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keep it up, will be a good little car! i bought one for a runaround for £180 two years ago and have fallen in love with it since. really needs a 2.0 though as the 1.3 should have been left behind in the 80s. will probably swap mine out once my sierra project is finished.
keep it up, will be a good little car! i bought one for a runaround for £180 two years ago and have fallen in love with it since. really needs a 2.0 though as the 1.3 should have been left behind in the 80s. will probably swap mine out once my sierra project is finished.
I've had 3 this year. I raced it against a 1.3 civic before the engine came out and it was no match for the ka. We did it a second time with the ka loaded with 8 wheels and tyres and it still passed the civic. I will point out the civic was carbed vs the kas efi. They're fun little cars.
Thanks, I thought I could post a bit more here instead of spamming the Facebook page with the boring bits. But a alot of the time the boring bits are important 😊
Right so with the car stripped out the next thing to address was corrosion.. The best bit 😣
As people may be aware, the KA is far from exempt from the rusty Ford list.
I repaired the sills to pass an mot when I bought it. But since taking the bumpers off and having a good poke around and clean up I found some more.
you'll notice that this is not strictly in chronological order, but it kinda is. I would sometimes work on more than one thing in a day.
In the last picture you'll see that I also smoothed out the boot
I would like to say that going into this I had little welding experience. I bought a cheap welder from lidl, expecting it to be a gas mig welder, turned out to be a flux cord only welder. Oh well. Im far from Mr money bags so I had to make do with what I could afford. I hadn't known how to set up a welder prior to this, so I decided to start on the floor pan as it seemed the most straight forward...
I had used a gas mig a few times before, but using this flux cord was a different experience, especially as I was still (and am) a very novice welder. Anyhoo this was my first go at flux cord
I must admit the spatter threw me on the settings as gas mig doesn't spatter anywhere near that much and you don't get the slag etc.. so I was adjusting here there and everywhere. But it's in and it does the job.
The next things to weld were the holes left from the heater matrix etc
welding starting to improve 🖒
Last edited by Mario Genesis; 22-11-2017 at 09:48 PM.
looking over the pictures again its surprising just how bad one of these can rust. I've had a couple in the past but didn't have them for long, just bought cheap to sell on and i've heard a few people say about the rust.
Glad to see one's being saved, just get some decent rust protection on once done.
looking over the pictures again its surprising just how bad one of these can rust. I've had a couple in the past but didn't have them for long, just bought cheap to sell on and i've heard a few people say about the rust.
Glad to see one's being saved, just get some decent rust protection on once done.
Yea i think ford really fucked up with the rust issue on these. We had a sportka from 5 years old and it already had the usual rust on the petrol cap and rear wiper. By the time we'd had it a few years the sills and windscreen pillar were well on their way! Which is a shame because they are good cars other than that.being based on the same platform as the fiesta mk3 was never a good start as they have to be right up the near top of the list for rustiest ford lol
They were given a minimal amount of paint from what I've seen, they also don' have rear arch liners. So the mud and road grime sticks up there holding moisture.
The sills rot like they're made out of apples 😂 I did get another one and the sills on that were like a patchwork quilt.. Then I decided to race it on some private land and ended up rolling it which was fun.
The one on the left got rolled.. the one on the right just had the engine taken out and had an engine bay full of grime
Someone mentioned about the sport bumpers allowing for wider wheels. This is true. I bought some staggered 13" banded steels, and I intend to use some 25mm spacers with them on the rear, as in the future I will be getting a decent set of wheels.
Plan atm is to get it on the road as I still pay tax and insurance on it.
I got them back into shape, gave them a couple coats of high build primer and some engine enamel as they're only a temporary measure. They still look good.
They came with stretched tyres and would just fit the arch with the full width tyres ill be using, however they wont fit the lightweight wheels ill be getting in the future which will be 25mm wider. (Hence buying the spacers). So i decided to extend the rear by 50mm in total.
I cut where the bumper clips to the body, in order to retain the fixing points.
I'll come back to these a bit later once the spacers arrive.
Last edited by Mario Genesis; 23-11-2017 at 09:20 PM.
I've seen a few different conversions over the years, they are a fun car to mess around with. My last one on the outside all looked good (I must have got lucky and it drove well) but underneath it had failed its mot on rust but I don't know how bad.
I used to know a girl who got rear ended in one of these by a semi and survived which was a surprise, another mate turned right at a junction when a car was coming and the girl in the passenger seat was lucky to survive. They are reasonable in accidents.
I still remember trying to mess around in a insurance/hire car a girl I knew had years ago, thing was brand new and we tried the trays under the back wheels approach. The poxy little engine kept stalling when trying to pull away it was so under powered. Definitely needed a bigger engine to get it moving
Aren't you going to need that heater box hole when you get it on the road? Does a car not require a form of de-misting the windscreen wot be road legal or have I dreamt that up?
Nice job on the boot, and keep up the progress on the rust!
Aren't you going to need that heater box hole when you get it on the road? Does a car not require a form of de-misting the windscreen wot be road legal or have I dreamt that up?
Its not part of an mot test. But ill get a quickclear heated screen fitted, that was used in some of the "fancier" editions.
It's not really the right time of year to be doing painting and bodwork outside, but it has to be done.
I bought a new bonnet, and fixed up the sport bumpers.
Plastic primer/adhesion promoter High build primer
The KA is notorious for the fuel filler cap are rusting, this happens as the rear arches have no plastic liners, the wet mud sticks in the arches and holds moisture. It eventually creeps through to the outer surface, by which time it's a mess underneath
There is an internal "extension" panel available, but the rot had got further that that so I just chopped the whole lot out and did without the mud catching cup shape.
Last edited by Mario Genesis; 12-12-2017 at 09:57 PM.
Where I started 20 years ago age 15 repairing cars in the street with mates...
Good days them... everybody was doing it years ago
Keep up the good work
I’ve got 3 garages now... and can’t even be bothered this time of year
Respect is due, I will never moan about having to do my car in a single car garage.
To be honest im looking at renting one for a month just to paint in. Wet it all down and get a space heater in there. They'e about £80-100 a month around here. Would just have to get it there somehow
Where I started 20 years ago age 15 repairing cars in the street with mates...
Good days them... everybody was doing it years ago
Keep up the good work
I’ve got 3 garages now... and can’t even be bothered this time of year
Thanks for the comment, I was in training for a fight these last couple months, so forcing myself to get out and work on the car in between that was a struggle. Now theres no daylight, it's cold and/or wet I just have to take any opportunity the weather gives me.
09-11-2017, 08:34 PM
2.0L Ka
