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Hurmeez' 1977 Mk2 Escort Estate


Hurmeez

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The next detail to think about is the mounting flanges of the quarter. Even though I used an 8mm spot weld drill and was pretty careful about the removal process, it's hard to get away from the fact that an 8mm hole is a pretty big one to fill with a plug weld when it comes to reinstalling it again. To get around that, I've opted to replace any part of the flange that I've had to drill out. 

I started with the easier shorter sections.

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Then I went on to tackle the longer section along the back of the door. 

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I made this section by folding one long straight length of steel, then tweaking it and manually stretching and shrinking it in the vice as required to match all the contours of the existing flange.

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Ended up with a pretty neat fit. 

But then it was time to go inside to make some tea.

And then it started raining

Some of my mates from work were posting in our group chat that their streams were rising and they were getting worried. In solidarity of course, I sent them a photo of alarmingly sized puddles on our back pavers at that time.

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But then it kept raining.

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And raining.

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And blow me down it just didn't stop.

I jacked the car up as much as I could, lifted everything worth saving onto the work bench, and we retreated back to the house (which is raised ~1m above ground level) to wait out the standoff. 

We blinked before the water did. 

Once it got to mid-shin in the kitchen, we decided it might be prudent to find somewhere dryer to sleep for the night.

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The next morning, we returned to the quote Scene of the Crime unquote.

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The water got up to the bottom of the bench top. My nice new birthday-present-to-myself welder missed the water by this much.

Note the tide line on the tail gate.

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My daily was totaled, and my partner's Corolla missed out on a similar fate by only a couple of inches and the fortunate placement of Toyota's ECUs on the top of the passenger strut tower. Subaru's incidentally instead put them under the passenger front footwell. 

So yeah, remember how I mentioned the KBS on all the internal cavities and how two coats was probably overkill for interior panels. Yeah, well, glad I did it now.

The immediate triage for the Escort was to pull the seats out and leave them in the sun to dry out as much as possible. I also drilled some drain holes in the lowest points of the floor boards, and mopped up the standing water as much as possible. Everything got doused in CRC 556 (probably not the best idea in hindsight when it comes to painting it, but such is life) and I borrowed some big 5ft floor fans from work to try and get the garage dried out as much as possible. 

Longer term, we had to move out. The house was toast and almost all our stuff was wrecked. We've managed to find a new place, with a slightly better laid out garage and enough room for our little girl to run around. 
The car has mostly been on hold since the flood. I've been focusing on all the work around the new house to make it comfortable and setting up the garage to try and make the best of the limited space I have. 

I think I've got it into a pretty usable state now though. I have the means and motivation so now there's no excuses. 

We're back to real time now though, so updates will likely return to the more sporadic rate you'll be more accustomed to. Thanks for reading my ramblings to bring it back up to date in the mean time. 
 

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