1976 2 Door Mk2 Escort Adelaide Track/Daily
My names Matt Smith, 17 from Adelaide SA. Bought the car in July but haven't really had much time to work on it with year 12. I finished up year 12 and have started work on the car. Thought I would put up a post.
To set the record straight. I until this point had never worked on a car before, never driven a manual and never contemplated a hammer and a car being used together!
Started of in July, picked up the car from a bloke in Smithfield. Having little knowledge of cars we kind of rocked up, listened to it struggle to idle, saw the dents. Offered him a considerable amount less than he wanted. He took it!
Ended up getting the escort home on the car trailer, took her off and the next day we took it for a spin.
After a very, very sketchy and scary drive we realised the rear brake master cylinders were missing. None of the electrics worked and one cable decided to set itself on fire.
Safe to say, never listen to people. The bloke told us "yeah she's all right to drive. I did a burnout in her just a few days ago *points to black marks*.
Here are a few photo's of the car when we originally got it.
The water was as rust brown as it comes. (very worrying)
We started by rebuilding the carby as we were told that it was faulty.
Had quite a bit of trouble locating parts but eventually we had a new diff, rear brake assembly, coil, condensor and ballast resistor.
The arches were screwed on both the left hand side. I love the look of group 4 escorts (that's honestly where I first started gaining interest) So I decided that I would get arches and a spoiler at some point!
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We had a heap of issues with idling, spent a very long time trying to get the timing correct, replacing all kinds of ****. Turns out the cam was one tooth off. Turn the car over and it ran a dream. Idled at 850 all day.
The cam is non-standard but I haven't yet identified it.
We then redid the electrics, fixed that and bought a new brake booster (eamonlad is a legend)
After that the car ran bloody well, had a lot of fun on my mates driveway, we essentially had a working car.
Year 12 finished and the car was ready to be moved from my legend mate who let me keep it at his property as we didn't have room!
Day reg, the car ran a dream. Didn't over heat and has plenty of power. The starter motor did screw up that morning but we unfortunately didn't have an opportunity to move it any other time. So roll start it was!
This was a bit of a worry as it was the first time I had driven a manual properly so we couldn't stall. But luckily we had no troubles.
The car made it home in one piece. The list for it so far is:
Fix the bloody dents.
Full rewire, replace and fix all existing dodge cabling
Fix the starter motor
Full suspension upgrade (everything is fked. Shockers are rooted)
Get the interior looking shmick.
Register and Enjoy!
Got the car home and started the panel work, ripped out the interior to a bare shell which should make getting arches alot easier!
post edited by mattsmithadelaide - 2016/09/20 22:19:40