stop... STOP... SSTTOOPP!!!

As you can imagine, a car is made with adequate safety systems in place to safeguard the occupants of the vehicle and most the time the safeguards are over engineered and don't require attention.

However...

If you have ever owned a BA onward Falcon, you can sympathize with the owners of these vehicles and I when I say the braking system could do with some attention... Rotor warpage, pad squeal, fluid boil etc... Yeah, Ford's attempt to reinvent the wheel may have come up short of expectations on these vehicles.

Not that it can't be rectified! P.B.R. Braking systems are here to help, on this occasion the kit to help this XR owner out was the Stage 1 upgrade. The rotors from factory have a straight fin type cooling system inside them which may be O.K. for some vehicles... but not these. The same goes for the pads, as many of you would have noticed on Law Enforcement vehicles, brake dust is very apparent - this is due to the pads being of a composite not suited to heavy braking, and the fluid is once again O.K. for town use etc... but when it comes to heavy usage such as track or canyon work this whole system in conjunction with itself has a rather large history of FADE!

P.B.R. have come to the party with a mild upgrade which replaces the factory rotors with a Territory sized rotor with a "Kangaroo Paw" designed cooling system which spreads air out over the surface of the rotor much more efficiently thus dissipating heat much more efficiently extending the life of fluid, rotors and pads. Heavy Duty pads are then fitted up and the whole system is then flushed with a 312 degree boil point fluid furthering the longevity of heavy braking just that bit more.

... and in terms of my car I finished the calipers off with a couple of coats of red brake paint.

May the modifying begin...

The first step I took to modify my vehicle was to allow it to breathe.

Snort Performance crafted a beautiful split dump - 3 1/2inch with 2 inch wastegate pipe. Where the split joins together, the pipe is blended out to a 4inch flange.

Then the intake required some work, so Mick O'Connor allowed me to used some of his thin gauge alluminium insulation sheet and workshop to fabricate a removable cold air intake much like the F6 has. This was the first mod to be made for function with disregard for looks. The opening to the airbox is larger than the ones used in the F6, but being light in construction it was easily dented as seen in the first picture... as you can imagine this was the reason for its removal from the vehicle later down the track.

This is what we came up with in place of the $100 option fitted from factory on the F6.

 To finish the day off, I installed a K&N panel filter and we installed the C.A.P.A. 10psi Flash Tune.

  The flash tuner has been a key part in the well being of my car through the processes it has gone through. Things like intercooler hose clamp testing...

... and boost control (Have seen some wild spikes) are all manageable through the Flash Tuner with the second to none after sales assistance from the team at C.A.P.A., the Datalogging software provided by Herrod Motorsport and an every now and then test of Air/Fuel parameters on the Innovate wide band air/fuel meter with backup from an Autometer Boost Gauge makes diagnostics more controllable and has positively contributed to the life of my XR.

In the beginning...

This is the build of my 2003 Ford XR6 Turbo.

Vehicle Manufactured: May 2003.
Colour: Winter White.
Transmission: 4 Speed Automatic.
Trim: Black/Red.
Wheels: 17inch 5 spoke.
Differential: Limited Slip, 3.45:1.
Windows: Non Tinted.
I.C.E.: Non Premium Sound.

Vehicle Purchased: December 2008.
Mileage: 41,xxxkms.
Modifications: Nil.