Ford candy apple red looks good 👍
Ford candy apple red looks good 👍
ford candy apple
A little more progress - got the front panel completed and ready for paint:
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Enlarged the indicator holes for the Hillman / 'works' Escort sidelight/indicator units, blended the front spoiler into the wings and smoothed over the bumper bolt mounting holes. It's looking pretty smooth now.
Also ordered a new door skin from NHC Panels last week which arrived the next day - we were looking at the drivers door, and, although not rotten, it was full of filler to try and level it out... comparing it to the passenger side was like chalk and cheese. Came to around £160 including VAT and delivery.... anyway, this meant the previous skin (a Hadrian Panels item some previous owner had 'fitted') needed to come off:
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(about the first outing for the Porsche this year too, it's photo-bombing in the background...)
There's a little bit of surface rust inside the door, but nothing a wire brush and some rust killer won't solve. The main area that needs addressing is (as always) the bottom corners and the area immediately next to the drain holes (seems to have been 'repaired' at the same time as the door skin was replaced - at least it was metal and not fibreglass bodge I suppose). So that was chopped out and will have a relatively simple straight piece of new steel welded in:
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Have got next friday booked off work - arranging for the painters to come and view the car... I'm starting to form the opinion that I'd rather pay them to finish off the bodywork prep and do all the painting - primer and colour, inside and out. Otherwise it's simply not going to be done this year.
just looked through this thread again car looks amazing, ya gotta do what ya gotta do, for it to get finished
Get it finished for the summer man!
Just read this thread from start to finish - what a cracking project!
Looking forward to seeing it in its colour. Red's not normally my thing, but candy apple red - now you're talking!
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!
Good news and bad news today - we got the replacement door skin and have started fitting it up; it's not bad, reasonably well fitting, a few bits to shape slightly, but I think the door it's being fitted to has had quite a bit of work in the past, so it's not a surprise.
Bad news is that we've just heard that the painters we were going to get to do the car in the next couple of weeks are closing up shop. So that's now left us with a big problem of finding a good bodyshop willing to do a full interior + exterior respray. We know plenty of people who will do paint, but they're mostly guys who repair panels or respray bumpers. The only two decent places we got details for today with proper spray booths and ovens are booked up until the end of July and September, respectively!
If anyone knows of any good painters around the Durham area, please let me know! If we can't get booked in for June or July it's going to make the chances of getting this car finished this year almost slim to none
Got the details of another two body shops - one in Stanley, the other near Peterlee - going to get some quotes from both of them first thing after the bank holiday monday this week and see how quickly we can get the car booked in.
I really don't want to hang about; once painted I reckon I've another two months or so of re-assembly, so if I leave it too long the cold weather will be setting in again and it's no fun doing fiddly detail work (interior, trim, wiring, etc) at that time of year
Ok, first things first, we've managed to get another painter sorted. We're taking the car in 2-3 weeks, so we need to get any last work done that would be a pain after the paint is done. Oh, and it's going to be Porsche ruby red pearl metallic (L8A7)....
The car is now fully down on the floor - original hubs and 13" four spokes for now as I don't want to risk damaging the newly powder coated wheels and new tyres while in the garage.
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We've also been busy installing a Corsa B eps column:
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This is mounted using the original Ford column support, welded to a flat plate and bolted to the Corsa mounts - they're also a brace lower down the column to the pedal box. It feels quite sturdy so I don't foresee any issues once it's powered.
The Corsa UJ fits over the end of the original Escort column, which we've cut down so that it just comes through the bulkhead - this allowed us to reuse the original bulkhead bush and housing. At the moment we've ground the column flat and filed out a groove so that it fits in the UJ and is secured by a bolt. This should be fine, but when the car is finished we'll weld it to the UJ for extra security.
One big thing we've had to do is get the panels aligned better - the doors specifically. The front wings are (were?) pattern parts and are not the best fit, but they're rust free so we never did anything with them. The passenger door catches the back of the wing as you open in:
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So we modified the hinges
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And here's the results...
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Also re-drilled the mounts for the Ford and Escort boot badges - finished the boot prep off too, just a little bit of wire brush on the drill and cure-rust - as you can see it wasn't bad, but this should keep it this way for a good few years:
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Last couple of jobs are to finish the major prep of the bonnet and hang the drivers door - it has a new skin so also needs some final work to get it looking first class. Should be plenty of time to get things sorted ready to go to the painters.
