fish99

Well here it is... My first resto, and as a novice when it comes to these things im sure that I will have plenty of questions to ask. For those who didnt read my bit in the general discusion section, I will give you a brief introduction of my time with the car.

I have owned the Escos since 2001 where it had around 74K on the clock and was a totally standard example mechanically. (rare to find these days). She was sat on the original rims and was minus her front spoiler and hockey sticks as the previous owner misjudged a speed bumb. Anyway I used the car for under a year using it as an everyday car. I decided that as the year of owning her approached I would treat it to bit of a power upgrade. Greens, 3 bar map...well you know the spec. So I went to Grove garage ( as I have used them previously for my series 2 escort) and had a full service done on her. Anyway I got speaking to Mark and told him about my intentions of having the power upgraded. He was very good and told me what would be involved, what parts would need to be sourced and what power I could expect. Top man... Anyway, We decided that as it was going to go for an upgrade I would have to book it in for about a week later, where he would inspect the engine and complete a cambelt change etc..fai enough so off I went on my merry way.

A couple of days later I was on my way to work and decided to use the car as I was a tad late. Off I plod and as I approached the blackwall tunnel I saw the ignition lights come on and a loss of power.. I was a bit phased at the time as I drive like an old lady these days and was only poodling along. I managed to fight against the power steering which was non effective and got her to the hard shoulder. I opened up the bonnet and straight away I saw that the cambelt had slipped its teeth about 6inch and it was a case of goodnight vienna for the valves.

As I wasnt going anywhere, and I wasnt a member of the RAC I decided to use the SOS phone and called Motorway control, which put me in contact with our Police control room. I spoke to a friend of mine on the other end bizarely enough and they arranged for a Police tow truck to come and get me (well there are some perks to the job). As I was on my way to work I had a work mate see me and he decided to pull over. Good old Bongo (well its clive really but we call him Bongo as he Books on and never goes out). I told him about the car and that it was dead as we waited for the tow truck. I sat in the car with Bongo and the truck arrived. I told the bloke where I lived and he said " no worries mate, Ill load this up and drop it home for you"...nice one I thought. At this point we leave the car with the recovery and good old Bongo gives me a lift to work. After about 10 mins I get a call on the mobil, it the recovery lad. He said " I dont think your handbrake is working mate, I have released it but it feels like its dragging". So me and Bongo then turn round and see my car about 100yards from where it broke down... to my horror I saw that the Escort has been put on a front lift with the front wheels strapped up nice and tight and the rear wheels on the ground... yes you guessed it, it wasnt the handbrake that was on, it was the back wheels being dragged along the tarmac and the front wheels screaming for mercy.

After I politely pointed out that it was 4 wheel drive he decided to put it on a flat bed and take it home for me. Well it stayed round my brothers house for years after that day collecting moss as I lost total interest in it.

2 or 3 years after I decided that it was a shame that this car was being mistreated so decided to book it in with a mate who has a body shop and it was a great place to store it. Well after 2 or 3 years in the shop it has come out and is now back home with me. I have had some paint work done on it but at this time it is a very very sorry sore sight. I have decided that I would love the car again and do a bit of a resto on it.. Im not into concours so dont expect to see the floor pan chrome plated or anything, but I am into having a tidy, clean car, which at the moment the Escort isnt. I am a novice at anything mechanical, but will give anything a go.

So here I am, at home with a gloss black K plate Escos in the garage and some time to do some work on her. Dont expect miracles over night as I am a shift worker and find it very hard to muster up energy most of the time haha.

Here are some piccys I took today, and as you can see...it looks bad..especially inside... wish me luck

Neil

MONSTER

Sounds like you got your work cut out for you there mate.

Good luck & keep us updated

wess-rs

Good look with the project

RichieST

iTrader: (2)

Good story that! All the best with it

fezzajsy

iTrader: (9)

all the best with it and keep updates coming..always some sound advice on here as well if u stuck..

woolford

good luck fella ill watch this

fish99

Well here are some more piccys of the interior which is basically pure filth at the mo and I reckon all the door cars , carpet and roof lining will need replacing. Looking at the seats they are just dirty with the usual signs of wear, so I may be thinking of a retrim in future.

I have made a start on removing the interior but have called it a night already as I was night shift last night finishing at 7am then waking up at 9am to get things ready for the car to come home.















