I'm back after a month of repairs and a accident in the shed, luckily I was aware and stood clear, more on this later..
Back to the car, I've decided to remove the fuel filler hole and blank it off, the filler will be relocated on the C pillar with a modern cap.

Patched and filed to blend into the body, using the wingnut blocks really helps keep the panel in line


Thought to show the gutter that I replaced to see how it looks

This is the patch repair for the fuel filler

That's that part done, on to the next part of the car..

Later that day I literally threw the sunroof panel on top of the Escort roof to see how and what needs to be cut away. The weirdest bit is the windscreen opening at the top is exact the same shape as Nissan donor roof.


Next was to find centre of the Escort roof and carefully measure how wide I need to cut the hole out, once centre was found and marked, I used a chalk line to ping the line down.

Then the big cut to remove nearly half of the roof skin

After some sunroof panel setting and aligning to get an idea what needs removing etc, this happened..

The back of the rotisserie decided to have a fatigue moment and the car dropped to the floor, luckily the car righted itself before the spindle broke. Made a heck of a bang onto the concrete and because the frame is what hit the ground there was hardly any damage done to the car believe it or not.

What had happened is the tube which goes inside the main frame tube got a bit porous and corroded causing a tear, not to mention I believe the tube was slightly to thin..This rotisserie has served me for nearly 20yrs and never had a problem. This is the body mounting frame where it let go.

This is the spindle which the brake rotor bolts to

Cleaned up the old tube and welds ready for the new thicker tube
Measure the length and cut in the bandsaw, if you look closely there's a spider doing a runner from danger
Welded the new tube on and ran a strap over it and down the frame to minimise and future breaks

Time for a brake rotor upgrade, I saved the front rotors from my Focus ST for just such occasion, you can see the size difference, 235mm 1300mk1 rotor against a 320mm rotor !!
The caliper is also an upgrade from the mk2 escort M16 caliper, the new one is from a Toyota land cruiser 4 piston..

Next is to start the plasma cutter up and cut the hole bigger, I thought my little cut 40 plasma wasn't going to do it but it actually needed turning down, I kept blasting till the tube went in with a little gap

It fits !!

Making a removable disk is to weld a plate to the spindle and another to the outer tube which the rotor is welded to, I used 2x 10mm bolts to take the stress.

This is the rotor about to be welded in place once I know the depth and to keep it square..

Cut a bit of rhs box to take the shape and angle of the support bar, this is to mount the cheapo E brake frame to.

This is how it's going to sit

And the caliper mounted with 3mm plate and a gusset to stop and side moving

And this is the completed new setup, prolly a little bit overkill but why not !!


Recently I modded the handle as the E brake one is a pain to use so I sent it into the bin and resurrected the old Anglia ratchet handbrake handle as before..

Upgrade of the upgrade handbrake lever

Getting back to the roof panel, I did some more trimming being confident the front part of the roof doesn't need to there anymore.

Some bad bare metal fire rust, all this will be sand blaster clean and treated with non wash off rust converter

Now that the donor roof is starting to blend in to the Escort roof... Or what's left of it, I have also trimmed back the rear of the Nissan roof as it's got too much of a curve so I'll be raiding the back half of the spare escort roof but not taking to much as the front half is for the van/Ute conversion later on .

I welded a support bar in to stop any change in height or angle, will do the same or more at the rear if required.
On a different note, I've finally got my 4x4 Ute on historic reg for the next 3yrs , $230 for 3yrs beats $310 per quarter, tho I can only drive it for 100 days in a given year, that's way more than I will use so I'm pleased with the outcome.

Roof looks good Marty, you're a bloody magician

Last week I did the sandblasting of the inner pillars and around the back quarter window opening. After a couple of refills of garnet I called it a day. The next day I hoovered up the shed floor and in the car, rolling it to pull out as much garnet as possible. Then I gave all the bare metal rust treatment which made the steal go all black.

Had a day to do some more on the roof panel this weekend, I did some panel beating along the edges to keep things in line.
First off I placed the sunroof back on the Escort and pinned it with cleco locks at the front windscreen edge, this way I know it's pretty straight mounted and just nudge it into place. I did a side measure and rear, it came up within 2mm so that's where it'll be set.

Ah, your thinking, but the thickness of the extra panel will not be a good look.. all good, one got a air joggler /hole punch, what this does is step the panel down about a mm so the letting in panel will blend in smoother.
However, my joggler has been sitting a while and lost a bunch of hyd fluid and wasn't squeezing much, all I had was auto trans fluid to do the job and worked a treat

And here is the job it does, it's easy better than the manual joggler I've had for ever.
You can clearly see the step down it created without much effort at all..



Next on the list is to smooth it all out and get it blended as best I can and then it's cut the other Escort roof rear section to fit in..

Gave the roof a whip over with the rust/paint remover disk on the grinder before I processed to finalise it's fitment and final welding, adding more cleco locks where needed


Aligning and panel beating until it all fits neat and flat

Bit of a close up shot

I used panel clamps and tek screws just to make sure nothing will move and then I removed it one last time to punch holes in with a hand joggler for plug welding , also gave the panels a squirt of weld thru primer

Now it is ready, no turning back...

This is a pic of where the new skin meets the old burnt and rusted skin. I used a length of angle to prop up the roof skin more level a bit later on

Panels plug welded together and linished smooth, I took my time doing this as it can buckle the panels from heat as much as welding can.


I haven't done the front leading edge yet , just ran out of time to tackle it, next weekend's job. I do need to look at a previous crinkle on the left rear of the sunroof corner, as there's all inner frame brackets there I don't think beating it out will be able to be done, so I'm thinking to cut out most of it and make a new piece to go in.
Here is the inside panel showing the welding penetrated plenty good..