The story of how I became to like XB's was a mate brought around his 351 XB Wagon. Took me for a spin and instantly, I just had to have one. Well the 351 anyway. I went out and purchased a 351/4spd/9" XC Fairmont Wagon. Played around with it for a bit till I came across an XB Fairmont (302/auto). Bought it for $3300 roadworthy and registered (12months) from the Bendigo swap meet. Got it home and decided it was time for the wagon to go. Swapped the driveline from the wagon into the sedan and visa versa. Sold the XC Fairmont wagon (302/4spd manual) needing restoration for $200.

Then it was time for the XB to be revived. I sent the car off to have the 351, c4 auto and 9" diff to be rebuilt. The basics were 400hp 351 build, auto to handle it and change the 3.0 9" LSD  to 4.11 LSD. Came back it went well. I was content for awhile.

Had the car dyno'd. It had 180rwkw. Something not right there, it's  supposed to be a 400hp engine. Enter Hallam Performance and Barney's exhausts. After some tuning and exhaust changes we had 230rwkw. Which made the engine output more than 400hp. I was very pleased.

Drove it around and raced it a few times and boredom kicked in again. Ended up being put off the road thanks to the boys in blue. That's another story.

2 years later, I decided I want more power (300rwkw). Enter CHI (Cylinder head innovations) http://www.chiheads.com. Played for a few years trying to sort the combo myself and also did a complete chassis swap. Due to 1st chassis being too damaged (underbody wise) to get rego.

Enter Hallam Performance again. Back on the dyno, ran up 279rwkw. Very pleased once again. I've driven it 5000k's and raced it once and that's where I am at. CHI is doing more to help me out and another dyno session will be happening shortly to tune for more power.

Enter Hallam Performance again. I finally reached my goal of 300rwkw on the 17/5/05. We hit 306.1rwkw! Now it's just a matter of time setting the car up for some times on the strip. We did some testing on 3/6/05 running 12.2's finding the convertor was too small. The convertor I have is made for a blown 400 Ford. In my engine it only stalls to 3300rpm on a transbrake. Once it's released we don't have enough stall speed. A convertor change will happen soon and we'll see what happens. We'll try a pipes off  dyno at a later stage.