Hurmeez

I got a quick bit of welding done last night before work. Not much but it's progress.

Alright time to make up for the time I've been away. Prepare for a pic dump for the ages. I've been working on buttoning up the bottom front corner of the driver's side inner wing. In the last post I got the outer skin of the chassis leg all finished up so now I'm working on the other side. I sprayed the inside of the rail and the back side of the bumper mount reinforcing plate before I clamped it up ready for welding. I tried to position the welds close to where they were originally for no reason other than neatness. Then I welded it all on, including some tacks to the crush tubes,. This might seem a bit on the weak side but that's what was holding the original pieces together so once again, good enough for Uncle Henry... And cleaned it all up while I was there. Now it was time to start thinking about fitting up my inner wing repair panel that I made up months and months ago before I realised just how much of a mission all this front end work was going to be. This part is going to dictate where the front valence panel will mount so it's fairly critical that I get it in the right spot. Thankfully, some clever bloke thought about all of this before hand. When I went to all that trouble to make my guards bolt on, I made sure they bolted to the front valence in a way that held it tight to the inner wings while they were still there at the time. Therefore, I should be able to clamp the front panel up to the upper inner wings that I already know are in the right place, bolt them to the guards, and then clamp my lower inner wing repair panel to the valence to show me where it needs to go. If none of that made any sense, don't worry, I took photos. So to start, clamping the front panel to the upper inner wings. Like this. Then bolt the guards on... The repair panel actually jammed in place by itself which was handy. Then I passed some bolts through the crush tubes with some grease on the ends and spun them once they touched the new panel. This put a grease spot in the position of the hole for the crush tube which I could then center punch and drill through. Which gave me this... The holes weren't in the perfect place and the tack welds made it difficult to fit so I opened each hole out with a die grinder until it fit nicelyish. This photo shows what the panel was that I had to work with. It's hard to see properly from this angle but there was quite a gap between where the panels were and where they needed to be in order to butt up together nicely. I decided to bolt up the brake booster mount to try and brace everything a bit and stop myself from pulling things too far trying to make my panel fit Uncle Henry's. Goodness knows how effective it will be but at the very least it makes me feel better about myself. Then I went ahead and opened the hole out further to more closely fit my panel. At this point I started to go the other way and began to trim my panel to fit the hole. Once it was fairly close I started to clamp it into position. Once I had it all fully trimmed up and holes drilled for plug welds I sprayed everything with a good coat of weld through primer. Once it was dry it got clamped up once again and tacked in place with the TIG. I figured now would be a good time to double check the front valance fit before I do all the plug welds. Once they're in it'll be a real prick to try and adjust. Looks pretty good to me. So I set to and broke out the MIG to fill in all those holes. Turned out well. Good penetration all round. And that's about as far as I got. I decided to clean up a bit before I did all the TIG welding fully, as well as pulling out the cross member for better access. So that's it for this week. Next plan is to finish up the welding on the driver's side inner wing then give the fab work a rest for a bit and get my ass into gear with pulling the V6 out of the Mazda. Hopefully the welding shouldn't take too long but these things always seem to for me. I'll be sure to keep you guys posted.

I suppose steel will be cheaper as well versus the alloy. Looking at the flywheel, I assume those lumps at 9, 11 and 1 oclock are what you mean by balancing efforts? Surely they'd be simple enough to turn off in a lathe wouldn't they?

That's the plan Alex, I just have to get a hold of the gearbox and engine first. I bought the box last night and am just waiting on confirmation on when is the best time to pick it up. As for the engine, I have to pull the car in under the hoist but there's other cars in the way at the moment so much tetris must be played beforehand. I'm looking forward to it though.

