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A little hour done before work. Got the exhaust welded on the MG  I fixed the earth clamp on the mig  I put a couple of cable ties on it as I think the cable flopping about is the reason it broke. I can’t remember if I mentioned it, but my regulator I use for spraying broke and would only give me a couple of bar pressure. The replacement turned up so I go that set up.  And that was that |
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Dec 12, 2023 17:08:08 GMT
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As I worked last Sunday, I had a day off today. After a bit of Christmas shopping (how the hell are the prices of phones justified?), I went to the garage. The new starter motor for the MGZR had turned up so that get fitted. I had removed the battery and air box to make this easier and left the key in the ignition. When I reconnected the battery, the car locked itself. Great. I have only one key for it. Luckily the driver window was wound down 3/4” so I was able to bend a bit of TIG rod and hook them out of the ignition . Bl00dy cars. No photo evidence of any of this. Next on to the mk1. I’d spotted this a few weeks ago.  Looks a bit frilly. I may have spotted it previously and forgot about it, either way, it needs sorting. You know the drill. A bit cut out and the pillar cleaned up  A bit made  The bit welded on  And finally ground back and primed   That might be all the welding done! Although I’ve thought this many times before. The rest of the afternoon was spent sanding, scotching and hoovering the interior ready for some topcoat- hopefully over Christmas. |
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Dec 22, 2023 14:39:37 GMT
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Spent a couple of hours on the inside of the shell today. Last bit of filling done on the inside (just the window surrounds) and added a bit of spot primer to where it rubbed through in other places.    I’m on call tomorrow, but I’m then off until the 2nd of Jan. I think it’s the first time in the last 13 years I’ve been off for the whole of Christmas/ New Year, so I’m quite looking forward to it. I’m navigating in the Astra at Pembrey Christmas Stages on the 30th so I’ve got that to look forward too. And I plan to have one day in the garage to get the inside painted in top coat. That will be another year’s worth of work done on this project. Merry Christmas to you and yours |
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Dec 23, 2023 10:41:16 GMT
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Same to you Mr Bay
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Dec 23, 2023 17:14:46 GMT
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Still watching, even though I cant see the weeny stuff on the mobile anymore and logging in is farce! Enjoy your break and hopefully successful painting!  |
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Dec 23, 2023 17:38:25 GMT
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Still watching, even though I cant see the weeny stuff on the mobile anymore and logging in is farce! Enjoy your break and hopefully successful painting! I know what you mean Mr Viva. I have to expand all photos now to be able to see what’s going on with everybody’s projects. I hope the painting goes ok. There’s a lot of surface area to cover inside the car |
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Dec 27, 2023 17:03:31 GMT
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I have discovered that 3 days of vegetating is my limit. By yesterday afternoon I’d had enough. Mrs Jonsey suggested a walk and I was well up for it just to get out of the house. So today was ‘try to paint the inside of the Escort’ day. I started off by scotching all the spot primer that I’d put on last time. This was followed by some hoovering, then blow jetting, then a bit more hoovering, and a bit more blow jetting until I’d (hopefully) got all the foreign bodies out if the shell. Everything was then wiped down with the stuff you wipe stuff with and left to dry for a bit. No photos of any of this. I then taped up all the holes in the floor  And bagged off the bottom to avoid overspray  The rain was horizontal. Not exactly ideal painting weather.  So I gave everything a dust coat, left it until it was tacky, then added another 2 or 3 coats, I can’t remember. In total I put 2 litres of Ermine white on it.        I can’t remember if I mentioned it but the paint spots I had in the inner wing were in fact water. I thought it was from the compressor. However, today I realised the water was dripping from the inappropriate mask that I’m using as I’ve had a couple more drips. One on one window surround and one on the screen pillar. These will have to be remedied later. Overall I’m happy with it though. I didn’t get any runs, but to get a good shine I needed to spray at about 3” from the panel. If I new what I was doing, I could have adjusted something on the gun to resolve this, but I don’t, so I didn’t. |
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Dec 28, 2023 12:55:07 GMT
