All of the old articles have been brought over as well as all the pictures. Any old bookmarks to articles should still work as well.

We’ve added a Google Map feature which we will slowly add to event articles as well as compile a list of 4WD venues on a dedicated map as well. Over time we’ll add tags to the existing articles as well.

There is a lot I have put into Elvira, by the way that is her name, a lot of time, blood and sweat has gone into this fourby. I have also spent a lot of money, my wife is not very happy.

Well enough of the bullshit.

My mate Dan had told me there was a car for sale and it would suit me down to the ground, so we organised to go see it. My first thought when I saw it, was that it needed a lot of work.

Peter, the owner of the XB 4×4, was the one who built her up. Peter did not want to sell her to just anyone, he did not want to see her stripped down for her parts; I said there was no way! She is one of a kind!

Queensland Roads and Transport were the ones that had engineered her in the first place, I do have a photocopy of the paperwork. Well, when I went to get her registered, they had “misplaced” the originals. So I had to go and find an engineer to fix my problems, she ended up with a blue plate on her firewall (now I have a blue plate and full engineers report).

The First Attempt – The Beast

Don’t ever rush the job!

The reason my first rebuild attempt was rushed, I had some sponsors that wanted to put their vinyl on her. I am not going into detail about this first build (link to previous article) because with the second I will get into the real nitty gritty.

The reason I said don’t rush? Because I had the car on the road for about two weeks before it nearly burnt to the ground!

Just outside Yatala, Queensland, about 15 minutes away from my home. I had just finished work at midnight and I saw smoke coming from under the dash. I was doing about 105 km/hr and whilst reaching for the fire extinguisher, the dash caught alight. This was about 0130, well I was not happy! It took me hours on the side of the freeway to get her hotwired and start up again. After getting home, she sat in my car port for about two months, I was to angry to start again from scratch!

The reason for the fire? An overheated wire under the dash, melted the insulation and shorted.

The Second Rebuild – Elvira

I started by taking all the barwork off and then dragged her into the garage.

First the bonnet, it had a bend in the back and rust in the nose. With the bend, I put the bonnet on car chocks under the back of the car, then with a bottle jack on top and a Primus blow torch giving a little bit of heat, it all worked out awesome! The front of the bonnet, I cut out the rust, got some of the same gauge sheet, went to the vice and started to bend the new steel into shape. There was a fair bit of shaping work before I tacked it into place with the MIG. Once it was tacked in, I still had to grind back and smooth with bog. Then I could primer the bonnet.

Next, I ripped out the engine and all the wiring loom. Welded up the cracks in the engine bay, resealed the old seams with bog, sanded it all back and then painted it gloss black with a purple pearl.

Once I had taken the whole car apart, I started to sand it all back with a Makita orbital sander. Back to bare metal.

Now be careful doing this, if you stay in one spot too long, you can heat up the steel and warp it. Move around, do different bits (Hmmmm paint stripper is good in one way, no heating of the body. But bloody messy!). I started with 80 grit, then moved down through 120 to 180.

Now prepare to spend a lot of money on bog, most of the bog is going to be sanded off, if you want the job to last, don’t buy cheap body filler!

Take care here. The final finish all depends on this part of the job, it seems to go on forever, but it is worth it in the end.

The tools I used for sanding the body filler (bog)

1. Body Speed Rasp
2. Velcro Roll Sandpape
   1. 40 Grit
   2. 80 Grit
   3. 120 Grit
   4. 180 Grit.
3. Makita Electric Orbital Sander
4. Air driven Orbital Sander
5. Meter long Velcro faced Sanding Bar
6. Bog Cards, Hardener, Body Filler and a lot of cardboard

I used K&H primer, thinners and spray putty system.

1. 60L thinners
2. 8 L gray primer
3. 4L spray putty and yellow primer
4. 1L blue spray putty
5. 10L clear
6. 8L Ford Phantom Purple
7. 3L Aluminium Sparkle

Now how you do this will depend on what tools you have. I have a large compressor (14 CFM) and a whole heap of different Star Brand spray guns.

