Sam's 304 VN BT1

[GRPABT1]

If it's a BT1 like mine then it'll have the Calais style interior light with the seperate map lights, these are actually exactly the same as the interior light on some EF/EL Ford Falcon's so when you scour the wreckers check in them also.

[savage1987]

good to know - cheers!

I actually found one i thought was good but turns out that's broken in a very obscure and hard to see way fail..

[GRPABT1]

Yeah the tabs that hold them up break off easy, I've replaced mine twice

[savage1987]

This car decided it didn't want to work any more within hours of getting my LS1 fired up and on the road again. Must have heard me talk about selling it once the LS1 was running and gotten scared. Poor thing, I can completely understand - I don't like change either

Anyway I'm chasing an electrical problem, and preparing the car for sale at the same time. Everything should end up neater than it's ever been so it presents at its best for prospective buyers

Not sure how keen I'll get on it - at the moment I'm just tidying up chunks of wiring throughout the car, removed power/RCA/signal/ground for the amp which no longer resides in the boot area, and so on.

Also gave the battery terminals a tidy up but I think I will need to remove the voltmeter from the positive terminal permanently. It has a large amount of corrosion through the inside of it so I'm not happy with that, mainly because it's connected to both terminals directly and I've no idea if it could end up causing a drain if some of the circuitry failed over time.

Other than that, just little things. Still working on getting the head unit to sit perfectly, gluing door seals back together with black sika-227 (that stuff is amazing :P) and fitting a spare bailey channel rubber to the passenger door to kill that annoying window rattle they get when it's missing.

Plenty of work to go

Sam

[savage1987]

Pulled the battery out, going to give this area (and the engine bay in general) a good clean up and polish, and dress it up a bit for sale.







Found the fluid level in the battery a little low, topped that up. Didn't even know this battery was serviceable. Silly me

Pulled the air filter just to have a look at its condition.. good thing I did, because it turns out my air intake tube to the front bar was too much for it










Also pulled out the voltage regulator to see if the brushes were too short. Unfortunately I jumped the gun and blew a few dollars on brushes before pulling the regulator out, because they don't look as bad as I had expected.









Progress is slow but I have as much time as I want, which is nice.

[savage1987]

Getting carried away already

If it costs me little to nothing, doesn't take a stupid amount of time and makes a good visual difference, I'll take it on.








You can see in these pics the paint issue I want to address before getting rid of the car. Looks like this side of the bay has had a shit job done on it some time in the past, which is a real shame. I'm yet to decide how to tackle that one. Open to suggestions.

One thing that won't be making an exit with the car is my AD6 front splits.. they'll go into the LS1 when I get some sort of door pods sorted out. To that end, if anyone in Townsville has some decent 2nd hand 6" coaxials or even splits they want to offload pretty cheaply, let me know I need something to fill that space!

[savage1987]

man I need to stop doing this stupid stuff it's not going to help me sell it!

Reason I left so much length of cable is so that if the new owner doesn't like it, it's simple to put back where it came from. I think it's polite to do that

[wrx884]

LOL would b a pain 2 change the module if it goes haha but does tidy it up.

[savage1987]

It's not that hard to pop a guard off do it a couple of times and it becomes a very quick and easy job.

[mischa]

Wow, that is easy. So you can just unravel the wires all the way back to the firewall where it heads over to the back of tue engine to the coil and dizy?

[savage1987]

Yep. Unwrap that harness that runs past the ignition module, and you'll find all the wires for those two plugs go back up to the big intersection near the firewall so it's dead easy to poke them through and out the side. I disassembled the long plug, but couldn't get the square one to release any pins so I chose to cut and solder those wires to eliminate risk of damaging the plug itself. I put the wiring through the factory hole on the engine side wrapped in tape and convoluted tubing, and drilled a 7/8" hole for a 22mm blind rubber grommet which you can see just under the module in the photo. From then it was just a matter of rebuilding the long plug, soldering those 4 wires and tidying it all up into new tubing.

[savage1987]

I decided to improve on the shitty old factory ground from the negative terminal, so it's 2AWG now. Maybe it'll improve some things, maybe I won't notice, but I had the stuff here to make it so I couldn't think of a good reason not to.




Installed the alternator again, wondering about looping the battery sense wire straight to its 12V post, undecided as yet.

Got the battery sitting back in its spot after cleaning out the buildup of crap that always hides underneath them.

Have also fit a new set of cheapy Clarion 6.5" coaxials to the front doors so my AD6s are in storage waiting for me to sort out some sort of door pods for the LS1 VN.



The car starts and runs better than ever so I think I must have chanced on whatever was dodgy and fixed it up when I was playing with the battery terminals. Correct fluid level in the battery probably helps too.

Somehow an amazing fuel leak developed from this line, the old hose clamp had reached its lower limit which wasn't enough, and fuel was leaking really badly. The best thing about that particular line is that it leaks down very close to the coil which of course is exactly what you want....






After redoing the thermostat gasket AGAIN, it still bloody leaks. Sprayed everywhere as soon as I gave it any revs.



There was a bit of corrosion on the housing where the hose goes on, so I might just buy a new housing to eliminate warp issues etc, even though it looks to be all flat I'm not convinced. I've done a new thermostat and gasket, another 3 gasket changes and a final one where I sanded back and cleaned both surfaces and applied some loctite gasket maker etc etc, it's still leaking so I think a new housing and a new top hose should finally have all bases covered. If it leaks after that I don't know what I'll do

[savage1987]

I decided to pull the throttle body off to make some more room for changing the thermostat housing. I discovered the problem with the gasket consistently leaking was a combination of two separate issues.

