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Hello welcome aboard. I can’t imagine there’s many mk3 escort cab’s on the roads now.

I take it that’s old Sarum air field that’s in the background.

I knew this would be a hard job, but I didn’t think it would take me three weeks to do.
So I had to finish off the inner structure. I made up a couple of repair patches. I just hammered some small bits into shape.
Using a hammer and a socket in the vice.



And then weld them into place.



Then it’s onto the door skin. After a bit of trimming it’s tacked into place.



Once happy with it I fully weld it in.



Next onto the second half of the door skin. First tacked, then fully welded.





After that it’s a case of dressing the welds and tidying up.




Putting the door back on the Austin and it’s not to bad. But there’s room for improvement. So I will do some more tweaking.
And hopefully get it looking right. The other door should be a bit easier as the main structure is in better condition.
I wish the repair panel was in one piece instead of two. Having a joint right where there’s a crease in the panel makes life difficult.

I can confirm that a XF seat is one of the most comfortable things you can sit on. I regularly drive across Europe in mine.
Also I have a seat at work that’s out of an old SAAB 99 and that’s really comfortable. In fact so comfortable I sometimes fall asleep in it on my dinner break.

DPF’s are giving us all sorts of problems with are work vehicles. We have some Rangers and Hilux, as well as some Vauxhall vans.
They are always trying to do a regen. The fleet of old Land Rovers we have are actually the most reliable.

Had a box of goodies turn up this week.



So I thought I would have a crack at repairing one of the back doors. It’s a job I have not been looking forward to as it looked like a tricky job.
I decided to go straight in at the deep end, and have a go at the one in the worst condition.



Not much better looking on the inside.



After spending ages sanding down the wings last weekend. I thought I would get hold of some stripping discs for the grinder.
Wow what a difference. The car has been painted in enamel and sanding discs get clogged very quickly. But not this disc, it just removed it instantly with out clogging and just left shiny metal.
This is the result.





There was a load of filler in there as well as fibre glass and paper. Once removed it became clear that it was going to need more work than I originally thought. Annoyingly you can only get repair panels for the front and not the back. Which seems odd as its one of the areas that always rot out. Next I decided to start chopping out the rotten areas in the door skin.





Yeah that’s a bit on the crusty side.
So I started to make up small repair sections. Starting on the top bit.



Then a little bit of the side.



And then the bottom bit that the skin is folded over.



And that’s as far as I got today with it. I have to admit that when I first removed all the paint and rust. I thought maybe this was one repair job that was beyond my skill set. But I thought sod it I couldn’t make it any worse than it already is. So just do one small bit at a time.
This might take me a while, but hopefully I can pull it off.

I possibly could be driving it next month. With no windows sitting on a milk crate.

Is the teeth different to the ones on the water pump. Wrong belt?

Water pump from a different motor?