I have recently moved to London for work, should be here between 1 and 2 years, depending on the industry. However the last few years have been spent working and building my Mk1 circuit car. It is intended on being an Improved production club car in Australia and as such has been built to their rules. Largely as the name suggest it must remain a production car, suspension pickup points and type must remain, engines must be from the same manufacturer and same configuration as the original. We predominately compete in two classes, under 2 litres and over. Turbos have a multiplication factor of 1.7 so most turbos, if not all are over two litres class however are restricted, I think it’s a 36mm restrictor.
I intend, when finished, to compete in the under two litre class, therefore it currently has a Sierra injected pinto. Body wise, as mentioned, is largely restricted, no tubbing, multilinks varying suspension systems lightweight fibreglass panels, Perspex windows or drilling etc. Therefore all glass, door cards and ¼ cards and bulkhead panels are in place. The escort has an advantage that somewhere in the past, bubble arches have been homologated so they have been completed in the three months leading up to us leaving for London.
I started the car as a competition only vehicle about 5 years ago, working on it weekends and evenings, all the time saving money to spend on it, hampered by my partners incessant desire to travel.
I have had the car for over 10 years. I originally built it as a neat and tidy road car, used on weekends only. It ran twin 40’s a mild cam and standard Mk2 running gear, albeit slightly lowered and 13x6’s
At the time I was tinkering with a cooper s mini as the family race car, offset ground 1100s crank and bored cylinders gave somewhere near the 1.5 litre mark, 13x9’s slicks, large tubbing hi-lows 48 weber almost sitting next to the driver. Needless to say compared to an escort it wasn’t the most reliable. I believe one event cost us 1500 AUD per lap after we spun a bearing. So I decided that the escort was the way to go for reliable, well more reliable motorsport.
Initially, the idea was to bolt parts to the road car and have some fun, however discovering the front floors to be held together by body deadening was a blow to that idea. So out came the grinders and cutters and welders and a new floor including Auto tunnel, as Group parts were not allowed as they are body modifications were stitched back in. Unfortunately the replacement panels we are able to get, well the ones I got fitted so poorly I threw them away and custom made new floor sections from halfway up the bulkhead to under the drivers seat. While doing this I replaced the early Mk1 under-floor shock-absorber mounts with a mk2 turret piece. All of this took a long time but did include removing all sound deadening, tar etc from the underside, while lying on my back with a wire wheel in a grinder throwing high speed stainless steel spears all over the place and seam welding, I hate welding upside down!
Once the chassis was sound, though looking around turbosport I had nothing to worry about as there is no sill rust, the bulkhead, under the heater was fine the front turrets and inner wings were fine as was the rear arches and everywhere else. The only other rust was mild surface rust to the boot floor which I might fix properly one day, mostly cosmetic but I can see it.
So I bought the bent parts to the cage from a local cage builder, along with 19 meters of straight material and fabricated the fully welded cage. One day I will finish it with an under dash brace and perhaps more bars to the front firewall. Again the rules dictate It must not extend outside the passenger cell so that dictated its design. As it turned out the seat I finally purchased, has shoulder wings that clash with the side intrusion bars and if mounted centrally to the foot well clashed with the closing door so the seat it s a little high for my liking, in saying that I’m 6 foot tall and cannot see the bonnet while seated and strapped in
Suspension wise I started with gusseted custom valved, shortened wet legs, coilovers and 255 pound springs, adjustable camber/caster alloy tops, standard new TCA’s, adjustable roll bar, 50mm deep anti dive further adjustable for caster, a quick rack and nolothane bushing throughout. Up back is reverse eyed leaves of about 165 pound, and bilstein shock absorbers, adjustable rear spring hangars, anti tramp bars and adjustable panhard rod. All this led to a flat handling slightly under steering escort, impressive enough but not quite right, I don’t care what the back end of a car does but the front end it must point and turn. We played with different camber settings, tyre pressures etc but it was leaning on the bump stops through corners and therefore was always going to do it. So I hatched a plan to replace the front shocks absorbers with 50mm shorter items and gain more camber. More of this later.
The rear axle is a shortened Hilux (yes Toyota commercial two wheel drive tray back ute). These were reasonably cheap and the rations for LSD range from 3.7 to 5.8 or something like that, they weigh 60KG with LSD and no brakes and are reputed to handle 350+ hp. The axles are huge compared to the escort and one thing I was not going to be doing is replacing axles at a race meeting.
The brakes consist of BMW E30 260x22 vented disks and Volvo 4 pot callipers and Ferrodo DS3000 pads on modified hubs ( the bearings have been moved inboard by 4 mm to clear the steering tie rod end) up front and Nissan Pintara 270x14 solids and Nissan 200sx sliding single pot callipers to the rear. Actuated by a bias adjustable pedal box with two .625 master cylinders with remote reservoirs and braided line throughout. The next addition to the car will be cold air ducting to front and rear brakes as the fronts glow under braking, so I have been told as I can’t see them.
