BA GT thoughts?

[Cobrajet03]

Is it worth grabbing a BA to have a GT?
Do they have enough street cred? Too many built? Are they too close to a xr8?
Prices have slipped into the 12k-14k range hence the question.

[FairmontGS]

BA GTs look great. I'd have one in a heartbeat if I had somewhere to park it. Go a manual GTP with low kms for best bang.

[Rob 351]

Still the best looking of the modern day GT's imo. My young fella just bought a manual 03 with 55,000 ks's & leather for $21,000 & it's a cracker of a car!!!
Grab one if you can!

[FlipXW]

Originally Posted by Rob 351

Still the best looking of the modern day GT's imo. My young fella just bought a manual 03 with 55,000 ks's & leather for $21,000 & it's a cracker of a car!!!
Grab one if you can!

Hey Rob, fairly sure from some of your posts I've seen that you're in the Newcastle/hunter area. It wouldn't happen to be lightning strike is it? Could be my dads old GT if purchased from the area.

[Smoke Pursuit]

Originally Posted by Rob 351

Still the best looking of the modern day GT's imo. My young fella just bought a manual 03 with 55,000 ks's & leather for $21,000 & it's a cracker of a car!!!
Grab one if you can!

Hey Rob was this the blueprint one at Tweed heads?

[Rob 351]

Originally Posted by Smoke Pursuit

Hey Rob was this the blueprint one at Tweed heads?

Yeah mate thats the one, should I be nervous???

[FlipXW]

Originally Posted by Rob 351

Yeah mate thats the one, should I be nervous???

deleted. My mistake

[DBourne]

If I was going for a BA, I'd want the MKII with the 6 speed manual, rather than the 5spd.

[Whitey-AMG]

Originally Posted by DBourne

If I was going for a BA, I'd want the MKII with the 6 speed manual, rather than the 5spd.

Yep
Plus the revised timing chain tensioners ( from plasric to metal )
Revised coolant passages in the heads. I think early BA had the old design heads ?
Also , early BA had the "oil burner engine" where there was the issue with harder ring packs being used and the incorrect oil used at factory fill for the running in. Some of these engines never "ran in" correctly and continued to have issues with oil consumption etc....
IMHO, BA2 is a safer bet and despite the naysayers, the 290 GT's can be peddled into the 12's with good bolt ons and good tyres.
Tuff looking car and very good all round performer.

[290GTP]

I think their great cars and very underrated by a lot of people. Most dismiss them as being way inferior to the BF, but gearboxes aside theres bugger all difference between them (the 5 speed shifts better than the 6 speed anyway and how often do you really use 6th gear??) and I think the BA is the better looking car.

Ive seen one for 10 grand on carsales about a month ago, had over 200000 thou on the clock. Thought about buying it as a parts car for my GT-P.

[Kingsley]

I traded our FG XR6 on a BAII Super Pursuit ute and not regretted it one bit. A BA/BF GT would be a good car to pick up now while they're cheap and as other have said, tend to be the best looking of the current breed.

[ebv8]

DO IT!
BA's do look tuff in GT form and drive very nice
don't buy the first cheap one, i got $4500 off the advertised price on mine just for asking
there is not a huge market out there for them so a motivated seller will come down, i got what i think is a special car with lowish km's for XR8 money.
the seller had it advertised it for 12 months and i got him just when he was about to kill the next person that didn't turn up

[dcstraight]

Are you going to drive it everyday? Do you want it as a collectible? Thirsty buggers if on urban duties...in saying that, there is a lot of car for the buying power at the moment - manual, sunroof and a couple of other factory options would be high on my list.

Agreed that they look good in factory guise!

[blackf6]

GT are cool. Get one.

[ebv8]

i have a very early girl and i don't get why there are haters for the old ones.
yes it rattles on start up but the old 5sp is great, no cooling issues, and i can get 8l/100km if i drive like a nun,

[290GTP]

You would think by now most BA GT's would have had their tensioners done.

[Fairlane 500]

Originally Posted by 290GTP

You would think by now most BA GT's would have had their tensioners done.

It's neither an expensive nor hard job anyway.
Certainly wouldn't put me off buying the car.

[boss351290]

Spend a bit more and buy a bf gt, they have six manual or zf auto. Much better than the 4 speeder. Also timing chain issues were fixed by the time bf came around and bf has brembos on the front and 328mm discs on rear much better than ba standard. Also all bfs had premium sound, colour screen. Dual zone ac, pod gauges on dash as standard. Many ba gts look like a xt inside with silver plastics. Bf is the way to go. The issues all sorted apart from the diff bushes. My opinion sorry.

