mk2marty

Now, just to throw another spanner in the works, there was a new deadline for the rebuild (or at least a temporary hurdle). 

A change in jobs (and careers) to a Porirua-based association meant we had an impending move to Wellington coming up, and I am very grateful to Aaron for fitting the car in and laying down such an amazing paint job in such a short amount of time. However, the now-rapidly approaching relocation meant rather than taking the time to piece the car back together slowly, it was a case of stuffing as much back into the car as quickly and temporarily as possible so it could be moved. 

Already regretting life choices at this point - the weather got colder and wetter the further south we went. Who knew that Waiouru had sleet in February?
While the Telstar was fine to tow it over the hill and back, it probably wasn't going to tolerate 10 hours-plus pulling a dead Escort full of parts, so I went with the more sensible option of hiring a Hilux for the big drive down country. Not least because it could then also carry all of the crap in the garage that didn't fit in the moving truck... 

Once it was tucked up in the new garage, the long and involved process of 'clean, paint, lubricate and refit' could begin. Oh, and a whole lot of this stuff:

I figure if it's managed to prevent the Accord from dissolving into a flaky puddle, it must be good (and I really like the smell of it for some reason). Many cans later, and all of the cavities were waxed. Some of it went on the car too, puhuhu

As predicted in an earlier post, I've blinged it up a little bit. While it was a pretty un-fucked with original car when I bought it, a base model Escort sort of isn't the greatest place to be. Part of the goal for the restoration was to make modifications to it based on what was available in period, and mostly from the Ford parts bin. Sort of an 'if you worked at a Ford dealer in the '70s and got cheap deals' kind of exercise. It's also an excuse to use some of the parts I've hoarded over the years. 
So, to that end, it has a full set of factory bronze-tinted glass, remote driver's mirror, centre console, and stainless window trim from a Ghia, 13x5" Rostyle wheels (of the correct earlier offset, either from an early Sport or a Mk2 Capri - this wasn't intentional as I'd have preferred the '79-onward spec wheels with an increased negative offset, but at least I can claim they're correct for an early Mk2/tbh the main factor was just that they were cheap), and a couple of different 2V Weber carburettors. Tried a 32/36 DGAV on it initially, which was simply too big - because it's intended for a Cortina the throat sizes are wrong for anything under a 1600, which means the air speed through the venturis is too low to achieve proper fuel atomisation (so it bogs at low RPM, and generally doesn't have a good time). It has a jetted-down 32DGAV 5E currently (fitted as factory to a 1600 Sport) which has smaller venturi sizes and works better, but the manual choke conversion for a DGAV has never really worked properly, so when I saw a 32DGV 15C (the factory manual choke 1300 Sport/1300GT carb) come up on TM, I jumped on it. Shortly after that, a set of factory extractors popped up, so I grabbed those too. Dad very kindly donated a Sport air filter housing to the cause, and all of these will find their way onto the car once I've built the other engine sitting in the shed. This will end up being based on 1300 Sport specs, with a few extra David Vizard tweaks thrown in (and hopefully the car's original 1100 pistons, for more compression). Managed to score a factory Sport gearbox for it too (which has a closer ratio and allegedly stronger gearset from OE), so that will go in when the engine does. 

I also built up a 3.89:1 final drive for it, to give it some longer legs on the motorway than the 4.11 it had. Hasn't made a huge difference, but every little helps.

Spot the difference.

Anyway, circa April '21 it went for its first WOF post-reassembly, and shortly afterward it made the trip up to Auckland for the north harbour all Ford day. This was actually a pretty momentous occasion - the old man brought along his Escort estate (which he's had since the early '80s, and I learnt to drive in), and the two finally went to a show together. It only took like 8 years for it to happen...

And that pretty much brings us up to the present day. Still have it, still have plans for it, still have parts in the shed waiting to go on it. However, with a growing fleet and a Fairmont that's taking increasing amounts of time and money, those things are taking longer to happen. Ah well, it's still nice to open the garage door to it. 

Discussion for additional Escort barrying here:

Big shout out to Aaron at Full Noise Auto Restorations Ruakaka for laying down a stunning coat of paint:

Telstar will tow anything. And yes, it's on the trailer backwards - in fairness, it didn't have an engine over the front axle, and I didn't want to blow the rear window out of it...

Thread dredge. I'll try and piece together the rest of the story as best I can remember. 

