I decided while waiting on the dial indicator to give the garage a clean and put the pedals back together. I've got new rubbers coming for them too.

Came up a treat, can't recommend a good powder coater enough, all the parts he's done for me have come up so good.


 

 
I also need a new brake light switch, back in the day the original one failed so I jerry rigged up an falcon one to fit, it did the job but may as well get the right one on there.

I bought a few of these for my mk1 and future builds
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mqWW2Bj
Agree with the powder to coater guys work, A1 job

Ok buckle up - big day in the garage!

LSD backlash is set and the cap spread done, took me a while though - I found that these English axles are sneaky. When you set the cap spread the backlash increases by about .10mm, makes sense though as I was tightening down from the far side of the crown wheel so pushing the crown away from the pinion, I ended up setting the backlash to .05mm then doing the cap spread and that got me right bang on .14mm


 

 
 
I set it on the low end of the spec, since the new center and bearings will have moved things about a bit. I used the same pinion spacer and the contact patches look good but there will still be some wear in as the pinion and crown wheel re-seat. 


 
Decided to give it the old paint pen treatment and now it's ready to go in tomorrow. 
 

Instead of just jumping under the car and fitting the diff I decided to do some upright work after leaning over the diff center for a few hours - plus I still need to grab some prussian blue to properly check the contact patch.

I electroplated the headlight adjustment screws and fitted the front headlight bowls.
 

 

 
I also moved the horn to the center of the grill, where I had it before it fouled on the right headlight bracket.

Also cleaned up the chrome bezels, I went to take them to the local guy only to find out that he is closed permanently. I found another guy, but he is a 50 minute drive away and is booked out until next year. So nothing ventured nothing gained.


 
The middle two surrounds came out great, they are pretty much perfect for 45 year old parts. The outer two have some blemishes as you can see. These sections can be aligned to face down and I'll put them on the inner headlights, you wont be able to see the blemishes unless you go looking for them.
 

 
All I need to put the headlights back in is new springs - gonna see if I can pick some up tomorrow morning. So by the end of tomorrow I want to have the headlights in, the diff center in (after checking contact pattern), the axles in and the rear calipers on and maybe even the handbrake mounted. We will see, that's a big list!

Another big day in the garage, this will be one of three posts to split up all I did today .

Headlights are back in and ready for final adjustment once the nose cone goes back on. I managed to hide the crappy chrome to the bottom of the drivers and passenger outer headlights, there is only one little blemish on the tops now. I may get them re-chromed at some point in the future but for now that's good enough.


 

 
They look funny without the bumper on .
 

 

 
And here is a closeup of the new springs - Bunnings specials.
 

 
I still need to polish the chrome a bit more to get rid of some more blemishes and bring the shine up, that can happen later though.
 
One more thing to fit, plus the wiring etc and the nose cone will be ready to go on!
 

After the front end it was on to finalizing the center and getting it in the car. 

No prussian blue was to be had anywhere this morning and I wasn't going to waste half my day looking for it. So I did what any reasonable person would do - I added yellow food dye to white grease to make my own contact grease!


 
It worked a treat coupled with painting some teeth white to get a really nice contrast - looks to me like the gear is almost exactly in the same place it was before. I remembered you have to load the center up to properly measure the contact patch ( I wasn't doing that yesterday ). So I chucked an axle in so I could put resistance on the crown wheel.


 
you can see the nice sharp line where the grease has been left behind and the full face is clean with a little left on the top edge. Can't really ask for anything better.


 
Same story on the back side, nice sharp line across the gear pretty much right in line with the old wear pattern. It will still probably be a little noisy for the first 5000km or so, but as long as there are no bangs or grinding noise it's game on.




And here she is in her home. I need to touch up a few marks I made on the casing but for the most part I managed to get it back together without any major issues.

Then it was on to putting the axles in, getting the rear caliper hardware on and the calipers mounted. Was a little bit of a head scratch until I figured out that the kit wants you to put two washers in between the axle retainer and the housing -  plus re-use one of the original axle retaining bolts.


 
I will take a close up of the mounting bracket and share it when I am doing the next part of the handbrake fitting. 


 
You can kinda see what I mean in this shot, I needed to space the axle retainer as the original brake drum backing plate is about 3ish mm thick.

The axles themselves have some play in the splines, not a massive amount but enough to make me convinced that if something it going to break once it's on the road, it will be those axles. There wont be any clutch dumps ( or not that many  ) so it should be ok. 

Also Good LORD that LSD is tight, the wheels will not free spin at all - everything rolls over nicely though so I think this thing is gonna really bite the road.



I started routing the handbrake but remembered that the rear shockers will need to be in place - or something mocking them up - so I don't accidentally route the cable and mount it in a bad spot. So next on the list is rear shocks.

Also I will need to get the handbrake cable shortened, not sure what is going on here but the cable is almost 30cm too long! 
 

 
The local brake shop should be able to do it no drama, so I will drop it down after I am back from my work trip next week.

And putting the axle in wouldn't be complete without mounting a wheel! It's so close to being a roller I can taste it! All i need is rear discs and she could be on the ground by Christmas!
 

 
 

That's some rapid build going on recently. The rear handbrake length, can't you zigzag it to take up length? Shorten it otherwise. My mk1 zetec was disk rears and I ran the cable on the tramp bars then inboard to the HB splitter/balancer. I used laser cables and were also just a bit too long ..

Are you using focus rotors on this kit?

That's what I'm actually trying to figure out now - the mob I bought the kit from when I was in the UK gave me a Eicher part number, that cross references with 90s model Escort, Courier, Fiesta and Orion front rotors. So I am trying to find an Australian model with the same part number to cross reference it further. 

Bit of an oddball one because in the seller lists these as cosworth rear brake calipers (don't think they're genuine - repo probably) and that the discs slide straight on with no modifications. 

I've managed to find a lot of euro hits but no Aussie ones, the reference is 90R-02C0100/1093

martymexico
The rear handbrake length, can't you zigzag it to take up length? 

Sorry forgot to say - it's the inner cable that's the issue not the outer, outer runs perfect - inner is just way too long.