Spent today fitting the drivers side door. This isn't the original door to the car (unlike the passenger side), as the colour inside is not the 'pea green' elsewhere, but a more metallic olive green. It also had a skin at some point in the past (neither jobs we did ourselves - so sometime over the last 41 years some one did it).
This door never fit very well, so I know we were in for a good time today....
First things first, we got the car out and reversed it back in to the garage so that we had better access - the bay it was in doesn't have much room to the side. A good chance to have a clear out, get rid of the crap and dust that had built up and check for any more imperfections in the work we've done so far...
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I'm quite pleased with the way things are looking - the painter should be able to make a good job of this!
So, we had already fitted the new skin to the door and spent a lot of time trying to get the curves and lines right - it's not a perfect match to an original door by any means, but it's reasonably okay. If you had an original next to it, it's like night and day though :-S
We had lots of mods to do - bending the hinges back, welding washers to the hinges to pack them out (someone had drilled them out prior to us and the door had a lot of droop):
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We must have taken the door off at least 30 times today, but we managed to get it close enough where it's not catching anything when closed and the panel lines are as good as they're going to get - the worst bit is at the top at the corner where the door meets the wing and the windscreen pillar; the gaps are fairly consistent but the line isn't quite the same as the passenger side.
Still, it's on, it opens and closes without hitting anything and the shape is pretty decent, so we tacked on the skin:
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Some minor work to finish the shape of the bottom corner, and a small skim of filler at the edges where we've formed the skin to better meet the wing and rear quarter, but we're not planning on skimming the entire door - it doesn't need it.
Boot is nearly done - small skim of filler needed on the lip where the car would have originally had the chrome trim, but other than that, is ready for rubbing down and painting. That leaves just the bonnet, which needs a small amount of further filler to sharpen up the swage lines. Well on track to go to the bodyshop in a few weeks time I think!
Got three days of holiday from work this week - planned with my dad to have one last push to get the car 100% ready for paint.
Spent today doing filler and sanding work on the drivers door (around the new door skin), boot lid (bottom edge where the chrome trim and lettering was) as well as a little more on the bonnet.
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The door is done, perhaps 5 minutes more work on the profile of the shut line where you can see we've been working in the pictures above.
Boot is a simple job - only to rub down flat where the filler has gone on. Nothing tricky there either.
Bonnet is just about perfect now.
Going to finish off the rubbing down tomorrow morning, then the plan is to put a coat of spray filler on the door and bonnet, just to see if we're miles out - I don't think we are - before the painter gets his hands on the car.
The only other things I can think that we may possible need to do before we take it, is to make some seatbelt anchorage plates for some rear inertia reel belts; up on the rear pillars, the final thing is to trim the ally firewall panel to go behind the rear seat. We want it painting seperately to the car (to get a good covering on the inside of the car before fitting it), so it needs to come out and go back easily, without scratching the interior paintwork. Some tin snips should take care of that.
I think I can safely say (fingers crossed) that the car will be finished by this weekend, with it (fingers crossed again) going to the painters next week.
Oh, one last thing I completely forgot until looking at the last few images I posted.... we need to enlarge the door lock holes for the new set of Solex locks I bought! Don't want to be doing that with the doors freshly painted!
So further progress made today, hey, this is going really well at the moment... a remarkable lack of fighting between my dad and myself as well
Started today by running down the boot to get a much flatter finish:
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We then gave the boot and the bonnet a first coat of primer, we thought we had a pretty good finish, but knew that you can never really tell until you get paint on...
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Things covered remarkably well - a few little low spots and a few bits that some stopper sorted out, but nothing major and we were both really happy with the way the lines are back in the bonnet. So, on with the wet and dry paper to take off the surface ready for another coat:
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Boot is done and back on the car.
We also gave the drivers door (the new door skin) a coat inside and out, I'll really happy with this, although we spotted a few bits around the door window frame that need some stopper, we'll get those last bits tomorrow morning.
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As you can see, I also took the opportunity to fit the new Solex locks - this was remarkably easy - a small amount of filing around the existing lock barrel hole.
Coated the back of the scuttle grill with cure-rust, so that should be okay to prime up tomorrow too.
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Bonnet is finished, I'm really happy with it:
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So, plan for tomorrow is to rub down those small areas of stopper on the drivers door, trim the alloy firewall panel and fit the rear seatbelt anchorage points on the rear pillars (I got mounts with captive nuts delivered priority next day from Demon Tweeks - £1.50 a piece). One small patch to tack over where the original heater controls where, on the dash (I have an aftermarket heater and blowers, so the controls will be on a diy centre console), but I think that's about it?
