Hi all

I bought a WRC escort shell from Mark at MK Motorsport.
It was thought to be shell number 16 but, having spoken to Gordon Vincent (very nice chap), he informs me it's shell number 20.
Anyway Mark is going to sort the shell. Nothing major needed but, after years of rallying, it needs a bit of TLC. He's also putting a floor mounted pedal box base in, fuel cell base, and swapping steering from left back to right hand drive (as Mark pointed out it looks like it was right hand drive originally).
Also done a deal with Mark to supply all running gear, engine cradle, adapt our cam cover, make caliper brackets, etc etc.
We've agreed a completion date of end of January 2018 to sort shell and supply parts. Once finished it'll be getting blasted then painted metallic grey.
I'll post pictures of parts as and when I have them and of shell 'improvements' as and when Mark sends them.
Quality of Mark's work is top draw so hoping to have a very nice car when it's eventually built.
Few pics of shell as I bought it attached.
Planning on running 500hp 'ish' and a Quaife 87G gearbox with paddle shift.

 

Nice shell, keep the updates rolling

 

Lol - end of January 2018 - I cannot pick myself up off the floor for laughing.

Do not be misguided by this idiot. Yes, he can produce amazing product but has zero concept of time.
My advice to you is send him no money at all. He will ask you for it up front.

Good luck with the project but I would find someone else to supply the bits for it.

 

This thread is about my project..........not about your opinion of Mark!
Lets keep comments about the project please.

 

Good luck. So many people get upset when they hear what they do not want hear.

If i told you he was the best, most attentive person who has the best communication and time keeping you would be happy.

An opinion is something based around fact. Especially in my dealings and the majority of others.

Good luck. I hope it works out for you.

Having a WRC Escort is something I love. Being set back for over a year on false promises I do not love.

 

look forward to seeing how this progresses

 

I will be keeping an eye on this. Looks like a good project.

 

It’s a nice shell. I saw it marks a month ago. Keep the updates coming

 

Was that when you collected your completed shell?

 

Yes it was mate

 

Cool, I was trying to show that he has turned over a new leaf and seems to be getting the job done. All my recent transactions have been timely. We had a few fall outs in the past but in recent times all has been on track.

 

Martin Hadland is booked in for Feb and he doesn't seem to suffer fools lightly.

 

I've had several chats with Mark and I believe he's turned a corner.
His work is fantastic and if he can deliver on time he'll prove he's on the right track.
Arranged to collect some parts next weekend and I'll post pictures of them so you'll know he's delivering on time

 

Good honest reply couldent have been said any better 👍🏽
Cant wait to start putting this escort together 😀

 

Yeah I get that Toby. You’ve got to remember that Mark is of an age now where he gets to work using a bus pass and if meals on wheels don’t get his liquidised bananas and custard to him by midday sharp, he’s asleep in the arm chair all afternoon.

 

Yeah, bless the old bugger, he forgets my address every time, I have started posting him address labels for me

 

Thaught this thread is about a WRC escort build ??

 

I took this into consideration before letting Mark tackle my project.
Luckily I don't live a million miles away from 'Grimsby on Sea' so i can collect

 

Sorry for the hijack. If you are local that is perfect. I am thinking of sending my 205 in for WRC turrets and cradle.

 

I don't mind a bit of banter

 

Not interested in argueing about what happened. The truth has already been posted in many forums.
Just trying to save someone going through the pain i had to trying to deal with you.

 

Like you said it’s already been posted about. As have a few very happy customers comments. Now belt up man and let this thread carry on without you please.

 

Well said that’s over and done with now 👍🏽

 

Like i said. Good luck.

 

looks good

pasi

 

Will be a nice toy.

 

Getting back on track.

Did all of the WRC Escorts have the full cradle in the rear and were all active centre box?

Do you know any of the history of your shell? Would be interested to hear more.

 

Mark might be able to answer the first question?
No more or less nothing about cars history..........but would love to find out if anyone has any info.
It appears to have been RHD, then LHD. Mark will put it back to RHD. I would like shell to stay as original as possible.
Only thing I did was send pictures of it to Gordon Vincent then had a chat with him, during which he dug out his paperwork, to confirm it's shell number 20.

So if anyone on here can shed any light I'd really appreciate it

 

All WRC Escorts have the cradle. If it doesn't have rear cradle/McPherson struts, then it isn't a proper WRC shell, as these were a fundamental part of the upgrade to WRC spec from the previous Group A semi-trailing arms.