We finished the last instalment in Dargaville, just prior to the first wave of Covid. While most of the first lockdown was spent underneath various tractors, the extra few days here and there helped to keep progress going on the Escort. 
First thing was to cut open the LHS C pillar, where a large hole lurked. Most 4 door Mk2s have this problem - C pillars that rust from the inside out. The reason for this is that the inner vent body doesn't sit level with the bottom of the vent aperture in the outer pillar, so there's always a few millimeters of water sitting in the bottom of the vent. Now, this would be fine if it could just evaporate with the air movement past it as the car drives along, but whatever bitumised sealant Ford used to seal the vent body to the outer pillar skin goes hard eventually, and allows that little puddle to wick its way down and sit between the sealant and outer pillar. This is what causes the characteristic C pillar rust bubbles, and once you can see the rot coming through from outside the car it's too late...

This was what lurked under the bubble in the pillar, after I'd cut the hole in the vent body back to reasonable-looking steel. Note the space between the bottom of the hole stamped in the outer pillar, and the bottom of the vent body. Also, offending bitumised sealer visible towards the rear of the hole.

Because I like having the famed Ford AeroFlow (TM) ventilation (changes the air in the cabin every 30 seconds, don't you know), I wasn't just going to cover over the vent apertures. Not least because you know that with AeroFlow (TM) you only need to smell farts for 30 seconds until they're driven from the cabin by the incoming fresh air.
So that meant I needed to fix the C pillar vents, and find a way of fixing the inbuilt water trap. This ended up being a new channel section with drain and hose (which runs down behind the wheelarch and exits under the boot floor), welded into the vent and sealed against the new piece of steel I welded into the outer pillar. I'm still not entirely happy with how it turned out - it's not the tidiest repair, as access for both death wheel and welding torch is severely limited - however it's functional and non-visible. And hopefully it's solved the problem of water pooling in the bottom of the vent. 

Didn't take as long as I should have with the welding and grinding and things got a little hot, so I inadvertently managed to warp the panel a bit, which was annoying. Managed to get it fairly straight again with the hammer and dolly though. 
Rinse and repeat on the other side:

Rebuilt the rear of the RHS wheelarch, inner and outer skins:

There were a few other places that needed patching - the bottom of the RH A pillar, and the top of the RH A pillar once the screen came out and more holes appeared. After this, I had to make some new guard mounting rebates for the tops of the inner guards, attach the new heater bowl, and attach the front valance and guards permanently. So, it went from looking like this: 

...to this:

By this point, in addition to the front guards and valance, most of the bolt on panels had been replaced - the bootlid and three out of the four doors were substituted with ones that the tin worm hadn't attacked. It was almost ready for paint. There's enough photos in this update though, so that'll be next time...

On a side note, it's bittersweet going through all these old photos again - my little garage buddy passed away earlier this year. Miss her heaps. 

(Ignore the panel fitment, it gets fixed next update) 

This is the other Australian. Cost way too much to buy, and will cost even more by the time it's back on the road. 
No idea what it's like to drive, because the engine's in pieces and i bought it like that.
Like all Falcons it has rust, shit repairs in places where it used to have rust, and rust coming through again where some of the shit repairs are. It also has the most early 2000s bogan colour scheme, inside and out. It looks like a bumblebee. Someone has removed most of the original interior, including replacing the factory Fairmont front bucket seats with some sort of electric couches from a Chrysler minivan(?), which weigh about as much as a small moon. The factory buckets are unobtanium too, because they're the first thing on the shopping list for anyone building a GT replica.

I've always wanted one though, so what can you do? Bonus is that it's certed for a 351C/FMX/disc brake 9" diff too. 

Escort passed an important milestone recently

A Lucas appears!

On 23/06/2023 at 07:00, jessemk2 said:

Looks like that's been in the country since 1965, RHD converted from the picture too. Bet it could tell some stories, a pillarless '59 Cadillac would not have been an easy car to get hold of in 1960s NZ. 

/pft 

On 03/05/2022 at 19:12, Motu said:

I should practice my signature and sign a few cars myself. What happened to these...Telstars in general, 4 cyl or V6 ?  They were everywhere, and then poofta...all gone.

spotted this one on my lawn, does that count?

Usual cheap car casualties - lack of maintenance kills them, and they're not worth enough to fix again. 

Radisiches are starting to gain a bit of a cult following, but regular GE platform 626/Telstars are vanishing quickly. Which is a shame, because a V6 XRi hatch with a sunroof and leather is actually a pretty sweet car tbh.

/for thread: