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Hi Bruce,
Welcome to the forum, and to OZ, looking forward to getting seeing some pics of the car as it develops. Whereabouts in the country are you located? good pickup already to get a Mk 1 in decent nick.  yes, Cossies are not easy to get hold of and worth drug money here, Zetecs and other stuff readily available, but costs a lot to get gear from UK, as you may already know , unless you have some good contacts. Cheers, Len

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For such a great nation our car choice is limited and our new laws so restrictive. I don’t know what the authorities were thinking when they changed these car laws. People in all other countries can do amazing conversions with engineers of high quality approving. Here we have decided to not even trust our own engineers. It really is such a shame. Keep it as natural as you can for the resale but again in 5 to 10 years it will be another reason panel and motor engineers will close up shop as manufacturing anything here will be a thing of the past. I might just start mowing grass there’s an abundance of that and it’ll grow back.

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As for your build. Give MD conversions a call. Their in Blacktown Sydney. He might surprise you of what you can still put in, I know he still does V8 escorts maybe not 302s and the like. Worth a call though. He has some crazy escorts himself. He is an RMS engineer to inspect cars so if he approves it it gets registered. Cheers

I would love to see photos of this evo 8 escort conversion, recently sold my evo 7 and picked up an escort to have atleast something in the garage.

Bonus, I have a relative who has a workshop in Fairy Meadow, not far from you, who builds Rods and does other modifications. I have been surprised at what he has managed to get engineered. 
If you are interested send me a PM and I will find some details for you.

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Try these guys, I have used panels from them and they are good to deal with.
 
 https://smckaperformance.com.au/