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Phantom Black 2002 VX SS

VXSS.195

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G'day everybody, after lurking through the forums for a while and briefly sharing a few pictures of my ride I thought it was time to start my own thread.

So after spotting an advertisement for this car up on Facebook, I thought I'd go check it out and before I knew it I owned it. It's a 2002 model series 2 VX SS in phantom black with black leather interior, 4sp auto, 220,000 k's and completely stock when I purchased it back in February.

Here's a couple of pictures the day I went to look at it, looked fairly rough in terms of paintwork etc, but still a clean starting base.

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The first thing I did was cleaned the car up and gave it a decent polish, wax etc and it came up very nice.

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Next thing was to take it for a roadworthy, but before that it had an airbag fault which no doubt it'd get knocked on so I proceeded to fix that before anything. After much investigation and replacing things that didn't need to be fixed it came down to the drivers side airbag located in the bolster of the seat.

The culprit:

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Anyway, I went and got the airbag light cleared and all was sweet. I went and booked it in for a roadworthy straight after that. I took it in and it got knocked on bubbled/damaged window tint & engine oil leaks (surprise, surprise..) The oil leaks were pretty bad (although the rear main was just replaced before I purchased the car) so I had no choice but to pull the engine out, freshen it up and replace a few worn gaskets.

Got straight into it and started pulling the engine out;

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Out she comes;

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Off comes the old worn rocker cover gaskets;

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And with the rocker cover gaskets replaced, sump gasket replaced, engine mounts replaced amongst a few other things and a tidy up, back in it goes!

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And removing window tint, what a fun job that was! (not)

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After it was all roadworthied and good to go the mods start to begin. First thing I did was went and picked up an exhaust system consisting of Pacemaker 4 into 1 extractors, 3 inch high flow cats and a straight through twin 2.5 inch catsback. The only thing was that this system was off a Statesman, so the catsback had to be shortened which I did, but it was rather iffy.

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The catsback looked funny on the car and was just way too loud, so off it came and on went the stock catsback exhaust (for now), although I'm very pleased with the difference the Pacemaker extractors and high flow cats have made!

Around the same time I replaced the SS badges on the car as the old ones were crappy.

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The next thing to happen was to get the windows looking nice and dark! I ended up going darkest legal on the side windows and 10% darker on the rear window.

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I was browsing through Facebook not too long after and came across a set of SSV wheels for sale. My original thoughts were either the 19" SSV wheels or the 18" VZ Monaro wheels, but I saw these SSV wheels and went for them and am pleased with how much they enhanced the appearance of the car.

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After a while I got sick of the stock sound of the exhaust and thought it was time to get the SS sounding more like a V8! So I purchased this Supercat twin 2.5 inch exhaust and chucked it on and wow... :bow:

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I got bored one day and decided I'd wanted to do something to the car, so I sprayed the brake calipers red and rotors silver, just to make it look a bit neater behind those wheels.

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The next mod (minor mod, but cool) was putting my speedo into police mode so I had the digital speedo. It's actually come in surprisingly handy and I use it all the time now.

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At this stage the car was getting used to go on a lot of long trips and I'd noticed a noise from under the bonnet getting more noticeable, but thought nothing of it. Next thing I know I was on a trip down to Melbourne when the battery light came on, everything dimmed and my power steering stopped working. I pulled over, and popped the bonnet to find the idler pulley absolutely rooted!

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And all fixed up with a nice, shiny, new *metal* pulley.

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Next big plan for the car was a mafless tune.. so I bought one of these.. but still to this day it hasn't been tuned, although, I'm going to be getting it tuned on the dyno in the near future. The aluminium intakes are meant to be the way to go, but only time will tell..

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And just recently I've had a few more little troubles with the car.. including a stuffed heater tap and scrubbed out rear tyres, although the heater tap was an easy fix and I shall be getting two new tyres this week..

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Annddd just this weekend, I picked up a tow bar and fitted it up.. it's amazing how well Holden thought through everything when it comes to fitting tow bar packages.. all the nuts and bolts required were already on the car ready to and the trailer wiring harness was plug and play which literally took two minutes to hook up.

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That's the history of my ownership of the SS up to today! I've been very pleased with this car so far, and am looking forward to treating it worth more mods as time goes on.
Future plans include mafless tune, chrome exhaust tips, fitting a few LED globes around the car, custom plates and just whatever else I decide to throw at it! Thanks for looking.. :wave:
 

uniacidz

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Nice start and nice build up.
 

kangavxss

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Another SS owner..Welcome..should be fairly reliable now after all those fixes, good job..When you install that OTR and do a mafless tune it will give your ss a nice boost. Cheers
 

mpower

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Fantastic writeup and great car, look forward to more tales :)
 

gmwarrior

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Should have done heads and cam when the motor was out, but not everyone wants to go that way, just my 2c, still nice car though good job mate, not too many black ones a:beer chug:round
 
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Tones

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WOW! Those tyres!
That could have ended in tears.
Nice pick up, and nice work along the way.
I do love those wheels, they really suit the VX's
 

uniacidz

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Yeh the tyre.

Lucky you caught it in time.
I didnt
 

mpower

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Much like lights, front and rear - I feel like the only person who checks tyres on at least a weekly basis for wear, etc.
 

VXSS.195

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Thanks for all the kind words!

Another SS owner..Welcome..should be fairly reliable now after all those fixes, good job..When you install that OTR and do a mafless tune it will give your ss a nice boost. Cheers

I didn't mention it above, but since I've owned the car I've also had to replace the oil pressure switch and the 02 sensors. I've heard these are pretty common problems for these cars, so I'm hoping with these few little fixes it should be pretty reliable for a long while. I've driven another LS1 with the mafless tune/otr and am definitely looking forward to getting mine tuned! :spot on:

Should have done heads and cam when the motor was out, but not everyone wants to go that way, just my 2c, still nice car though good job mate, not too many black ones a:beer chug:round

I knew someone was going to say that :D As much as I would've liked to, I was more focused on getting it fixed up and roadworthied at the time. That's not to say it won't happen in the future, though!

And in regards to the tyre, I actually noticed the rear of the car was shaking and shuttering, pulled over & saw that. The tyre had actually bulged around where all the steel was sticking out. I'd say it was about to go kaboom. The spare tyre went straight on.. and the strange thing was that those rear tyres weren't that old yet they scrubbed out incredibly quickly.. I guess that's just something you have to expect owning an LS1 ;)
 
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