Hurmeez

I suppose I better start with the obligatory acknowledgement of the extended time between posting...

Cool so with that out of the way, I started to make my first little bits of progress at the new house. And in the theme of progress, I figured the best place to start would be going backwards and redoing work I've already done.

It started (as many bad ideas do) with me standing and staring at the car for a while. The more I looked at the radiator mounts and installation, the less I liked it.

The top hose port of the radiator is above the fill point, and the big notch cut out of the lower cross member is just silly. The proximity to the engine also doesn't leave a lot of space for fans etc, and overall, the rad is just excessively big.

So, what to do about it? Firstly, I decided to look into the engine to rad proximity issue. I went back to the very basics. If the gap is too small, why is the engine so far forward in the first place? Is the distributor too close to the firewall?

Well, no. I'd assumed from the beginning that I'd remove the dizzy and either run batch fire or pick up a cam signal from the front of the engine with some other aftermarket solution.

Ok, what about that IACV? Isn't that in the way? Yeah, it kinda is. Right, so why is it there? Do I need it? For these BMW throttles, yeah, if I want the ECU to be able to control the idle RPM.

Ok, do I need these BMW throttles? Yes. ITBs for me are a hard requirement for this car.

Sure, but do I need *these* BMW throttles? Well, no, not necessarily. @Roman and followers might see where this is going.

Ok, so if I take the intake manifold and throttles off for now, then what is holding the engine forward?

That would be the thermostat housing. Being as it is a FWD engine butchered into a RWD layout, the thermostat housing is now about as far from the radiator as it is possible to get. This is inconvenient from two perspectives; it means the coolant has to return from the radiator past a set of hot headers, and it also means the engine is held forward artificially in the engine bay.

Right, so does the thermostat housing have to be there? Well, again, not necessarily. It's only at the back of the engine thanks to a long transfer tube that takes the coolant from the thermostat to the pump inlet through the valley. If I can figure out a way to get rid of that tube, I should be able to shift the thermostat housing to the front like a civilised engine.

So I had a look at what that might take. The factory pump inlet is fed by the cast adapter on the right hand side of the above photo. I found that by removing the transfer tube, that adapter could be spun 180° to face forward and still bolt up just fine. Great, good start. The next big problem is the cam belt. (If you'll allow me to borrow someone else's photo for a minute) You can see how the belt path runs more or less directly through where the new coolant housing is.

To get around that, I bought a cast aluminium elbow to get the tightest bend I could, then sliced the female O ring sealing surface off the pump inlet adapter and welded on the new elbow.

To finish it off, I needed to make something to allow the thermostat to sit up inside the new elbow and do its job. Initially, I cut the flange off the factory thermostat housing, and tried welding it directly onto the cast elbow.

This was a disaster. A combination of my severe lack of aluminium welding experience (this is my first time using the AC mode on the welder in anger), and a potentially dodgy casting made for very fizzy welds that mostly resulted in a goopy mess rather than a nice sealing flange.
So I cut that off and tried again. This time, I turned up a new flange and tube stub out of a big chunk of scrap from work. The combination of nice fresh material, and my slowly improving abilities made for a much better welding experience this time.

Even with the elbow though, it still wasn't enough to clear the belt. To make the clearance required, a section of 3mm sheet was cut and bent and grafted in to create a small notch.

Note I've given quite a generous clearance gap here. I've seen how much these cam belts can flap under high load/RPM, and the last thing I want is to strip the teeth off the belt, or crack the housing or what have you from the two of them coming together. I was careful to ensure the cross section of the narrowest point was greater than or equal to the next smallest restriction upstream to try and reduce the chance of cavitation or overheating due to restricted coolant flow, but I suppose I won't know how successful I've been until I can actually get it running.

Finally, I needed to provide a return for the heater core coolant supply. I cut supply female O ring boss off one of my spare coolant housings and welded it onto the back side of the pump inlet adapter.

This will allow me to use the heater core supply tube from my spare engine as a return tube for this one.

So then we have the final result:

A slightly modified factory return tube can be used for the bottom radiator hose, and the top hose can connect directly to the standard top housing.

I took the finished product into work and hydrostatically leak tested it to ~5bar (5x higher than the maximum allowable coolant system leak test pressure in the factory service manual), as well as leak tested it underwater with helium to make sure there were no pinhole leaks. All seemed pretty good to me.

