I know the van doors are light, I can take them an and off one handed while putting the hinge bolts in without working up a sweat now having doen it 50 times.
Wait till you see the van rear doors, they are piddly an weigh less than a block of rum'n'raisin.

Ford might be just picking numbers out of a hat for build quantities, or the count guy was asleep that day !!
Drewdog, I was in the shed when reading this and was a few get away from the doors, these are orig 6/77 2dr GL rally pack. Here's a pic of the intrusion barrier, it's so big you prolly thick it's the door skin itself at a glance.. Pic taken sneakily thru the striker slot !

Yep home now and took a snap of the rail, its so close to the door that you would think it's the skin, there is probably 3 to 5mm between it and the outer door skin.


 
Also more goodies arrived in the mail and the car is one step closer to being able to roll about! 


 

 
Roller bearing top mounts with the shim for GAZ inserts, the roller bearing can be removed too for servicing, GPR4 make some good stuff but by golly it aint cheap!

The joys of not having kids I suppose, I can waste money on cars instead! 

Oh i forgot to put it in the last post, my car is a December 79 build so the bloke counting definitely took some time off!

Yeah the plan has been to run with Capri / UK RS style strut inserts and space them, I had no idea about the Cortina MK2 came with rollers though, wonder what the discussion was in the engineering department to not carry them across to the later Escorts?

Has anyone used these ones in the past - how much lighter does it make the steering? They advertise as a lighter steering but since its been years since I drove the car I probably wont know the difference. 

Bit more garage time today, picked up some lower arms ahead of fitting the front struts so I could get the sway bar and everything fitted up and ran into a snag.


 
The arms went in a treat but there is NO way the wide sway bar mount and bushes will go on, first the bushes are for a smaller diameter sway bar (mines 22mm) and second it seems like the bracket is WAY to close to the edge of the bar. Not sure if that's normal but the sway bar will definitely bind on the bracket when cornering, there just isn't enough clearance on the inner radius.
 
 

My solution is to dump the wide bracket, I need to order new bushes anyway because the ones in the kit are useless. So I've ordered standard width 22mm white line bushes and I'll clean up and paint the standard sway bar bush brackets and run the standard width bush on the wide bracket body mount. This means I'll still get the castor from the mount without the headaches of those brackets and bushes.

Also brains trust, should there be a metal bush for the end of the sway bar that goes between the washers and through the rubber bush on the control arm? Can't remember if there should be one there and the workshop manual doesn't specify. Pic for reference.

Yep, as I suspected - went out to the garage and did the old eyeball test. Completely out of whack.


 

 
No wonder I couldn't get anything to bloody fit properly!

Option of also getting a swaybar made to order. Especially as you probably don't want to start hacking into the car now its painted so nicely.
We have Selby here in Nowra and they have made a couple for me.
And yes they have a bush on the ends on the threaded ends of the bars.