'76 Escort RS continual project.

[Joe O'dMoors]

The car retained the green strip for almost a year and then one random weekend I spent a few mins, and a few bucks on some red paint and gave the car a slight refresh. I had planned to bring the car to a few events over the summer, but I ended up working too many hours to get the time off and to have enough energy.

[Joe O'dMoors]

The car came setup for tarmac/asphalt use. In order to prepare the car for gravel use last year, I raised the ride height up 1 inch. It had a 2 inch lowering kit on the rear springs, and I wanted more suspension travel. The fronts are coilovers, so adjusting them is very easy.
The car was previously a little low and the ubolts got damaged by rocks.



And, everytime I take parts off of my cars, I always renew/refinish them.
The rear leafs actualy fit inside my blast cabinet and received new coats of chassis epoxy.



The leafspring mount on the NS looked suspect, and I was right.
Here's a shot of all of the rot removed.



The internal guard piece was barely attached, so I made up a new one.
And dusted off the welder.




It's a horrible piccie, but this is all sorted.
I over built it, adding in an additional support plate I made from 16 gauge sheet.



The car getting used to its new height
I had to run it around a bit to get the suspension to settle and make more final adjustments.

[Joe O'dMoors]

I finally got around to ordering a new trans output seal, as it's been a slow leak all last year.
I ordered one and a spare from Burtons! Quick shipping! Yaay!

A little bit of help getting the propshaft bolts loose.



All in good shape, save a sticky rear u joint.
Luckily, after cleaning it up nicely, it was able to be revived...just too much crud in the joint boots.




The propshaft looks sharp with new coats of epoxy.



A deep socket 35mm was perfect for seating the new seal.





With a lot more spare room, I did a quick epoxy respray of the rear diff.
It's a RS2000 English with Quaife internals.

[Joe O'dMoors]

...that job segued into another job....

The rear end of the car had the lower section cut away for exhaust clearance or something else.
The cutaway angles of the metal wasn't matching on both sides...this has driven me crazy.
Here's an old pic of the car, and one can see the lower section with miss-matched cutaway angles.



So since I was doing body work on the car to address some trunk rot, this was the first thing I sorted out.

Prepping and measuring the OS, so it will match the NS.



And all mended, filled with new sheet and painted. Yes, the paint work is rubbish back there. It's just temporary as the whole car is getting resprayed eventually.


Add in a new coat of paint to the rear silencer....much better........
This pic reminded me that I still need to trim some excess off the rear arm U bolts.



In all, the rear exhaust, rear suspension and driveline were recoated in black epoxy, and the bottom of the trunk, up the floor pan to the rear seats was recoated in white epoxy.

[BigFred]

Thanks for all of the update posts. Very interesting. (Need to get going on my project again.)

[Joe O'dMoors]

Thanks!!!
And yes, it's that time of year again!
Back on the tools!
I'm looking forward to seeing updates on your car.

[Joe O'dMoors]

All small things add up to the big picture...

I have no other Escorts in the area to compare notes with...but this bumper situation was not correct.


So I sourced some grommets and they turned out to be a perfect fit!!!
I had 4 grommets, so I did front and rear.
Now, I need to get some better looking hardware

[IFHP]

This answers my question from a different thread. The series of transformations is amazing. Thanks for sharing it.

[Joe O'dMoors]

Thank you!!!
More to come!

[Joe O'dMoors]

The car has some of these anti slip floor guards, riveted in place. There was a bit of surface rust beginning to appear on the floor near the plates, so I removed them to get a better look.


A fair amount of dirt, surface rust and rot were hiding under the plates on both footwells...



So they both got stripped back to bare metal and all the rot cut out...
The rot on the OS footwell continued on into the lower door jamb support...
A hefty pile of Ford sheetmetal cut out.


New support plates were added into the rebuild..
Double seam welded...which I welded, facing upside-down...so they are not pretty


Halfway through the lower jamb-to-floor replacement....more holes to fill in, on the floor pan...


Both floor sections mended, epoxy coated, with epoxy coated floor guards.
Good enough for now!

[Joe O'dMoors]

And as luck would have it, I came across a very nice Mk3 Escort (USA front wheel drive model) at the junk yard. Poor car looked like it didn't belong in there.
But I was happy to score a rear badge that looks pretty good for 3 dollars.
I also got in an RS2000 trunk decal from DMB graphics in the UK, the pairing looks very nice.

[Joe O'dMoors]

So, I had high hopes when I replaced the output seal on the transmission, that the minor leak issue was fixed for good.
That wasn't the case. A quick drive around the block proved that no progress was made.
I had the good sense to crawl under the car to try to determine what was going on.
Spline shaft looked decent, considering how much abuse it has seen, but noticed a drip coming from farther back, where the joint yoke was....

After some research, I found some folks have had similar issues with a missing/damaged yoke bung.

So, I thought I had a brilliant idea on how to solve the leak. It (leak) was coming from the yoke and not the seal.
I figured that I would reseal the outside as well as the inside of the yoke tube.
I mounted the propshaft to a cart and ensured that the entire piece was plumb.


And I mixed up a batch of marine grade epoxy to add inside the tube...



Well, I added WAY too much and found out the shaft wont mount fully into place onto the car anymore.
So I was able to successfully clean it all out using a thin punch and compressed air..
I just made a smaller batch and tried again...adding just enough to cover the bottom of the yoke tube, to provide a good seal.

I'll find out if that was another horrible idea again in a few hours after it's cured.

[Joe O'dMoors]

Since the summer season came and went very quickly, it's back on the tools again for some more updates/upgrades on the car.

The fuel line runs from the tank, through the rear seat firewall, through the cockpit, near the seats and up through the front firewall up to the carbs.
The rear line from the tank to the pump, was unbraided rubber hose and poses a huge fire risk if there was ever an issue with the delicate line being damaged. (the whole tank would empty out into the trunk)

This aspect of the project should have came earlier, but ohh well.
The nylon sheaved line from the tank to the pump is looking tatty. There is a heat shield sheath on it, and that's why it looks odd.
And the secondary tank tap (just above the fuel line feed) was just a rubber hose with a bolt clamped on, to prevent it from leaking,


I haven't spent much time looking at the interior fuel line, but it appears to be flexible nylon tubing, with a fiberglass semi core.



And you can see, just a rubber fuel line running from the FPR up to the carbs (lower right of pic)..very vulnerable. It all has to go, as I've been lucky not to have the car burst into flames.

[Joe O'dMoors]

In order to keep some sort of order to this potentially chaotic project, i figured I'd work back to front.

The fuel tank was easy to drain and pull.


With all the bits out of the trunk out, it was more apparent on how ratty it has become over the many years since the car was painted by someone else.
Multiple layers of paint on the floor and multiple touch ups over the past few decades.


The fuel line, 12 battery positive and working harness all passed though the same hole in the rear firewall bulkhead.
There was chafe protection, but still not up to my standards.


The rear section of the wiring harness had been respliced at one time in the past, so it made it easier for me to have another go at it.

[Joe O'dMoors]

The trunk was finally stripped.
Since this is a rally car, the back seat rear bulkhead was cut out, and a firewall was welded in. A hole was carved out, for the batt +, fuel line and rear wiring harness to pass through. All was installed and sealed off with spray foam.
Practical, yes.
Pretty, not even close. But the small details of rally cars are never very pretty



And as many projects I do, tend to spiral out of control, I will take advantage of an empty trunk to fix all of the repairs that have been done over the years,


Lots of unused holes to weld shut.