So it’s time to put the primer on, but first I had to wax and grease remover the whole car (personally I leave this to dry for half an hour afterwards). Put on the first coat of primer, normally when the first primer coat goes on there will be little pits in the bog. This is when I use spot putty, once dried, lightly sand back the spot putty and then sand pack all the primer with 900 grit wet and dry. Now wax and grease remover it again.

Time to put on another grey primer coat, then I let her dry for a day. When I went and checked out how it all settled, I found a few scratches and little holes. This is when I used the spray putty.

Most of the primer and spray putty I sanded back by hand, it takes a long time to sand, spray putty, wax and grease remover again. So after I’d put the next coat on, I left it all to dry for about 5 days.

By this time I was getting bored with sanding and primering, but I did it all again, the last coats to go on were another spray putty and a light overcoat of matt black. The black over coat will show up any high or low spots when you sand it all back again, a bit like bearing blue. When I was happy with the finish, I dewaxed and degreased the whole car.

With the last coat of primer gray, I left the car for about two weeks to even out, and to give me a bloody break from it!

I had to wait for the perfect day, my time was running out, before it got to cold I had to spray!

Finally, about 33 degrees, 25% humidity, not too bad, I started to lay the paint on. It is hard to describe how I paint, as an old school panel beater (my friend Ray) taught me how to spray cars properly.

I gave the car a light sand with 1200 grt wet and dry, then de wax and grease one more time.

I ended up laying down about five coats, to jazz it up a little bit, I added progressively more clear. Not e that this doesn’t work for all paints. I then let it set for a week.

Stage 2 of the paint job, Aluminium Sparkle!

My wife designed the flame on the bonnet, it starts the stripe off that goes over the roof and down the boot lid. I did not go all the way with the stripe on the boot lid, because I did not want to join up with the GT striping, so I left about a ten centimetre gap. It took me about 14 hours to tape up and mask off the whole car, had a hang over the whole time… not good, very seedy. But, the striping turned out awesome! When I went out shopping for tape to mask up with, I made sure that the wax and grease remover was not going to affect the tape, I do learn from my past mistakes.

When it was all taped up, I lightly sanded all the exposed parts with 1500 wet and dry, this takes the gloss off the existing paint and “keys” it to allow the new paint to stick better.

What next? Wax and grease remover.

Then I sprayed the exposed areas with aluminium sparkle and let it dry overnight.

One last time. Wax and grease remover.

At last, the final coats of clear. I ended up with about ten coats of clear, why so many? The Queensland sun is harsh! Then I left the car to dry for about a month.

This part is hard on the body, my body.

I cut back the car by hand with 1500 wet and dry and Sunlight soap, why the soap? It makes the cut on the clear much finer and you don’t go through as much wet and dry.

Once I had cut the whole car back with wet and dry, it was time to cut it back with cutting compound. I bought a generic compound and I had a Makita hand buffer, then I let it rip. Once this was done I cleaned the whole car down.

For the next part of the cut, I used Meguiars cutting liquid 1,2,3 and then swirl remover. Once I had done all this (it took about two days), I washed the car to get all the crap out of it and she turned out bloody fantastic!

The Interior

I only changed two things from the first build, I made a new back parcel shelf to suit the 6×9 speakers and a custom made dash insert from 6mm MDF covered in grey leather to house the Autometer gauges.

So after all that, I started putting the car back together. All new wiring loom, the gauges, all new fuse blocks and a heap of relays.

All the Bar Work

The bullbar, side steps and rear bar, I sanded all the way back to bare metal, then painted gloss black, with clear over the top.

Other Custom Work

I ended up taking out the petrol tank and put the spare wheel in. I had to reinforce the side panels where the old tank sat, so I could move up the Toyota spare wheel carrier off the chassis, it worked out quite well.

Having two gas tanks in the boot, I cut out the old filler neck on the passenger side of the car and plated it up. I then moved the filler neck to the right hand side, where I carefully cut out two custom made flaps and welded them into place to cover the filler nozzles.

The Last Car

This is the last car I am going to build.

This fourby took it out of me, I have always wanted to one of these cars (some years ago I wanted to do the same thing to a Holden ute. Now that would have looked HOT!), I have always had Holdens and buying a Ford was a new challenge.

I use Elvira as my everyday car, she runs on straight gas and believe it or not, I get over a week of driving from one fill up.

I am thinking of putting her back on dual fuel, so I can really go out and play with this toy that I have rebuilt. I am making up a custom tank to go where the old Ford diff used to be, this way I can keep the spare wheel where it is.

The End Result

• B&M Shifter
• SAAS Bucket Seats
• SAAS Sports Wheel
• Gauges, from Auto Meter
  • Electronic Speedo
  • Tacho
  • Voltmeter
  • Second Gas Tank Level
  • Oil Temperature
  • Water Temperature
  • Transmission Temperature
• Reversing Camera and Screen
• Sound System
  • Kenwood Head Unit
  • Pioneer Amp
  • Clarion 6×9 Rear Speakers
  • Kenwood Front Speakers
• Uniden UHF Radio
• Springs, shocks and bushes
• Cross Flow Radiator
• New Air Tank lines and fittings
• Holden 160 Amp Alternator
• Five new Fuse Blocks
• Hundreds of Terminal connectors and lots of metres of wire
• Hundreds of nuts, bolts and screws

We were able to find another event close by that we could attend and hopefully have someone eyeball us and give us the nod. So off to Benarkin we went.

Just a day trip this one… although it was a reasonably long day. A little more relaxed as far as doing SOS goes… no calling in each car, just if there seems to be a large gap between any.

Being just a day trip we didnt really worry about shelter… oops. A bit of wet weather hoevered around. We were able to hide (well, Az was) in Pinball. The wet also made the forest tracks nice and slipery with the pace notes having to be adjusted between the 2nd and 3rd stages.

Alas, no pictures of our own for this one. Just the two of us on site and the wet weather would have made taking pictures interesting.

But at the end of the day, we were able to be deemed competent… even if our assessor was only told they were assessing us when we arrived. Oops! Greg!

We arrived. We unpacked. Just kidding!!

Hats off to the women, especially L & D whose scare factor started at 250%, but by the end Solvol and scrubbing brush couldn’t remove those smiles. As for K, the way she tackled that last hill was a source of inspiration to all of us.

Murray, Brian, Dan and Tony were ever so helpful, encouraging, calm during our panic attacks, and persistent.  “Don’t step over the strap” was heard several times and that was just for me!

At the poshy end of the campground; closest to the toilet; one camper brought a tent with an open fireplace. The neighbour, without any consideration of the danger to himself, immediately demonstrated the correct use of a fire extinguisher to the attentive crowd.

They say the older the boy, the bigger (& more expensive) the toy. Brian, being the sharing sort of a lad he is, took us for a spin in his new baby. By the way Brian, can we drive with our eyes shut too, after we get as much experience as you of course. I wonder how many of us would have accepted, if he told us before he started, that he had hardly used it before.

They tell me you don’t have to be crazy to drive with Dan the man, but it is a distinct advantage. Maybe I have a death wish, but I found it enjoyable. I think driving up the gully with him boosted my confidence enormously. At one stage, I felt like we were lying on the driver’s side door. The last time I was that close to the ground I was sun bathing, but he was so calm as he told me what was wrong and how he would correct it.

It’s easy to tell when a couple have children – they spell words. By the way, can anyone tell me what the 2 letter word “FU” means? I couldn’t find it in my dictionary, but it was used between husband and wife (not necessarily in that order) so I guess it is a term of endearment.

Well done to Murray who led us in song on Saturday night. I couldn’t exactly identify the tune, but it goes something like ZZZZZZZ!!!

Full marks to J for her behind the scenes paperwork and childminding – thus freeing us to do what we came to do.

I think I can speak for everyone when I say that we had the best instructors available and a superb learning experience and the company wasn’t too bad either.

Hopefully, C’s knee jerk reaction to the last hill won’t incapacitate her for too long.

P.S. Names withheld to protect the guilty.