As you can see I have my work cut out with this. I have started from the back and removed the boot carpet, seats, door card etc. Im hoping by tomorrow I will have the front seats out along with the carpet. Fingers crossed there wont be any nasty surprises lurking. So far so good with it.

Once my battery booster turns up Ill get it onto the drive for a bit of a blast with the steam cleaner.

I have alread seen a few problems, obviously the rev counter.. didnt know these things could rev that high lol and the clock is shagged.

Just out of interest I saw for the first time the water pumps for the water injection I presume. How was that wired up? Was it just a case of plumbing in the water bag in the boot?

Also in the nearside rear quarter there are lots of relays and an ecu type thing..what is all that for.

One of my aims with this project is to learn a bit more about the car and to improve it the best I can.

Thanks for the comments so far

Neil

bigpower

Look forward to this thread!

Youve got to adore Gloss Blacks!!!

MONSTER

1st thing I would do would be to get it outside and give it a good blow out with a compressor

fish99

I think your right.. I must have 3 years worth of body shop dust in the car and I dont want the car sucking in all that crap.

AJC

iTrader: (6)

best of lck to you

Brian

iTrader: (2)

Great project mate


Brian

fordrs2005

iTrader: (4)

the rev counter looks like its had enough

neil andeRSon

iTrader: (3)

good luck m8. i'll be hecking progress.. hopefully get motivated on me saph again!!

RS EDDIE

Mate being in essex, Id be more than happy to give you a hand with it. Im off quite a bit doing the same sort of line of work that you do. Im pretty good with fitting stuff and fairly good with my hands. Ive got a frst, that im working on at the moment and id have that ship shape and shiny in no time whatsoever...

Anyway the offers there if you need a hand when your off etc...Edd.

fish99

Cheers Edd for the offer.. Ill bear that in mind.

nice one

Neil

bigpower

once you get stuck in, it wont take long to take shape!

This was mine 12 months ago......





its nearly there now !!

Jay,

iTrader: (4)

this looks like its guna get interesting and its a good strong car to do

yeh the pumps ect should be there but im sure there connected to nothing , you need to speak to turbo systems or karl norris they will tell you better info , if your on p8 then that will control it

fish99

Well I have been out in the garage for a few hours today and started stripping a bit more of the interior out. I was quite surprised how well the floor pan was for a car that is now 15years old. I have had a bit of a nightmare with the seats as 4 of the bolts that hold the front seats onto the floor pan have snapped. Im sure with a bit of drilling I will be able to make these good again.

Anyway Ill let the piccys do the talking



Dont you just love those great racing pedals.. I would say why do people put them on...when I should be saying why did I leave them on


Pesky seat bolts... Im sure I can sort them out one way or another.. I hope they are not hardened steel



With everything out I went and gave it a wipe down with a damp cloth...I was really suprised how shiney the floor pan was. I have seen other restos where the carpets have been lifted and the floor pan looks like it was out of the flintstones car.


I have a couple of bits of rust around the one of the seat mounting holes.. With a brave push with the screw driver it was still solid and I could see fresh metal underneath...This will be a job for tomorrow.How do you think I should sort it?




again some more surface rust near to the VIN.



A shot of the interior how it is now after a bit of damp cloth treatment.



Now this photo of the multi plug was the basis of the first ever question I asked on passionford. Unfortunately at that time my car was in the garage so I couldnt show anyone what I was talking about. Anyway, I believe this plug is something to do with the abs. What I would like to know is where is the feed side of the plug meant to be plugged into. The problem I have, and you will see in the next photo, is that the feed side has been chopped into the ignition wiring which plugs into the fusebox. I have unplugged the ignition plug from the fusebox in the next photo so you can see the bodge. Does anyone know how the first multi plug should be fed (sorry if thats not clear, hard to explain)



Anyway thats about it for now...Ill be back soon with more questions.

rostill2007

cant help on that wiring question but i do know i would love this project best of luck with it im sure some one can help with that

fish99

cheers mate, I have only done 2 sort of half days and im loving it. Want to get that rust sorted on the floorpan tomorrow and then start stripping the underneath.

rostill2007

could you not sand the rust down till it is back to clean metal and use rust remedie works well in my experience and then a little skinm of fillers to remove pits in the metal

RS EDDIE

Get a 240v drill with some wire brush attachments, i got a load the other day for rust and they work a treat, saves so much time and alot better than a dremmel. Only cheap aswell. Where in essex r u by the way...

fish99

Edd, Im near to Barking.

