The car made an appearance with the Eurofordclub at the Peter Warren All Ford Day in Sydney, and had a few people come up and say hello! It was good to raise money for the Westmead Childrens Hospital. Next year I hope to be there with the Classic Ford guys with my RS2000.

Back in the workshop, it was time to get the final bits and pieces finished on the car. The front coilover struts had been clamped in place to set the right height for the centre of the coilover threaded tubes, so it was time to weld them on.
First we removed the struts from the car as a whole assembly, the lower control arms had to come out with them as they refused to come off while in the car.

The Noltec strut tops and Bilstein gas struts were removed, don't want those gas filled grenades anywhere near my welding!

The Escort sitting up on its stands with no front running gear!

The threaded tube welded into place, the struts are now ready to be stripped back to the metal and painted up.

Onto the engine, it had been running previously but stripped for parts when it was installed into this shell from the previous shell. We checked the valve clearances and found two inlet valves were a bit out, so we reset those.

The block looked rather ordinary in its flaking black paint, so we went to work stripping the block down, masking up the engine bay, and putting a new coat of high temp engine paint on her. We kept the cruddy old black rocker cover on, as we don't plan to use it, and any overspray won't Matter.

The paint is on and begins to dry, so we turn our attention to the new rocker cover. We only have a chrome one in a good state of repair, and so it will do for now. We flattened out the edges to ensure good gasket sealing and avoid the oil leaks.

The paint is drying, the rocker cover sits nice and flat on the head, so it's time to wait for that to dry and then we'll begin attacking the other parts of the engine to get it ready to fire up!

Something interesting that we hadn't noticed before was that this engine block is a German EB block, just like my RS2000 engine, which is excellent news as these blocks are sought after for racing.
No doubt I'll have another update soon!
Timmeh