So then a bit of a debrief: The modifications should allow me to move the engine back about 60mm before more extensive firewall modifications are required. This will have numerous advantages.
- More clearance for a radiator and fans
- A rearwards moved shifter position (I was never totally happy with the stretch to reach 1st as it is)
- Better sump capacity thanks to more clearance between the cross member and the rear bowl
- Better intake manifold clearance thanks to the slope in the factory bonnet.

The updated coolant path will also clean up the engine bay somewhat, allowing better clearance for the headers on the passenger side.
As far as what I might have lost from changing to this setup, the factory thermostat is an automatic bypass style which blocks off the heater core and recirculates the coolant around the block until the thermostat opens. My new housing does not do this. To make up for it, I intend to use a bypass style heater tap from a early 2000s Commodore to control the flow through the core, and thereby control the heat itself. This will mean I can turn the heater full cold during startup to manually cut the heater core out of the coolant path and hurry the warming up along, or if I'm really desperate, leave it in the loop and warm myself up at the same rate as the engine.

There's still one or two little things left to fully finish off the changes. I'm still of two minds whether I keep the existing fill port and use it as a bleed point, or cut it off and plate over it. I'll see how it goes. The bottom hose tube that comes off the thermostat housing also still needs modifying to mount it to the engine properly, as well as the two feed and return lines to the heater core. These should be simple enough to do once I have a radiator to aim at etc.

If it doesn't work (leaks, overheats, cracks off and explodes etc) I still have a hail Mary solution of removing the water pump and going to an electric pump that is PWM controlled by the ECU, removing the thermostat entirely. That will take a lot more fabrication work and money spent on parts though, so I'll keep that in my back pocket for now until I actually need it.

Thanks for reading. I have done more work on the car since the above, though I've been very slack about taking photos of the progress, so I'll see if I can scrape together enough for a coherent sequel soon.

Cheers.

Made a little group project trophy/keepsake for a co-worker who was moving on. Each little figurine represents a project he had an especially large part in the success of.

*I did the figurines. The "rustic" plaques were supplied to me at the absolute last minute.

Lol nah course not. 

I don't think I explicitly said so back when I did it, but the deal breaker back in the day that convinced me to cut the quarter panel off was the state of the outer sill. I was considering originally just doing my best to panel beat the quarter on the car, but when I started poking around the sill, I found the typical (for this car) 10mm of bog covering a totally munted panel work. As part of cutting off the quarter, I separated the sill off into a discreet section, which I then also cut off and chucked in the bin. So now the job is getting a good replacement panel in its place.

For this, I shelled out for a new replacement panel from Palmside. Pretty cheap and not too far off the correct shape considering the price. 

Figuring it would be too unwieldy to manage the full sill and quarter panel as one unit, I cut the front section of the sill off in a nice straight cut that would be easy to weld back up later on.

That done, I started offering the sill up to the quarter and trimming both to fit.

Once I tacked the front of the sill back on and offered it back up to the car, I realised the alignment wasn't quite right and the panel gap between the bottom of the door and the sill was expanding the further forward it went. Being the anal retentive prick I am, I wasn't able to just let that go.

I zipped through the tack welds and make up a couple of brackets (jigs? Work holding thingies?) with holes of various distances from a central point. This let me swing them fore and aft and finely adjust the relative position of the front and back of the sill to zero in on the gap I wanted.

Once I had my alignment, I was able to tack it all up again, double triple check it all, then start welding it up. 

I had aimed to run it all in one continuous bead to minimise the differential distortion. Ended up having one stop/start in the middle, but the HAZ stayed relatively uniform and I did manage to keep the warping to a minimum.

That done, I spent a day or so  hammering it up and filing it back as best I could until I got it well within a coat or two of high build primer.

I was right initially, it does make it pretty awkward to handle the whole panel now, but it's not an absolute deal breaker. 

Still some small tweaks to do on the quarter yet, but it's coming along. 

To meet the two part seat improvement brief, I opted to focus on the comfort half first.

The main issue with the current layout was the totally level seat base. I'm not sure why I decided on this back in the day when I first did the mounts, perhaps it was because that was how the seat sat on the ground when I was trying it out. Perhaps it was because it allowed the rails to work relatively easily. Perhaps it was because I was like 15 and didn't know any better. Either way, the end product was a seat that put a load of pressure straight onto the bones of one's arse, and left one's thighs flapping in the breeze. So, the most important aspect to improve the comfort would be to tilt the seat base down at the back (or up at the front if you want to look at it that way). 
I decided to base the angle of the seat base off my flat mate's Mk6 Golf R, which are pretty aggressive at about 30 degrees (above the horizon assuming his car itself has little to no rake), but really comfortable. As per usual, I started with cardboard. 

