Thread: Buying a Falcon

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

They break off when you are trying to open them. Three now.

My fuel economy is pathetic. I work in mpg. It does 18-19 around town lightly laden, 16-17 laden.
Up the highway the best I ever got was in ideal conditions, only me and an ovenight bag, cool damp weather, and was short of 25 mpg by a smidgen. Laden with around 750 kgs in the back it falls to 20-21. Add a trailer and it is down to 17-18. I complained repeatedly to the dealer who plugs in their computer and says "within guidelines, 11-13 l/100k's". Complete bull****, I know how much fuel I was pouring into it. The fuel injection guru at Capalaba says "11-13 impossible,14-15 normal. over 15 needs something fixed". I expected better from a then new modern car with individual port electronic injection. I have hired several Commodores with the 3800 Buick V6 and got over 30 mpg up the highway every time.

If they break off when you try to open them it is probably cause by the fact that the hinges have dropped and the weight of the door is taken up by the handle, I went through 9 on an XC Falcon I had.

Originally Posted by Debacle

If they break off when you try to open them it is probably cause by the fact that the hinges have dropped and the weight of the door is taken up by the handle, I went through 9 on an XC Falcon I had.

Or the door is locked.

the door opening [complete side] on AU was one pressing
the older falcon was like a series landrover.lucky dip if its the same shape.

after the door is adjusted.and the hinges bent the X door handle requires modification to strenghten ford knew that this was an issue and did nothing-the door handle is also a hyundia..

ive seen a few Au handles brocken--most of the time its adjustment.
the rest is the plastic isnt painted with good stuff so it fall apart..

FG has fridge door-magna handles-that is long over due.
I heard talk that it was sudjested that these became after threats of ADR changes.

AU3 and BF have a dodgey door lock that can be cheep to repair.

I look at my BFII and they are the older handles.the drivers door is almost needing an adjustment.the left doors have parking damage so its on the todo list up grade the doors and mirror but i dont think there is a FG wagon.

falcon can do a lot better with a cheeper tuning package...a basic one that works.I also took a big hit recently after they changed the tyres.
from G/Y NCT to bridgstones.

Having owned quite a number of both Falcons and Commodores I must admit I'm over both, I enjoy driving the Disco's to much.

If I had to choose from either though, from my personal experience, I would buy the GM product. Having said that I consider that the straight six and 6 speed ZF is superior to the GM pov power pack. But the rest of a Falcon, even the new ones, in general are made of tinny junk that tends to rattle and fall apart.

cheers,
Terry

IMO the Falcon wagon is a great car, we have three currently as company cars a 2000 AU II, a 2002 BA, and a 2007 BF MKII.

I am currently driving the AU II which has 388,000kms on it with only an alternator and a aircon compressor replaced apart from general service items.

I prefer to drive the falcons on long trips over my 2008 Disco 3 HSE, it is a more comfortable place to be if you need to spend a lot of hours in the cabin.

The AU is a little thirstier than the newer cars, the BF MKII (115,000kms) is the best in this regard, ours has a long term average of 10.2 litres / 100km calculated not indicated.

We make sure that the cars are serviced on time, the BA had the standard brake shudder issues from new (now on 293,000kms) which we rectified by replacing the rotors with DBA slotted, which has substantially dropped the occurence of the shudder.

I would personally look for a BF MKII or MKIII, the slight power upgrade on the motor seems to have made them slightly better on fuel also.

The wagon never got the 6 speed ZF transmission unfortunately.

Also the door handles were not upgraded to the magna style ones until the FG falcon, however we have not suffered from a broken handle on any of our cars. We have had two door locks stop working on the BA, however this is a simple job to rectify.


As a side note a mate and I recently did a Melbourne - Brisbane - Melbourne round trip to look at a car, he was a little dissapointed that I had decided to take the AU, now after spending 40 hours in it over a weekend he has decided that it is indeed a very comfortable place to be, and usually asks if we can take it if we are going on a longer trip.

Cheers,
Daniel.

Well, thanks again for all of the advice because I certainly needed it, living in a Land-Rover ghetto for the last couple of decades and all. I did indeed get a Falcon, by winning a tender from our local shire. However, the car was in Derby and I couldn't get a lift over there, (and the Range Rover won't make it), so I bid anyway and didn't actually see the car until I paid for it and picked it up last week.

It's actually quite nice and was quite cheap. It's a BA model with 133,000 on the clock so I'm hoping to get quite a few years out of it, especially since cheap and simple station wagons may completely disappear the way things are going.

The thing has the weird Falcon noises and little niggly things that you read about, though with my Landie background they don't seem so strange. It is a great highway car and just what we need for nipping between towns here.

And I think I'll be stockpiling parts now . . .

Originally Posted by dirtfisher

but after my V6 commodore destroyed the camshaft at approximately 250,000km (always changed oil every 20K)

You got quarter of a million km from an engine while servicing it at DOUBLE the recommended mileage. And that wasn't good enough? Are you now trying for a million km with an oil change every 80 000km?

V6 Holden engines require at least a modicum of decent servicing. I would have one every day of the week and twice on weekend days before a Falcon.

Originally Posted by Davo

Well, thanks again for all of the advice because I certainly needed it, living in a Land-Rover ghetto for the last couple of decades and all. I did indeed get a Falcon, by winning a tender from our local shire. However, the car was in Derby and I couldn't get a lift over there, (and the Range Rover won't make it), so I bid anyway and didn't actually see the car until I paid for it and picked it up last week.

It's actually quite nice and was quite cheap. It's a BA model with 133,000 on the clock so I'm hoping to get quite a few years out of it, especially since cheap and simple station wagons may completely disappear the way things are going.

The thing has the weird Falcon noises and little niggly things that you read about, though with my Landie background they don't seem so strange. It is a great highway car and just what we need for nipping between towns here.

And I think I'll be stockpiling parts now . . .

There a great car but not with out there problems. But take no notice of the naysayers on here with there Peugeot and citron wog boxes plenty of these cars around with over a million k on the clock