lexus Falcon is DEAD!!!
G'day, intersting happenings lately.
upon driving to my mates place 50km away, i was cruising along at around 100kmh when a sudden Vibration almost instantly turned into a terrible floor mangling broken tailshaft and locking up the diff causing one wheel to skid till i gained control and stopped on the side of the road. after having the car towed to my mates place(was much closer than back home) we jacked the car up and sussed a few things out. realising it would be impossible to get it into the garage with a seized wheel we investigated this issue first. removing wheel which had blown out due to such a long skid, deciding to remove the brake caliper to pull an axel out and suddenly the axel was free to turn. the handbrake lever was jammed on(fairly common on early ford disc brakes) did this cause this chain of events??NO...
what caused this car destroying disaster? i can only guess at this stage, i had a rear uni fail(didn't let go )a few months back which made some bad vibrations, this was replaced and tailshaft was rebalanced. did hidden internal damage occur in this instance?
the diff was rebuilt with a ratio change did something in here lock up causing the tailshaft to strain?
did the car god not like the idea of a ford and toyota mix?
the damage (that i can see so far) the front half of the tailshaft(one piece) is still in the AUTO(crown type) about a foot(30cm) long. around this area the underside of the car took a severe beating. about 6inches inwards in an arc which has buckled the floor in the tunnel and other points (probably could be cut and shut with cost) the gas(LPgas) line has been pulled from its brackets(did not suffer a leak supprisingly) and the 2.5" exhaust is squashed flat in this section.
PICS coming soon, going there again tommorrow with camera.
whats next?? well i had thought of giving up the whole idea and selling it all off, for $3500 as a falcon lexus half cut.
but i doubt anyone would be interested? so i have decided that if i can find a Good XE falcon sedan(XE has more rust problems than XF) XE has provision for mounting a hydraulic clutch in a simple bolt in matter(XF is a pain as has bigger diameter booster and cable only clutch arrangement)
i always prefered the XE(barring rust) as they gave a far better instument layout with round analog guages, the under floor is identical between XF/XE so all will bolt straight in but i'll need to modify the air con again(ford like chaning stuff all the time)
this time i'm going manual W58 probably or maybe mid 90s ford T5 box(easy speedo setup and gearbox mounting) and may find that factory tailshaft fits as bolt in.(considerable saving)
i will then put a new exhaust in from factory Y pipe in a 2.5" system with a high flow cat.
i expect using the existing broken falcon i will need another 8 grand to complete the deal including engineers certificate,gas research, diff upgrade etc.
why am i not too concerned about this current car? it was not my original idea exactly, as i wanted a sedan(this is an auto ute) manual. current exhaust is a price compromise,
i luckily hadn't completed the engineers proccess($1000), got the car roadworthy($500min) and rego is due in a week or so($500) and the body had some rust which i was not overly concearned with but would have to adress sooner or later.
the plan is to find a good sedan XE in ether S pack(white only, i had one once i miss it alot but rust was bad) the other option would be an Fairmont Ghia ESP(i have owned 2 of these which i ran into the ground over afew years each, i like to drive my cars and do aprrox 600km per week)
see how things pan out from here......
bye for now Dean