Still working away on this...

Got two weeks off over Easter and want to get the rest of the body work sorted out, so I've been trying to get on with some of the fiddly associated jobs. All of this stuff seems to take forever and requires endless little brackets making up, but that's life. First off I made some ally brackets to support the base of the wings to the sill and also the front behind the bumper. No pictures of that, but the wings are no longer floppy.

Next up I fitted the proper front bumper. This had to have the front jacking point holes made in it and I had to make up some brackets to fix it to the wings. I also trimmed the ends down a bit so it matches the Cosworth arch profile a bit better. Thanks to the mismatch of MK5 and MK6, Cosworth and RS2000, not to mention the use of GRP parts, the panel gaps were never going to be perfect, so this has all been done just to keep it simple and fuss-free. The chances of damaging these parts are incredibly high, so I just don't see the sense in spending ages on getting perfect gaps. It just needs to be easy to remove and light. Function over form and all that. The only thing left to do here really is to remove the foam from the front bumper, tidy up some of the brackets and add some little tabs so the bumper just screws on above the jacking points.

Anyway, it's made the front end look a bit more like a car:





Next on the body work hit list was the side skirts. These were fairly simple, just needed a hole putting in them for the sill stand tubes and a bit of trimming to suit the wide front wings. I have since trimmed the sill stand tubes down, as they are still very long in this picture!



You can see at the front where I've been trimming to suit the wings. For some reason I don't have a picture of it finished. You can also see the difference in wheel arch profile from a Cosworth to a normal Escort, with the Cosworth having a longer wheelbase. I will be trimming the arch profile to match the side skirts. This will also gain me some wheel arch clearance which is no bad thing.



The final job was to fit the rear bumper, which took much longer than I thought it would! The rear jacking points mean that the standard bolt positions had to go anyway and I wanted to save some weight, so I spent what felt like an eternity removing foam to be left with this:



Half a bloody black sack full that was...

Anyway, bumper on, secured on a bracket at the top, an M6 on each side and an extra little support bracket to the spare wheel well. It is amazingly flimsy so I suspect I will get through a few of these! Just needs a spot of trimming to match the rear arch profile. Oh, and painting of course...







Rear jacking points/towing hooks are on and bumper required some trimming to accommodate:



Going back a while, Mat Lewis at MDA Motorsport made me a replica Group A pedal box. Mat originally made it with a single return spring for each pedal. The works ones used two springs and, when I put the cylinders in, it did feel like one spring might not be enough, so I modified it to use two. It probably would have been fine to be honest, but I didn't want to have to take it out again, and I can't leave anything on this car alone lol. Anyway, assembled with rebuilt cylinders (again courtesy of MDA) and ready to fit:





So, as of Friday I am off work for two weeks, so the wings will get some final fettling and then I need to get busy prepping and painting. It will never be a concourse car, it's all very rough and ready, but it's built for a purpose. There's lots of nice shiny examples on here, so I will leave that stuff to the rest of you lol.

Oh, one last thing, I fitted some retro rally stickers to my tool box lol.







Until the next time...