Quote Originally Posted by HK1837 View Post
I was at Tocal field day on Saturday and a bloke I spoke to there was selling exhausts and chips for them and also a pedal box replacement. He reckoned the drive by wire pedal box gave them terrible throttle response and that they sold a replacement to fix it. Sounds like a good idea but first thought is the exhaust, chip and pedal add another $3000 to the car.
Looked again at a Ford today, $31500 driveaway for an XR6 auto, and $36500 for a turbo auto. They've fitted a heavy duty ZF box to the FG too.

Dave, GS is 1200kg towing capacity I think.
Interesting. I've got a 1600kg towbar kit fitted to our XR6T sedan and there is a 2300kg tow pack option available with load levelling kit. The genuine Ford part number you'll want is BGC19A009B and is available on (only the) auto ute (all engines). You may need to get the "ugly type" alloys or steel wheels in order to get it fitted as they are part of the "one tonne" pack.

Methinks you might need to find a dealer that isn't just trying to sell you floor stock. The ZF is a sweet box and the raitios are well suited to the turbo engine (keeps it nicely on boost at lowish rpm), just make sure you fit a decent aftermarket cooler to it and be sitting down when you ask how much the 20lts of oil it uses to flush and then fill the converter/box is at or around the 50,000km mark... Zat iz ze price vee pay for Cherman engineerink!

The ZF does have an archillies heel though, the 3-2 downshift during overboost condition (about 5-8 seconds worth) can see upwards of 600nm of torque trying to go through the input shaft, leading to failure. Nizpro do a much stronger input shaft that will handle big torque from worked engines.