Story so far, 3 months ago.
Bought in what appeared good condition, recently painted and bubble arched.
Staring us in the face was the fact it didnt have any inner rear arches, painted and blended in bubble arches, but no inners, the seller a young thai lad handed me some plastic pick up truck wheel arch liners, this was'nt going to cut it in the real world.
Before any of the entertainment started at the bodyshop i built up a pair of Original MK1 escort front legs, with Bilstien Subaru gc8 yellow inserts, RX7 calipers and discs.
A set of deep dish 15" alloys, 8" front 195/50 , 9" rears 205/50 were sourced new from Tikseries.
Front cut Nissan Silvia S15 sourced with the famous SR20DET, final evolution limited edition of 245hp coupled upto a 6 speed gearbox, the turbo on this final generation is the Garret GT28 , hi-tech inconel turbine wheel and ball bearings.Standard boost runs 9-10psi , the turbo could run 15 very comfortably and with roughly 8hp per psi that would push it very close to 300hp!
Way more than Alan requires sadly.
Our last peice of the Japanese transmission puzzle had us salvaging a Mitsubishi Sapporo rear axle, featuring disc brakes and a LSD , this combination would be the equivalent to an Atlas Capri, only the Capri comes minus the lsd and discs !
Onto the bodyshop" 1 month finished sure "says the owner, i've come to expect to double or triple whatver timescale they estimate, sure its a months work, but the real world means it doesnt get worked on every day, sometimes for weeks at a time nothing happens.
At the body shop our panel beater , a young thai alcoholic, given the task of restoring this car to concours condition would proceed to tell us no problem and within 2 weeks our faith in thailand was restored and some quality work took place.
Sadly after finishing the nearside sill , inner rear tubs, our panel beater went off to bkk with the message the doctor had told him he needed 6 months off work to recover from all the hard work he had done.
In stepped Mr Gai. , who finished off the rest of the work and unearthed even more hidden scrap metal cleverly disguised with body filler.
Meanwhile our Welsh mates at Motorsportools provided us the opportunity to spend a good couple of grand on Grp 4 Escort parts Heavy duty clubmans 4 link kit, round turrets, Bilstien coilovers 2 "1/4 springs Panhard kit 2.9 ratio rack ,Compression strut kit, Adjustable forged lower control arms, lowered rack crossmember to suit the taller sr20,polybushes and AVO stlye old skool dep dished leather steering wheel, to name a few of the goodies.
Time is now January, engine has been installed once to work out the engine/gearbox mounts, taken out , engine /gearbox mount fabricated, and the engine dry fitted again then taken out.
Engine room details such as air filter box cut into the inner wing with ventilation hole swaged in, 7 lucky holes have been cut and swaged into the front rad panel for the intercooler and BMW radiator, holes in the bonnetslam panel made redundant from the absence of the original bonnet opening mechanism have been filled and smoothed, the plan is to keep the safety latch though , whilst using old school bonnet pins.
The car has been transported over to the fabrication shop for its roll bar.
Pics as it stands now
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