ED XR8 Sprint

[v8falconsrule]

So here's my new baby. Born in April '94, she's an ED xr8 Sprint. Cobalt Blue, Auto. She's beleived to be a genuine one owner car, sold new at Huston Ford Murgon (qld). the only noteable modification from stock appears to be a change of the body side moulds swapped from black to red- no worries i like the red better anyway : .

i adopted her on 28th feb 09, with only 133,000kms on the clock and this is how she looked-

[v8falconsrule]

here are some shots of the near perfect factory interior-

[v8falconsrule]

the first job was to replace the old tape deck with a CD player formerly fitted to the Au. this was a fairly straight forward task, yank out the old unit, modify the mounting brackets slightly and figure out the wiring and plugs- i kept a note of what each plug location was for, if anyone needs it pm me and i'll pass it on.

Before-


And After-


it's not the flashest head unit around, but she's given me many years of faithful service...and saved me from having to dig through boxes looking for my old tapes- yes kiddies there were such things once!

[v8falconsrule]

so now the next task is to ditch the noisy old clutch fan for a nice, neat set of Ef thermos. ofcourse the prospect of freeing up some extra horsies never crossed my mind : .

removing the fan and shroud is fairly easy- shroud and snorkels are held by a couple of screws each. The clutch fan is held by a large central nut, 36mm from memory- i used a shifter.

you need to wedge a large flat screwdriver into the smaller bolts, and rest it on the power steer pulley...or as i did, use a pair of vicegrips on the smaller bolts. for the v8's the thread is a standard right hand thread, (on the 6's it's a left hand reverse thread). the nut should undo fairly easily, then yank that sucker outta there!

Factory-



Stripped out- check out the extra room.



and how it should look when finished-



Much, much neater, and i should be able to use an Au intake- a slightly bigger intake mouth and a smoother path to the airbox. i just have to persuade it to clear the power steering pulley.

the other upside is i found the horrible dead rat smell,


now i need to figure out how to control the fans, and make it all look factory.

[noosacuda]

That's what i'd love to find a written-off one of,an auto Sprint/XR8 to convert mine to an auto with the 3.45 diff. Nice dead rat! LOL!!

[Road_Warrior]

Nice. Lose that rear window louver though :-|

[v8falconsrule]

Originally Posted by Road_Warrior

Nice. Lose that rear window louver though :-|

never fear rear louvre went bye bye last weekend, i was half tempted to keep it for some reason : , then i caught my hand on it when i washed it, so that sealed it!

i am also tempted to ditch the mudspats too, otherwise i'll need to replace the front pair as they're broken, might see how much for a new pair.

[sbcb]

Nice buy mate, good to see it will be getting the TLC it deserves.