Which made a design that would work, sure, but fuck it's ugly. So I revised the design to a more conventional crossmember/seat box with individual upstands for each seat mount point.

Note also the diagonal braces that pick up on the sill jacking point and gearbox mount to make a single unbroken structure (including the gearbox crossmember) across the whole car. 

Happy enough with the shape, it didn't take long to get it formed in steel. 

The upstands ended up a bit wider than I really would have liked, but they had to be in order to meet the area requirements for certifying the mounts.

Before welding everything in, I went back and reworked a dodgy high school era patch that I am by no means proud of, and converted the floor replacement panel lap joint to a proper butt.

I intend to coat all the inaccessible cavities of these new sections with KBS as well, but there is no point in putting in all the associated effort to later burn the paint off with welds after the fact. So I put in a lot thought as to the order of operations. 

First was to stitch weld the chassis rail to the floor at all the points that will be covered by the seat box.

The plan is to fully stitch weld the chassis eventually, but this is enough to save the paint for now. Yes I know, stop tacking it and just weld it you poof. I'm not very good at MIG alright and this was overhead and Mercury was in retrograde and shush, it'll hold just fine. 

Similarly, the car will eventually need a drive shaft safety hoop. The ideal location will overlap this new seat mount somewhat, so I made sure to install a doubler plate now while it is easy to get to.  

Big thick SOB but I'd rather overkill it than have to go back in later to replace it in order to meet the regs. 

Next was to assemble the seat box and brace assembly as far as practical, again in order to minimise paint burn off later on.

Finally paint! Did the full prep and two coats. Again, probably overkill for an interior panel, but might as well (more foreshadowing). 

While this was drying, I also knocked together the two rear mounts for the seat and got their undersides coated up as well (this is a lie. I was doing all the metalwork in parallel and it took ages to get all the nice little sill hugging details on all the plug weld flanges right).

Finally, with all the component parts finished, painted, and ready to go, I chucked a coat of paint onto the appropriate areas of the floor pan, waited the requisite hours for it to dry, then measured measured measured and welded the buggers in for good. 

(Note that the rear inner mount was not welded in. This will be remade in 1.6mm steel after the verdict from the certifier recommended as much if I want to use the built in seat belt anchor on the seat. Which I do. The factory Escort ones are at a weird angle and not very comfortable to use.)

And would you believe it, I have no photos of the seat in place once all the mounts were fully welded in. 

You'll just have to take my word for it that it looks just like it did in the cardboard mockup shots. Heaps comfy now too. 

It does have the feature (bug? Not sure, hard to say) that it raises up now as it moves forward on the elevated seat rails. This might be useful for any short arse that needs their seat moved forward to see over the dash anyway, since there is no discrete height adjustment in these seats. Regardless, it's at a perfectly comfy height for me when I sit in it, and beyond that who else really matters?

Next mish will be to weld on the sill brace panel I fabbed up in the last post. 
Before that, the brace and sill both got generous coats of KBS, weld through primer in the appropriate spots, and "Hurmeez woz here" tags before getting closed up for good. 

Then I welded the panel on, had a baby, moved house, setup a new smaller garage, ground the welds back, and took some lovely photos.

Phew. It must be time to weld the quarter panel back on now right? ...Right?

These posts are getting fewer and farther between as the years go on. Every time we get stuck into a project at work I'm piling on the overtime, promising myself that as soon as it's done I'll take a week of leave and get some hours in, only for us to go barreling off head first into the next thing with fewer guys, tighter time lines, and ever more ridiculous demands. Add to that a brand new babber in the mix, and the time that I've had spare to spend on this thing has been getting less and less every year. Hell, even this post has been sitting in my notes for months as I slowly find the time to write it. (I wrote the above passage in September 2022 and every part of it remains true ten months later. I'll add wee notes in the post in brackets as I re-edit it now.)

But you're not here to listen to me moan about the shit that we all have to deal with, you want to see what I have actually managed to do, so I'll get stuck in. Bear in mind, all the work in this post was done mid to late last year (2021). 

The whole reason I pulled the quarter off was to give myself the best possible chance at fixing all the crap underneath, so I had a crack at that next.

