UPDATE #3- THE POINT OF NO RETURN Jesus, will this weather ever let up? Today has been the only day that's stayed dry enough for me to do any work on project Family dragster, and i've managed to make some NEIGHBOUR QUAKING progress.
Now all this measuring, researching, designing, mocking up of the upside down gearbox and stuff has been useful, but somehow it hadn't felt like i'd
done much. It felt like, this project was still in it's infancy and I had no real
commitment to the twin engine plan.
What I needed was some incentive. I needed to get myself to.... THE POINT OF NO RETURN!
So after this revelation I ran outside with my brand new angle grinder and started work immediately:
The calm before the storm. I singled out the boot floor as the biggest contributor to the car's seemingly unmolested appearence and began to size up the task- No boot floor=serious work in progress. Ergo, the boot floor
had to go.
No need for marking out, I could just about see the feint spot welds through my scratched up goggles which would guide the way so no worries there. I like how my lame, blurry photography skills somehow encapsulates this. Choppy choppy!
Lots of sparks later and we're made some serious changes to the outward appearance of the Escort
It was at this point, seeing my boot floor some feet away from the rest of the shell, that it began to feel like this was indeed a twin engined project. Result.
Also at this point, my dad wandered out to see that this most definately wasn't just 'routine maintinence' after all and that i'd been a bit sketchy with the details of why i'd be needing the car back down the side of his house for a while....
Right then, now I was feeling properly motivated so it's time to open a sachet of WHOOPASS and get the party started!
My project will require the use of Escort front supension at the rear of the car, so it made sense to use the inner wings from the front of an Escort in my rear end build.
Me and Benzboy went directly to the scrapyard and singled out a clean looking mk4 Escort to liberate the inner wings from.
While I did take pictures of this event at the time, they are currently on a computer far, far away and as such you'll have to imagine what 3 days (yes, THREE DAYS!) of chipping away at an 80's Ford with unsuitable tools looks like.
To cut a long story short, the scrapyard decided that they wouldn't allow power tools on site anymore so we had to spend a long time with a few wood chisels we found in the toolbox before we could take our prize home.
To say we virtually chewed them off, the new inner wings look pretty good!
Another twin engined Escort conversion i've seen implemented the entire inner wings from the front in order to keep all the geometry correct and save the hassle of making things like track control arm ounts etc. Buuuut..... this Escort is going to have the engine mounted much further back which will foul parts of the TCA mounts etc, and as such i've decided to use only half of the inner wings- you'll see why later in the thread.
Anyway, the inner wings will need some cutting to fit.
The lip for the outer wing needs to come off first, so...
....out with the grinder....
....and off it comes.
The inner wings will extend down as far as the boot floor, where they will be welded to my new chassis rails to create a super-strong structure. So, I needed to cut the inner wings down at the correct angle to make the turrets sit at their correct angles once the inner wings are lined up with the chassis rails..... you still with me?
This may look like something the Blair Witch made to spook cam-corder weilding campers but it is in fact a highly sophisticated jig to accertain the correct angle to cut the inner wings.
Kinda makes more sense in this shot.
Heres the line that I will follow with my grinder....
...and theres the job jobbed.
All the surplus metal from the inner wings. Theres more where that came from!
The next job in line is to get the suspension off the rear end and make way for some new chassis rails and shell stiffening!
So I need the car in the air. But of course, the simplest jobs always turn out to be the most time consuming and jacking the car up turned into half an hours worth of toil.
Part of the reason is the tight confines of the work space.
This is the side with the most space
Got there in the end though:
At least I won't be grovelling under the car to get the rear suspension off! It's now quite accesible
But ominous looking rain clouds stopped the play for now. If the rain passes over I might use the few hours of daylight left to continue!