Well, you may know I had intended to put a 2wd Cossie engine into a TX Gemini coupe. However it somehow went sideways as I realised the Gem was not going to retain much of its originality and a MK2 Escort came up through a Car club acquaintance.
The car was being set up for tarmac use and had already been turreted, partly caged and arched so was heading down the path I wanted to go.
I picked it up in June 2021 and work has been in fits and starts due to other commitments and my health hiccup.
Here it is as bought.

So cage was the first thing to finalise and with the help of a friend who has the bending gear we sorted it as we went into lockdown in August 2021. So the car was stranded in his workshop and I made late night forays to get it done.
We recently added a bar across the dash as once I had the steering sorted I knew where it could be positioned.

you wont bend that up for a while Mark, that's a few metres of tube.
Definitely a good head start.
We expect weekly updates now...:)

Yep Deano, that was part of my reason for hesitating on this. Oh well.
 
Ok I'll keep moving on the posting cause all this was done last year once the cage was finished. First pic is the front under dash bar, that finalises the cage.
 
The other thing I thought I'd do thinking outside the square was to put the intercooler somewhere out of the way as the radiator/thermo takes up all the room in front of the engine and I've still got an 13 row oil cooler to go in!
The radiator is a GRP4 monster which I'll post up fitting details later.
 
I think you've all seen pics of track cars where they cut the crap out of the front of a MK1/2 to fit an intercooler. I just did not want to do this and water/air setup seems like a lot of extra plumbing etc and at the end of the day probably has to be in the cabin anyway? Its good having the RS finished as its a good template for measuring up on this car, and there is absolutely no room under the bonnet of the RS so, why not?
So I got a Skyline unit as it was the most compact (and I've got a mate who has a box of them) I could find whilst still having good capacity and proceeded to try and figure out where to put it.
I always had my eye for under one of the front guards and well I'll let the photos tell the rest.
The first two pics were sent to PWR as they have made me a couple of custom jobs, but I just didn't want to spend a grand plus on something that may or may not not work?
So fabricated some brackets utilising the intercoolers rubber OEM rubber bushings and it fits a treat. The hoses come out together into the engine bay through the vertical panel which is normally at the side of the factory battery position. The only hard bit will be the hose from the turbo will have to travel across the engine to enter the intercooler, but I figured I will worry about it later
Thank god for nutserts.

Well the diff is done.
The donor was a Hilux LN86. It was going into the Gem but fortunately the Escort shared something in common with the evil Holden, wheel tracks.
It was an adventure fabricating the bracketry for the 4 link etc. The UK stuff is made for the Atlas and English so didn't bother.
New centre is a 4.11 clutch pack type LSD. We'll see how strong it is

Looking good Mark
I've a Hilux diff which is a RN25 , just a whisker wider than escort but less than Capri, came with a TruTrac centre to be installed, I've no idea on ratio which is why I've not used it..
My latest think is using a 07ish Triton diff with factory LSD and 3.9:1 for my resto depending on engine choice ... Might be a call to the local engineer soon 🤔

Marty, the main reason I did not go with the early Hilux was the problem with sourcing the main reciprocating components etc. That's what a Hilux place told me anyway. Whether or not that's the case???
I would have to trawl thru the measurements I made at the time but as I recall it is very close. Plus it is now running a disks so all a bit different anyway. And I don't need to worry about engineering for the first time