I'm not sure if the Escort WRC had three active diffs. Centre would have been active though as far as I know. Just don't think they always ran an active rear in this era as not all drivers thought it was needed.

You could try contacting M-Sport to see if they have any record. I don't know if they built all of the WRC cars, or still sold shells to people like Mike Taylor and Mike Little who had run Group A cars. If they could even give you a clue as to the first owner, you might be able to work it out from there. There is quite a bit of knowledge around about them still.

Good move on keeping it original. Nice, original Group A and WRC cars are now fetching big money and are only going to become more collectible as their historic eligibility looms on the horizon. I would be making sure I was very sympathetic to the shell and using as many pukka parts as possible.

 

Combination of Active and Passive cars were built, that shell was done at ACS in 1997 by the looks of it, it will have probably been built to the Boreham spec at a guess..

The active cars were just front & centre using mainly FFD diffs and Gems Controllers...the later cars switched to Xtrac with the Mag or Ally 9" rear diff...

Some would argue the Cradle/McPherson upgrade wasn't as good as the later beams and trailing arms, one major improvement though was the use of same hub on each corner so less spares to carry....bump steer on the cradle setup was horrendous out of the box!!

 

Tried M Sport. They don't have any records for them!

 

The number on front offside turret is....R01/020 - 16 - 97 so could have been done in 97.
Have no idea what the 16 means????

 

16th week of 97 at a guess...cars of that age won't have had anything to do with M-Sport apart from a few Customer cars built by Malcolm for himself and the likes of Steven Finlay, Brian Bell, Eamon Boland...the contract didn't get signed til late 97/98 IIRC when they were already switching to Focus...the only real development done at M-Sport was the Xtrac revisions to the drivetrain everything else was pretty much as per the Boreham spec..Malcolm then sold the X-Trac licence to Dewitts which is why as far as I can remember you can only buy parts for that box from Dewitts...

 

Did Gordon not mention the version of cage that is in that shell? It looks like one of his later cages..might be wrong about that as that first pic is blurred...and there is no pic of the r/h side of the engine bay...

 

Hoping to go to MK's at weekend. If I do I'll take some more pics and post them

 

I thought the whole reason to switch from the semi-trailing arms to the McPherson setup was because of better bump steer characteristics. With a McPherson setup it shouldn't be that difficult to get near to zero bump steer?

 

Thats one of the reasons why, unless you are looking to replicate a period car you simple would not use the Boreham designed cradle. To copy it and sell it as the best mod ever is madness.

If you are going to build this car to be worth money you must use genuine parts not copies. Otherwise it will be lower end of the market just like mine. I did not build mine to replicate the Boreham WRC. I built mine with mods to improve on the original designs.

 

I was just looking at some pictures of the rear suspension of an Escort WRC, but I can't really see what would cause bump steer on it. The two arms running from the knuckles to cradle near the diff are the same length and run exactly parallel. So when they move up and down the toe shouldn't change. The arm that connects the knuckle to the front of the cradle will push the knuckle back a bit when it's completely horizontal and pull it a bit forward when it's not horizontal. But this would only change the caster of the wheel and not the toe. So can you explain why this design is not good?




BTW, what is different on the later beams and trailing arms compared to the earlier ones? In the Escort Cosworth Group N and Group A manual nothing is mentioned on the beam and arms being a different geometry.

 

The lateral links are not the same length and the heights differ slightly, the bumpsteer when our was built initially was really bad we had to make lots of adjustments to dial it out, even the camber changes aren't brilliant and most of the advances in the modern cars is the increase in suspension travel and improved geometry from bump to droop...

I don't have mega experience with the difference in the later beams, but I do know that the later versions were nigh as good as the WRC configuration, mate of mine running a Group A car on Gravel car is using a later Tarmac beam with Mag Arms..subtle adjustments do overcome the problems with both setups but I do wonder how many people actually measure things like bumpsteer when they set a car up...

 

And also from my experience there are lots and I mean lots of differing parts that were used on the Boreham cars that were designed, tested and tried on the cars, some were adopted as parts to go forward for homogation some weren't...a lot of these parts were still circulating in the uk in the late 90's/early 2000's...mis matches in parts like that often caused issues whilst trying to build a car...the funniest story I have is the WRC steering gaitors used on the easy feel racks...and trying to identify those!!!