Well those surface rust bits didnt turn out to be surface rust. , but overall its still not bad enough to warrant a new floor pan as the seat mounts are still good and strong. I have a welder here at the mo who is going to put some new metal in for me. So we will see how that turns out shortly. Im sure with a bit of paint you will never see the fix anyway and it will be stronger than before.

Piccys will be up soon

Munch

cool project, all the best with it!

RS EDDIE

Good man, im in romford, so let me know... im busy trying to fit my new alloys to my frst, but if you want a free hand let me know chap.....

fish99

well no piccys of todays update as I have only just got in from the garage...So I will post photos of todays work up tomorrow. Well what I have done so far... The welder chap wanted to plate over the rust... cal me old fashion but thats crap.. Not only would my seats be pissed by 2mm because off the plate, but there is nothing to stop the rust from totally destroying the set mounts in time.. so as far as im concerned, thats a no go. What I have done is cut the rusty part of the floor pan out. Its not a huge size..the drivers side is about 10mm x 40mm and the passenger side is about 40mm x 40mm. What I will need to do with the passenger side is seam weld the seat fixing under the car and then weld a flush plate inside. I will then grind this down if need be so its flush with the rest of the floor pan. What I might have to do is grind of the captive nut and then drill a new hole for the seat to be bolted through. I cant see any real problems with this but we will wait and see when the welder comes back tomorrow.

Second part of the day I have removed the drivers side side skirt... well overall not to bad. I had some rust along the sill lip but I have cut that out and will get a new plate made up and welded into position. I also have a little hole that is about the size of a 5 pence bit a little bit further up the sill towards the door. Hopefuly the welder chap will be able to sort that out also.

sorry there are no piccy for today, but I have been working my bits off.

fish99

Well bit of an update...not much as unfortunately this car project has already put me in hospital, through my own stupidity.

I was grinding all day on saturday in preperation for a mobile welder to come round and sort the seat mounts on the floor. Like a good boy I was wearing my gogles for 99.9% of the day. Right at the end of the day my cutting disc on my dremmel decided to run out so I went to B&Q to buy a new one, 10 mins before it closed. I get home and go straight into the garage leaving my gogles in the kitchen. Thinking sod it ill just cut the metal as it was about 5mm worth of work. Anyway, sods law a bit of metal goes straight into my eye. I leave it overnight and still no better, so its off down to A&E for me. Staff looked into my eye and couldnt see anything so flushed it with a litre of saline just to be on the safe side. I wake up this morning and can still feel something, so its back down to the hospital to be seen by an eye specialist. Within 2 secs of looking into my eye with some binocular type thing he tells me he can see a piece of metal in my eye which has started rusting. So with a bit of anethestic he then digs this lump of metal out. Im now here with a sore eye from the digging and praying that there are no more bits...so thats my lesson of the day kids..dont be a mug and grind without gogles.

Anyway, to catch up on the progress so far.

Right the seat mountings which I said was surface rust... well as far as the passenger side is concerned, I couldnt have been further from the truth. I decided to put some of that rust killer on it to see how severe it was and the whole mount turned black and brittle..obviously I wasnt going to leave rust so out come the dremmel and it was cut out. I have drilled out the spot welds from the seat mount under the car and have now spot welded them back onto the nice plate that was put in.



I havent yet ground the welds down to make it all nice due to my little eye problem.

The driver seat mount was ok and all I did was cut out a small section which was on the edge of the chassis number and have plated that also. I have put two further spot welds on to strenghen up the mount..it didnt need it, but I thought hey, what the hell.

I also painted stop rust onto the chassis number which has turned it black..doh. I will sort that out later.



As I mentioned before I started to get busy with the drivers sill... personally I didnt think it was too bad. The bottom lip went in a couple of places but the inner lip was top notch. What I have done is cust the sill lip off in places and I will replace it with a new bit of plate and weld it to the sill. I also have a small t shape hole in the sill, so with a bit of skill and luck I will be able to put some new metal in it..



The metal behind the lip was top notch, so once the new metal goes in and the mastik 121 goes on, then hopefuly it should be bullet proof.


small hole, a new bit of metal should go in there no problems. Cant wait to get this welded up.

