock and his son Shane for many years,
and have worked on a heap of his cars in the past,
so they were more than happy to help out when it came to working on the Fairlane.
Shane has made up a 2.5inch press bent mild steel system
that splits off from our 3.5inch dump pipe.
It's all in a day's work for Shane,
and after a quick coat with some heat proof paint,
it was time to start it up, and hear how it sounds.
It's a bit smokey on cold startup due to being untuned.
Nonetheless, it sounds awesome
and it's time to drive it round the corner to Blairy's to strap it on to the dyno.
After strapping it down on the dyno,
Mick connects his MAP sensor line and
starts off by doing some light load tuning
ensuring the air-fuel ratio is correct.
Mick then proceeds to do some minor, full-load runs.
Checking the recorded data, Mick can see how
the engine reacts to the numbers he is inputting in the fuel table
and knows just how far he can push it.
Things were looking really good, with the car making 341.3 HP
until this happened...
Yeah, so that was the tail shaft breaking
which is, uh, pretty special, so
after it broke it also tore holes in the floor and ripped out all the fuel lines,
and brake lines and all that
bent the exhaust that Old Cock had just built, so
Um
What we determined was
There was a bit of a miscommunication with the tailshaft maker
He didn't, uh, didn't hear the bit where I said it was a turbo V8
just thought it was some old ****
So it wasn't really
built to the spec, and it's also a very long shaft 'cuz the car's so long
So it was
yeah, not up to it.
So what we've done is moved to a 2 piece tailshaft
To do that, we got a Hilux tailshaft from just a Hilux ute
and used the centre bearing out of that and had it just cut up and rejigged
to work
And then we had to make a centre bearing mount
to hang it from the centre of the tunnel.
So it's got a
rolled piece that goes up inside the tunnel, shaped to the tunnel
It's got nuts welded into it and bolted through from above
And then it's got this frame, here,
which holds the centre bearing
We can also adjust the centre bearing height
to account for things like vibration and that sorta thing,
Which is pretty common, cars to have that sorta adjustability
So we just use spacers to space the shaft up or down
We just fiddle with that until it runs happy
So we've now got the
Hilux slip joint
which is from a front tailshaft, I think, in a Hilux
Obviously because there's no slipjoint in the back of the gearbox
it has to have one because it's got a live axle and as it goes up and down
it changes length, so that's your slipjoint there
and all the length changes are happening between here and here.
It used to be up here, bolted to the tailshaft adapter.
So that's all working well
We had to do a few repairs to hoses, lines, floor
Exhaust got bent to oblivion so we had to fix that up
but she's all good to go now
And the other problem we had, it kept stopping all the time, just like it did when it had the 302 Windsor in it.
So the cleanout of the fuel tank was less than successful
it just kept dropping
like, rust flakes that would get sucked into the
the big filter in the pickup and it'd block
You'd stop, then it'd release
and drop back down, the car would go again
So we found that out
by driving around for a while, and
Just bit the bullet and bought a brand new fuel tank for it
which we also upgraded it,
to a 130 litre tank out of a GTHO Falcon
So it's, uh, huge
Which is good, because it runs on E85 and
E85 loves to drink, so
Yeah, that's all good now, so
the car's running great,
just off to get the final tune
once Mark takes it home he's gonna get it tuned up
at his home town, or thereabouts
and drive it.
With the initial tune done at Blairy's,
we were able to drive the car after the tailshaft repairs
and sort out all the little problems.
Mark had the final tune done at Rod's dyno which is closer to his home.
Rod plays with the duty cycle on the boost controller.
and is able to squeeze out a couple more PSI
so it's time to smash down some power runs.
We've made a pretty stouf 451 horsepower
at 16.5 PSI.
With the tune being the final step in this massive build,
there's only one thing left to do
and that's to hand the keys over to Mark
and for him to finally enjoy some reliable power.