Last edited by MegatronUK; 11-06-2015 at 18:39.
great work loving all the pics
Looking awesome! I have just found out how much work all this is and your just a little ahead of where i am with my escort i'm hoping to be in paint in the next couple of weeks.
Tons of lovely stuff completed today
First of all, the seatbelt mounting plates arrived in the post overnight from Demon Tweeks:
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Trial fit to the rear pillar, held with a self tapper:
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and in final position, fully welded to left and right pillars:
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Finished off the drivers door, where we used the stopper yesterday to fill a couple of small imperfections where the skin has been spot welded on:
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Gave the passenger door a bit of loving too, small bit of filler along the bottom edge where a little bit of rot had taken hold a couple of years ago, cleaned off, kurust-ed and filled back again (not big enough to warrant cutting out and welding), and then gave it a coat of high build primer the same as the drivers door:
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Completely cleaned off the underside of the bonnet - panel degreaser, d/a and then kurust:
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A few very minor surface imperfections, but it's fantastic for an original bonnet - mainly just dings and dents that we've had to deal with (hence all the messing around with it over the last few months). Remember that someone had Zeibart protected this car from new, so there's not a lot of rust about.
The underside now has had a couple of coats of high build, to match the top side:
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One small job today was covering the original position of the heater controls:
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... they've now also had a smear of filler around the edge, which should blend it in to the dash when rubbed down.
We're not quite finished - the bonnet needs rubbing down and painting again underneath, and the passenger door needs a little more paint - I also want to get a covering of paint on the inside of the drivers door skin, so that when it comes back from the painter it has something more protective than the basic grey primer it arrived in.
I think we've got something like another 4-5 hours of work before we can send it to the bodyshop, I'm hopeful that means just half a day of work on sunday should finish it off!
Bodywork is a nightmare really. We've done this sort of stuff on the car before, but it was always 'rough and ready' as it was my track day toy up until now; so we've put a lot more effort and care in, this time around. My dad will readily admit that bodywork prep and painting is not his thing.
The gutting thing was having to take the cossie lump and box back out after fitting it all up, to do all the bodywork and painting
That said, I'm quite happy, having spent the amount of time on it we have done over the last 12-18 months, that it's not bodged or full of fibreglass, so it's worth the extra effort in the end.
The one regret I have is not replacing the front wings with new (not because of rot or rust, just shape and fit) and getting steel bubbles all round (rather than grp), but new wings and arches were simply out of my price range back 10 years or so ago when I had them done, and I'm not going to take them off and redo all of that simply to change to steel arches.
More progress made!
Started today by filling in all the panel seams under the bonnet with sikaflex to get rid of any gaps and ensure that the bonnet braces don't move about:
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Also gave the paint from yesterday a rub down to smooth it out - found that the front lip needed a bit of filler, so also did that.
Ran a bead of seam sealer along the bottom of the passenger side door, where it has been kurust-ed:
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Decided to fit the ally firewall panel before it goes for paint, for peace of mind we therefore stripped the paint back on the firewall and painted it so that the new panel isn't sitting on old paint/primer when it goes for painting next week.
Also used the grinder and a set of flap discs to give the roof a good clean - it was starting to get a little surface rust, it's now been taken back to bare metal, given a coat of kurust and primed, we also put some etch primer on the seatbelt anchorage plates before that:
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Not sure if you can see, but the patch over the heater controls has also now been blended in as well.
So, what's left to do?
- Rivet the firewall panel to the seat back and rear scuttle.
- Drill a couple of drain holes in the drivers door.
- A little bit of rubbing back on the rear scuttle to get rid of a few small runs.
... and I think that's it. With any luck we'll get that done over an evening or two this week and then try to arrange loan of a truck to get the car to the bodyshop for next weekend.
Last edited by MegatronUK; 14-06-2015 at 20:38.
..... and I think it's now all ready for paint!
Dad got most of the work during the week (new drain holes in the bottom of the repaired drivers door and rubbed down the runs in the visible primer), so we spent today putting the final rivets in for the rear firewall, sealant around the edges and painted the inside of the new door skin with the schutz gun, so at least it has something more than the etch primer covering it.