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I didn’t plan to do a lot today as I’m going out for a curry and a few pints later with some mates. I wanted to remove the masking to have a look at my efforts.   There a couple of places wher it isn’t as shiny as it could be and there are 2 runs. One will be under the carpet so no big issue and the other is on the parcel shelf. I probably won’t do anything about that one either. I did not paint the dash panel as that should be matt black. I bought six cans of matt black paint back in April so I’ve got plenty. Masked up everything I didn’t want black  Went to get my matt black paint from the unopened box only to find there was only one can of matt black. The rest were gloss 😡. A bit late to complain now. Not knowing how much I would need I gave it a dusting of gloss black first  And built up some layers. I then went over it with the matt until I couldn’t be bothered to spray anymore. It dried really quick with the heater on so I removed all the masking.  It gives a good contrast against the Ermine white. And that was that. Early bath. |
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Dec 31, 2023 14:00:05 GMT
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Another couple of hours on the Escort. First off I got the shell off the rotisserie. Then I got the cross member on and all the front suspension.    I had to file the bolt holes on the cross cross member as it wouldn’t fit. I’ve only painted the bl00dy shell since the last time it was on so I have no idea why it wouldn’t fit. As a bonus, when bolting the top mounts, one of the bolts went tight and broke the weld off. Great.  I’ll have to take it off again to fix. I got the rear coilovers on. And got the axle ready to put on next time.   I also had a Quick look at the wiper motor conversion to Mazda MX5. It looks pretty doable  |
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good progress be a boost when its on its wheels
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good progress be a boost when its on its wheels Thanks Danknight, it will indeed, but something has come up that may hinder its completion date. I’ll report tomorrow |
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As I plan to take this car stage rallying I have to resolve my class issue. When i did a Targa rally and when I do Motorkhanas, I do so in road rally class. The rules have changed. If you run a 4 valve per cylinder engine, you have to run the standard inlet plenum unmodified. When I converted the current engine to RWD, I had to swap the throttle body to the other side of the manifold. So I can’t run in road rally class. I could just go in the 2.0 litre class but it’s got Escorts with Millington Diamond engines(30k+), so the guy with the most money always wins. I don’t have all the money so this class is no good. So I have decided to run in the 1.6 litre class. But what engine? Ford Xflow? Not really powerful enough in 1.6 form. Lotus Twincam? Would look lovely regardless of power but to expensive. There’s actually a nice one in my other garage but it belongs to my brother and I doubt he’s prepared to sponser me. In fact, there’s a myriad of other 1.6 engines out there, but I’ve opted for an x16xe engine from a Tigra. As standard they are 109bhp. But they are, according to the internet, 38kg lighter than its big brother the c2.0xe. That’s a good weight saving at the right end of the car. My current engine is even heavier than the c20 so even more lightness added. So where to source an engine. I didn’t really want to go out and buy a Tigra and convert the whole lot. I wanted pretty much a plug and play system. Well what I got isn’t exactly plug and play but it is currently located in this.  It’s a Formula Vauxhall Junior with Van Diemen chassis from somewhere between 1998 and 2001. The engine is basically a standard 1.6 that was blue printed by Scholar Race engines. The standard injection is replaced with taper throttle bodies, MBE management and a dry sump system. This ups the power to 150bhp and 125lbft torque, which happens to be exactly what my current 2.0 litre is putting out but with all the added lightness and a rev limit of 7500rpm instead of 6500. My older brother and I have gone half and half on it. I’m having the engine and all associated parts and he wants the Hewland gearbox and upright’s etc. I’ve got hold of a Westfield bellhousing to connect it to the Ford type 9 gearbox and I ordered an exhaust manifold today. I One unexpected issue is the lack of an alternator. That in itself isn’t such an issue, but the lack of a pulley for it on the crank is. Especially as the crank is running the dry sump pump. I will also have to chassis mount the engine. Not really a problem but I have just painted the bl00dy engine bay 😩. We will hopefully get it running on the weekend to check all is ok. Here’s som more pics               I can actually fit in it. Really struggled to get out though.  |
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i think a x16xe is a great choice especially as its dry sumped and you can get it low down in the engine bay
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i think a x16xe is a great choice especially as its dry sumped and you can get it low down in the engine bay I don’t know if it will go any lower because I still have the cross member in the way, but they to seem great little engines, with a nice flat torque curve in lower power guises. |
