Thanks lads. A little in car vid from Matsuri... As you can hear, the CWP is now howling like a beast! Car in storage now until around March time when I will start the re-fresh. I have quite a few big jobs planned to improve the car and make it more versatile. Invisvamp: I used some generic chassis mounts and just suspended the engine and box in and jiggled it round until it had enough clearance. The tight point is between the sump and the rack. Rad was originally an E30 item. The Ally one is an E36 M3 one with about 3" chopped off the bottom. Cheers
I'm not far off putting all the bits back on mine now. Front end suspension is almost the same as yours but where or what are the bearing off ? Also is that the standard relocated outer hole position in the x-member? About 1" outover.
Yes you can. But if you have eccentric mounts it will alter the camber at the same time. Best to have ones that will move caster and camber independent
Lots of places for top mounts GRP4 FABRICATIONS: Ford Escort competition and Ford MK1 & Mk2 Escort motorsport competition parts. Group 4
Same as normal eccentric ones but you have a bit more adjustment. For max castor bolt it in the position that has the top mount as far back as possible. Then from there you can fine tune camber using your lower arms and castor by your compression strut/tension rod/arb position. I stuck some cool clips together on a vid...
Damn! Some epic quick entries there.. must show my pops as his first car was a mk2, I'm sure he'd love to see this build
Cheers! Hopefully more of that this year but even faster! Before Christmas the car was laid up at my Dad's house whilst I did some bits on the house.... For my Dad's and My birthdays, I booked us onto a track day at Mallory at the end of Feb. I would take the Escort and the Porsche 944 daily I had just purchased and my Dad took his Merc Sl55 AMG. The only prep to the car was to put fuel in it and check the levels so considering the last time it was used in anger on track was at Matsuri, it did really well! The day was awesome and nothing broke on any of the cars.. The 944 is a std 2.7 so not fast by today's standards but it is awesome fun. It desperately needs lowering and stiffening up a lot but the chassis is awesome. Really enjoy driving this.. The Escort was amazing. on the damp track it was very lairy but so much fun. It surprised a lot of other cars (and some "race" cars). As the track dried I really gave it massive abuse and it just got better and better. The engine is so much better with the Poncams in as now it just pulls straight to the redline. At the end of the day, lots of fuel had been burnt and lots of fun had been had by all. Nothing broke either! The car is now back in the garage again. I am not going to get chance to work on it for a while due to buying a new house but once we have moved and built a new garage it can start getting some attention again. In other news I have had some more Billet steering arms machined up for some more customers...
Looking good mate. Are you going to be competing in Drift Outlaws? And are you going to be part of the demo at Forge action day later in the year?
Cheers, Probably not as I am not able to attend most of the events. I will be doing Combe a few times this year and prob Silverstone for a few shows.
Re-commissioning for 2015.. After the car was laid up over the winter (in a bit of a state following the abuse it took in 2014), I wheeled it out and used it at Mallory (see above) that has meant the car is now a bit worse for wear. Also, I have just bought a new house which at the moment has no garage… This impending house move has meant I am rushing to get the car back in a good enough state to get it back on the road again before I loose the use of a garage! This means all the bigger plans I had will have to wait for a year and instead I have to focus on getting some of the main areas sorted.. The main mechanical problems (I’m ignoring the state of the body for now) were as follows: -Exhaust manifold cracked (due to hitting downpipe on trailer and ground) -Oil leak on left hand side (dipstick tube loose in block) -Strut top mount bearings worn out and knocking -Diff very noisy As well as fixing these problems, I wanted to do a few mods to improve the car… -Fit prototype suspension bits -New turbo oil drain -Modify downpipe, exhaust and transmission tunnel and gearbox mount for better ground clearance Exhaust manifold. There was a pretty bad blow from the exhaust and a visible crack in the manifold so I knew it would need repairing. After taking it off, it was basically cracked everywhere! The downpipe has caught on the trailer again and tried ripping the turbo off. This had broken the brace, leaving the hole lot to bounce around. After a fair few hours with a mixture of the Tig and Mig, all the visible areas had been repaired. It isn’t the prettiest but tbh, this manifold is more of a prototype as I still intend to make a steam pipe one which should handle plenty of abuse. Following the welding, it was fettled inside with a die grinder then sandblasted. I slapped on some black enamel to tidy it up a bit. And refitted… Turbo oil drain. With the turbo clocked to become top mount, the oil drain runs very close to the flange of the turbine. I had previously used braided line and heat wrapped the closest point. On taking off the turbo, it was apparent this had got too hot and the line had started to become damaged from the heat. A new, steel one was fabricated. This should be much better and safer. Pretty simple, Plate, holes, welded, cut and painted… And then the turbo was re-fitted.. Oil leak. The LHS of the engine was pretty oily and it had made quite a mess. I noticed the dipstick tube was now a loose, rattly fit in the block. It looks like around Gerrards, the oil was coming out of here and all over everything. The dipstick tube and hole were cleaned up and then bonded back in with some hard core glue we have been trying out at work. Strut top bearings The spherical bearings in the eccentric top mounts were now knocking really bad. I stripped the mounts down, blasted and painted them, then fitted some fresh bearings (M20 from Mc gill Motorsport). Whilst they were apart I also got around to modifying the top nut so it has a step that locates in the bearing. The spring seats and bearings were cleaned up and inspected and found to be mint. The whole assembly was re-greased and re-assembled. Prototype top mount spacers The position of the standard top mount limits you when you are going for improved steering angle. I have designed these snazzy adaptors to basically increase the top mount position to work with an increase of 40mm in track width. This should give a bit more clearance on lock and allow me to reduce the camber slightly (as currently I have to run more camber than I would like, just for clearance). This could have been done by chopping about the shell but I am keen to develop a bolt on solution for other escort owners. They sandwich in between the shell and the top mount, using the existing fixing holes. Looking forward to trying it out with these fitted.
Continued.... Prototype tension strut anti dive spacers Using the off the shelf tension strut kits puts the front pivot in a less than ideal position. These little spacers are designed to lower this mounting point by 20mm (bringing it more inline with the TCA inner pivot) This will reduce the amount of dive the car has and reduce any lurching into corners. The tension struts were stripped down, blasted and painted. New fixings were used and it all went back together with a dollop of grease. This has also given a bit more lock clearance (before, the track rod end would clout the tension strut at full lock). Eventually, this setup will be replaced by a new front sub frame and wishbone arrangement. Increasing ground clearance I have had quite a bit of trouble with catching the exhaust on things (mostly reversing off the trailer!) which has caused the manifold to crack. I knew when I fabricated it up the first time I wanted to improve the routing but at the time, I didn’t really have time. As it was all off and up in the air I set about sorting it. Existing view from underneath shows how the pipe is about an inch or so below the chassis rail. This isn’t too bad considering it’s a 3” pipe but it had a fair bit of damage. When I had the 4Age in it, I made a channel which the manifold and downpipes tucked up into. This didn’t really work with the SR because of the gearbox mount and clearance. The solution was to chop a hole in the shell, re-do the gearbox mount and tuck the downpipe up into the channel. After the hole was chopped in the floor to remove the old box mounts, I started to modify the gearbox cross member. With the mount done, the hole in the floor was capped, a M10 stud welded in for the mount and then a gusset over the top to prevent the tunnel flexing around the mounting point. With the added clearance in the tunnel, the downpipe was then shortened and the spring mounts re-welded to suit. At the same time I added a further mounting between the downpipe and the block. This should help prevent the turbo being pulled about by impacts to the downpipe. With it all fitted up, the lowest part of the exhaust is now inline with the base of the chassis rails… Perfect for big jumps and bumpy lanes! More to come...
Continued..... Diff As you can hear in the Vid above, the CWP was making a massive racket. That got a lot, lot louder with every lap of Mallory so something had to be done. Looking at the design of it, it seems quite likely that the oil can quite easily slosh out from the diff into the axle tube, which can’t be good for the bearings and teeth. Also, the breather on the top had dumped a load of oil all over the diff and the back of the car. I pulled the diff out and inspected it.. The crown wheel was absolute toast. It had 2mm+ of backlash and even when you tightened it until the gears were meshed so hard it was jammed, it still had about 1mm. No broken teeth or other damage though so that is good to know. I have a few other CWPs laying about (all worn out though) so built my LSD into the best gear pair I had. It will have to do for now but in the long term I will probably be fitting another axle setup. I removed the standard plastic breather which is a push fit into the axle housing and replaced it with a 8mm hose spigot, bonded in. This means I can pipe it to a higher point to reduced the chance of it spraying oil everywhere again. Rear brakes As it was wet at Mallory, I was using a lot of rear brake bias. This took it’s toll on the already pretty worn pads! One had gone about 1mm into the back plate and the others pretty much crumbled off. The discs seem to have got away with it. A new set were fitted.. Other little bits.. A fresh set of tyres were fitted onto the minilights… Old sun-strips replaced.. Just needs various fluids filling up, alignment done over the next week and then the car is almost ready to go! Next stage is to tax it and get driving it again. Now the weather is turning good I will finally get chance to play with the mapping side of it and remove the AFM. When this is done, I can then fit the 550s and turn the boost up a bit. Future jobs: -Recondition Compomotive CXs (I love the look of it on these wheels when they are polished up -Build tyre rack for trailer -Fit new fuel tank (got a posh plan for this) Next event: 31st May – Retro Kings – Doing passenger drift rides
Cheers! Taxed it now so it is fully back on the road! Drove it to work this morning to give it a bit of a run. Some observations: -The CWP I have fitted is mega noisey (But not as bad as the one I took out) -Front end feels very planted now with new bits fitted (Havent fully aligned it yet either) -It goes well.. (Still only running approx 0.8bar) Going to do some playing with the ecu over the next week or two and drive it as much as posible to try and dig out any niggles.