[boss351290]

And all bags had blue cam covers and plenum. Most ba had black the engine bay does not look at nice. And bf had dual exhaust outlets much nice look from the rear.

[boss351290]

Sorry bf gt had blue cam covers most ba gts had black.

[boss351290]

And ba series 2 gt and later had stiffer springs so handle a bit better. Lots of small changes.

[boss351290]

A friend of mine spent $4000 changing cam chains and tensioners. Should have spent $4000 more and bought a bf and get all the other extras for free.

[98TLS]

Originally Posted by boss351290

A friend of mine spent $4000 changing cam chains and tensioners. Should have spent $4000 more and bought a bf and get all the other extras for free.

Bit puzzled as to why your mate would buy one that needed the tensioners done when theres plenty out there with em done already...he must have got god to change them to pay $4000.Bought mine with them done,lowered,exhaust done and a nice set of BBS rims...sorted.Love the thing and no regrets nor any desire to replace it with a BF.Fwiw i reckon if your looking for a GT then look harder and find a GTP the difference in price these days is very little.

[boss351290]

Originally Posted by 98TLS

Bit puzzled as to why your mate would buy one that needed the tensioners done when theres plenty out there with em done already...he must have got god to change them to pay $4000.Bought mine with them done,lowered,exhaust done and a nice set of BBS rims...sorted.Love the thing and no regrets nor any desire to replace it with a BF.Fwiw i reckon if your looking for a GT then look harder and find a GTP the difference in price these days is very little.image

My friend bought that ba gt with 90000km on it in very good condition. I had my bf gtp at the time. He was a mechanic but now does something else for his living. After about 2 years of ownership the tensioner and chains became more and more noisier on start up to the point that he had the problem fixed. The car did not have any noise when he originally purchased the car. It was mercury silver with 5 speed manual a very nice car. I actually was going to buy it off him after he fixed the tensioners as the car was very clean. I diff offer him about $16000 from memory about 3 years ago but he told me the diff was starting to get noisy and would need fixing. In the 3 years he owned it only did about 7000km. He ended up trading it on a ranger. I did manage to buy his x3 tuner off him to use on my ts50. Never seen that car again. It was a good one.

[Lukeyson]

BF went to euro3 from memory and lost a lot of the 'V8 body rock' at idle which I loved in the BA's I had been in.

[Whitey-AMG]

Originally Posted by Lukeyson

BF went to euro3 from memory and lost a lot of the 'V8 body rock' at idle which I loved in the BA's I had been in.

Yes, but it gained a ZF trans , brembo fronts as standard , auto climate and premium sound colour screen as standard and standard twin exit exhaust...
Pretty good pluses i reckon.

I reckon a lot of the rock and roll on early BA idle was probably tune anyways...

[Lukeyson]

Originally Posted by Bluey-GT

Yes, but it gained a ZF trans , brembo fronts as standard , auto climate and premium sound colour screen as standard and standard twin exit exhaust...
Pretty good pluses i reckon.

I reckon a lot of the rock and roll on early BA idle was probably tune anyways...

Yeah exactly, hence why back then I waited for the BF, and I wont ever part with it.

[Polyal]

IIRC BA's actually had a lumber cam/tune and was toned down in BF (maybe BA2).

They look tough as, bin that IRS and put a 9' in and its pretty much a modern day muscle car.

[blackf6]

To comply with Euro III emissions standards and new drive-by noise rules (ADR 83/00), changes for the BF Boss 290 engine – relative to its BA predecessor – included:
A dual ram-entry airbox (first introduced in the BA F6 Typhoon and BA F6 Tornado) for more efficient induction;
Twin knock sensors;
Camshaft timing improvements for a lower idle speed and better idle stability;
Repositioning the front oxygen sensor from the manifold to the catalyst downpipe for greater accuracy in measuring the air/fuel ratio; and,
A new exhaust system which consisted of four-into-one extractors from each cylinder bank joining into twin 2 1/4-inch exhaust with an intermediate silencer box. Exhaust gases would then pass through new tri-flow silencers before exiting via the six-inch twin-outlets which featured a trapezoidal design.
For the BF range, ‘transient rpm’ limits were introduced which enabled the engine to momentarily exceed the prescribed rev limit of 6000rpm during upshifting by 250rpm (i.e. to 6250rpm). This enabled wide open throttle upshifting of gears to be scheduled at an engine speed closer to the rev limiter than would otherwise be possible.

[blackf6]

My opinion is. XR-XB GT. Are the heroes.
EB11 and EL are starting to get into the classic realm.
BA are at the low point unwanted duckling status.
BF are held in higher esteem because of the GT 40 Th and cobra special models.
FG 315 is another unwanted duckling.
FG 335 and up are the current performance kings.