Dunno if anyone is interested in Fords but I've been driving this bad boy for the last few days. I'm in love!! 224kW of power in a front wheel drive may sound a bit average but this thing is amazing how straight it pulls under power. The sound is amazing too!







There are SOME perks of being sales manager at a car dealership!

224kw in a FWD... average?? sounds like fun to me.

The only drawback is some crazy axle tramp under full noise off the line if you're a bit too heavy on it.

Hey Shoota I'm a fan of the RS too but I thought they had sold out already.

Nah, Ford told everyone they had sold out. There's about 20 left unsold Australia wide I'd reckon.
I swapped this one in from another dealer to put on as our CFO's demo. Looking after him!

rubbish color, thats why there are probably 20 left, the colors nobody wants.

dont give too many of your trade secrests out- you need to protect your job shoota

You know that feeling when you're doing something you've never done before and you realise you shouldn't have even started?
Yeah, that happened to me today.
Now I've never claimed to even have a clue about panel work so knew it would be a challenge for me to do any of it.
So, I decided I'd put the Maddat trans tunnel in. Easy job right? Maybe. So I trial fit it and realised it would need a bit of work to make it fit flat with the floor-







The main thing preventing it from going into position was the front seat mount rail so I unpicked that and folded it back. The reason I unpicked it rather than just cut it is that my engineer is very particular about everything being 'blended' onto their host panel not just welded on where it meets-

[img width=600] http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/ad177/Shoota_77/DSC00503.jpg[/img]




So this where it started to get ugly. I had a set of new floors that I got off wayne080866 that I realised I should fit before I trim anything off the new tunnel to make it fit.

So I drilled out the spot welds along to sill panel, through the chassis rail that runs under the floor, across the front at the base of the firewall and also removed the front seat rail completely.

Once I'd got underneath to break the remainder of the spotwelds I realised that there were only another 8 or spotwelds to remove the chassis rail
So I took it off-




I started to feel a little nervous at this point....
But unperterbed I got the angle grinder out and chopped the floor out completely-




Now I was really nervous. Then I looked along the inner sill and realised that it was way beyond leaving there so I drilled out the spot welds linking the inner and outer sill so I can cut a strip out to replace it. I also had to remove the outer rear seat mount. Now I'm really sh1tting myself. I'm so far out of my depth now it's not funny! It freaks me out how you start something thinking it will be easy but it leads to the next thing and the next and the next........
Anyway, I've got some serious light welding practice coming up...







All advice welcome!!!

my advice- less rust than a ford- have fun

Why would they say they have sold out when they hadn't?

hey shoota,
dont panic mate its good that you find it now rather then 2 years down the track once its coming through the paint.
take it slow just take heaps of photo's so you know where everything lines up when your welding it all in. spewing your not in syd mate my donor ute's got great iner door seal's you could weld straight in. make sure your outer door seal is not rusted out also, mine were screwed.
also a bit of advice i've been given and someone correct me if i'm wrong, i was told to brace the cab and chassi rails as much as possible to prevent it from twisting when cutting the floor/tunnel out.i was goin to put a few between the chassi rails and a couple in the cab half way up hinge/door seal. like i said dunno if this is 100% necessary but thats what i was told to do.

keep goin mate you'll be rite!