I started by unpicking all the spot welds on pretty much all the component panels until I got right back to the floor pan itself, then started working my way back out from that blank canvass. 

First thing to be rebuilt was the jacking point and support brace. I acid dipped the factory doubler plate overnight in phosphoric and reused it, otherwise everything is brand new. 

Everything inaccessible is covered in two coats of KBS Rustblast so I have no concerns about any of the rust coming back (Foreshadowing lol. Stay tuned on this) 

Next was to move out to the inner sill brace panel. 

 

This was probably salvageable but it made more sense to just replace it for the four or five folds that it would take. I elected to make it out of two parts butt welded together, cause I didn't have any raw stock big enough to do it in one go. The more complex shape on the one end would also be much easier to re-produce as its own part and weld it on again afterwards. 

Note that the butt weld was made on a diagonal to maximise the strength of the joint and was in no way intended to be a straight weld until I made the first fold on the long panel in the wrong direction. 

Buuut then of course before I welded that on, I wanted to take care of the lap joined replacement floor pan that has been in there for years. I was never stoked with how I had welded that in, and I decided if I was going to do the rest of it right, I want to do this right as well. 

So out comes the grinder and out comes the inner sill. 

Then zip zap zoop, in goes a new one.

I formed the new panel over the edge of the bench with a length of angle iron clamped on top and patient tapping with a hammer dolly as required. It has ended up with a fairly distinctive hand made finish, but that's kind of endearing in my eyes so I don't mind.

You may notice too, that as part of the sill removal the seat mounting cross member was also removed. This was originally intended as a temporary measure to make it easier to do the sill welding, but while it was out, I thought it might be good to improve the seat mounts. 
Thinking about it with the benefit of hindsight, mounting the seat bases dead flat and with M8 bolts, while legal, is neither the safest nor most comfortable way to do it. 

So the brief for the new seat mounts: Make it more comfortable, and make it safer.

Perhaps here is a good spot to end the post to keep it digestible. Now that Reddit is unusable I have no excuses not to keep the thread updated. More to come. 

It's been a long while since the last post and I don't feel like I've done enough for a full post yet, but I do want to put something up to show what I've been working on and to say that neither me nor the project is dead yet. I had typed out a nice post but then the browser crashed and I lost all of it so this might be a bit less polished than usual as I try to rush it out. 

I carried on from the driver's side guard lip by doing the same to the passenger's side. It didn't take long to get the lip cut out and the new one tacked in. You've seen this all before so I shan't write too much about it. 

No sooner had I tacked it in, that half the bloody car fell off in my lap! 

I let myself be convinced by those less directly invested that this would be the best way to tackle the whole thing. To be clear, I agree with them, but damn is it not confronting to see it on the floor like that. This way I can get good access to properly panel beat all the welds, as well and ensure all the inaccessible cavities are properly sealed up and corrosion protected before I put it all back together. For example, see here the bare metal and (house) paint flaking off the inside of the lower window panel. I can paint this up properly and have total piece of mind when I weld the quarter panel back on. 

You can see also how much better access I have to cleaning up the weld on the wheel tub as well. 

With the quarter off, I had a nice easy down hand weld to get the arch final welded, then I stripped the panel inside and out. 

I then spend the next 50 hours panel beating the lower rear corner to clean up the patch welds and sharpen up the body lines that run back from the rear of the wheel arch. It's sitting with a guide coat at the moment so it looks far more wavy than it is. 

The welds themselves are pretty hard to spot at this stage if you didn't know they're there. 

I'm not very good at it but I'm enjoying the process. I still have the whole of wheel arch weld itself to handle as well, hence not feeling like enough progress to warrant a full post. 

Hopefully by the next post I'll have it welded back on the car and looking straight as an arrow. Here's wishing everyone a happy new year since it will likely be after that at this stage. 

 

Cheers.  

To explain the previous change in direction a bit, I'm trying to do everything the right way, taking my time and getting rid of any and all rust in a way that's going to mean it's not coming back. Previously I could be found guilty of rushing things a bit under the naïve notion that I could have it on the road ready for the end of high school. Well this is the start of my fourth year graduated now so that's obviously out the window. So for a while now I've been putting far more effort into doing everything the "right" way, rather than the quick way.

