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There were lots of
little bits that got blasted and then zinc plated, this is just a small
selection of them. |
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Picture
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follow
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Almost
every bit of the car was getting blasted or cleaned and plated as above,
or painted like these bits here. |
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The engine
bay wiring loom needed a lot of work. Many extra wires had been added over
the years and in some cases these had just been tie-wrapped to the main
loom. I started by removing all the old loom tape and tidying up the
wires. |
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I put the
loom in place within the engine bay to check that the wires would all
reach their respective components. When I was happy with that, I taped the
wires together every few inches. |
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Then I
started to re-wrap the entire engine bay loom. As an example of all the
extra wiring, you will notice that I have 4 relays on the inner wing
whereas a standard Mexico has only one. My other main problem is that the
loom is now so thick that the standard loom clips wont go over it. |
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Next up
was the interior loom and even this has been extensively modified. Many
years ago I made this centre console in ally sheet to hold the extra
switches, fuse boxes etc. Before I put it back in I thought about painting
it in wrinkle finish but I decided it would be too much bother to remove
all the switches and wiring, so I left well alone. |
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With most of the dash sorted, I turned my attention to the suspension etc.
First up was fitting the 5-linked Baby Atlas Axle. This may only be an old
rally car but every part that was even slightly rusty was blasted and
painted or plated. |
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A really lucky find at a local Autojumble was a pair of Roller Tops still
in the Ford boxes. The guy selling them said the part number on the box
was a Mk2 Cortina part and he was looking £15 each for them. My mate who
was with me nearly choked when I talked the guy down to £25 for the pair. |
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My adjustable front Bilstiens are the more unusual short tarmac version.
Along with the new Roller Tops, I fitted a new pair of inserts at the very
reasonable price of £95 each from Peter Lloyd Rallying. The Bilstein
casings and the springs etc were just blasted and painted. |
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The struts were then fitted to the shell, I still need to get my hubs etc
blasted and plated and then fit the brake calipers. Note the Tank Tape on
the struts and the rubber pipe on the steering track rods, there is grease
under these to protect the exposed threads on both. |
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Next came the adjustable bias pedal box, it was completely dismantled and
various bits blasted etc. I fitted new rubbers to both the brake master
cylinders but the clutch master was worn badly and needed to be replaced
with a second hand item. Some of you may spot that my pedal box is not
actually a Mexico based one, it is the Twin Cam/RS1600 version, identifiable
by the much longer accelerator pedal. |
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When using an adjustable bias pedal box you need extra reservoirs for the
extra cylinders. The one on the left is the original late Mexico type one,
I think it is just moved slightly from its original position. The other
two then feed the two brake cylinders. |
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Next up was my big header radiator, my original one which I had got
re-cored about 15 years ago was past its best so I decided to keep it for
a spare and make up a new one. I managed to find a busted Mk1 Cortina big
header rad, (short type) in a scrap yard. The guy wouldn't take any money
for it as he was going to throw it away. I took it to my local radiator
specialist and he put a tall 3 core matrix in it. I then had to make up my
own side mounts to suit the Mexico. |
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Each side was made from 2 pieces of steel. They were cut and shaped to
suit both the rad and the rad supports in the car. I have the slam panel
of the shell cut away slightly as per Twinks and RS1600s to allow more
clearance for the slightly thicker 3 core rad. A standard rad has only 2
cores. |
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The side pieces are now all made up and ready to be fitted to the rad. I
will drill the mounting holes after the sides are fitted to the rad. I
then took all the bits back to Brownlow Radiators and they soldered it all
together and painted it. |
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Picture
to
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Here is the rebuild rad all ready to be fitted. I now have what is in
effect a brand new tall 3 core big header rad all for the price of £105
and a little work. Not bad I thought. |
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Everyone has their own method for putting in the engine and gearbox - here
is a brief run down on my method which I find is quite handy even working
on my own. This method is particularly useful if like me you use a World
Cup Crosmember. The first thing I do is lower the gearbox into place. I don't
bolt it in, but I leave it sitting on a couple of blocks 2 or 3 inches
lower than its normal position, the tail of the box is slightly lower so
the nose points up. The rags stuffed round the bellhousing are there to
hold it roughly in place. |
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You may have noticed in the photo above that the engine crossmember is not
bolted to the chassis rails, in actual fact it is sitting about 5 inches
below the chassis rails, this makes it an awful lot easier to put in the
engine and box. To achieve this all you have to do is unbolt the steering
column and the bolts holding the crossmember in place then push it down as
far as it will go. It will still be held in place by the anti-rollbar and
the TCA's. |
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Next the engine is lowered into position. Lower it down to mate with the
gearbox and bolt them together. Once they are bolted together you can
raise the gearbox and bolt its crossmember in position. Next bolt the
engine mounts to both the engine and crossmember. Once that is done you
can hoist the engine along with the crossmember backup into its proper
position and screw the bolts up into the chassis rails. |
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At the same time as
fitting the engine etc, I was also preparing the doors, boot and bonnet.
