Modified MK6 Escort

Hi all!
I've been on here before to show you my MGB.

The MGB is still in rebuild as I've not had time to get it ready yet. Mainly because I've been giving up garage time and space to my Son while we cobble together his Escort project.

Its a P reg MK6 Escort.
We have chucked out the FWD lump and chopped it about a bit to make it rear wheel drive. We have built a 4.6 litre Rover V8 and bolted that to a Chevy Camaro auto gearox etc.

Hopefully it will make some very gentle shakedown passes next Sunday at Santapod for the Fast Show.

The enginehasnt been started and it still has no brakes. So its going to be a bit of a rush this week to even get it rolling.

Heres a few quick snapshots of the last few days.

I'm gonna watch this thread!

Wow ye me to lol



Matt

Sweet thats going to be mental

i just spaffed lol

Well!!!

This weekend at the Fast Show went pretty well I think. EVENTUALLY !!!

Friday was a big push from 8am to 11pm to get it ready to roll.

But late on Friday we took it to the trading estate on the trailer and it had no spark. Bloody trigger module in the mallory was duff ??

My Mallory wouldnt fit so we called our mate Tricky (5.2 RV8 TR7 that was on our dyno days a while back) And asked if we could nick his dissy etc. Jay shot over to Banbury to pick him up from the pub, then to his garage to strip the bits, then take him back to the pub anf then bring the dissy home. By 1am Saturday we had spark but no fire up and lots of spiitng back through the carb.

I wne to work Saturday while Jay got it trailered to the track. I got there at 1.30pm on Saturday and set aobut finding the fault.
Long story short.. Big engine strip on the trailer to reset the cam timing. He had misinterpreted the cloyes leaflet and had the cam in about 150 degree's out.
By 8pm Saturday we had it running. I went home via Asda for a gallon of oil and to get my MGB battery and some rocker gaskets.

Back at 7am this morning to do oil change + set up auto shifter linkage, top up gearbox so it could find a gear and then cut the rear arches out and do a bit of fettling and set tracking by eye.

By 11am the engine had done around 30 mins of running so it was run in as far as I'm concerned.

1st test run was very light pedal off the line and max rpm of 4000. 18 seconds @ 82mph.

2nd test run was a bit quicker on the pedal off the line and max 4600 rpm. 15.1 seconds @ 88mph.

Last run was same as run 2 but max of 5000 rpm. 14.2 seconds at 96mph.

Jason reported a problem of wandering at around 90mph.
The steering rack has a lot of play? So this week we will do a little tweak on that to try and make it better.

I also want to weld a stabiliser bar across the trailing arms and also weld on a couple of extra links to make the trailing arms inot ladder bars.

Then next Saturday it will be back on track again for some more spirited runs

It wont set the world on fire with an 1800 axle ratio but I hope it will make the 100mph and be in the 13 second bracket. If that goes according to plan we will think about adding the nitrous.

All in all a very good weekend. But boy do I ache ?? Its been a busy one for sure. But I'm glad that Jason had a cracking 25th birhtday weekend and the car came home in one piece!!

sweet that thing looks mental sounds like u had a very busy weekend

Pleased to here it well ish but that sounds like a lot of hard work. Looks amazing on the line lol

I hate all excorts from mk3 onward, but THAT looks fun. Good effort!

Hope you get the issues sorted and some more power out of it!

munkul wrote:I hate all excorts from mk3 onward, but THAT looks fun. Good effort!

Hope you get the issues sorted and some more power out of it!

For me its Mk1 Escort only if I had a choice. But I guess Jasons idea was to do something that folk would look twice at

We will be back next Saturday for a the final shakedown runs. It will easy hit 100mph + and be in the 13's to complete the testing. Then it will be a new diff, new cam, some spray and an 11 second pass by the end of the year if all goes well.

Is it still road legal??

good stuff!

Are you gonna tub the arches to let it sit a lot lower then?

It could be road legal if we fitted a handbrake and a few other bits. But this is a cheap track slag that will cost nothing in tax, mot and insurance.
Thats the fun of chucking a car like this together. As long as you have a trailer you can take it to any drag strip and have fun for just the cost of sign on and fuel

We may eventually tub it but we quite like the old skool look to be honest.