There is a limit on the number of teams that can run in the event and we will only be able to accept 12 teams, with 3 cars per team, so we urge you to get your entry in as soon as possible. The 2008 EFS Logan Challenge will commence 7.00pm on the Friday evening, and concluding with the presentation Sunday afternoon.

Please find attached further details on the event and an entry form.

Also a winner for us, with Nev and the big XB taking home a runners up trophy on Elvira’s first outing after her latest rebirth.

A club run is what this is all about, to hang out with friends and look at what others have done, whether that be comp trucks, tourers or mums daily taxi.

As well as the swap meet to try and clean out your back shed of unwanted leftovers. (or lots of spares in some cases)

The gates opened Sunday morning from 7.00am for the entrants of the Show and Shine and the Swap Meet people, while entry for the general public started at 9am by gold coin donation.

I gotta say, I thought it was a good turnout by the 4WD community with a broad range of rigs, from the all Suzuki tourer team to full blown rockcrawlers and the F-250 show truck.

Wanna know what the judges are lookin for, well we asked em in 2006, check this vid out, http://www.pointnshoot.org/index.php?name=UpDownload&req=viewdownloaddetails&lid=32

Each truck entered was in the running for a place by make, with optional entry (for the same price) into tourer, tradesman and modified. Team entry cost another $15.00 for the team, but hey it’s all for a good cause and more bling on the trophy shelf never hurts.

The Toyota category gets split into Landcruiser (wagon, ute 80,100 60 prado etc), and the rest are called Toyota, such as Rav, Hilux, Surf etc.

In all Makes you will only be judged against the same brand and not Suzuki against a Pajero for instance.

The basic criteria is simply how well your rig has been looked after and how well it is presented on the day, plus the basic safety items that we all should carry. The older cars still have a huge chance as mileage is taken into consideration.

Then there’s the Touring class, that is they have been setup for long distance cruisin’ in the outback.

Modified is basically the comp trucks, coz we don’t usually qualify for having “taken care” of our rigs.

Last but not least, the Tradesman which is for the builders, brickies, labourers etc. And these need to display that this is what they are set up for, such as signwriting, ladder racks or large tool boxes etc.

Teams were a five car affair, six having been a bit hard to scrounge together in the past, except for those really organised people such as the Redlands and Logan clubs.

For all the boaties out there Wynnum Marine put on a great display some of their boats and of course Coochiemudlo were back with some of their gear to remind us all who the angels of the beach are. After all this is an Outdoor Recreation Show as well as the 4wd Show and Shine.

The weather held out beautifully for us, although I know I took home a good dose of sunburn, and I reckon a pretty good day was had by all making the hard work of setup, knockdown, cooking and general organisation by our volunteers well worth the effort.

At the end of the day we were down on previous years with some 45 entrants on the field, a dozen or so trade displays for the punters through the gate. Despite the relatively low attendance the club still raised around $6000 which goes to our worthy charities;

Kidney Health Australia
Coochiemudlo Surf Lifesavers
Volunteer Marine Rescue Victoria Point

Winners and Runner-ups are as follows

Best Presented Runner Up
Suzuki Tim Ford Graham Chattin
Rover Pearl -
Holden Ken Freeman Megan Weier
Ford Lance Judd Neville Solway
Jeep Mark Hammond Garry Hammond
Mitsubishi Ted Cavanagh -
Nissan Pat Zondah Paul Kent
Toyota Mitchell Harha Steve Currell
Landcruiser Robert Woods Deb Bertram
Softroader Brian Ryan -
Touring Robert Woods Paul Kent
Modified Brett Thorpe Robert Woods
Tradesman Shane Mayers Pat Zondah
Team Walkabout (Redlands) Outdoor Auto
Judges Choice Robert Woods -
Best in Show Lance Judd

But she always did miss the ‘lux, so when on a Saturday morning expedition to school for book and uniform buying it had a little brainfart, she was ready to kill me.

After we finished said shopping stop, she was all fired up to hit Garden City for a “fun” family day out. How does fighting through the masses constitute fun? But I digress, she was fired up, but the 7 wasn’t interested, it turned over fine but wouldn’t keep making the go noises from the front end. A little bit of fiddling with the accelerator showed that it could be kept in the functional state, but let the foot off the hammer and we entered energy conservation mode.

