Craig's ED Fairmont Ghia:
Lesson 1 - Never Judge a book by it's cover:

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So what's a White ED Fairmont Ghia with bull-bar doing on our Visitors Cars pages? Good question we asked, and the answer we got left us with no doubt as to it's interest to our readership! After all, who out there would not update their EA - ED with EF - EL engine technology if they could? So when Craig wrote telling us how he'd fitted the below listed components and managed to get the car to work with a manual gear box while using an automatic intended ECU, you can understand he immediately got our attention!

Gotta keep an eye on those Roos...

Of coarse starting with an ultra low mileage example (45,000 to be exact - off of "this really old guy that couldn't drive any more") makes life easy with little to repair before beginning modifications. Purchased in 1999 at the tender age of 19 on apprentice Mechanic's wages, you can imagine Craig's pride when he brought the new ride home to show all his mates.

Being a Mechanic by trade and having a head full of ideas left Craig only one place to go - with mods coming thick and as fast as the money would allow! Finding an EL XR6 wiring loom and engine computer was like a dream come true - and in no time at all the overalls were donned and the spanners broken out with pieces going left right and center.
Originally going to use a EF computer, Craig decided to run with the original distributor style ignition instead. A 5-speed manual gearbox quickly took the place originally reserved for BTR's smooth shifting 4 speed auto taking only 3 hours to install including pedal box making that all-important clutch action possible.

With manual equipped Falcons being so rare, it was all Craig could do was to find a wrecked XR6 so rather than hunt around and spend more on the manual loom and computer Craig cleverly made do with what he had. On initial start up after installation, it would "rev to bout 2500 rpm for about 5 seconds and report a hell of a lot of faults under self test.
It took me a few days but I finally worked out the computer could be set straight by attaching resistors where the solenoids used to hook on." 5 watt resistors quickly took the place of the originals used as "after 5 hours of running time the smaller ones would get a wee bit too warm for my liking." Ahhh - the lessons learned while having fun!

Something tells me Craig likes night time photography?

Maintaining correct operation also meant replicating the gearbox's temperature sender - with a new Tandy sourced unit now attached to the heater pipe completing the fit-up courtesy of one hose clamp! Tricking the 'brains' by replacing the gear position switch was another thing altogether - quickly solved by attaching two resistors to simulate "park" and "drive" with a switch mounted on the clutch to bring them back to sanity and the "park" position when depressed. "The gear position switch works by giving low resistance in Park and high in 1st so I used the clutch switch so that when the clutch was engaged both of the resistors were used but when it is in it only uses one so now no faults are reported - so that's all good now."

"The (engine) computer was not really that hard either - the pin out's on the ED ECU are the same as the EL ECU but the EL has a few more added. - Like one for the intake, one for the knock sensor and two for the fans - so all I had to do is go to the scrap yard, grab an EA ECU 4 and pull 4 pins out - then put them back into my ECU plug, then send the through the fire wall to be hooked up!" Sounds all too easy...which would be to understate the effort and frustration Craig went through getting it all to work!

While he was there it made sense to add the EL's dual runner intake manifold along with EL thermo fans (all run from the same EEC unit) so this particular ED Ghia kicks like the factory never intended it...

With manual's being rare in GLi's / Futuras, it puts Craig's Fairmont Ghia in a totally different class. Finally the ED rocker cover was substituted for the EL item fixing that eternally troublesome issue of oil leaking from the "half moon's" at each end.

Right: there's more of that night time photography again! Spooky huh?

Making sure he didn't ignore the creature comforts, Craig installed a pair of 12" Pioneer subs including 4 Alpine Amps to drive the whole kaboodle with 2 for the subs, and one for the front and the other for the rear. Supplying the tunes is a Kenwood 10 disc stacker, with a Kenwood 11 band 4 volt pre-out graphic equalizer (kgc-9044) running through a Kenwood krc-663 head unit. Future plans include polishing the 'Roo Bar to a mirror finish with the long term including a pair of hair dryers and further traction aiding devices should time and finances allow...

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Craig's ED Fairmont Ghia: Lesson 1 - Never Judge a book by it's cover:

Craig's ED Fairmont Ghia:
Lesson 1 - Never Judge a book by it's cover: