great pic i thought.
Posted by a guy over on www.retro-rides.com
great pic i thought.
Posted by a guy over on www.retro-rides.com
Last edited by popuptoaster; 05-05-2007 at 13:00.
Some Rs's there Mate!
Scouse.
P.S. where are they now?
Hey
That's my Dad in the pic, he was a traffic copper for Merseyside Police, that pic was taken at the Traffic HQ at Smithdown Lane if you know where that is (as a scouser I expect you do!)...
They all got auctioned off to private owners. I remember someone who lived up the road from us went to the auctions, bought one, brought it home and parked it on the drive. He went in to get his Mrs to show her, when he came out it had gone - pinched within five minutes of getting it home! Ouch.
Nice forum by the way, I'll be having a good look round
cars still on the road, tax runs till the 9th 2007
Retro,
I do know where that police station is. I go past it quite often
Where in Widnes are you, as I work in Ditton Rd?
Scouse.
id brake the law just for a ride in one
that pic is quality oh the good old days.i might of even considered being a policeman bk then.police were much better then
tommy 2000
Coppers broke my mates arm and then did him for assault.
He may be a little bit mouthy at times, but assault.
Besides all that, nice car.
Had two CID officers from grays come visit me in the cell once when i was in brentwood, that was fairly intense as the custody officer seemed to have vanished for half an hour. :S
lovely cars bet a few of them don't exsist anymore
the guy has found the owner of the car in the pic, looks like a happy ending.
the car went from police car to rally car!!!
Quote:I saw an advert in Motoring News in Feb 81 by Walkers offering 5 ex-police RS2000Customs. I had just decided to return to rallying and was going to build a car from scratch but I went up there from my then home in Walton on Thames, Surrey to have a look and bought PHF356T from out of 5 RS2 Customs, all IIRC in the PHF35*T range. I chose that car because it was said to have had a new half engine and new diff. Can your dad throw any light on that? It was probably correct as I found teeth in the axle casing when I later used the diff to replace the one in my road RS2 and much later discovered the axle casing was twisted when I used it on another car for hill climbs. I used the engine as the base for the rally engine and was caught out because I put new mains on what turned out to be a first undersize crank ( a sure sign that it was a "service" engine reclaimed from rejected production line) and had no oil pressure.
I only ever drove it twice in standard form - I tested several of the 5 cars around the neighbourhood of Walkers and then drove that car home.
I prepared it for the RAC Rally, which it did in 1982 and then in 1984, finishing both years. It also did 7 other International Rallies, mainly in Belgium and a raft of club rallies, hillclimbs and sprints.
They all had four extra (cheap!) switches in the dash below the heater control panel, Lumenition, zipped headlining and the orange stripe was still in place under the door mirrors (they had taken them off to fit it and cut around them when they took it off. The wheels were engraved "Mer police" - presumably you couldn't park a police car there without finding it on blocks when you returned......
It had a Varta battery, marked in blue "MER Police" (which failed completely when I next went to use it...)
Apart from the "special build" sticker on the O/S inner wing, that was about the only changes from standard.
When I went up to get it, I saw a police RS2 "Base" model in Liverpool - presumably they switched to those as soon as they became available as it was as quick (unlike the Mexico Mk2 it relaced) and cheaper.
Several members of the forum have standard trim parts etc. off that car (whether they know it or not) before I sold everything to Will recently.
Will send more photos later.
I head from Will Onions (the new owner, and a well known club rally driver):
Quote:Sorry did not reply to your email straight away, but I contacted Keith, who as you now know owned the car from 1981 up until 2 weeks ago when I bought it along with another car, and 2 van loads of escort spares, which included quite a lot of the standard parts that he removed from PHF when he first converted it into a rally car. It is unusual that a car of this age only now has 2 previous owners, and even though it is a rally car the shell, which, although has had a new roof, is in very good, completely rot free condition. Keith is a very meticulous person and has retained all sorts of interesting bits of history, including the original purchase invoice from 14/2/1981 for the car. He paid £2,695.00 for the car. He, I believe has forwarded quite a lot of info for the car including pics for you. He and I are both very please to have now filled in this bit of missing early history for the old girl.
I am a rally driver myself and have competed in many different types of car over the years and more recently have been using a “modern” spec MK 2 with a 330bhp engine, sequential box etc (see http://www.reason8.com/clients/jt_mo...?info_id=30704)
As you are aware the historic scene is now very popular and PHF is a very good post historic specification rally car. I intend to restore the car as a group 2 escort and do the British historic rally championship in it next year. We hope to be able to do a couple of events latter this year including the Roger Albert Clark rally in November which is a rerun of the old style RAC rally.
It was quite surreal when I saw your post on Sunday night as I had just come in from the workshop having just finished completely stripping down the car. It is now just a shell which will go of shortly to be stripped back to bare metal, and then of to the fabricators to have a new roll cage fitted, along with a few other modifications. The shell will then be re sprayed and then rebuilt using most of the original parts. There is nothing much to photograph at the moment, but I will keep you posted if you wish.
1982 RAC rally
pics from 82 - 83
1984 RAC rally
nice pics pop-up im liking the home made windscreen.looks a bit like a heated front screen
tommy 2000
And from nose-cone to flat front!!
Scouse.
This Car lives still
Pmsl
Big Wing sold and gone to be a film star
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