Mk1 escort van rolling/running project

[freddy6868]

lots of work done there m8
some mods cracking how u have fitted that engine.to a mk1 van a bet it will go some eh...
keep up the good work.

These engines have only been fitted to a handfull of escorts but never an escort van that i know of and i like to be different so i fitted it with all the top parts.

Keep An eye on this blog though as i have started doing something else i have never done before.

[freddy6868]

Well luck is with me on this one as it is an easy repair. I have had the sills and arches in the back of the van for ages i just had to get round to doing them. So when i bought a 10 quid welder i decided to rip all the arches and sills of to see just how bad the damage underneath the new panels were and luckily its very localised.

So this i haw i done yesterday with the great help of my mate lofty who has just finished restoring and preping a mini for rallying so he has done alot of panel work.

We started of by marking out where we had to cut to fit the repair panel in. So we cut it a little bit short and trimmed away the excess to make the panel fit.

Cutting and trimming




Cutting done


Setting up/testing my new welder


Cleaned up and covered


All taked up inplace




Seam welded 95% of the arch on but the gas regulator froze over so we had to wait a while for it to defrost





Whilst waiting for the valve to defrost we cut the sill off and found even more filler to hide the poor workmanship of the last guy. The whole rear of the van had coatings of filler like this in so no wonder it weighed in at 980kg with the old x flow in!


Welds all ground back and covered to stop them rotting






Only a couple more panels to do and she will be mint and solid once again!

[Aaron P.]

cracking on with it...looks great...wish mine was that far ahead ...i need to get out to the garage more...

[freddy6868]

Well nothing has happened with the escort in months as i have bought a house and thw only time i touched the escort was to move her to her new garage. Which has no electrickery atm. I did buy some really wide wheels for her though!

I thought the wheels were 13x7" in size










But they are infact 13x8.5"! So abit wide for standard arches but it will work out fine.

Another reason why the escort hasn't had much attention is the mrs bought a capri so i am also working on that in my spare time so i have three projects on the go now. so all fun.

[Fat Cat the Rat]

Bought it off Ian and Neil then from Pontllanfraith !

[mike77cos]

Got to love a nice capri

[freddy6868]

Bought it off Ian and Neil then from Pontllanfraith !

What the capri?

[freddy6868]

Yeah its only got 78,000km on the clock so thats about 48,000miles if i'm right. It was only on the road 6 years and off the road for 19years, only had 2 owners too. So a lovely car for the mrs first classic ford.

[Fat Cat the Rat]

What the capri?

Sorry , yes i meant the Capri, use to live in the same town as them, as i rallied an Escort i used to pop in and buy odds and sods off them over the years.

[freddy6868]

Sorry , yes i meant the Capri, use to live in the same town as them, as i rallied an Escort i used to pop in and buy odds and sods off them over the years.

I don't know if they owned it originally i but i bought it of my mates grandfather who was from tonyrefail nr llantrisant and he bought it off a mate when the capri was 4years old as his mate crashed it and damaged the drivers side wing and slam pannel. Luckily the damage has been repaired and all it needs is some tlc to the pait and the original engine put back in.

[freddy6868]

I actually had time to work on the escort sunday! I helped a mate fix his starlet turbo on the saturday and had a free day sunday. So i spent 6 hours welding fresh metal into the body.
Firstly i had to remake the lip and weld that in. That was the easy bit and it didn't take up too much time.
This is how it looked before, too much missing metal for my liking.


Well it took 4 and a half hours for me to make this peice of metal with a body work hammer, a peice of old worktop (to get the rad for certain parts of the pannel) and a bench vice to hold it all.

All tacked into the van


Abit of seam welding later and it was almost in




I ground most of the weld back and welded up all pin holes left. But it was way too cold in the garage at this point to do any more so i just painted it up to protect it.




The best bit of welding i done all day and i was lying on my back the horizontal weld that is.


Well i had time to finsh what i started on saturday and i must say i am very impressed with my self as it's turned out well for a made from scratch pannel.

All welded up, ground back and primered and cavity waxed the inside to protect it from the nasties.









Also my axle for my wide ass wheels turned up today. Only got to tack the leaf spring pans on it shot blast it and then get the seats tig welded on and to paint then.

[freddy6868]

A little more has been done this week. Firstly i have cut out the passanger rear arch and welded a new one in, again took ages! I have modded the front pannel to take the oil cooler and i need to make a couple of brakets to hold the oil cooler. I also got round modding the ally rad as the outlets needed slight felting to take my engine configuration. I also splashed the cash this month as i have bought a nice plated Titan diff which after alot of thought i will be putting it in the 3.89 diff as it is in perfect working order already.

Looking good


Not so great


Only a small repair patch needed here




Peeling it off




All welded up




I have also solved the problem of how to mount all my little clutch, front and back fluid bottles to the car with a sugestion from my bro so i knocked this up and welded it in.

[freddy6868]

This turned up in the post this morning! It was brand new second hand.

It wasn't planned to go out and buy a plated diff but this came up cheap and for once i had spare cash to buy it.


All fitted with the help of my mate reedy. The diff was in good condition with only 0.008" of backlash and the CWP mesh was correct as it came out of a low mileage 1600cc mk2 escort only 30,000 miles on it. All steam cleaned and the new diff all fitted up it only took 25 mins to remove the old one and refit the new one then tweek side wheels to get the correct backlash again.

[mike77cos]

Good find

[freddy6868]

I have also changed the fpr for the filter king with the 85mm bowl with the high flow filter as the old one seamed to have failed. The new fpr even has a built in pressure gauge so so you can set the pressure correctly.
Well as my old MBE wasn't mappable by anyone in the south wales area i sold it on the bay. Then i went out and bought a DTA S40 that will control injection aswell as the ignition as i think i will either convert the webers to run as throttle bodies or run throttle bodies in the future.

I then had to set about making a wiring loom for the lot and after a lot of advise off a couple of mates i dived in and expanded my skill sets futher. After getting my hands on some top quality wire and all the plugs and plug boots i set about making it. Below is a picture of the loom half finished as i haven't got heat shrink thick enough to go over some of the wires so i will finish it when that arrives.

I am happy with the way things have turned out as i even went as far as making litlle lables and heat shrinking them into the loom. I also think the black and grey is a good contrast.

After looking everywhere for a cheaper solution i had to fork out for a brand news tps sensor fo fit on the webers as i am going to run the engine on a 3D map untill i run it on injection.

I then relised i will have to weld in a lambda sensor boss into the exhaust system to get it mapped so i will get that welded in some time this week. I am happy to say the quality of the one i got was better than the one in the picture too!