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99 Series 1 VT Senator

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vrsprspt, You've got a great ride there & it was a pity you got stuffed around.

Before I got my ute re-painted, I asked my mechanic for recommendations. I was still fresh to town & only knew a couple of people and I got 2 contacts from them. I went to the first one where the owner owns a VU SS ute and a HSV E Series II Clubsport. All the the guys working for him had various Holdens. He does insurance work which is their bread & butter but they enjoy doing private work. We sat down & had a great chat on what needed to be done as well showing me his portfolio on private cars that the crew have done over the years and I was impressed. I wanted to keep the costs down & he advised me what to do. We set a time a time & date to get the work started. The owner also said to drop by at any time to see the progress.

It took a bit of time as they were doing the job in between insurance jobs & saw each step of the progress. What impressed them at the time was all the parts & panels I had That I got from my local Holden Dealer Spares section. They thought that some parts didn't exist any more. They did an excellent job & they all loved working on my ute. I was extremely impressed by their work & their service. I've become good friends with the owner & his wife as I see them once a week for a chat & catch up. I also bring bottle water, munchies & cubes of Sprite to the guys on hot days and they appreciate it. They also repaired & painted my Grand Vitara after it was damaged in a car park. The GV had major rear 1/4 damage & I thought it would be a write off but again they did an excellent job.

The best thing to do for future reference is track down a good spraypainter. If they own Holdens/Fords & are proud of the work they churn out then stick with them. I'm sure you'll find a good spraypainter in Melbourne especially ones that like appreciating classics. If they have a portfolio of cars they've worked on & they're proud of what they do, then stick to them. If your car gets damaged again & you're claiming under insurance, you have the choice where your car goes.
 

vrsprspt

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vrsprspt, You've got a great ride there & it was a pity you got stuffed around.
Thanks mate, yeah I think they gave me nightmares lol

The Senator went into aircon shop yesterday, was told problem could be 2 things, seals are leaking where pipes bolt onto compressor ($160-$180) or the compressor itself has shat itself ($600-$700). Because it has been a couple of months since the aircon has worked and I have pressure washed the engine bay a couple of times, they had couldn't see where the leak was coming from (once they got it on the hoist, they had to take it around to another workshop that had a 4 post hoist) so they advised it best to go the cheaper option first and just replace the seals and regas. Get a 3 month warranty so no issue there, if it is the compressor that's stuffed, I won't get charged again for a regas.

Spoke to 2 different shops about fixing this problem, when it came to the compressor, both would use an aftermarket compressor because they were thought to be better than the genuine ones. Apparently genuine ones were made with a porous aluminium and that was fixed when making the aftermarket units, can anybody shed some light on this subject?

Also got a new clockspring in the post yesterday, so looking forward to having my steering wheel controls back. At $180 new I baulked at the idea at first, then reading on what others had done, someone suggested that 2nd hand was a bit pointless as it was just as old as the one that had failed and was only a matter of time before it stuffed up to, made sense to me lol
 

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I remember when the air-con in mine crapped itself. Mine cost me $900 to get it all done & now it never misses a beat.

I have stuck with genuine parts when re-building mine but I have looked at aftermarket products that would do the same thing. Best thing is research the brand in question. Everyone here will have different opinions on various aftermarket products.

A story that I can tell you recently was when I saw the guys at the local Holden Dealers spares section where i live. they are off-site to the dealership & sometimes they dump their trade-ins where they are. I saw a 2014 VF SSV ute 6spd Tremec TR-6060 in excellent condition from the outside. I asked the guys if that was a trade in & they said no as it went to the service dept. What had happened was that the owner decided to put in a 'performance' cam that he bought from eBay into it. When the owner installed it & fired it up, it crapped itself. It was still under warranty from Holden but cos he used an aftermarket product, it made it void. His insurance company wont pay either to get it repaired. It was estimated that to fix the V8 would cost $6500 to fix not including labor. A new V8 engine is $8000 from Holden but doesn't include labor, programming etc. So it's just a life size paperweight. For a great ute, it got stuffed up by an idiot. It's still got HP on it as well. At the moment it's sitting there waiting for the owner to decide what to do next. The guys and myself shook our heads as the 6.0L engine is an excellent engine to start with, why mod it when it's still under warranty.

I admit some aftermarket parts are better than the original but again research the company that makes them & ask for opinions.
 

vrsprspt

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Got these in the post today, might have to quickly put one in the front at least before I go away over easter, then eventually will hard wire them in.
Liked these cause they were smaller and not so noticeable, had a look at some footage on youtube taken with these cameras and day or night were both reasonable quality
 

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Trust me, they'll come in handy. The amount of old people & P platers that nearly swipe me while i'm on the roundabouts is unbelievable.
 

vrsprspt

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Trust me, they'll come in handy. The amount of old people & P platers that nearly swipe me while i'm on the roundabouts is unbelievable.

See it so often myself, exactly why I wanted to get them
 

vrsprspt

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Hit a bit of a milestone over the weekend so felt I had to pull over and get a photo of it for shiits and giggles

Not much else been happening here, fitted a new battery a while ago as the 450 cca just wasn't cutting it, 580 now and she cranks no problem hot or cold. $90 for a new excide battery with 30 months warranty is not bad at all. The guy I got it off said it had been sitting on the shelf for 3 months (as he wiped the dust off the top of it), it struggled on first start but went for a 20 minute drive and have not had a problem since

Been thinking for a while of trying some new wheels, something black but wasn't sure if I'd like the look. Will find out hopefully this week when put on the VZ R8 (I think) wheels that are a real dark grey
 

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MEANL67

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I had a 510 cca in my vt v8 and found after awhile it lost some juice, I went a 620 cca and turns the motor over a lot quicker and only just fit in the bay.
 

vrsprspt

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OK, so not much movement here for a few months as have been having trouble with my leg and it has taken forever to heal up properly without running into any problems again, am only getting back to my usual routine of things in the last couple of weeks so looking forward to getting a few things happening on the Senator again.

The R8 wheels that I had planned to fit will be going on this Friday finally, they have been sitting in the corner of my dining room collecting a bit of dust so will be good to see how they look on the Senator.

Even though been unable to do much because of my leg, have been collecting bits and pieces that I want over the last few months as bargains came up. The one I am most proud of and have been looking for probably the longest, is the set of Harrop brakes I scored. So that's how I spent last Saturday afternoon but was only able to get the front done, so hopefully this weekend finish off the job.

Will add some photos when can figure it out as have a new phone so I think photo file size is too big, cbf right now as too late
 

vrsprspt

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Been trying to use photobucket to get pictures up but wouldn't let me upload any photos yesterday. Learnt this morning through PlayStation Network being down that there was a large cyber attack on some service provider that caused havoc on alot of major internet sites, so after PSN was back online, tried photobucket again and hey presto it worked


 
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