Thankfully we weren’t to far from Graeme at Suzuki Auto Spares (used to be Suzisport Springwood), so a change of driver and an interesting two foot drive to the workshops ensued, any release of the accelerator meant no motion which indicated to my small mind a loss of idle setting in the engine management unit.

Dave popped the bonnet and had a dig, checked the ‘fiche and web manuals, yep computer speak required. Normally this can be achieved with blinking lights on the dash by bridging out terminals in the diagnostic port near the front passenger wheel arch. Problem Dave? (Hey any excuse to dodge the baleful glare of she who contemplates murder). Some silly bugger appears to have skimped on the fitting of the redundant diagnostic terminal box under the bonnet, bugger, this’ll make the drago… yes dear, we can still get it fixed.

Quick nip up the road to the Suzuki dealership.

Can we help you sir?
Interrogate the Engine Management Unit?
Not likely sir, fully booked.
Oh, you know our Safety Manager, well then maybe a quick check.
No, no error codes in the computer memory sir. We’ll try disconnecting the battery for a couple of minutes.
Hmmm, it still appears to be having trouble, but it’s definitely not the computer sir. Come back say Friday week and we’ll book it in for you.

Jeez mate, you want to die before I do don’t you. So honey, still going shopping?

No.

OK, just want to go home, yep. Sorry love, my fault.

No, the Hilux would never have done this to you. I’ll make some calls and get it seen to.

Yes, I know you need a working car, no, I wouldn’t expect you to drive it like this.

Oh boy… bit of time on the phone, tried all the Suzuki dealerships and they are all booked out, musta been a run on damage over the driving holidays huh.

After cleaning terminals, checking wires for damage, chasing voltage drop and trying to keep my skin intact, I get a call back from the guys at Zupps Mt Gravatt.

Hear you’ve got trouble with an XL7 mate.
Yep, seen that one before, changed the battery recently?

Hey this guys psychic!

Yeah, happens here occasionally, the computer sorta forgets things, heres what you do.

Turns out to be an easy fix, and the other guy with the tie was on the right track, just a tad impatient.

Shut the whole car down and close it up, ‘cept for the bonnet fool, now lift the positive wiring clear of that shiny Century battery and leave the whole thing sit for at least half an hour, this gives the electronics time to discharge and all the chips to flip or flop.

Reconnect the battery, let it sit for at least another five minutes to go through boot up.

Pop the doors, insert the key, say a little prayer, tongue down and to the left with a right hand twist…..

We have ignition, and idle.

Damn computers!

See, I wasn’t there.

Maybe the gods hate me, maybe that albatross is still chasin me. Either way, between my navvies being tied up with last minute work and family I had to skip the drive, then to add insult to injury, the pay got stuffed up and the play kitty had to be ratted for feeding the billy lids.

However I was intent on not lettin it all get me down, too much.

Thankfully the weather was looking to help me out, a dry weekend meant I could do some work on the car, what with the shed being full of household storage and a bludging houseguest formerly known as Littlefoot.

When I whipped over Chris’ place a couple of weeks ago there was an agenda for the day;

• Transfer case
• Uni joints in rear tailshaft
• Test drive (preferably somewhere up Beerwah forests)

Of these I managed the first, this is a good thing, by swapping in the late model NT box I got a transfer ratio improvement (much better pull now..), fixed my breaking rear driver mount by replacing it with a bolt through a neoprene shackle rubber and we also checked a dubious front passenger wheel bearing, been a while since I stripped one of those out.

However, as I departed I still had a worrisome metal fracture sound on power up, quite distinctive really.

So with a spare weekend, I notified family of my intent to abandon them and disappeared over to Suzuki Auto Spares (formerly Suzisport) at Springwood, I had a date with Dave to eradicate some mice.

Having stripped the rear shaft out earlier in the week (8 9/16 bolts), I flicked the front hubs and locked her into 4H, also known as front wheel drive at this point, and headed off into the wonderful shiny daylight.

