mk2marty

Cheers mate! Maybe it's the Northland climate that helps with the project car enthusiasm

Surprisingly I still own this. I figured i'd better update the build thread now, it has more metal in it now than it did 2.5 years ago. With a year of a long distance relationship, moving house, changing jobs, other cars and a fairly sizeable task ahead to fix all the rot, progress kind of came to a halt not long after the last update. In the last year or so though I have been chipping away at it, so far I have cut and welded the l/h inner guard, heater bubble, l/h floor pan, inner and outer sill section, rebuilt the bottom of the l/h A pillar, l/r wheel arch inner and outer, outer sill section, and probably some other small bits I can't remember. I also cut the front valance off, and I am very thankful for the abundance of pressed panels available new for old Fords in that I got a new valance, front guards, and a myriad of repair sections to stitch in, without these I probably wouldn't have taken this on tbh. Here it is on its way to its new garage: Some repairs to the firewall where every Escort rots - under the heater bubble. I've made an indent in the new heater bubble so water can actually drain away, rather than collecting in the bottom of the bowl and rotting through the seam that joins it. It mightn't look tidy, but it's solid and there's good penetration through to the other side, so I'm reasonably happy. The l/h side floor section was probably the most daunting repair in terms of size, I ended up cutting the floorpan back almost to the seat mount before I found decent metal, but after I zapped in the floor section the outer sill and pillar fitted up pretty nicely. This was the most recent repair - the rear wheel arch - which someone in the past has had a go at, not rust proofed behind the repair, and it's rusted again. There was a patch welded into the outer arch, which someone had beaten in with a ballpein hammer and shaped with bog, and a large patch on the inner which had gone rotten. It all had to go, I ended up cutting away the inner half and remaking it, and welding in a pressed section into the outer. All that's left now is the l/h C pillar and vent, probably the r/h C pillar too, the bottom of the r/h A pillar, a random little hole in the rear apron, make some new front guard supports and attach the front. I have a full set of factory bronze tinted glass and chrome trim mouldings for the windows, which will probably end up on the car too. And this is pretty much how it sits today!

Some good things have happened to the Accord since the last installment! I gave it some CV boots, thankfully the inner and outer are the same size, because both boots on the L/H axle were split. Fun fact - pre-facelift Accords have CVs at both ends, but later ones like this one have tripod joints on the inner. Confused the hell out of the bloke at BNT, anyway. It passed another WOF last week without any hiccups, and we've taken it for decent number of road trips around the upper North Island. I even slept in it after Crate Day, which honestly turned out to be more cramped and uncomfortable than I thought it would be. Still working on tidying up the front end, there's a sedan at a wrecker down country who might be able to supply the grille bits. The passenger side carpet is pretty rotten and it got consistently damp in the rain, which was a pretty good indicator that there were holes somewhere that there shouldn't be holes. I broke the unwritten rule of old car ownership, that being "don't pick at that bathroom sealant, you won't like what's underneath it" and lo and behold after chiselling away the layers of Selley's Bathroom Adhesive in the windscreen plenum chamber there was a decent hole. After taking out the wiper motor I found another hole, so out came the cutoff disc and the welder. Just to be safe I pulled the dash out so nothing caught fire, to be honest this is probably the first time this car has seen the hot end of a MIG torch in its life. I made up a couple of patches, binned them after I found more scabby bits near where I was welding to, and then made up some bigger patches. Glued them in with the metal gluestick, and hit it all with some epoxy. Might spray some underseal in there yet, or I might just spray it all with fish oil and put up with the smell for a couple of weeks. Otherwise it's been plain sailing, the front seats need some more foam because as far as I can see they don't actually have springs in them, just a layer of heavy foam which has disintegrated over the past 39 years. Local content laws dictated that as much trim as possible had to be made here, which is why we didn't get the neat colour coded interior fabrics that everywhere else in the world got, we got beige or beige. I pulled out the amplifier that was tek-screwed through the floorpan underneath the passengers seat and the lil' Johnny spec head unit that was flopping around the dash and wired in with three core house cable, and wired in a period '80s Clarion spindle mount unit - less doof, but more class! It needs a set of TS-Xs for the parcel shelf next time i'm near Buyee.com. Here's some pictures of it enjoying the scenery

Could be keen

Cheers guys! The car came with a Gregory's manual but thanks for the offer, @tortron I'll keep you in mind, @- i5oogt -, if plastic welding the corner of the grille on the car doesn't work then it'd be good to replace it with something decent.

We've all done it, right? Spotted something tasty on Trademe while browsing idly on a Friday night? Sometimes, after a few beers, you might even put in a cheeky low autobid just for the hell of it. Well, fast forward two weeks and it turns out no-one else wanted that crunched Accord you were bidding on while a little bit drunk. Damn. Thus, for a stupidly small amount of money, I added another slightly rotten Eighties classic to the fleet. This one rolled off the NZ Motor Corp production line in Nelson sometime in the early part of 1981, probably into the hands of a caring gent who treasured it for a couple of decades, adorned it with a set of THE GREATEST WHEELS EVER M8, and apparently never had a flat tyre because the original Reidrubber Award is still sitting in the boot. Fast forward a few years, it passed through several more owners, and tried to pass through a brick wall which didn't go so well for it. However, considering the reputation that first-gen Accords have for disappearing slowly before your very eyes, this one seems remarkably solid. The wall-inflicted damage was limited to the pushed-back bonnet, radiator support panel, guards and bumper, with the chassis rails thankfully having escaped damage. It was in this state that I picked it up on Saturday morning, drove it to the parents place and tore it to pieces in their driveway. By Saturday afternoon it was sans front, I had pulled the radiator support panel back to where it should be (it helps when your Grandad has a low mile, immaculate one owner example you can take measurements off) and I sprayed rust neutraliser over every bit of metal oxide I could find. The whole structure is surprisingly flexible, everything bent back into place quite easily, and by Sunday afternoon the front was starting to look more like a Honda again, and the bonnet was back to where it should be. It was solid enough to make the trip home, anyway, and to drive it round to Grandad's beforehand to spin Honda yarns and spot the differences between pre and post-facelift Accords. It was already missing parts of the grille moulding and a bumper insert though, which was a bit annoying, and the bits of chrome moulding it does have are bent. Not sure where to get replacements for these, I am unused to the lack of aftermarket support for anything that isn't an old Ford... I did however find some repro indicator/park lamps from a place in Otahuhu that turned up in the mailbox the next day, which was pretty sweet. I'll take some proper photos of it once the rain stops, but here are some phone snaps in the meantime

