well decided to take the car out for a run because its been too long, put on the hwy spec wheels (15x7 195/50/r15) and went for a run into the hills to a mates place.
to cut a long story short returned home with one less gear usable in my gearbox then i set out with. wasnt even doing anything silly so im rather stumped. It has had a hard life previous to last night, but still odd. car still drives fine just have to work around 2nd gear.
looking into stronger gearbox options but all im doing is making myself very sad. over $3,000 for a straightcut 1,2,3,4 std 5th setup to take the abuse. looking to see if anyother gearboxes line up close. 
heres to hoping and praying.
 
 

also got those 13x8's to fit without any clearance issues, now with the 175/50r13's
might go to a 175/70r13 and see what they look like later on.
 

 

 
and now with the small wheels and tyres the exhaust sits a touch low
 

 
so the car is heading back the Brae Auto Fab to have a custom 3inch into twin 2inch exhaust made to tuck it all up nice and high.
 
cheers
Zac

Looks mad on the 13s
Good luck sorting the gearbox.

nice 4door mate, had you any trouble finding the 175x50x13 tyres in vic, im in adelaide and cant get them anywhere.

Hi i am very new on here and am glad i found your project as a friend and i have just bought a mk2 ghia to fit a bpt too. We are used to working on Laser tx3 and familia's and i had a eskie as my first car so always loved the idea of putting a bpt into one altho we may put in a bpd by the look of it now. We have way too many spare engines laying around mainly BP na engines some BPT and a couple of BPD we usually do turbo converions in laser hence so many BP na's floating around.
Just incase you dont know the BPD was out of the GTR familia used for group A rally basically bigger turbo stronger motor etc i had one in my show car with minor mods exhaust intercooler running 17psi made 166kw at all 4 wheels.
You have done a great job on ur car and im not sure why more people havent used the BP series engine as its a great little engine thats relativly cheap and easy to get partts for look forward to seeing what you have in store for your car further down the track.
 
My daily

 
My old show car


 
My wedding day with friends Eric and Rob that are also working with my on this project with their car's

 
My old eskie

 
James
 

well car went back to Brenton @ Brae AutoFab not long ago for him to work his magic, after some chatting we decided that a 3 inch into 2x2inch pipes was the best combination for max flow and ground clearance.
 
as always he work was amazing and im super happy, its the highest u will ever get an exhuast on an escort without cutting the floor. ill let the pictures do the talking
 

 

 

 
 

and always with this car the more money i seem to spend the more things break.
 
I had plans of having the car finally tuned sometime in the next fortnight, but on the weekend whilst putting some kms on her the china spec turbo decided that it had had enough.
Luckily it was not a catastrophic failure resulting in engine damage but i did happen to notice a slight squeel (which at first i thought may have been a loose belt ) which happened to be the inlet impeller trying to eat its way through the compressor housing. so i limped the car home and its sitting waiting for a new turbo.
 
Kinugawa Td05h 20g
 

 
should flow enough air to produce 220+kw at the wheels whilst be very responsive.

more updates
 
have been spending alot of time around victoria's drifting scene as of late and have well and truely caught the bug.
so without completely ruining the look or usability of the car im going to try to set it up so that i can slide predictably and safely. whilst still being nice to drive when its on the street.
 
a few things i have picked up along the way to fit
 

 

 
if u noticed the coil overs are infact built from capri struts so i will be buying in some repro steering arms and having them shortened to increase the amount of lock generated by the normal steering movement
 

wow, thats some nice work there for that exhaust!!!
Looks great!

That exhaust is a work of art be sure to put some pics up when you get her drifting.