As long as the box cant be seen when looking across the chassis rails its fine,
As long as the box cant be seen when looking across the chassis rails its fine,
Looking great! Is the MX-5 box a straight fit to the Ford Duratec engine?
Awesome work you've done there mate, I'm going to enjoy watching this build Do you ever fly down to Christchurch at all?
Thanks Gary, that is what I thoughtAs long as the box cant be seen when looking across the chassis rails its fine,
Yup, straight bolt up, no mods required. The 2005 onwards MX5 (NC Model) has Duratec engines in it.Is the MX-5 box a straight fit to the Ford Duratec engine
Well I used to go a lot, as I fly for a Middle East airline that goes there daily, but they have changed the aircraft to a type I don't fly, so not at the moment. However will be down in November for holidaysDo you ever fly down to Christchurch at all?
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Cool cheers for the info
Whipped the top of the gearchange house off
Was told by Dave from RetroFord that a RX7 Short Shiter like this will fit
so bought one on eBay for £32 delivered
Started up making a gearbox crossmember, quite fun as all the angles are off-cock due to the 10 degree angle of the box in the chassis
Used up a set of spare Watts link bushes as the rubber mounts
Then recycled a set of rear leaf hangars for the chassis mounts, nice thick steel they are, no doubt they are collectors items and this is heresy of some description, but they are no use to me
Tidied up the butchered tunnel brace, welded a couple of bits of thick plate on the inside of the tunnel to spread the load
The bottom of the mount is just about 5 mm below the chassis rail, so all tucks up pretty well
Finally made up a couple of alloy plates to fill the gap between the rear inner arches and the rest of the boot firewall, just needs a bit of seam sealant to finish it off
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On the rear 1/4 sealers.. make sure you have few mm#s of gap between the plate and the 1/4 ... if its touching you'll see it when you polish the outside as it will push through.
Doing a great job and some very impressive fabrication work
just as well I have a few mm already in places then, but I will shave a bit more off before I permanently rivet them in. I guess being aluminium they should cause less damage as well
Thanks, considering I started this without having done any metal work, its amazing how quickly you learn, it gets better with every new thing I do, that is for sure. Still no where near the pro's though, but I guess that is to be expectedDoing a great job and some very impressive fabrication work
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I always use ally aswell..but when i was young and foolish... only a few years ago mind, i butted it tight..took me fecking ages too.. and after about 4 polishes and countless bums leaning on that area ..i had a line show up ... so now.. solid seam everywhere before paint ..then after paint, silicone those to the 1/4 so its a rubber cushion
Top work there fella, real quality.
Gotta say too, great advice from the Gary there, spot on.
One to keep an eye on this....
u're damn good in fabricating those works...! RESPECT!!!
is there many oldfords' in doobye..? i dun think so...
anyway, GOOD LUCK mate..!!!
Mirror, silicone, you learn something new every day, once again thanks to Gary for the save of the day.
Med, couple more Escorts in Dubai, not common tho, but we are trying to build interest
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Normal silicone is actually corrosive, it will eat into Alu and steel, especially if moisture is present. Mirror silicone was developed to stick mirrors to walls etc and not eat the reflective backing stuck onto the glass to make it mirror.
Mirror silicone is actually less prone to silicone paintwork also...although I would never use it in a body shop and only apply it after the paint has hardened etc.
excellent thread m8..and cracking job your doin..
excellent work mate keep it up it coming along nicely
Some hard graft going on there , the end result should be a winner
What goes on at the Dubai aerodrome?
well they are still building terminal 4, albeit a bit more slowlyWhat goes on at the Dubai aerodrome?
Otherwise not much. Looking forward to flying the new A380 soon, which will mean lots of BKK flights.
Would love to come and see what you lads are up to over there as the Old School scene looks to be alive and kicking, with some interesting local solutions
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your doing a cracking job there you be up and running befor i finished welding,
is there a reason you have put your wing rails on the wrong sides like easyer
fitting of glass fiber wings ??? just thought i would ask
First one to spot it or mention it, which surprised me, but yes, tried the rails on both ways and after a lot of head scratching decided that the GRP wings sat/hung much better with the rails the wrong way round. Also Rivnuts are hidden n the inside of the wheel arch.
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Well its been a busy couple of months and not got much done to Svetlana, however finally the stars aligned so that I managed to get 6 days off in a row from work and my mate Gareth finally got his pipe bending machine down to his new garage, so it was time to do a cage. Did a bit of research and happily plundered the MSA Blue Book and Custom Cages website to choose a design that works for me
All the structural welding was done by Gareth, so I take no credit for that part of the cage construction, likewise he was the technical advisor, having done a few of these in the past
First order of the day was to make some boxes out of 3mm plate, to sit the main hoop legs on
The purpose of these was to allow the main hoop and front legs to be tacked together
Once the main hoops were bent and tacked together we then knocked the boxes out and dropped the main hoop to weld the top joints that sit up against the roof. Once the top welds were done, we reinstalled the boxes, welded them in and attached the main hoop legs as well
Wish I could weld as well as this with 2 hands, never mind one handed
Gareth doing his welding duties
Time then to link up the rear turrets to the cage and also a cross bar that will be used for the seat belts
Decided it would be a good idea to link up the front turrets as well, so I put the tubes through the front bulkhead and chopped them longitudinally, then plated the half tube and welded them to the strut cups.
