hlev

Heyheyhey

Finally have managed to take a few shots of my project, which I would like to share with you...

It's a 1982 Mk3 Escort Laser, 3dr, LHD, German made.
1.3 only (yet, but who knows what might come in my way...)
I will keep it standard looking, but intend to install slightly lowered suspension to start with.

The car unfortunately has spent the last 3 years on our driveway, hence the dust, leaves and debris inside the engine bay and interior.

First task is to strip it to bare shell then weld it up.
I'd be into cutting and shaping the panels, weld, but haven't done it before. Poss. bodyshop will do it.

The car (some twat stole my badge ):


Here's a few shot of the places that need attention:

Battery tray, as usual:


Inner wings:


Front panel joints:



Front crossmember:


Front box section (?):


Rear arch:


The boot isn't too bad!!


Sills, etc etc
The floorpan hasn't rotten through, but it needs some work, also parts of the wing panels have to be changed.

I'm stripping the inside next week...

Thanks for looking.

rscossie86

Good to see another Mk3 Escort beeing saved...

Good Luck with the resto and keep us up-to-date

Ade

Good to see another LHD MK3.
Are you in the UK?

I've got one too, but I'm just a jammy bastard in that mine didn't have any rust

Lux_Interior

That looks good! My Mk3 started out that colour, but its now black
Good luck with it!

hlev

Thanks for the positive comments guys!

I stripped the interior yesterday, but forgot to take the camera with me.

It's better than I've expected, the rear floorpan and the crossmembers are the same as the boot floor, not a single spot of rust...
The passenger floorpan has to be replaced and because it's not that expensive, I'll get a new one for driver's side as well.

The sills suffer from rust at the same spot as outside, it may be OK to replace only the front quarter of the sills each side if that's possible.

Pictures to come soon.

@Ade: I'm not in the UK. I had lived in London for 2 yrs, but moved back to Hungary 2yrs ago. (And since been spending a fortune on postage of ebay items! ))

@Lux: I reckon I'll keep the colour (champagne gold, if that is...) but have the side decal airbrushed rather than sticked on.

Do you know by the way if this decal was courtesy of the Laser range or are they XR ones? It seems to be original...

Mr Sam

please please please leave the exterior EXACTLY as it is and slap some lairy ass ZVH in it.....major brownie points if you do that


even better a X'flow

Ade

Escort Lasers in the UK never had any large decals like that, nor did any other model. I'd imagine it was a dealer applied kinda thing.

Mine came with an equally cheesey one which was soon whipped off


(an old scanned pic!)

hlev

Cheers for the info Ade, I've never seen your decals before, and have seen mine only once on another escort. That was colour coded, black-dark grey-light grey to go with the caspian blue car, therefore I thought it might be original...

Anyways, Day 2:
This is about how far we've done:


Managed to get the dash and the heater out:


Drivers floorpan:



Passenger floorpan:



Rear footwell:


Minor issue where the driver seat bolts to the footwell:


Sills/rear quarters/doors:








The back panel and the tailgate had damaged in an accident, a truck reversed into the poor Escort:



Filler neck area


Well, could be much worse for a 25yr old shell. I haven't been aware of the previous repairs, but they must had been done at least 6 years ago, 'cos no repairs have been done on the shell since I own the car.
Can't wait to get further next week.

Thanks for looking.

hlev

What I thought was only surface rust....


Yesterday I managed to remove the rear body trimmings (pass&boot), rear lights, bumber, belts, withdrew the loom from the back, haven't taken pics due to being in a hurry, I'll take some later.

To my surprise the rear quarter panel from the inside looks like it never has been touched, neither the arches repaired ever in 25 yrs... not bad eh?

Regarding engine specs, well, we've done some tests with anti-gravity propulsion, as you can see it's very promising so far.

Mr Sam

leave the decals ..... pleeeease

hlev

do you mean leave them _as they are now_?
Can't do it, as I'm gonna give it a windscreen/windows out full respray, once it's welded up, _But_: i'm planning to blueprint the decals with Illustrator or something, and have them plotted and cut out from new sheets of stickers. Or airbrush. I intend to keep the looks, that's what makes it special for me (until some monster engine's being fabricated)

hlev

Afternoon 3:

The car's in a rather sorry state now, but it's starting to look like a resto project.



Temporary storage for my back seat:

hlev

Just a wee update for reference:

I haven't had much time lately, so there's no "visible" progress.
I spent 2 afternoons stripping the car since the last post. Oh, almost've forgotten...Bought bubble wrap from a local factory and wrapped everything prone to damage and put them in storage

Loom is 99% tagged and removed. I need to buy around a 100-120 quid worth of panels to do the shell up.

- inner wings
- front wings
- battery tray
- fusebox area
- full sills
- rear arches
- front floor panels
- full front panel
- front lower crossmember (what the radiator bolts to)
- rear panel

I bought a solid tailgate from a mk3 xr3i and a set of the bronze tinted windows from the same car. I think they gonna suit the gold car.

Do you think that riveting the wing panels to the inner wing lips has any disadvantages over spot welding?

MrCapriScort

Great project, looks like a fair bit of welding needed

hlev

Cheers mate!

Getting there slowly...

Engine bay:

My shiny NOS Weber 32IBF off ebay!!
This was a bolt on replacement, no setup required, the engine was being fed by this when driving from my driveway to where the car is now..