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Robevo's 1969 escort ca18det


robevo

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Hi all, (Warning huge post!)

Long time lurker, thought its about time I put my project up

Here we have my mk1 escort 2 door. Was originally a 1300 auto (yay for big tunnels) this was my first car and I got it when I was about 15. At the time it was in need of a re-build, the engine was not running and trans was Stuffed. So along with the help of my father we got it all running again. 1300 Manuel & a 32/36 weber, the guy a brought if off painted it for me (not the best job but it will do)

I drove it around like this for a couple of years, until the day came that my wof man wanted a cert for the raceseats adjustable camber plates etc. it was always the plan to get a decent 1600 in there so it was put in storage until I got the engine built & would cert it all at once.

So a few years past, 2 of the engines I got the parts for ended up in dads race car haha. But after driving mitsi evos around for afew years the turbo bug bit.

So one day while talking to a mate he had a ca18det and S13 5 speed in his garage. So a deal was done with the wheels I had on the car (the famous rs 4 spokes) and I was now the proud owner of a ca18det

So to cut a VERY long story short, the car is now pretty much complete.

Here is a rough idea of the specs of my car I like to call my RS1800 turbo

Ca18det engine - standard ECU and injectors

Front mount intercooler

Race pro bov

N/A throttle body

Adjustable cam gears

Standard turbo with 16G 60trim compressor wheel (that's what happens when u give Steve murch a turbo for a rebuild haha)

S13 5 speed gearbox

Toyota hylux lsd diff

Capri bilstein front struts with adjustable spring platforms

Adjustable castor camber plates

300zx 4pot front brakes with 280mm front rotors

Mitsi sigma rear calipers and sierra discs

Jamex raceseats

Sparco steering wheel

Firbeglass dash with smiths gauges and vapor digital dash

Here are afew pics of it

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So all that is left now is to fix my leaky front seal on the diff, and afew other small jobs and go for its cert!!

Of course there have been a huge amount of people who have helped along the way

Grant & Brett @ Walker racing

Andy & Scott @ RaceFX

Paul and Al @ Dunkley racing

Steve Murch @ Motorsport engineering

Mike @ Motorsport composites

Damian @ Skidwest productions

Steve @ Auckland speedo services

My boss Steve @ F40 Motorsport

My dad Peter - cant thanks him enough for all his help

Chris, Phil, Russell, Karn - And anybody else I forgot haha

And of course my fiancé Justine and my baby girl Keira

I could not of done this with out you

Like I said this has been a long long road to get to this point. So if anybody wants any more photos of any part or any details on how we did what we did just ask & I will post them up. I have about 200 photos of the whole process from Start to finish

Cheers for reading

ROB

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  • 1 year later...

Hi all

Wow - long time & some huge changes for myself in that time but hey let's finally have an update

Firstly the good news - the escort is now fully certed & has a wof and reg - a week over 11 yrs off the road!!

Where to start - after getting the leaky diff seals sorted (helps if they were installed in the first place haha) found I had to go down a tyre profile to stop the tyres rubbing on the inner guards (now running 195/45/16)

Then we got the car looked for its cert. Clint is a great guy & helped a lot. Major things were:

Brake disc width - brain fade on my part there but ended up upgrading the aswell, now running 305 x 28 rotors

Struts - was gutted to find out you can no longer weld the strengthening gussets onto them. So,lucky found some struts that my rebuilt shocks fitted & did the coil over conversion

So after getting the cert it was time to get this thing running right.

First off had a very bad misfire, even under very light load. Ended up getting new nissan coils & messing around with plugs and gaps but found a very bad earth on the ignitor & bingo pretty much 95% sorted. Ended up fitting an innovate motorsports afr gauge. And found it to be running very rich, & still had a large miss right up the top of the rev range. Did its first long run to Hamilton & used 30 liters of fuel - oneway!!! So plumbed the bov back into the inlet system... Helped a little... Found a large air leak from the turbo... Helped more... Then as I was about to think about aftermarket ecus etc found the afm was not playing the game, fitted another one & bingo. Wow it really surprised me the performance of the little CA18 lol - oh yea and found the radiator was stuffed so got a nice alloy fenix one, an AE86 one was the perfect size to get between my intercooler piping.

So now just using it as much as I can to find anymore little gremlins & looking forward to my first event. Looking like the Holden club track day at puke on the 16th June.. See how things pan out

I cant get the pics working so if anybody can help out I'll get afew uploaded

Looking forward to meeting some of you at the meet on Wednesday

Cheers

ROB

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