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The plan for today was to try and get the single seater engine started. Sadly Mrs Jonsey’s plans for me were different. She wanted to go shopping. So a Macies breakfast and a quick shopping trip later and I got to go out to play. The single seater doesn’t have a battery so hooked it up to the Rav4 with some jump leads. Tried cranking it over and it would fire but stop as soon as you let go of the starter. The fuel feed was leaking so I cut the pipe and reattached. The petrol stunk like some old skirting board paint. Tried it again. Same issue. After several attempts I gave it a tiny bit of throttle and it burst into life. it ran pretty well for stinky old fuel. My brother then came over to try the gearbox All good with that too. It’s a dog box so sounds clunky. When warm the engine idles with 35lb oil pressure  And 50lb when revved a bit  As my brother was here, I took the opportunity to get some help fitting the axle and the steering column and get the car back on its wheels   I got the boot and doors on too  Hopefully get the engine and box out of the single seater tomorrow |
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Cold morning today. Started the dismantling process with labelling the wiring loom   I then forgot to take any other photos until, with the help of both my brothers and Jones Junior (the younger), we got to here.   To get here after the engine was out of the single seater was as follows. Ford bell housing removed from gearbox and Westfield XE item fitted. Clutch removed from engine as the spline is wrong. Fitted gear box to bellhousing- only nipped up as gearbox spline is a fly poop to long. We used the 2 post lift as a hoist to crane the engine in. The smaller engine doesn’t fit.😩 the engine’s needs to go lower but the sump is hitting the steering rack. Took that loose. Still to high. Loosened the cross member bolts and dropped that down about 15mm. Engine is now low enough but the engine is half inch off to the passenger side as the starter motor nose on the bell housing (that does nothing) is hitting the gearbox tunnel. I’ve fitted the biggest tunnel in the world, bought the most compact bell housing and it still won’t fit😩. This leaves me here  So what’s the problem? Well there’s 2 actually. Problem 1. The dry sump is 15mm deeper than the front of the old Ford sump. Granted the Ford sump had a big bowl on the back of it but that wasn’t a problem the front part being deeper is. Problem 2. The XE engine flywheel is 1” closer to the block than a Ford engine. This means the bell housing is 1” shorter. This then means with the gearbox mounted, the engine is 1” further back towards the bulkhead. So what to do? Problem 1. The sump pan has a trough along its bottom. Either end of this trough has a connection for the scavenge pump to return the engine oil to the external oil tank. Because the connections are either end, I can cut a notch into it to clear the rack. And cross member. Problem 2. I could move the engine forward to clear the tunnel, but I would have to move the gear stick hole forwar too (freshly paintedtunnel). I can also buy a 15mm spacer to go between the gearbox and bell housing to space the engine forward. This and cutting a chunk out of the bell housing should be enough. First step is to borrow my brothers engine holder upper thingy that mounts on the inner wings, remove the cross member and sump and see how much I can cut out of the sump / trough. But I also need to get the exhaust manifold into my possession and onto the engine to make sure I don’t mount it to low. My garage now looks like this  But The Younger has one hell of racing simulator  |
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teaboy
Posted a lot
Make tea, not war.
Posts: 2,127
Member is Online
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That all sounds like a right pain in the backside, Phil.
There must be loads of Vauxhall engined Escorts out there so there must be a way?
I have got every confidence that you will get there.
Good luck.
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That all sounds like a right pain in the backside, Phil. There must be loads of Vauxhall engined Escorts out there so there must be a way? I have got every confidence that you will get there. Good luck. Thanks for the vote of confidence Mr T. There are loads out there with C20xe engines, but not many with its little brother. The main issue is the sump the ones you get for those engines in RWD format are a lot shallower and have a camels hump to give even greater clearness to get the engine lower. This sump didn’t have such issues as racks and cross members so they made it deeper.  Had I not painted the engine bay, I would have got the grinder and hammer out to get me where I wanted. (I will still have to do this for the mounts). We’ll get there. |
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I’m on call again, so took the opportunity to go out and pick up all the tools and clean up some of the mess we made. Whilst there I fitted the starter motor so it doesn’t spring up any further issues, and took a few more pics to show the issues  The biggest lump in the bell housing for the smallest starter motor I have ever seen. I can see that getting some attention from the grinder.  Because of the “massive bulge” the engine is off centre. All doable. Looks quite small in there  |
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