As it turns out, this is fairly easy, I just hadn’t been applying brute force in the appropriate manner.

As you can see, the old joint was pretty flogged out, which may have been hastened by my application of hammer and drift to the caps of the joint in a misguided attempt to move them at Chris’ place. Turns out the trick is to stabilise the joint then apply a biggish hammer sharply to the lobe.

This process required two different hammers, the first persuader being a little undersized, ‘course a lumpy is always convincing. Once the cap “pops”, flip the joint over and repeat on the opposite lobe then pull the caps and part the joint.

Repeat again to totally remove it.

Putting the new units in, greasables for extra life although the old ones looked factory fit so 19 years aint bad, requires a gentler and more measured approach. If you take to them with the hammer again, even a light one, it’s not hard to get them cocked up and jam or knock needles out of place. Either way you might as well go back and buy a new one.

The trick is to use the vice as a press, in a pinch a decent G or F clamp will probably do the same thing, notice the dolly being used to help recess the cap below the circlip line.

Last thing to watch out for is alignment of the shaft at the slip yoke, if the uni’s get out of sync at either end you’re going to have a hell of a vibration problem and wonder what you went to all the effort for as it didn’t seem to fix nuthin!

Of course I also had another problem…

In running around in FWD mode, I’d misaligned the flanges between the transfer output and the rear diff, as mentioned, fixing this by changing the relative shaft flange positions at the slip yoke is a bad idea. Solution was to drop it all into neutral and manually shift the car to rotate the rear diff and align. Obviously only do this on a flat hard level surface and don’t try it with a Patrol or Cruiser, you’ll bust a sphincter valve!

End result, ticking noise gone (except for the speedo cable), less backlash and thanks to the new transfer, lots more pull (but less happy at the top end, 5th and 3 grand gets 90 on the road with 215/75’s).

Nothing ticklish, or furry, about this little piece of technology. But it’s just as cute. Well, as cute as a micro video camera can be.

Elmo Cam

The 2.2″ screen is crystal clear, but it doesn’t look it when the camera is viewing the world through the dusty windscreen on Pinball. The recordings are also high quality (MPEG4) and saved onto an SD card.

Connectivity to a PC is via USB2, or you can just remove the SD card and insert it into a card reader.

The built in mic is pretty sensitive… but too sensitive on our first run as we found out when playing back our first comp recording. The base unit was vibrating against the padding on the rollcage. In fact, it was vibrating fast enough to just sound like static. We’re looking at getting an external mic, probably mounted on the dash so that it picks up driver/navi discussions more than everything else.

The unit only arrived a day before our next comp, so the install was going to be quick and dirty. None the less it would give us a good idea of how the unit performed.

The camera was mounted from the top front bar of the cage on the passenger side of the rear view mirror using a fixed pair of retort stand clamps similar to the one pictured below. We sheathed the camera in a tube of air con pipe insulation to protect it from the clamp and any nasty bumps. Working out a permanent location for the camera will be interesting if we want a permananet mounting place. We already spend over an hour preping the cage and putting in the harnesses without another fist full of nuts and bolts to deal with.

The base unit was velcroed to the top diagonal bar of the cage. This was a tidy place to put it, but due to the angle of the bar it was difficult to see the screen. Long term we’re considering mounting it on the dash bar or on the dash itself.

We managed to get 3 movies from the unit. We lost a couple as the SD card decided to go cactus on us. Alas, these would have been the best footage from the weekend.

The stills taken from the video aren’t all that crisp, but then again given we were moving most of the time I’m not surprised.

All in all a damn fine piece of gear. I’m looking forward to getting some better footage out of it in 2008.

Of course, to do that you need some way to measure the pressure. Although we already had a tyre gauge, one of the prizes we won this year was able to make things a little easier… the ARB E-Z Tyre Deflator.

A number of people had commented they didn’t like the E-Z, and at first I had to agree. But after reading the fine manual, it became a breeze.

The feature that makes it easy (well, fast rather than easy) is the valve core remover. You can disengage the valve core while maintaining a seal and deflate the tyre by just pulling back on the sliding valve.

Yes, it really is that easy.