The fuel system consists of a baffled and foam filled group (?) tank, alloy surge tank, alloy speedflow fittings and two high pressure filters a Mercedes high pressure pump and a low pressure gravity feed pump. All pipes are run through the car.
At this stage I was running out of money so an import Sierra unleaded fuel injected engine was fitted just to get it going before the final choice of engine was chosen and paid for. The head has been rebuilt, it runs an adjustable cam pulley and 4-2-1 extractors but is otherwise standard. Power is transmitted through a standard 4 speed with uprated clutch and 4 kg flywheel. This is how it stands today though plans are for a zetec on twin 45/48’s. My budget should stretch to 200hp so while over here in the UK I’ll start collecting parts??? Any hints or good serviceable second hand parts???
However all was going well until at a race meeting where 3 other Mk1 escorts were present, all except mine were bubble arched and just looked a lot more serious than mine. So after getting home and cleaning it I hatched plane to arch it. At the same time the missus was hatching plans to move to London, perhaps we should talk more? By the first following weekend I had managed to remove all remnants of the rear arches and outer tub and tack in place the steel infill. As they say the first cut hurts the most and in a very clean Mk1 with no rust it hurt more than I was expecting, but it wasn’t anything special so old metal was flying everywhere. At the same time I hunted down another Hilux diff housing and axles. This was 75mm per side wider then the existing one, the arches are reputed to be 50mm wider than standard and the old wheel tucked under the old arches by about 25mm so If my match was correct there should be about a pinky finger of clearance. The front arches had been converted to Bolt on during the floor repair so these were whipped off for the front arches to be bonded and flushed. While they were off I decided to modify the crossmember. The TCA mounting holes were reinforced while being moved out and up. Of the 75mm per side track increase 25mm was all I could legally get from moving the pickup point. 40mm extra width was gained from adjustable lower TCA’s, 4 mm was already there due to the bearing relocation and a 4 mm spacer had been added when I decided to run with Long wheel studs. And finally thye wheel offset is different front to rear to square the car up. The top was simple as I just rotated the top of the strut towards the outside of the strut top hole centreline and now have a healthy 3-7 degree negative depending on which track or event the car runs.
However I encountered some delays in the machinist getting around to turning the outside diameter of the axle flanges to fit within the disk hat and install the new wheel studs while changing PCD, so the metalwork to the arches was completed but I could not fix the flares in place until the axle was built and installed, the centreline and width was determined. So I undertook renovation number three of the boot. I had to respray it because of the inner arches So I modified the Tank base, re-plumbed and rewired and manufactured a new surge tank with more of those expensive speedflow fittings.
Also while I was waiting I manufactured new coliovers. Based around a Koni, Mazda RXZ series 4 strut insert I cut apart another set of Mk two struts. In face They are so much shorter I was able to cut the strut tube underneath the original spring platform. This was pretty much the easiest and one of the more rewarding modifications I’ve ever done, quick, simple and effective. The shock absorbers are good foe 300 Pound springs and are insitu top adjustable. I stuck with Mk 2 struts as I had a modified hub to fit and they were significantly lighter than the common Capri strut swap.
Once al the parts were in place it was a simple matter of fitting bonding and blending. 3 weeks of body filler dust all over the car, me and the workshop. The fronts were simple as the fibreglass flares(remember it’s a competition car and steel/alloy flares are expensive) fitted well. The rears were a nightmare. There were gaps of about 8mm to the panel once the majority of it was held flush, not to mention the crease line in the mould was about 30mm lower and the entire flare was radially too short. Not to mention I was not too short on time to find another set so As you may tell from the photo the flare has been lowered on the body and rotated slightly towards the rear. Ill fix this after the first time they get ripped off on the circuit or garage.
During this time I decided to continue painting the rear ¼ into the door jambs and along the sill so removed the door strikes, with the door swinging freely it opened as I was dropping it down from the jack, strangely I thought the car did not return to a flat stance on the ground… As it turned out the door opened and landed on a jack stand crushing the bottom edge flat as 900 kg of car was supported by the door. Oh hell, a perfect door without filler or a patch or rust now had a major bend along the bottom. Luck was on my side though. I grabbed a monkey wrench tightened it up on the impact point and bent it back out. To my surprise and with only a small amount of hammering along the bottom edge the door popped back straight and a thin smear of filler had it back to good in no time. The door frame and bottom crease line saved the rest of the panel from any distortion.
So all there is to do now really is find more power. I would love Cossie turbo power but the cost In Australia is prohibitive, and so is Duratec so I think I have settled on Zetec, with the right bits bolted on 200HP should be achievable with a throw away bottom end that should cost nothing to replace.
Has it been worth it. Yes of course, I have done everything except the fine machining work, Iv’e cut, welded, filled, painted, bolted, polished, wired and swore at it all, would I do it again. Until recently no, but I have been away from it now for three months and am hatching plans on a round arched zackspeed, group 4 mk2 with Australian Ford xr6 turbo mechanicals and lightweight fibreglass/carbon everywhere. Oh to have dreams!
photos to follow
Cheers Justin P
Thanks guys, finally worked the photo thing out. Justin p