Escort Mania!Escort Mania!|
Hi everyone, this is my personal tale of Escort motoring. My favorite car is of course the Ford Escort Mk 2, in particular the van. Here you can read about my Escort tales as well as find out about my turbo van build-up. When I first got my license at age 17, I was given our family 'spare' car, a 1973 Alfa Romeo Berlina. This had a 2 litre twin cam with twin webers, and wasn't too bad for a first car. It was short lasted however, as some lady decided she needed some crash test dummy training and pulled out right in front of me. And I mean RIGHT in front of me. Bye bye Berlina. After the insurance money came through, it was time to buy another car, and this time it was my choice of vehicle. The budget was only $2400, but for that I picked up my first Escort, a Green van! My first Escort Van
Although it was nothing special, I enjoyed driving this van and learned to appreciate the practical nature of owning an Escort van. Particularly good for camping (the Escort resort), or just crashing out pissed in the back at a big party :) Big plans were afoot for this van, but one night my plans were dashed! It was parked in a quiet suburban street in one of Sydney's most expensive waterfront areas amongst Porsches and Mercedes. Theives decided to take my stock Escort van instead of the more expensive cars - at least they had good taste! This was a major bummer, now I had no Escort :( After a Spanish inquisition by FAI insurance over the next six months, I finally got my $2000 insurance payout and vowed to never deal with FAI again.
So now with cash in hand, I went Escort van shopping again. There wasn't many good ones around, most have been abused by tradesmen over the years. I then came across a van I had known from some years previously. This one had been part of the factory rally team and was used as a service vehicle. Colin Bond built the engine himself. My friend who owned it crashed it and sold the wreck to one of his friends - complete with all the factory rally bits. His friend had then moved all the bits into another shell (more on this shell later), but hadn't got it completely sorted and was now ready to sell. Money changed hands and now I had another Escort Van! Complete specs for this van are listed below: My second Escort Van
This was a good Van to drive, the sound of twin webers is music to the ears. I drove it for two years, however it was definitely no rocketship, and more power was needed. It only had the standard exhaust manifold and system, which I figured was probably sapping a lot of the potential power. Plus it was a bit smoky, and generally tired from having a life of hard driving and infrequent oil changes. A quick scan of the Trading Post uncovered a 2L engine for $50 - suit rebuild. I bought it and stripped it down ready to make some power! I rebuilt the engine myself. First it was chemically cleaned. Then I had the head pressure tested to make sure it was OK before I started porting. The ports were shaped with Devcon steel putty and ported to Vizard specs to give a more downward port, a more gentle turn while still maintaining air speed through the port. Valves were new std valves which had the back face machined to give a flatter profile. I cut multi-angle valve seats and a 290 degree Waggot cam with new valve springs was installed. The chambers were cc'd and the head surface shaved to give 10.25:1 compression. In the bottom end, the rods were linished for lightening then polished. New bearings and rod bolts were used as well as new ACL pistons. The whole bottom end including new clutch was dynamically balanced. Ignition was taken care of by a Mallory distributor firing a MSD 6A CDI ignition. I used Perry extractors and with some friends help, a custom 2.5" system was made. Once the engine was installed and I swapped the 40mm Webers for 45s, the van was transformed! Now it had the power to match the excellent handling. I was gobbling up V8s left right and centre. I drove the car around for another two years with this setup and it was very good. Unfortunately the body shell was crap! By now it had so much rust that it was stuffed. It looked like the previous owner had found the worst shell possible to put all the rally bits into. The firewall was fibreglass from a previous repair and the sills had gaping holes. To make it worse I had a spin, clipped an armco fence and damaged the left hand guard too. The cancer was too far gone to even attempt to repair this body, and there was no way it would pass the registration inspection. It had to be stripped and a new shell found. In the mean time I bought a 1.3L Mk2 coupe to get around in for $600. Once again I discovered how difficult it is to find a decent Escort Van these days! I eventually found one, the price was only $100 - no engine or gearbox. It wasn't particularly good, but it was better than most I had seen and my patience had run out so I bought it. My third Escort Van
Now I discovered how difficult it is to find a panelbeater. I rang dozens, 90% of them either only did insurance work or couldn't be bothered coming to have a look/give a quote. Even worse, they generally said they would come and then didn't show up! Finally one guy came out and quoted $4500. This was too much for me to spend on the body, My budget is biased toward performance, not looks. It was about this time I found another cheap van in the Trading Post. This one was in much better condition than the shell I already had, so I bought it. It was immediately stripped, and the two other vans I had were sent to be crushed :( My fourth Escort Van
Now it was time to revisit the panelbeater saga. Bad luck saw Sydney have its worst hail storm ever causing $1billion worth of damage. Now every panelbeater was so busy they would barely even answer their phones! After much of the same stuffing around I decided I would be better off painting it myself. This is where the job escalation began :) Next Page |
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Last updated Sunday, 22-Aug-2004 21:09:54 EDT.