Bit fiddly to do and I will still need to tidy up those side panels, as I have never been happy with them, but there should be plenty of strength in the old girl's front end now
While Gareth had his welder out, we put a couple of gussets on the link boxes
Put a wee gusset to tie the cage to the gearbox tunnel
Fitted the seat bars on the LHS, as initially this will be the side
I will set up the car for LHD use in this country. I plan to make the car ambidextrous, so that is is just a mater of undoing a few bolts and swapping a steering rack to change it from LHD to RHD, depending on what country I am in
Fitted the door bars after that, bloody fiddly to get right
One thing that made the whole exercise a lot easier was an £80 purchase from eBay in the form of a tube knotcher, made blood quick work out of the trimming and shaping of the tube ends
Used up 3 hole saws to install the whole cage, but reckon it saved a shed load of time.
Here is the largely finished cage, I trimmed the bottom of the dash so that we could get the cross bar as high up as possible to mount the steering column onto it.
The obligatory test session
So that was my week, bloody hard sweaty (36'C) work, took five, 9 hour days to get it all done. Big thanks to Gareth and Jason at a2b Garage & Motorsport here in Dubai
In for another hiatus until the next edition as finally getting to do my conversion onto the A380 next month, so Svetlana will have to languish in the shed untouched for a month or so.
Last edited by dobuy; 25-09-2009 at 08:23.
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Nice work there, cage looks good
http://escort.accelerator.org
1968 MK1 Escort 1300GT
1969 'Big Wing' MK1 Escort
1972 MK3 Cortina 1600XL
1984 Sierra XR4i
And other junk I don't like to talk about!
looks good seems you took it to the rite place
Nice work with the cage mate
Great work neil, well worth the weeks work it looks great and a must have been much cheaper doing it yourself
Cant wait for the next update, not long til its in paint at this rate
Fan-blooming-tastic!
coming along nicely
Thanks lad's really appreciate the comments. Dave it sure did save a bit of money to say the least, but more importantly like all things to do with this car, I learned a lot. Really made me understand what a lot of work is involved in putting a cage in and that it is defo not a career I am aspiring to
Think I will keep it to once every 2 years or so
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top class work great welding skills
A1 cage dude
perfect joins & welds
OLD FORDS never die,they just get FASTER!!!
She's looking brilliant mate All the best with the conversion to the A380.
lookin good A380! the escort would pass as carry on baggage compared to that
Well the A380 course is coming to an end, so a quick sneek out to the garage to do a few jobs. Firstly picked up a couple of kick/bulkhead panels from eBay for £20 each.
Never was happy with the look of my old patch up sides, so thought I would do them again
Lot happier with that now, here is the other side
Then Christmas came early, one of my mates Jason who is racing in the local Saloon car series here donated a set of discs and calipers from his Civic Type R, after doing an upgrade to even bigger ones
So one set of Brembo 295x28 discs...
With the bells removed (actually these are another mate, Spencer's old discs, which already had the bell removed)
Then after a bit of head scratching on offsets, I made up a quick and dirty, mock-up bell out of 2mm steel to try out positioning on the back of the Capri hub
Still a bit of clearance on the TRE, I reckon I can get about another 5mm out of the gap, which should be just enough to make a 7mm flat bell. Don't know if a 7mm flat bell is thick enough for strength, the original Brembo one is 7mm but of course it is bell shaped so may be stronger. Dunno, any thoughts
Here is the caliper (yes it is the wrong side for the arrow), looks pretty meaty
Looks like the brackets at the back should not be too much of a hassle, never done this before so a bit of a voyage of discovery
Fit nicely inside the wheels, think the caliper has to slide out a bit from the centre once mounted, but all looks like it will fit.
Piccie of wheel just in case you were wondering what it was.
So all in all looks like a very decent set of brakes, big thanks to Jason and Spencer for the donations to the cause
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Nice brakes and nice wheels
Flat bells are fine as far as i know, i have seen a couple around like it, and i think the ones my brother had made are flat too If you want more meat you could always go monster on them and have the disks fitting to the bells from the front, then you wouldnt need to take the hubs off to change the disks?
Your build has me drewling
Great work mate....well done
Nice cage
All looking
aint seen this thread for a while bud,you are still doing some stunning work on this real credit to you buddy.i had flat bells on my wilwoods on my mk2 and im pretty sure the ap bells on the new brakes are flat as well so i cant see that being a problem m8.as said lovely work so far
Does A2B want a fabricator ...
You'll soon be polishing the paint on this, keep up the hours
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