Back in “The Rebuild 2” I had done some repair work to the
navigator’s door. When I started to paint the door, I discovered a few
small spots where I was getting some sort of reaction with old paint etc.
After sanding down these areas I gave the door a coat of paint sealer, which was
a decidedly strange brown colour ;-) |
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I was now able to give the
door a few coats of high build primer with no further problems. |
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While the navigator's door
had been fixable the driver's door was just too far gone to be repairable.
I picked this door from my stock of second hand ones, contrary to local
rumour I did not take one of the doors of my Daytona Yellow Mexico, it
really was a spare door that came with a lot of other Escort spares in a
swap deal for Cooper S parts many years ago. |
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As you can see the bottom
of the door was a little rusty, but at least there were no holes in it and
a good going over with the blaster would soon clean this up. |
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You may have noticed in
the photo above that this is actually a door from an early Mk2 Van or
Estate. A close look at the door handle mechanism shows the plate that
Ford supplied to convert the door to accept the Mk1 type handle etc. |
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After the problems that I
had with paint reaction on the other door I decided to take this one back
to bare metal before doing any painting. Using Nitromors I removed the
first coat of Daytona Yellow, to reveal a coat of Grey Primer. I removed
this to reveal another coat of Yellow, then more primer, then more Yellow
etc etc. It looked as if the door had been sprayed on 5 separate
occasions. When I did eventually get down to the original Ford primer
there were one or two small areas of Isopon where the door had obviously
had a ding or two in its time. |
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Once I had the doors and
bootlid etc prepared it was back into my spray booth to give them a coat
of Sebring Red, and in the case of the bonnet a coat of Matt Black. |
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In the meantime I had
gotten the last of the engine ancillaries fitted and was able to start
the engine. As it turned out I had to remove the engine again because of a
blown head gasket and also a strange noise coming from the area of the
clutch, there was a mad panic to get these problems sorted in the last few
days before our first event. |
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And finally after all this
feverish activity, Saturday 10th May 2003 dawned. The first
time the car had moved under her own power for over four years, and she
was going to get a baptism of fire. Less that four hours after tightening
the final screw we were heading off for our first competitive event in
quite a long time. |
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The Drumhorc Hills
Hillclimb, an event taking place on a closed public road only 2 miles from
my own house. Everything went reasonably well considering there was no
time to set the car up properly. There was only one minor off into the
straw bales on the second run up the hill. |
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With our next planned
outing being over a month away, AVO day in June, I was able to take it
easy for a while. There were still plenty of minor jobs to do but the
pressure of meeting the deadline for the hillclimb was past. |
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There rest of the
Navigators equipment, like tripmeter, clocks, intercom etc was finally
installed as well as finishing off the wiring to various switches etc.
Door locks, door cards, badges and many other small items were also
fitted. |
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There were still quite a
few items to fit :- door bars to the rollcage, fire extinguishers, sump
guard, mechanical handbrake mechanism – essential for the MOT and a few
other minor items. But these would wait, there were more important
preparations to make for our trip over to the mainland and AVO National
Day. |
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Check
back soon for the next installment. |