With that in mind, the next logical step is to sort out the rear guards. That's going to involve a fair bit of panel beating to make any butt welding come out well so any extra access I can get to the rear quarter skin the better. Which means it makes more sense to sort it out first before any of those flash new panels I made go in. 

So of course I elected to ignore all that and cut out and replace the inner wheel tub instead. 

I did both sides, hence the last photo showing the wrong side. I wanted to kill two birds with one stone here. First, I had a good chance to acid etch any rust starting in between the skins and prime it all so it wont start again. It also let me rebuild the seat mount lug with an M8 captive nut. I don't know what the standard thread was but I've lost the special shoulder bolt for it. I figured M8 would be a sturdy enough size (bigger than the captive nut that was there) and it'll be easy enough to make myself nice new shoulder bolts to fit. You might also notice I stich welded the wheel tubs to the rear floor section as well. Should help to add a bit of strength. Who knows. 

Finally I got around to the wheel arch. Someone had previously "rolled" the guards by cutting slots with a big fat slitting disk and hammering them up. Obviously, this didn't lend itself to corrosive longevity. I started by chopping out the shitty rusted lower edge of the tub and replacing it with new steel. 

It took a good bit of fiddling around but I got there in the end. Didn't take any photos of the process. Dumb. Still, I'll probably not take any when I do the other side either so that should even it out. 

All the bare steel was painted with two coats of Hammerite. Possibly not the best option but it's what I have and it's mostly to keep everything good until a proper final paint. 

Next was to offer up the repair panel. It almost feels like cheating to use an off the shelf panel but sometimes common sense does prevail. 

I made up a few of these snazzy clamps to hold it all together while I tacked it. They turned out really well. They're really common but if you're not familiar, it's just a piece of square tubing with a slot, and piece of threaded rod tacked to a 1mm steel tab. The tab pokes through the gap and has a hole drilled in the other side to receive a short piece of 2mm filler rod. The nut pulls everything up flush and bingo bango, tacks ahoy. 

All tacked. 

And all welded. This was a mission and a half. Something like four hours of welding and hammering and probably close to five meters of TIG rod. 

I did get a bit of shrinkage warping, unfortunately especially the section that's over the vertical brace member that ties the outer edge of the guard to the rear quarter structure. This makes it next to impossible to panel beat it effectively with the tools I have, though I think I ended up getting the whole thing good enough to skim with a thin layer of filler and call it good. That or I might win the lottery later on and get someone who knows more than me to give the whole car a once over. Dreams are free.

The matt primer really hides a multitude of sins but it actually is pretty damn good. Still could do with a tickle here and there but I'm still happy with what I have achieved. 

I got the lip folded up and stitch welded too. 

Check out the leg! Pure horsepower there!

I'll properly seam seal them and fill it all with cavity wax come final paint and assembly.

With those folded up, I mocked up a wheel to see how it could sit. I refuse to say fitment. Or flush. Yuck. 

Much less yuck. Sweet even. 

Even slapped a few extra lowering blocks in there to get the ride height correct.

Could come down another 30mm or so I reckon. 

Final note/detail that doesn't really fit anywhere in the story. I changed how the wheel tub transitions to the outer skin. The factory setup makes a nice little shelf front and back to collect dirt and grime and shit and keep a good supply of moisture next to the panel and make a nice little rusty ecosystem. I changed it to be a free drop straight from the wheel tub to the ground and not provide anywhere for anything to collect. 

It's not quite as clean on the outside but a little wipe of filler and it'll be fine. You'll never be able to see it from any normal viewing angle anyway. 

The panel beating still isn't perfect. Ideally I need a set of spoons and a slapper to get it all where it needs to be. That'll be my next birthday present to me I reckon. 

Next job though will be to do it all again on the other side. I know how to do it now so hopefully it'll be a little quicker. We'll see.

Again, thanks for reading. I really appreciate it. 

It's crazy, I try to knuckle down in the time I have, perhaps at the expense of quite so detailed photos as I have done in the past. And yet, when I do remember to update on here, I find I have so many photos and done so much more than I realise. 

So, to begin. 

I cut out the rust in the lower right rear wheel arch, giving myself a decent window to have a look at what I had to deal with. 

Not great but not disastrous. I focused on repairing the wheel tub itself first, while I had good access to both sides. It took me a while with lots of fiddly hand forming but I was happy in the end. 

  

With that squared away, I made up a patch for the quarter panel itself and stitched it in. More careful forming over the bench and hammer and dolly work. 

