Ive decided to keep myself occupied by giving myself a nice complicated project. I havn`t had a performance car since i got rid of my S2 RS Turbo :-( . Which was my very first car!!

I got my hands on a mk3 xr3 a couple of months back just to drive about in, but the engine let go. I sold the twin 45 carbs which were fitted to it, for more than the car cost me
I was going to scrap it as ive been having a hard time recently and couldn`t be bothered with anything. But my best mate martin (md_cos) convinced me to keep it and convert it to 4x4 using a 2.9 cossie engine he has!

The plan is to use a sierra front end and floorpan, then stick a cossie v6 in it. i`ll worry about the rear end when i get to it, don`t see much point in going to the effort of fitting the sierra rear setup as everyone seems to alter it anyway, might aswell make it good in the first place!

I had a sierra donated to me for the floorpan, had £25 of fuel in the tank too

Heres the xr


Heres my engine crane gently removing the engine


Bracing the floor, just to make sure it keeps square


Got the floor out in about 30min


Disposing of the sierra shell, its upside down so i could get rid of some rubbish in it

 

Escort looks like quite a good one mate, nice and solid base to start off with. How much did you pay for it??

Good project and will be keeping an eye on this so keep the pics and updates coming.

 

havent you finished that yet?

 

Cool project

 

Thanks guys, martin how long exactly has it taken you to paint your escort and fit the front wings? 2-3years??

Escort cost £250, sold the carbs for £360

Had to modify the steering column bracket as it originally attaches to the bulkhead as part of the pedal box assembly, and im removing the bulkhead! got that finished this afternoon, i cant get into photobucket at the mo so will put the pics up later.

 

Heres the pictures from today.

The problem


The solution


The steel is on order to brace the shell to make sure it doesn`t twist out of shape, so the floor should be out thursday hopefully

 

nice work mate

You should have painted the sierra yellow before filling it with rubbish

Rich

 

Nice work richard

 

Fitted the strengthening frame thursday. Only just managed to get the pics onto photobucket, still using 56k





Should have the floor out of the escort tomorrow morning, maybe sierra floor in by the evening. Hope it goes well.

 

Got the floor out earlier on, but im still aching from 3 hours at the gym the other day so i couldnt be arsed with putting the sierra floor in! Getting there though

 

Great progress mate, and how solid does that escort floor look

 

Only had 5 minor bits of rot, drivers seat mounting, about an inch hole at front of floor pan and a hole about 3 inch at the rear of floor pan and thats it, theres two little bubbles on the wing rails aswell but nothing to worry about, sills n arches are all perfect

Just about to go and try the sierra floor for size, measured it the other day and it looks like ive gotta lose about 5cm from each side of the floor, inner wings aren`t too far out at around 1cm wider than escort. May even start welding the floor in, then again i might take the next week measuring everything over and over again! im terrified of getting it in the wrong place!

 

Got most of the shell and floorpan trimmed today, but ran outta cutting discs! so i couldnt get the front of the sierra chassis outta the way to lower the shell down all the way.

 

 

Sweet

 

nice work mate

 

Interesting project you got there!

How come you're not using the rear floor where the diff is held

 

Looking good fella.

 

Im not using it as people are replacing the sierra rear beams with adjustable setups to get the most out of em, i dont fancy taking the time to fit all the sierra setup and then buying a modified rear beam to get the best out of the car. I might aswell just build an escort wrc type setup in the first place.

By the way its getting a 400bhp+ YB now , might aswell do it properly!

 

this is what i was thinking about but for an MK1 escort ...
https://passionford.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=283686

 

wow would luv to do that to my mk3, but with cossie power!