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We were done early, and with nothing more to do before the car needed to go to the painters, we decided to mock up what the centre console will look like:
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It needs to be large enough to fit over the T5 tunnel, as well as fit the aftermarket heater/blower, the Cossie ecu and a new fusebox behind it. I'll be fitting three gauges in it (oil temp, oil pressure, water temp) as well as all of the switches and hazard lights - this isn't going to be a rally style panel, I want it done nicely with carpet up to the edges and the gear lever surround built in - just like an RS console for a mk1 or mk2. This is something I can be getting on with while the car is away.
Speaking of that, we'e arranged for the car to go to the bodyshop this coming Friday (26th June), as long as we can get transport for it on that day.
Last edited by MegatronUK; 21-06-2015 at 18:05.
I've just gone back through, what, thirteen years of history and now I'm all set for seeing the colour go on Cracking project and a great story told well
Out for a drive on a sunny spring day reminds me why I got this car
Yes indeedy, we should have the truck arranged for Friday, so fingers crossed it starts a new chapter in a few days time
looking forward to it
Well the truck is arranged for tomorrow morning - so we spent this evening getting the car into the central bay of the garage ready to be winched on to the truck. Doors went on, boot lid was bolted on, everything bar front and rear suspension removed from the car. Bonnet was wrapped up and left inside the car.
So, it's off to the bodyshop tomorrow!
And it's away!
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good news..now the fun can start...well done
no updates or pics
I've been quoted 3-4 weeks for the full job. It's only been 4 days!
Will probably drop in at some point to see how it's getting on though.
Me too!
Car is still at the bodyshop - had a look over this week to see the progress; no pictures because it looks depressingly the same... I know they're working on it, but until it gets paint on, it just feels like nothing is progressing.
Anyway, another couple boxes of goodies arrived:
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Stack 52mm eletrical gauges - oil pressure, oil temperature, water temperature. To fit in the centre console. Can't quite stretch to the speedo, tacho, fuel and boost yet!
12 circuit fusebox and relay system from Carbuildersolutions, along with a fresh air vent and two footwell vents to go in my custom centre console, with several metres of ductwork and two fresh air / heat mixers (one for the original dash vents, one for the new centre vent in the console). to run from my aftermarket heater.
Last edited by MegatronUK; 11-07-2015 at 10:25.
Looks like Christmas
It's turning out to be the most expensive christmas present of all time I think!
Anyway, I need a pair of seat bases in order to fit my RS Turbo Recaro's and found these in the back of the garage under a pile of other stuff.
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I've no idea where they've come from, they've clearly got some sort of home-made brackets on them, but am I right in thinking they're late mk1 or mk2 seat mounts?
With a bit of fettling I think we can make something up to fit the Recaro seats on these.
They look like Mk2 to me... I have the same on mine, slightly modified to lower them...
Update on the paint/bodywork - car had the primer and final bits of stopper put on this week by the bodyshop. I've not seen it yet, but my old man has been to have a look and he reckons it's looking pretty good. They've even managed to tidy up the join in the front panel and rh front wing which was a good 3mm out of line.
Hopefully the final paint goes on next week!
Looks a great project
Well, since any progress on the car has stalled since it's at the bodyshop, and the engine build up was completed several months ago, I'm at a bit of a loose end at the moment.
So I decided to crack on with the centre console. You'll recognise this image from a few weeks ago when we mocked up what it would look like:
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Dad since cut the basic shape out of MDF and ply for the centre section and I've been busy adapting it to fit my Stack gauges and heater/blower controls:
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And this morning I started fitting the alcantara-copy door card material I've been using:
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The fittings are, in each row from top to bottom:
- Oil pressure, oil temperature, water temperature
- Console hot/cold mixer (missing), console hot/cold vent, dash hot/cold mixer (missing)
- Heater blower fan, heater water control, cold fan (missing)
As I've gone aftermarket for the heater, I don't have a cold air intake any more, so am using a combination of bowden cable Y mixer pipes, a couple of industrial 12v dc fans and the fan controller to adjust the heater to fresh air mixture. I know it's five dials, but really it's no more controls than you would normally get in a modern car, just that my mixer controls are on two rotary controllers, rather than a slider. It also means I can have the heater on for my legs and blocked off for the dash, with 100% fresh air output for the dash instead at the same time (or vice versa, or any combination in between).
Last edited by MegatronUK; 02-08-2015 at 11:31.
looking good fella, hows the shell coming on, any closer too getting it back from the bodyshop.
Not yet! Last of the filler and stopper went on last week apparently, and it was fully primed as of friday according to my dad who popped over to see it.
So I'm hoping that they get the colour on this week.
duno why, but cant wait to see the pics of it the think it was mine
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