   

I wasn't completely happy with it to be honest. You can see it is pretty much dead straight across the bottom, almost appearing to bend down at the front slightly. It doesn't look right, even when standing a distance back and at a more realistic angle. Later on, I actually ran a slit from the front right to the back and lifted the front edge up by about 25mm or so, tapering back to nearly nothing at the back. It made it much more closer to where it should be and looks a whole lot better. There will probably be photos of this later on but take my word for it for now. 

Finally, with the body work side completed to a point in that area, I could have a crack at my dastardly plan I mentioned last time. I've long known that the battery isn't going to have a home in the engine bay. With that silly big V6 in the way and the overkill intake and such, there's simply going to be no room. Hell I'm still not sure headers will be a given yet but that's a problem for later on. So, where to put it? I had thought about using the spare wheel well back in the day but I've since decided that I like the idea of having a spare after all. Then I had thought about utilising the space ahead of the rear wheel tub and aft of the B-pillar. But I think it's just going to be too narrow to get a decent size erg box in there. I have heard of people making tool boxes in the rear floor, behind the fuel tank and under a false floor panel. I liked that but I thought I could do it a little more elegantly. 

Here begins the idea that last time I said I'd talk about assuming it worked. Well spoilers, but I'm talking about it. 

That weird double skin area in the right rear quarter seemed like a perfect spot to me. The plan was to rebuild the area rear of the latitudinal member into a battery box, and then merge it with the panel fore of the member to blend it all back to how it would be from factory. 

I had a pretty small area to utilise here and I wanted to make the most of it, so very accurate measurements and templates were going to be the order of the day. I broke out the aircraft structure text books from last year and blew the cobwebs off what I had learned. 

  

Howzatt!! The goal was 275mm. Trust the maths man! It's friggen magic!

Of course for all you know I just put the steel rule on the right number since you can't see the zero end, but let me assure you, that could not be further from the truth. 

Sits in there proper nice. 

So I used the same measurements on the steel, used the only bit of steel tube I have lying around to form my radii around, and folded up the final version. 

  

Gotta be happy with that. Note I added the dimple for a grommet to cover access to the spring hanger, same as on the other side of the car. Of course this will mean the battery will need to be removed to pull off the rear spring mount, but that's no real big deal. 

Next thing was to merge it into the forward part of the original panel. I had considered repairing the old one but in the end I decided I was better off to just remake it. Turned out easy enough.  

I had hoped to weld the two together before installing them but the shape simply wont allow it. Perhaps if I had the whole quarter panel off then it'd be a piece of the proverbial, but for obvious reasons, yeah nah. 

Finally, that just left the brace panel between the wheel tub and this second panel. Same deal as before, easier to make new than repair so that's what I did. 

It looks a bit rough but again, all hand formed and it's going to be covered in underseal in the end so I'm not worried. 

And with it all installed, it looks something like this: 

Compared to how it was. 

Looks mint as to me. I still have to work out the covering panel for all this and getting access to the battery and such, but for now, I'm pretty stoked. 

Next up will be to weld this lot in and find something else to do. 

Or of course I could chop the wheel arch out and do something completely different. 

Brilliant. We'll see how this goes later on then. 

Thanks for reading. 

So when I finished the last post I said to myself that the next one should be less wordy and just let the pictures do the talking. Now bear those good intentions in mind as you read the following. 

I did say that I might need to go to Palmside for the repair panel for this one, which means I am all the more proud of what I was able to pull off. 

Considering I only have the bench and a couple of hammers and dollies to work with, it came out pretty close. When you see the photos side by side it looks like the rear sloping section is slightly further forward than the original, especially compared to the shackle bolt access hole, but I'm planning to run an early Mondeo space saver or something so I'm not too worried. My cheviots wouldn't fit in there originally anyway so no biggie. 

Looks pretty good in the hole too. I left the front edge unfinished for now until I figure out what I want to do with the wheel tub and how to connect the two together. You might have noticed I also reused the original strap bracket thing too so, um, neat?

So with the inside panel sorted I started on the outside. I started by stripping the paint back, along with the bog. So much bog. 

Ain't she purty?

After setting to with the bench, hammers, and dollies again, I got this whipped up. 

It looked pretty good and I was preparing to tack it in but as I cleaned up the inside of the rear little corner piece I was finding more and more pitting so I figured I might as well do the whole job proper. 

Believe it or not, this was roughly formed with a rubber mallet on the grass on the back lawn before I did the final fettling the normal way. If it works it ain't stupid right?

And so next began what I can honestly say is my most successful panel welding so far. 

All told it was about two hours to get to this point, welding 10-15mm each time and hammering on each weld to keep the warping to a minimum. I left the front little bit untouched for now because I'm planning on replacing the wheel arch at some point so I'll finish it off when I get that finalised. Some more panel beating and a quick coat of primer later, I got this: 

Lighting it from a very oblique angle exaggerates the imperfections but it gives a good idea of what I'm dealing with.

I've since spent more time sorting that out as best I can and made some good progress. I don't think I'll be able to get it mirror straight with my abilities but it's pretty close now and a couple of coats of high build primer should get it there. It's a damn sight better than it was in any case. 

The last panel I wanted to play with in this area was the lower part of the door surround/quarter panel attachment point. This bit. 

As you can see it's pretty lacy and I wanted to change how the panel fitting worked so I make a replacement up that was slightly different. 

It's the top one here obviously; the bottom being the now installed quarter patch. You can see the flange where it used to sandwich between the quarter and valence has been folded over and an extra flange added to sit flush with it. From the inside:

This is going to let me plug weld the valence directly to that flange and remove the protruding section that they all have from factory. It obviously worked fine for Ford and made it very easy to manufacture but I don't like how it looks and it's always been my plan to remove it. I realise it'll be hidden behind the bumper in the end and no one will ever notice but that's no reason not to waste a few hours on it for me. 

The finishing touch for this area was to add in the dimple for the bung that covers the shackle bolt access hole in the inner wheel well panel. I could have just left the panel straight, but  then anyone who saw it might begin to suspect that the car wasn't a completely standard, unmolested example of a 77 Escort Estate. Obviously that's not something I'm willing to risk. 

All you need is a lovely wee die like this and you too can keep all the anoraks fooled. 

I'll take the hole out to final diameter at some point. Don't rush me. I just spent something like three hours hack sawing through this so I'm a bit tired actually. 

Over the course of making up these panels I did a few plug welds with the TIG. I was quickly convinced I should get myself a MIG before doing many more. So until then, the panels are going to sit nicely in the corner, ready to go when called upon. 

In the meantime, I've opened another can of worms. 

The driver's side quarter has similar rust problems, though not as severe. I figured I might as well crack into it while the techniques are still fresh in my mind and I can't progress on the other side. I started by stripping the paint again. And the bog. Even more this time. I'm reminded again how thankful I am to whomever bodged the shit out of this car didn't just scrap it. Cause judging by their skill level, they really should have saved themselves the effort. And then where would I be?

This patch it going to need some considerable beating around so I'm definitely going to need access to the inside of the panel. Which means this has to come out. 

And this. 

. 

It's a weird, almost double skin design, but not really, with a decently voluminous inaccessible cavity between the quarter panel and this inner one. With no drain holes either. Of course. So any dirt or water or bolts or bread ties or bookmarks or whatever that falls down there is gonna stay there. Until it rusts itself a nice access hole anyway. 

But it comes out easy enough in the end. I love spot weld drills. 

I have some plans for this area. It'll mostly be back to standard with new steel and better drainage, but I also have an idea for the back-most section that I'll reveal later on, assuming it works. Soviet space program style. 

In the meantime I'll get myself a welder sorted out and keep chasing my wheel arch lead. I'm not sure I stuck to the plan with being less wordy but hopefully it's been entertaining nonetheless. Thanks for reading. 

So true to word I finished trimming and cleaning the ends of the chassis rails. 

I plan to trim these tabs off and replace them with some facing outwards instead. That will let me get inside the rail to clean it out properly and get some good rust preventative paint in there before the valence gets welded on. 

Before that though, I decided to make up the valence panel itself. I had planned to make a cardboard template to base my replacement panel off, but then I realised that if I just tacked the original panel back together it would make a perfectly good template itself. I had sliced it in half to get better access to the spot welds for removal but that was nothing the welder couldn't sort out. Finally, with the "template" back in one piece, I cut out some material and took it to a workmate's to borrow his swaging jenny. In a perfect world you'd make the whole panel out of one piece and reap all the mad cred for your panel beating skills. I realised though that I don't actually have anyone that I need to impress and it makes no sense doing something the hard way when the easy way reaps essentially the same result (cough cough sump cough cough). Also there was the fact that the swaging jenny's throat wasn't deep enough to reach the center of the panel if it was in one piece. So it came to be that the panel would be made in a total of three parts. 

I used the jenny to raise the long edges of each of the rectangular swages that run vertically up the panel. 

While I was there I also borrowed the sheet metal brake to put in the two flanges on the top and bottom, as well as the slight horizontal kink in the swages, about 25mm from the top flange. 

All the stretching and folding left the panel with some considerable internal stresses which gave it a fairly substantial twist along its length. Rather than trying to hard to correct it at this stage, I carried on forming each of the features in the hope this would help to relieve some of the stress and help straighten everything out. 

To finish each swage, I hand formed each end with a hammer and dolly, while using the vice as something of a stand-in anvil. I know that's one of the cardinal sins of vice ownership but I don't really have a lot of choice. 

They're not perfect and there is some bruising from being a bit overzealous with the hammer but it's good enough for the girls I go out with and it wont be visible when everything is painted and undersealed. These alone were enough to take the majority of the twist out. 

Next it needed a bend in the top flange to follow the original panel shape. The flange itself is around 25mm wide in the centre where the bend needs to be. That would be a fairly ambitious shrink even if I did have access to a shrinker/stretcher, and now without it's even more so. Happily one of the rear door catch bolts wants to exist in the same place as this centre shrink so by adding a cutout to go around the factory captive nut, similar to the factory panel, I made hand shrinking the flange much more doable. 

So the top flange is bent slightly while the bottom remains straight to weld to the outer rear valence. The top flange front edge was also trimmed parallel to the vertical section meaning the outer edges are narrower than the center.  

Looks pretty good so far. The last thing that needs doing to this centre section is the addition of the water drain points in the lower flange. The panel gets some speed holes from factory and wiring penetration points, all of which will love to scoop up water. Without some way to let this water back out you end up with a substantial rust trap. Ford knew this, hence there are these water drain points in the factory panel that I am going to attempt to recreate. 

Making my life easier again, rather than trying to form these points completely with a hammer and dolly and deal with mind bending shrinking and stretching, I opted to chain drill out the space above where the flange will be moved up into, then weld it back up once the desired shape was achieved. 

I don't think I got any photos of the welds but suffice to say I'm still getting my eye back in after the extended break. Nothing a grinder and paint can't fix though. 

That meant the centre section is more or less complete. But there are still the two outer pieces that need filling in. Starting with the driver's side due to its more simple shape. This one I did start with a cardboard template before having a go at the steel. 

It has a tricky double bend where the two folds are in opposite directions but overlap each other which the cardboard doesn't really conform to very well. This translated to similar problems with the steel and as such I didn't take many photos as I battled to fettle the panel into shape. Eventually though, I got the end piece tacked in place on the end of the centre section and fully welded up.

Finally I gave it another test fit. 

I also folded the lower edge over to match the centre section but I guess I missed the photo of that. It ended up fitting really nice and tight up against the chassis rail and where the flange would be on the outer edge so I'm quite pleased with the result. 

Moving to the other end, the shape required is quite similar but the panel behind it is a bit different. On the passenger side lies the spare wheel well which had a flange on the rearmost edge for the rear valence to weld to. When I went to start working on the shape of the last piece of the inner valence, I realised just how poor of a state the wheel well panel was in. Being completely honest I fell down a rabbit hole and completely forgot about the rear valence for a while. 

The first thing I noticed was the signs of weld penetration from a patch panel on the inside. Next was the panel tacked on the outside, presumably covering a rust hole. 

So switching over to the inside of the wheel well, I hit it with a wire wheel to knock off a lot of the rust and shitty underseal and have a proper look at what I'm dealing with. Which wasn't pretty. 

There's at least two patches on the tub, one on the outer skin, one on the bottom, and one coming partially up the inner side of the wheel well. 

So rather than try to unpick everything and try to repair it, I threw a new slitting disk on the grinder and ran it next to the lower seam and bing bang boom, 

Yeah that's not going to go back together very easily. In any case, here's the panel I'm going to need to recreate somehow: 

Can you count the layers of patches? This one might be a palmside jobbie yet, but they only have the saloon version available so I might has well have a go myself first since an off the shelf panel will need modifying anyway. She's gonna be a pretty big job. 

If you made it through that, thanks for reading my typically over explained and lengthy post. Be sure to pipe up in the discussion thread if you have anything you'd like to add. 

Cheers.