Cheers all for the feedback, it's a huge help when the holes in the car just keep getting bigger, and the motivation gets lesser... As much as I'd like to make the repairs as invisible as possible, the replacement panels limit that a bit. What I'm thinking at this point is to cut the hole larger, drill the spot welds on the inner sill/firewall and use the replacement inner sill panel and butt it to the rest of the floorpan, and plug weld it to the sill and firewall in the same place as the factory did.

So there's a hole in the floor of my Escort. Would it be best to butt weld the floor repair section in, or lay it in from underneath and lap joint it - ie. weld it from the top? Bearing in mind that there's also the lower pillar and sill sections to be welded in too.

Anyone heading to the Waipu car show on the 10th?

So I did a silly thing the other day and bought a motorcycle. I am a complete newbie to the world of bikes, so this is all a bit of a learning curve. It's a 1985 model (Japanese assembled) Suzuki GN250, with flat handlebars and not much of an exhaust. It has got spoked wheels and a retro looking striped tank though. I'll probably end up finishing off the cafe racer mods the previous owner started. Yeah, I know, how original... Any tips/tricks/advice/sharns are greatly appreciated, and if there is any possible way to hot up a GN motor let me know! Still amazed at the quantity of stuff on Aliexpress available for these, some of which is already on it's way here from China

Cheers, i'm going to need it! Thankfully there's plenty of knowledge around OS and beyond, so the trepidation level isn't too bad at the moment. But then, I haven't actually uncovered all the rust yet...

Oh hey, this thread has photos again! Unfortunately, this post doesn't bear a whole lot of good news. The venerable Escort has been doing daily duties for a year, the new engine is sweet, and goes as well as can be expected from a 1300 Kent. But... Sadly, it failed it's WOF last month on rust in the L/H A and C pillars. So after being inspired by @Hurmeez efforts in rust repair on his Mk2 i figured it was time to start digging at the rust. Over the long weekend, I watched more and more of my Escort disappear into dusty piles on the floor... It started off so nice. After removing layers of bathroom sealant from behind the dash, I found a small hole in the inner guard, by the firewall seam. Figuring this was the rust the WOF man was talking about, I decided it would be fairly easy to patch with the front guard removed. After drilling out the spot welds along the upper guard seam and watching most of the headlight surrounds disappear into thin air, I found the centimetres of bog in the front valance, and after the guard came off, the dodgy looking bits at the top and bottom of the A pillar. At this point there was no going back, so out came the poky screwdriver (with results illustrated below): This is the bottom of the passenger's A pillar. The driver's side isn't as bad, it only has a hole in the pillar, the sill on that side looks intact (at the moment, anyway) After finding the fist-sized hole in the floor, I threw caution into the winds and attacked any other dodgy-looking bit of the car I could find. This is the rear wheel arch, which looks like it's had a repair in the past and has continued rusting. There are a couple of small holes in the driver's A pillar section, and the guard seam is pretty sad. The heater bubble has yet to come off, but there is serious work there too judging by the holes around the base of it... This was Dad's contribution: leaving Psychedelic Furs lyrics on my car while my back was turned... So yeah. I've never tackled any kind of rust or metal forming on this level before, so any tips and advice are greatly appreciated! Discuss/offer advice/sharns/tell me it's fucked here:

Sweet! Assembly is the easy bit haha, keen to see it once it's all done though! Haven't really got much planned for the Cortina, a while ago I converted it to a Mk4 clutch pedal setup because the self-adjusting bit broke, but that's about it haha. Might still do a thread update...

Cheers man! How's yours going? Are you still going to run slide throttles?

Oh right, so you wanted the rest of the story too? Sorry, here goes.. Repower, pt.3 So I took a Friday off work, parked the car in the garage and started stripping stuff out of the engine bay. A surprisingly short amount of time later, all the mechanical bits started falling out. Oily, broken 1100 begone! Sorry, I didn't get any air guitar shots, it was too hard to take selfies while lifting the motor out... And it's in! After fitting the ancillaries, filling it with fluids, fitting the manifolds, timing it and winding it over to get oil pressure, the moment of truth arrived. It fired up and ran sweetly, so I had to take it for a cheeky test run sans bonnet. Excite! The valve clearances had closed up a bit, but after adjusting them and checking the head bolt torques, it's been fine. I also replaced the starter solenoid, because one of the terminals broke off. And the Hitachi carb works alright too, I might still play with jet sizes if I can find some others to experiment with. The difference between the engines is night and day though, like it actually goes up hills now. The transmission is smooth, and all the fluids seem to be staying in their respective places, so i'll call it a win. Since then, it's continued to provide effective, reliable daily transport. I gave it a polish and it came up pretty nicely, considering it's actually six different shades of orange And I took it camping at Whatipu over the New Years period. Had to stop on the way home for an obligatory gravel road shot: discuss/tell me to put a rota in it: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/48306-mk2martys-1976-escort-moredoor-discussion/