FTO AUSTRALIA

Hey i've finally found a car over in Perth and picking it up this Saturday.
Facelift 1997 GPX 5 Speed Tiptronic in scotia white

Needs a bit of cosmetic work but seems like a good base car to build on, no obvious signs of rust and mechanically seems ok (to me anyway).
I have a few plans including going for a low boost supercharger setup and bringing the body work back to how it should be.

Looking forward to picking it up and starting work on her.

I don't have many pics yet just a couple that I snapped on my phone, like I said needs some cosmetic work....

*pulls up a chair*

Nice one ROB. do keep in contact this time, and lets see between me you and these crazy FTOaustralia members get you set up even quicker than last time

I'm really keen to see a supercharged Mivec gpx (make sure you make it nice and easy to follow in case I acquire some extra moolah to play with and want to copy)

I will try mate, my last supercharger build thread over on ftooc.org was quite long so I will try to keep this one simples

We are so much cooler then FTOOC !

Kustom wrote:We are so much cooler then FTOOC !

There is much more banter on here, ftooc used to be like that a few years ago.

Rob Furniss wrote:

Kustom wrote:We are so much cooler then FTOOC !

There is much more banter on here, ftooc used to be like that a few years ago.

You call it banter, we just call it bullshit

Kids...

Just keep your eye on the 5spd tip Rob, they're a pest.

Ohhhh looks forward to this thread. I feel this should be in the turbo section though.

Why not manual?

bass_twitch wrote:Why not manual?

A few reasons:
I'm lazy.

I don't think the manuals are that much more reliable than the tips, not all I know but even so how long does a clutch last under normal conditions - 100K? (pure guess by the way). Even some of the non-boosted guys in the UK were swapping out clutches and boxes every couple of years - some more frequently.
Tip boxes can be reliable if you fit a cooler - my old 4spd tip gearbox had over 340000 km's on when I sold the car and I used to drag it quite a few times a year with hard brake boosted launches which aren't supposed to be good for the TC but never caused me an issue.

If I had found a good manual I may have gone for one but i'd looked at 6 fto's and only one of those was a manual - that one had a slipping clutch and roof rust and was 7K with no movement on the price (I offered $6200 and got turned down).
I've never really had a good long enough drive in a manual fto to be wowed over a tip but I know they are supposed to be quicker, I liked the one I drove the other day until I really nailed the throttle and the car didn't go anywhere (slipping).

I'm crap at changing gear quickly and smoothly even though i've owned manuals for almost 20 years. I particularly struggled in my wifes previous car an Impreza WRX turbo, found I had to take my time for it not to crunch the gears and then doing that the revs have dropped back down.

Manual was really top of my list just for a change followed by 5 speed tip and then 4 speed.

I8A4RE wrote:Ohhhh looks forward to this thread. I feel this should be in the turbo section though.

Good point, could someone please move this for me?

Just picked the car up and got it back home, just. I gave it a bit of throttle on the way back and it starting squealing so I pulled over and the PS belt looked all out of shape, didn't have much choice but to carry on so I just took it steady.
The noise eventually went and I had another look when I got it home - turns out that someones fitted a 5 ribbed PS belt instead of a 6 so firstly does anyone know where I can get one and what length it is?
Also had a better look underneath and this time noticed that the front tyres are both wearing badly on the inside - the left one is actually down to the wires so I need two front tyres now and alignment doing.
Everything else looks ok at the moment.

6PK1080 belt

any auto shop will have it.
supercheapauto, repco, autobarn.

Thanks phunkydude

Sounds like he may have had a problem with the belt jumping, I remember there were quite a few threads on these belts and pulleys a while ago, one of the fixes was to use a 5 row belt.

The correct fix is to tension them correctly in the first place. These belts need to be pretty tight. And if putting a new belt on re tighten it after say 100kms, 500kms, 1000kms. Belt tensioning specs are in the manual.

I'd be more inclined to say it used to be a 6 rib, but one of them has shredded off. Has happened to me many times. Just double check your crank & cam angle sensor wiring when you do swap it out..

^^ yeah that too