Thanks everyone for your replies. On the flywheel front, I talked to Claire on the MX5 forums who has done this engine and gearbox combo in the past, and she said that she had no issues with the flywheel being unbalanced. Apparently on the RX-8 the counterweight is separate to the flywheel, whereas the flywheel off an RX7 (which fits the 8 and looks very similar) has it built in, leading to the confusion. Therefore I have decided to go this route with it. That means I won't need to pull the engine out of the 626 down in Auckland, though thanks heaps to @bigfoot for the generous offer. On the adapter plate front, thank you @BigT105e for the suggestion and I totally see where you're coming from but I feel like I wouldn't be comfortable with the amount of accuracy that I would get from doing it that way. Instead, thanks again to @Transom, I found the CAD drawings of the KLZE bell housing bolt pattern. I also found a drawing of the RX-8 bell housing bolt pattern and set the two over each other to try designing my own plate. It's very much in the early stages so far but I'm still chipping away at it slowly. You can see there are some clashes with bolt positions but one on the top left is a locating dowel on the engine side so I might be able to get away with it. The lower one I'm not so sure about yet but I work on it some more and I'm sure I'll figure something out. My plan it to get it to where I think it will work, then cut it out of MDF on the school's lazer cutter to check it will fit, then take it to a CNC shop in town and get them to cut it out of some ally plate for me. It should work out to be cheaper than importing it by a long shot. I'm still open to your guys' thoughts so fire away.

No pic update tonight. Looking for advice and opinions. I've managed to locate a gearbox in Auckland which is close enough for me to be willing to drive down and pick it up. It comes with everything from yoke to bell housing including throw out bearing and clutch lever but no clutch, pressure plate, or flywheel. So I'm at a bit of a cross roads. There seem to be two different options for how people adapt the RX-8 box to the V6. They both require the use of an adapter plate because there are no RWD boxes that bolt up the the V6 but I think I'll tackle that issue later on. For now I'm thinking about the flywheel and clutch situation. At the moment the motor I have is bolted to an auto box so I'm going to need to find a flywheel of some sort. One option is to use the rotary flywheel with a spacer adapter to take it from the single nut used on the rotary motor crank to the six bolts used on the V6. This is clairetoo's flywheel she did for this conversion. This option has the advantage of retaining the stock rotary clutch, pressure plate, and starter motor position and I already know where I can get the whole lot with minimal effort. The other option used by Alex in his Viva is to use a stock (or aftermarket) V6 flywheel with a machined spacer to bring it out to the correct position relative to the gearbox input shaft. I believe he used the V6 clutch and pressure plate which matched up the the rotary input splines. The complication of this method is that the starter needs machining to bring it in toward the flywheel center because the flywheel is 10mm smaller in diameter than the rotary one. Also I can't find a V6 flywheel anywhere but in a 626 in a pick-a-part in Auckland. Normally I'd be happy to go and pull it but I don't have an engine crane to pull the motor, and it's a long way to go. I'd be worried that I couldn't pull the motor in a day and then I'm stuck in Auckland overnight with a half pulled engine. So at the moment I'm leaning more toward the rotary flywheel because it keeps things as simple as possible and keeps the most stock parts on the car which is always a good idea if I ever needed to do maintenance. But there's one thing holding me back. I've read online that the rotary flywheels have a counterweight built in to balance the effect of the dorito wobbling around in the engine. I'm thinking though that putting that on a regular piston engine it will be totally out of balance and make a mess of everything. Does anyone know if this is the case? At the moment I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be an issue simply because Claire has already done it on her project. Finally, I'm thinking about building my own engine to gearbox adapter plate. I've looked at how much it would cost to import one from the UK and right now I'd rather have a go at making my own. I have access to a big milling machine for drilling the actual holes so I'm not too concerned with that aspect, but what I am not completely sure about is how I should go about measuring the positions of the holes as accurately as I'll need to to ensure a good mating between the two components. I have some ideas but I'd be keen to know your guys' suggestions. Phew! That's it. If you've made it this far and actually read it all then well done. I'd be only too keen to hear everyone's opinions. Chuck it all in here:

I feel like I'm saying this every update but not too much done today. Lots of balls in the air so to speak. I started with putting a bunch of holes in the outer rail skin with a step drill to plug weld it to the inner channel. Here it is all clamped in place. I gave both inner faces a couple of coats of weld through primer to help to keep the corrosion at bay. You can also see the ARB mount bolts in position to make sure they'll be able to easily slide in and out once it is all welded up. Then I welded the lot up with the MIG. It's much faster for these sort of jobs and far less involved than the TIG. While I had the MIG out I also went and spotted the butt joint together as well. I was originally planning to use the TIG for this part but I've only got the one gas regulator between the two machines and I couldn't be bothered swapping it over. No matter, the MIG will work just as gooder. It's not very in focus but such is life. You can see I've started to grind back the plug welds too. Finally I got the whole lot ground back and gave it a lick of paint. Not too bad. I reckon if you didn't know, you'd never know it'd been touched. That's all for today. I won't be working on it tomorrow because I have exams all day but I should be back into it on Friday. That is all.

Time for today's update then. I didn't get as much done because I had an exam but in the time I had I was quite happy with the progress. I started off by making some holes in the existing chassis rail. I cleaned inside the rail with a die grinder and solvent before I sprayed some weld through primer to try to keep the exposed steel to a minimum. Then I cut and clamped some 2mm plates inside the rail ready for welding. The idea here is for the plate to act as both a reinforcement, and a locating mechanism to hold the channel in place while I butt the two channels together. So I turned the TIG up to 11 and set to joining everything together. The green colour is from the weld through primer being messed up by the heat of the weld. These are the hottest I've ever had my little TIG; I'm trying to make sure I get some good penetration into the 2mm plate. Once all three plates were in I was able to slot the new channel section on and double check all the measurements. I wanted to be doubly sure that everything would line up nicely so I clamped everything to the angle iron again. Then I added another clamp to hold everything laterally and went ahead and welded in the rosets. And wire brushed it off all pretty like. Finally I could get to the actual butt welding. I left the welder cranked way up because I didn't have to worry about blowing through thanks to the backing plates welded in behind the joint. Almost like I planned it... Looks pretty good to me. All cleaned up, And painted with a quick spritz to stop any flash rusting. This was the last bit I got done on the Escort. Tomorrow I'll clean back the inner channel, hit it with some weld-through, and weld the outer skin on. That's the plan anyway. Meanwhile, I did a bit of work on the Mazda to try and sort out the trans issues. Remember, I do want to daily this thing if at all possible until the Escort is ready to take its guts. It's a really nice car after all. I started off talking to the transmission expert friend of mine (wouldn't really work if I called him the "trans guy," would it?). He suggested it may be a stuck valve of some sort preventing hydraulic pressure from getting to the valve body and letting the trans select a gear. He gave me a set of instructions of how to pull this valve and clean it up to see if that would help, then left for a while to go and run some errands. I pulled it out and hit it with some wet and dry as instructed before I reassembled and tried to put it in gear again. Still nothing. Kaput. Still, I was warned this might be the case. If it was, I was told to unplug a certain hose from the trans and run the motor to drain the trans of fluid before I pulled the pan off the trans to look for any shrapnel. So I did. Pulled the hose, ran the engine, got much less fluid than I expected into the waste oil container. Curious... I just assumed there mustn't have been much fluid in the trans. Maybe that was the problem in the first place. In any case, I'd drained it so now I went to pull the pan off. These bloody modern cars man! What a pain in the ass! Eventually I managed to get all the bolts out after wrestling around a cross member for too many minutes. Then I belted the pan a couple of times with a rubber mallet to break the gasket and get it off. Then it came off. Full of trans fluid. Shit. It may look like I decided to work on it in the barn for today but in reality that's all the sawdust I had to throw down to soak up the fluid. Once I had that mess dealt with I got to have a look inside the pan. This is what I saw. Now I like glitter just as much as the next man, but when I have that much of it, and in my trans fluid, I tend to get a bit upset. The two magnets were absolutely covered in chips and shrapnel and the oil itself had a very pretty sparkle to it. I don't think I have to be an expert to say she's toasted. I talked to my mate again and he said it's going to need a very extensive rebuild in the least, a new trans at worst. At the moment I'm thinking that it is going to be a pull the engine and sell the rest as parts job like I originally intended. And I'm ok with that. That said, the guru has offered to look for a new trans for me for much cheaper than I'd be able to get it due to his connections so there's still a slim chance of saving it. I think I'll probably just take the selling it as parts option though. It'll probably save me a lot of headaches. I should know for certain tomorrow anyway.

Today's work so far... I started by measuring, marking, and trimming the inner channel to the correct length. It didn't take too much fiddling which makes a nice change. I used a piece of angle iron to keep the channel parallel to the top of the original for checking the fit. I got it trimmed up properly and mocked the two skins up together to check how they'll sit. Looks good. Next I had to transfer the positions of the holes for the ARB mount crush tubes from the outer skin to the inner one. Easy peasy. Then I got them drilled out and test fitted the tubes. Should fit nicely. I gave it a couple of tacks with the MIG from the inside to hold it in place, Then fitted the bumper mount brace panel to the back side to stop the tubes from pulling to one side or the other... While I fully welded the front side with the TIG. The tubes stuck out slightly proud which meant I barely had to use any filler. Then I cleaned up the welds and put a drill back down the tubes to clean up any spill over of the weld bead. Finally I assembled everything to check how it would fit, I measured the position of the ARB mounting bracket relative to the other side which is as yet unmodified. So far they are dead nuts on so I'll go ahead and get this side tacked in. Not before I disassemble it all again to put some paint up inside the rail though. I'll put some topcoat on before I weld it in. I've stopped for a quick lunch now but I'll be back out there real soon.

Thanks Alex. I'm sure I'll be coming back to you with plenty of questions in the future.

No actual progress today. Sat around at the accident clinic for three hours waiting to turn this Into this. It's a bit bloody over kill but such is life. At least it was free. In future I'll just fill it with antibacterial goo and tape it up. It would save so much time. Oh well. I have school off tomorrow so I can get some work done then.

The Mazda is home now and it's in really good nick. I didn't realise quite how nice a car it is. It has cruise control, climate control, AWD, sun roof that both slides open and tilts open, heaps of leg room for the back seats, as well as the big boot. When we towed it from the transporter company depo it went into gear to begin with, then I put it back into neutral and it wouldn't go back into gear after that. It was making a horrible death rattle noise from the trans for some of the tow and nothing at all for others. Messing around with it today, it felt like it was in park for all the gears and rocking it back and forth did nothing until it popped and started rolling. It still wouldn't go into gear though after that and would just roll down the slight slope that it is parked on. I'm going to talk to the transmission man up the road tomorrow to see what it would cost to sort the trans out because I'd actually really like to use it as a daily now I've got it. That said, if it's not just a simple fix and going to cost big bucks to fix, I'll pull the engine and sell it as parts. It'd be a shame really but that's the way the cookie crumbles. In other news, I did some more work on the chassis leg repair channels this evening. If you remember back to earlier in the week, I folded up the inner channels and managed to put a fold in the wrong bloody place to fit properly in the outer skin. Tonight was spent trying to remedy that. This is the before shot. The plan was to hit it with some heat and try to flatten out the fold. Doing it cold would probably make it crack so hopefully the heat would help prevent that. I didn't take any midway photos because I was busy juggling a gas torch but I'll put a stop to your waiting and show you the end product. It's a little warped but nothing fatal and it should pull straight once it's been folded up again. Next job was to put the fold back in but in the right spot. I measured the inside of the outer skin panel and did a little bit of maths as an excuse for the guess that actually gave me the new measurement. Then, not having a sheet metal brake man enough to do the 2mm steel, I moved over to the press. I made sure to line everything up perfectly before I started and checked it against the other one while it was only bent through a small angle to try to catch it early if it was wrong. Once I got it started in the right place on the two round bars, I moved over to the V-block you can see to the right of the picture and finished the fold. It turned out like this: Which is to say snug as a bug in rug. Perfect. By using the same method as the outer skin I put the cut-aways in the same places as the stock car. This is, step drill to make the radius, then cut the extra steel away and clean it up with the flap wheel. Then I quickly zapped up the seam in the lower (upper in the previous photo) flange to finish off the overall folding part of the job. I quite like using the TIG on this heavier gauge stuff. Something about 70 odd amps going into it is just so satisfying. I subsequently ground this back to clean it up nicely too. Next was to add the "crumple zone" kink with my fancy custom press dies. I lined everything up as best I could and started to press it in. In hindsight I should have done it the other way up because to begin with it just folded it into a V shape and it wasn't until I flipped it that it came back to straightish. This is how it turned out "hot off the press" (see what I did there?). And this is after some fettling and dicking around to make it fit again. I'm happy with that. It'll definitely do the job. Next I trimmed off some excess along the top flange using the tin snips. In hindsight, I should have just used the grinder because the 2mm sheet is a pig to cut with the snips. Especially the last little bit. Especially when you slip at the very end and slice your finger right open and bleed all over the shop. So now my finger looks like this and I'm going to get it cleaned and dressed at the clinic tomorrow. I've got popsicle stick splints on either side to try to stop me from bending the knuckle and opening up the cut. I even managed to catch my ring finger but not nearly as badly. So the plan for tomorrow is to get my finger sorted, then finish getting the inner rail final trimmed and offered up, possibly even tacked in place. Also I'll get the transmission man around to have a look at the Mazda if possible. Let me know if you want to see a video of it not working and I'll chuck one up. Someone might have an idea. For now though, I'm going to focus on not bleeding and catching some Zs.

Folding up the channels had some mixed results. I got the first folded up with a bit of fiddling around but it turned out good. The second must have been not quite on the line or something but it came out slightly to big to fit properly. This is both channels fitted into the outer skins. This photo sort of shows how the second one doesn't fit nearly as good as it needs to. My plan is to try to heat up the fold and flatten it back out so I can refold it in the right place. Failing that, I have more steel so I can always just make another one. I'd rather not waste it though. Sorry for the small update. The Mazda should turn up tomorrow. Should be fun.

Got some quick stuff done tonight. I got a hold of some 2mm sheet steel to make up the inner frame rails so I marked that out and cut it up ready for folding in the brake at school tomorrow. I started by making up some test profiles to find out the measurements I was going to need in order to get the two skins fitting snugly over each other. The first one was too small, But the second one was just right. I then used the measurements off the second one to mark and cut out the blanks for the channels. This 2mm stuff is a pain to cut with anything but the big bench guillotine. The tin snips will just do it but it sucks when you've got girly grip strength. I also quickly knocked up a couple of dies to press in the "crumple zone" corrugation in the inner frame rail. It's pretty quick and dirty but it will do the job and it's going to be hidden so I'm not too worried if it doesn't yield a completely pristine result. Confirmed with the truck company the Mazda should be here Thursday because their truck has been in for maintenance. Looking forward to it.

I had a closer look at the gauges of the skins that make up the rail and I found that the outer rail is 1mm, as is the panel I've made, but the inner skin is 2mm which I have none of to make a replacement. So I can't make any major structural additions today but I can work on making all the details on the outer skin right. I started by getting the sway bar mount in position. I measured the positions of the holes on the original and transferred them to the new panel. This is the mount mocked up in position. And here are the holes in position: I also went and added the "crumple zone" relief cutouts using a step drill, slitting disk, and flap wheel on the grinder. They came out looking really nice methinks. I then went ahead and put in the holes for the crush tubes in the bumper mount brace panel, as well as brand new M8 riv-nuts for the actuall bumper mounts. I measured it all and it should be in the right place but I'll soon find out. Next job was to turn up some crush tubes for the sway bar mounts. I found some round stock and started it in the lathe. The factory tubes are 45mm x 11mm ID x 15mm OD. If that was good enough for Uncle Henry then it's good enough for me. I got the whole length down to 15mm OD first Then cut off four sections slightly overlength Then got them faced to length and drilled one before I got kicked off the lathe. (this is just left on the drill bit to take the photo, it was clamped in properly while I drilled it out) I'll finish the other tubes off tomorrow. That's all for today. I'll try to get some stuff up Tuesday or Wednesday when the car turns up.

Thank you for the tips. I did have a look at some aftermarket ECU's yesterday and you're not wrong about the prices. I'm aware that going this way won't be as cheap as chucking the pinto in it but I'm looking forward to the learning curves I'm going to have to go through. I believe Alex used a megasquirt in his viva and that came out relatively cheap I think. In any case, it'll be fun to solve each problem as it comes up.

Well it's been a while but I'm finally getting back into it now the weekend's come back. I made a start by cutting out the part of the inner guard that needs replacing. It took a bit of cutting and spot weld drilling but it came away easily enough. Before: And after: You can see a really dodgy "repair" that's been welded over the outside of the rail, probably something to do with the collision that caused all the buckling in the inner wing sometime in the past. I doubt it would have stood up to any sort of cert and it looks hideous so I'm going to cut it from just behind it and get rid of the whole lot. The replacement panel is all made up months ago before I realised how much of a mission the whole job was going to be. Everything you see here is going to be replaced. Before I can do that though, I have to cut out the bad stuff. I started by cutting the whole lot off just where I said. Now to stop all the stresses building up in the same place I'm not going to join both the inner and outer skins at the same point. So I'm going to carefully peel the outer skin back without damaging the inner skin and join the two in two different steps. So, here's the peeled rail. Came away pretty simply. This is the new outer rail mocked up to see how it will fit. Snaps on nicely so I must have made it pretty damn close to the right size. It's way too long currently but it'll be trimmed down to size later on. I learned a couple of things from cutting off the end of the rail. It's a little more complicated than a straight rail on the internal skin. There's a pressed kink, obviously some sort of rudimentary crumple zone. It sort of looks like a shadow in this photo but it goes between the two cut away parts. Now as much as the thought of a pristine front end and a steering column through my face in the event of a crash is appealing, I'd rather not screw up my pretty teeth. Therefore, I'm going to reproduce these features in my rails. I'll have to figure out a set of dies to press them in. On the Mazda motor front, I've got the car turning up on a truck either Tuesday or Wednesday so the next exciting chapter in that saga will begin soon. Until then, more cutting and head scratching today.

I thought it might be Claire but I wasn't sure. I have been reading her stuff on the miata forum but I didn't fully put the two together. I believe that when you use the mx5 box then the kl flywheel is the way to go but I talked to her directly on the CE facebook page and the rx flywheel was what she suggested for the rx box.

Yeah it's an auto 4wd wagon but the gearbox looks to be pretty buggered. I have no real qualms about breaking it and selling it as parts. If people really felt strongly enough about saving it they would have bought it already since it's been up in tardme for months at this point. Regarding the flywheel, I'm currently planning to use an rx8 clutch and flywheel setup modified to bolt up to the kl crankshaft. That is what the guy from crapengineering has done. This way if I keep the flywheel in the same relative position to the box as stock I can use the stock rx8 starter position, clutch, pressure plate, throwout bearing, slave cylinder etc. which should save a lot of headaches.

Thanks very much mate

Thanks @Transom. I was thinking I'll go with some sort of megasquirt so that should solve the distributor issue. I'm reading through Alex's thread now but it's a real bummer about photobucket being such a prick. I'd be happy for any help you could offer .

That was the video that started the whole thing . I think you're right about the order of operations with doing the V6 straight off. I think I'll be better able to decide once I actually have the motor mocked up in position.

Prepare for a let down of an update... The exciting update turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment. Over the last couple of weeks I've been inspired by @yoeddynz 's Viva and I've decided I want to put the mazda klze v6 into the escort. I did some quick measuring up using dimensions I found online and it looks like it will fit (tightly mind), with some small modifications. I want to put an rx8 six speed gearbox behind it because it is very similar in length to the ford type 9 and puts the shifter in the right spot. There's a guy in the UK that makes adapter plates to out the rx8 box behind all sorts of motors and it's a fairly well documented swap. So that's my new plan; find a kl motor and an rx8 box. I started by looking around for an rx8 box. They're hard to find and the ones on trademe are wanting $1250! The whole reason people started putting these boxes into escorts was because they were cheaper than the seirra type 9s! So for now I'm just going to keep a lookout for wrecked rx8s with either the 5 or 6 speed because they both have the same bellhousing bolt pattern so any adapter plate I make or get made will fit both and I can upgrade a 5 speed if I find a 6 later on down the track. Then I started looking into where to get the engine from. Luckily I found this on trademe. It's a Mazda Capella wagon jap import with the 200hp higher compression klze engine in it. The ad said the gearbox was dodgy and would probably needed replacing but I won't need that. Most importantly, he only wanted $900 for it and it was only in Auckland. I figured I'd drive it home babying the gearbox, pull the engine and sell the rest as parts to end up with a fairly cheap motor. That was the plan anyway... We got down there this morning to find that what he meant by dodgy gearbox was actually a completely non-functioning gearbox that wouldn't pull it away from the curb. Poo. That said, the engine sounded fine and the rest of the car looked really good so the new plan is to find out how much it will cost to get it transported home and as long as it's not too bad I'll truck it back up north and set about stripping it for parts. I'm undecided whether to throw the pinto in for the first while so I can still drive it while I build up the v6 and get it organised, or whether I should put the v6 in to begin with so I can do all the fabrication on it at the same time. At the moment I'm leaning toward the second option but I also really want to get in it and drive it as soon as possible so it's a hard choice. Feel free to give me any suggestions or advice on this mad new development here:

It's been a while since the last update because I had a birthday last weekend and I'm back at work now after a couple months mooching off ACC so it's harder to find time for the poor old escort. That said, I got a little bit done tonight. I started by cutting out the bad steel that I made the repair panel for last time. Then I trimmed both panels up and tacked them together to check how they fit. I'm not worried about the gap at the bottom because everything below there is being replaced anyway. Then I went ahead and fully welded the two patches together. I thought it would be easier to do this while they weren't on the car. In hindsight, I should have done the other side in two parts like this too. It saved a lot of time and headaches. Then I tacked it in place and double checked everything. I'm happy with how it's shaping up. I'm going to leave everything tacked for now right up until I have all the replacement panels on the car, just to let me adjust things if I need to in the process. I apologise for the lack of substantial updates for a while. Trust me though, there will be a very exciting (for me anyway) update on the weekend so stay tuned for that...

I got some more work done tonight. I started off by tacking the wing repair panel in and checking everything for squareness and so on. Looks good. I compared this level reading to one taken from a piece of square tube laid across the rear window frames and they are close enough for me to be happy at this stage. I can fine tune it later on. Then I moved on to the other side. It was in much the same state as the driver's side but I forgot to take a before photo. In any case, this is it after I made up the repair panel and got it fitting nicely. I've not tacked it in yet because I decided to make it as a two-piece panel since the last one was a pig to work on in one big piece. Now I have to make the lower part of this panel. This one I did take a before photo of. You can see the marker line showing where I plan to cut out and replace the old steel. And this is the panel I got knocked up quickly. It's still in need of some fiddling to get it fitting perfect but it was getting late so that's where I left it for now. I might get this finished up and tacked in tomorrow. We'll see how it goes.