G'day everyone!
I've been lurking around this forum now for almost two years and thought it was about time I introduced myself and my car.
My car is a Lemon/Lime MkII Escort RS2000 four door which I've owned for about 18 months now. It had been in a nose to tail crash before I owned it, with the repair work done by the previous owner. It needs a bit of a tidy up and a paint.
I brought the car nearly complete, with almost all of the original parts, as well as a heap of spares. I think all I'm missing now is the original radio and gear knob. The interior is in good condition with recently retrimmed seats, although they were done in a different material than the original. The front door cards have had 6*9" speaker holes cut in them which is a bit of a shame...
The body is in OK condition, with rust in the spare wheel well, and some on the right side of the boot. Can anyone tell me what originally went on that side? There is also a little bit of rust in the right rear wheel arch, the heater bubble had rust, but the firewall was pretty good. The left side of the radiator support panel has been 'repaired' with body filler. The nosecone isn't too bad, it has a crack in the bottom, and a split between the headlights, but nothing too serious.
The front floor and the transmission tunnel, however, are not in a very good way. The tunnel had been beaten almost beyond recognition to house a Celica five speed. While the floor has rust holes on both the left and right sides.
I brought a $250 Ghia which I recently sent to the sacrificial pit for parts, including panels. I stripped the Ghia and a mate and I hacked it up with a plasma cutter, so I'm currently in the process of tidying up what I need. I will be using most of the front floor section, including the larger automatic tunnel in the RS. Interestingly, the heater bubble in the Ghia was in near perfect condition, although the firewall was almost completely Kangaroo Edward, the opposite case to that of the RS...
The engine is the original one and was running quite well when I brought the car, however when I stripped it down I found that it had been given quite a hard time at some stage. The bores are 1mm oversize, while the main bearings are 0.25mm undersize. The piston rings were quite badly worn, as were the valve seats, particually the exhaust ones which had been pounded into the cylinder head and are in very poor condition, I'm supprised they sealed at all! The cam bearings were also in a bad way, particularly the centre one, as was the oil pump, which probably explains some of the above!
Some work had been done on the cylinder head, although only on the inlet side it appears. So I have been conservatively tidying up the job and removing some material from the exhaust side to even things up with the help of the Vizard and Hammill books. The next stage is to have new valve seats put in the head as well as new bearings. I'm waiting on a Piper BP270 cam kit to arrive to check the bearings fit and then that will happen. After that, I'll measure the combustion chamber volume and send the head away again to have it shaved to raise the compression ratio a bit.
Plans for the future are to fit adjustable coilovers, with new springs and dampers, Volvo/BMW front brakes and probably Nissan disks on a Hilux LSD. I'm also looking at buying a quick rack to improve the steering, and a bias adjustable pedal box. The car will be used mainly as a street car, but I intend to enter some sprint events and anything else I don't need a roll cage for, just for a bit of fun.
I've attached some pictures, there's some more to come...
I look forward to chatting with you all on the forum, keep up the good work!
Cheers,
Wagin