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Spitfire redline panelute

Airalistair

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Spitfire green MY16 redline Ute with amcat canopy.
Well inspired by campers thread on his ride I thought I should put up my experiences with my redline and amcat canopy. Bit of a long read, but work is quiet at the moment.

The car is a 16 plate redline ute in what was at the time a trial colour, spitfire green. I was holding out for the specs on the 17 models and came across some threads mentioning spitfire would be a new colour so did some research and thought it stood out and would be something a bit different. When the specs for the big finale my17 upgrade turned out to be a non event I decided to grab a hold of a my16 redline ute in spitfire that a forum member had located in Brisbane before the inevitable price gouging began.

It was a demo but had not been driven and had 7km on the clock so after a few months of monitoring it I made an offer and got it for $42,500 unregistered plus the trade of my well used series 1 Ve sv6 ute. They chucked in a weeks unregistered vehicle permit, mats and a tank of fuel. Got back to vic and rego plus stamp duty came out at about $2800 including slimline black plates. Not too bad as in the following months I kept an eye on Carsales and there was second hand ones with 10-20 thousand ks asking $59k or more..

After being a devout manual only for v8 person I bought an auto! Got stuck driving through Sydney in the manual sv6 while trying to eat a pie and use the gps on my phone and had steam coming out of my ears. My no autos thinking had come from a pathetic power sapping LS1 auto wagon and a 6 cyl VT auto that I drove for a while, both made you question whether the accelerator actually did anything. Needless to say this auto is unreal, I use the flappy paddles all the time and especially after a tune and getting used to it, it is fast and easy to keep in the torque curve. Seems to be an Aussie macho thing with the manuals as where else in the world does a sports car have a manual gearbox these days!

I tracked down the HSV exhaust that everyone seems to be running with on the forums here, mine was off an r8 maloo and despite everyone saying that they are 2.25 it is definitely 2.5 inch and for $250 extractors to exhaust tips they are a steal. Got it put on with my electric bimodal tips, an over the radiator intake and a tune and got 278kw at the wheels on a mainline. Picked it up and it had gone from pretty cool to freaking awesome. Click it down from 4th to 2nd with a boot full and the front end picks up and it just wants to go sideways, double click on the traction control button and it does go sideways. Tyres are too expensive and I need my license however.

I ran with the hsv mufflers and put my tips on them as it had the vacuum ones, I assumed that they would be better flowing than the factory Holden mufflers. Big mistake. Lost all the crackle and growl and wet back to sounding like a wet fart. For anyone else doing this, keep your holden mufflers!

I ran with an ahhh somewhat dark tint all round and it made it look a million times better, I live in tropical northern WA so it's a necessity here for both the sun and hiding stuff inside from the fellas. Whacked on some dark black weather shields and get a lot of compliments on them, my main purpose was to try and get rid of the massive amount of road and wind noise - not what I expected from a top of the line car in 2016! Basically you couldn't have a conversation at 60kph with the windows down. They made it a little better but geez it's a noisy car, have heard changing tyres can make it a bit better?

My intention all along was to put an amcat canopy on, as I'm still reeling from selling my last few panelvans so I finally got the money together and sent it down to Melbourne to get done. They were quite good to deal with, if somewhat relaxed about deadlines.. I asked about fitting an auto lock system to integrate with the remote locking as it defeats the purpose of just carrying the remote and having proximity locking if you have to carry a key for the back but they weren't really interested, i would have paid whatever it cost but it wasn't to be. Will sort that myself one day..

The fit if the canopy is spot on and seems like quite good workmanship, I have a gripe I still need to raise though and will be interested to hear what camper thinks about the rear hinges? One of mine came loose and they are so flimsy feeling I'm not game to drive with the tailgate up at all. The window also sits just a bit askew and doesn't have a nice locking motion. The other biggie is the black sealant they use to put it on stands out like dogs balls with spitfire green! Definitely looks like a ute with a canopy not a panelvan. Those side windows as ugly as they are, are a necessity and really help pulling out into traffic. The reverse camera is also a necessity, the moving gridlines are unreal and everyone who drives it makes a comment on them.

After being keen to keep the chrome trim that the 16 had, it really started to look out of place with all the black stuff on the car so swapped the side vents (piece of piss) and drl surrounds and lower grille surround to black (absolute **** of a job, broke 2 clips on the bumper and two on the grille surround). Didn't buy a black lower grille surround as you can only get an uppper and lower together and it's about $400.. so just got it painted at the local panel shop, looks spot on. It's worth changing to black for the fact that I noticed so many chips in the chrome it would have started peeling and looking ****. Still not sure on changing the upper chrome out will see down the track.

While the bumper was off I put a light bar behind it for a bit of extra lighting and it works surprisingly well. I was set on putting some fat 20 inch wheels on but I really like the factory ones so will keep them until I find something better. Probably end up just going to the hf20s as Holden really has done well.

The last mod I have had to do is a necessary one, as apparently people in the Kimberley don't buy redline Utes so you can't get a spare tyre option. $250 for factory jack and handle kit to replace the pump behind the seat, $250 for a gutter rashed redline front, $250 for a maloo wheel holder and all sorted with a factory spare set up. Holden morons gave me 5 years roadside, I'd like to see how they go coming to change my wheel when the goo doesn't work in the middle of the wet near halls creek.

Future mods will be a camper set up for the back, similar ideas to camper but I'm going with a second battery in the space freed up by the over the radiator intake to run an engel and a fan during the night! That's about all I can blab on about, pics to come.
 

Airalistair

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Spitfire green MY16 redline Ute with amcat canopy.
Unfortunately my phone tends to wash the colour out, and then I have to compress the images to post them on here so I will try and get better ones.
 

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Airalistair

Member
Joined
Dec 18, 2016
Messages
37
Reaction score
29
Points
18
Age
37
Location
Where the work is
Members Ride
Spitfire green MY16 redline Ute with amcat canopy.
Unfortunately for me this is now for sale, just not practical up here and with the wet season coming I need something more suitable. Its on carsales and will try and put on the for sale bit of this site too. Im pretty motivated so get in touch!
 
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