First time out for shakedowns and it gets into Fast Car Mag ??

http://media.fastcar.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Fast-Show-2012-pictures-Santa-Pod-08.jpg

Ace well keep up the good work and hope you drop into the 11's soon ish lol

Well today was????
Interesting.
We still have some minor issues with the steering wandering. Time to buy a recon steering rack I reckon and get the tracking done properly Smile

first run off gas was just to blow the cobwebs out. She is running really rich and struggles to rev over 5000rpm due to bogging. This is why she would only pull a 14.3 last week. We had no time to rebuild the carb an faff around with getting the metering spot on. I know another way of leaning the mix out without touchng the carb Wink

I stuck a quick nitrous kit on yesterday. Finished the intallation in the pits this morning and did a static test. Intead of 50/50 fuel to nitrous ratio I had to go 25hp fuel to 70hp of nitrous. Lots of reasons for this which I wont bore you with.

Long story short.
1st pass 15 seconds on carb only.

2nd pass 12.9 seconds with a 70 shot of gas but still running rich.

3rd pass, I added another 30hp of nitrous to lean the mix out some more. This seemed to hit a sweet spot because the power delivery was pretty hard and caused the run to be aborted (see video) so Jay could get back to the pits and take a tea break to calm down Smile

4th pass we dropped rear tyres to 11 psi and did a good smoky burnout. This time she hooked up and went pretty hard all the way to the finish to reel in a 12.3 second pass at 105mph.

OK!
I promised him a 13 second pass and we got close to pulling an 11. And an 11 second pass would have been very easy today. But not on the loose steering and bad tracking. So I told Jay we were calling it a day and going home in one piece which he was more than happy to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPYoz56jwIE&feature=endscreen&NR=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahu4ApXe000&list=UUqIlXfSAoiZ--GyG4tfRrjw&index=1&feature=plcp

very very scary stuff lol. sounds amazing and really great news on the 12sec pass, heres to an 11 next time, do you recon you will be gunning for a 10sec pass in the future??

When my Son saves up for a proper rear axle to get his gearing right a 10 second pass will easily be in the bag...
But he will have to be happy with 11's for the end of this year

10 seconds is the Holy Grail that all us 1/4 mile folk aim for. Once we get to that point we start to aim for 10ths of a second improvements to get to the magical Sub 10.5 pass.

My Son is very happy to have got to the low 12's so quick in the Escort. But thats because he didnt have to do any R&D on the engine setup. I've done that over the last 6 years on my MGB. So we already know the basic specs for a quick Rover V8 engine without having to spend much money on special tuning parts. Stock 4.6 Range rover block and heads with all stock internals that have 140,000 miles on them. + the sneaky tweaks anyone can do at home with basic tools. Add to that a new set of rings and shells + a squirt of nitrous and you have a very good engine for sprinting on a very cheap budget

thats good to hear, someone like you would be great for people to chat to that are thinking of building a drag motor or even just a nice fast V8 road car, you certainly sound like you know your stuff on the rover V8, been thinking myself of basing a class 10 auto grass car on a Rover block, a couple of lads have used chevvy lumps but they are very pricey, just not sure what box to use to get the rear engine set-up needed for auto grass.

The Chev lump are not only pricey but bloody heavy compared to a Rover V8. You can fit almost any gearbox to any engine with the right adaptor plate and clutch mods. We both run Chevy TH350 auto boxes on our drag cars. you can make your own adaptor plate quite easily.

Quick update!!
we took the Escort out again and messed with rear tyre pressures as she was way too bouncy off the line??

We added 3 psi to the rears and she settled down fairly well. This gave us another 2/10ths to bring in a 12.1 on the strip a while back.

We are now tweaking the nitrous sytem so we can chuck a 200 shot on the car to see if we can grab an 11 second pass before we take it to the Retro Show in July

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCy4hnSR2_I&list=UUqIlXfSAoiZ--GyG4tfRrjw&index=1&feature=plcp

This car is insane there really good times can't wait to see it with a 200 shot of Nos

What a slow day at the pod yesterday!!

Only got one test run done. But it was worth the wait in the end. We fiddled with the fuelling and made it a bit richer. And introduced a small delay on the nitrous to reduce wheel spin off the line. Not perfect but still an improvement that took the Escort into the 11's straight off the trailer
If you look at the exhaust you can see when the nitrous hits just a fraction of a second off the line. 11.93 @ 112 mph is great for a check out pass... Once I've made some more adjustments to lean out the fuelling I think a mid 11 may be on the cards in the next month or two??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIXmcamcpN8&list=UUqIlXfSAoiZ--GyG4tfRrjw&index=1&feature=plcp

Took the Escort to the Pod last Sunday and my Son rolled an 11.6 straight off the trailer against a very well tuned and nitroused TVR
The car has done really well for such a cheap build. 8 weeks ago it ran 17 seconds. Now its only 0.7 of a second away from being a 10 second car.
So its going off line for a while now se we can get my MGB back together for the Retro Show in 6 weeks