1. the housing that was on the motor was a HQ style housing, with no recess to accommodate the VN type thermostat's fat lip. The new correct housing has this recess, and it also has an O-ring, explaining why when I bought a VN thermostat a few months back it came with an O-ring.

2. the bolts securing the housing were too long by about 2mm, so it would not hold the new housing down. I fixed this by using a pair of shorter bolts I had laying around. Lucky

So far, the new housing and top hose doesn't leak. $70 fix.


The fuel leak from this morning has not reappeared, so I'm happy with that.


While the throttle body was off I decided to give it a good clean - lucky I did too, because I discovered the PCV system was clogged with shit. I can only assume it was an accumulation of loosened flaky crusty stuff, possibly from when I changed the rocker cover gaskets a while ago, which had made its way down to the PCV system over time and clogged it solid. The barb fitting on the throttle body was completely blocked, so was the PCV valve itself. I spent a little over an hour cleaning everything up and putting it all back together.


Engine is back together now and is running a lot better. Cleaning out the IAC assembly certainly must have helped, along with adjusting the idle screw so that the thing actually closes properly!! It was quite far from closed

Now all I need to do is get the guard back on, and swap the front suspension back into the LS1 (I swapped them months ago for troubleshooting purposes to no avail), and it'll be pretty much ready to clean up for sale.

[wrx884]

interesting with the thermo stat housing i think wen i 1st bought mine and was having coolent leak troubles i encountered the same problem, bolts had washes on there probably 2 cater 4 being 2 long like urs and the housing never fit right until i bought a new 1 then had no issues, so mayb mine had the same housing as urs and didnt know it.

[savage1987]

Seems like the old housing is an old style VN-VQ? 92060188. The O-ring type and newer style thermostat are listed replacement parts for the old setup.

[savage1987]

Today's progress... not a great deal really

Got the interior all back together, just need to figure out how to actually properly mount a head unit so it isn't just wedged in there (this one falls out).

Started working on the engine covers I have here, but that won't continue until I have some coarser sandpaper because multiple old coats of VHT paint warrant a bit harsher then the 180grit I have here.

Moved the car diagonally across the shed to make some space for the suspension work. This also affords space for the front bumper to come off, making re-fitting that LH guard a lot easier. Truth be told, while the bumper is off I will probably decide to pop the RH guard off and tidy some things on that side of the engine bay. We'll see how far I can be bothered going with that (probably not far at all).

Also tidied up a couple of wires around the place, and spent a few minutes re-routing the windscreen washer lines internally through the bonnet structure for neatness. Much happier with them now they are 80% hidden under metalwork.

That's all for now.

[savage1987]

Got a little bit done tonight.

Started by pulling the front bumper off. Unfortunately it didn't come off clean, so I need to replace that expensive clip assembly on the passenger side. That's thanks to a dodgy panelbeater fitting the front bar terribly, I assume. Regardless, I'll do my best to fix this up properly when it goes back on.

Pulled the RH guard off and got started on tidying up some wiring. This car won't cop the same level of re-shuffling that the LS1 did, but I think I can make a big difference with not much work now that I've had the practise on the LS1.










A quick random shot of the trans cooler







and another one, this time of the windscreen washer ducting I mentioned in the previous post.






I'll just keep working, and see where things end up there is no plan for where to stop at this point, I'm making it up as I go along.

Make sure you tell me if you're interested in buying it then I might have an excuse to stop doing silly things, put everything back together and polish her up for the move to a new home.

[stockies]

damn man, your going completely overboard with this...
I likely!!
If you weren't in another state, I would consider buying this.
Can see you wanting to keep it as a daily after all this work!

[savage1987]

Why do I need a daily? The LS1 is perfect for that. I have 3 cars including this one, between the mrs and I we really only need two. She's keeping the R33 GTST, I'm keeping the LS1 VN. This one gets to move on unfortunately. Maybe down the track I'll pick up a WH/WK Statesman/Caprice/Grange, that's what I'd like to aim for next, but I can't see that happening for a while.

[JTR007]

Looking good sav!
Shame your selling, such a nice vn
I'm thinking about hiding wiring in my vn bt1 too :P

[stockies]

Sweet, LS1 VN for a daily!!
I would love to have the time and skill to put an LS1 in my VN...



Sorry, dreaming a little there....


back on track!

Should paint the brakes, they'll stand out for a younger buyer...

And get rid of the sticker on the rear doors!

[savage1987]

Unfortunately that sticker isn't going anywhere.. it was applied too soon after paint by the looks of things.

Brakes are painted, at the moment just silver for a clean look but might look at doing them another colour. Maybe red will look OK with the stripe kit, but red has a tendency to make small factory brakes look, well, smaller... silver is a brightening colour that tricks your eyes into thinking they are bigger than they really are

[stockies]

Shame about the sticker....
I was going to suggest silver brakes, not really sold on factory V8 ones painted any other colour. I lol'd at your reasoning about the colour choice too!

As for more idea's, how's the conditions of the gutter moulds on this beast? I'm currently redoing all the black on mine, one piece at a time. I'm using VHT bumper and trim paint, it's coming up really good! looks like new! Even on the door molds around the windows!

[savage1987]

These ones are actually quite good - they look to have been redone recently.

[savage1987]

I found a photo from the last show I stopped in at here in Townsville...