So thats where I am at the moment. Once the old eye gets better I will start stripping the underside ready for powder coating etc.

neil

rostill2007

i learned goggles are good when parts wash went in my eyes hope the eye gets better soon as so you can make progress keep us updated

Twins

iTrader: (18)

Good progress there ,shame about the eye

cozzfather

iTrader: (1)

eye eye Neil

glad you kept the old girl and resisted the evo temptation, don't forget you can reconolise yer recaro leather trim which is cheeper than replacing it and can look miles better if you know a good reconoliser

Dave Henshall

thats the ABS ecu mate

fish99

haha, bloody eye. The DR did well and dug a nice big rusty bit out of the top of my eye... still think there may be one or two very small bits still there but they are not causing me any realy problems... lesson learnt defo.

I gave up with the Evo idea, thought it was just a shame to have this car for such a long time but never really got any use out of it...so the idea is keep the Escos and buy myself a fishing boat. So full resto time it is... Hoping to get back out there at the weekend and crack on with he floor pan around the seat mounts.

I have the seats indoors with me so I may and try and give them a new lease of life or failing that its off to the retrimmers. I have looked at a few on the internerd and there is a company that will replace the leather and make sure all the foam inside is sorted also. I would love to have a decent carpet made for it also as my one is totally shagged.

RS EDDIE

Going well mate, cracking right on.

I gave my carpet a whole can of foam cleaner and hosed it down a few times with a karcher. I hung it over the washing line and did both sides a few times..

Ud be astounded how much dirt comes out of even a clean lookining carpet. Then i hung it up in the garage and it was dry within a few hours.

I did this with an interior light grey carpet from a frst, which had at leat 4or5 inches of leaves and mud all over it after sitting in a scrappy for 5 or 6 years, and within an hour of good scrubbing and soapy foam ,it looked brand new and smelt of fabreeze when back in the car......

Keep it up man..

Franco

iTrader: (2)

So glad mine had the interior out when it went in to the body shop judging by the mess inside yours!!

Looking good though, mine had gone on the seat mounts also. While you're at it you might want to check by the transmission tunnel on the drivers side, they're also prone to going there!

Ps - Best colour also.......

Pps - why haven't you joined escortrscoswoth.com yet!

Ppps - dont wet the headlining! hoover it and wipe it down with a damp cloth, then dry it ASAP...... Looks like ford made the headlining from cardboard and tights!

fish99

To be honest I wish the body shop had taken a bit more care with the interior. At least they could have covered the seats etc.

Im not too fussed about the headlining as I will probably replacing that, and I will definately be replacing the carpet. I may try and get a ford carpet or I may even get a better quality one made by a vehicle upholsterer, still undecided at the mo.

Funny enough as Im a little out of action at the mo, I decided to give the seats a wipe down and a clean with leather care. Considering what they have been through I think they have come up rather well. The photos dont do them justice really.










I have also taken the runners off both seats and will be sending them down the powder coaters to be refurbed




Im hoping to get out there again on saturday so I can make some real progress on the floor pan again.

Cheers yeti, Ill have a look at the transmission tunnel, Im pretty sure I havent seen anymore rust.

Neil

cozzfather

iTrader: (1)

them Recaro chairs look okiedokie to me,i have seen some shite in my time and yours look good, if you feed them with autoglym they can go even better. reconolising is much cheeper than a retrim and can look better as some trimmers can't get the leather tight enough like oe.
just ringing round the car trimmers round essex would find someone who knows what i'm going on about.
what are you doing with the engine then ???

fish99

Well with the engine I am a bit undecided at the mo. To be honest it has only done about 10 miles since the head was re done back in 2005ish... and the bottom end sounded nice and tight. Im thinking I might just go for the 330 - 350bhp mark with the usual mods (dont have funds to start putting better gear boxs in at the mo) and just run it around till I get bored...Oh I do want anti lag at some point, just to piss a neighbour of mine off at 2am haha.

I do want a rebuild done at some time point, but I will probably put aside a fair bit as I want ideally over 500bhp.. but at the mo im juggling this, my house project and trying to save for my fishing boat...oh to have dreams haha

cozzfather

iTrader: (1)

Neil theres a great video on youtube of a certain escortrscosworth.com forum owners car with the anilag popping http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pgU4aYjCik8

check the second comment down the person must think escort cosworth owners stick their boat races up the exhaust.

fish99

Thats proper...that ought to p the neighbour off...cheeky git wheels his motorbike away from his house at 4am and starts is up outside other peoples houses.. Im going to reverse onto his drive at 4am and give it some beans....git

Quality comment... he must work for health and safety lol