1975 ford escort zackspeed

A nice little project mate.

This outta be good!!

So yesterday I sat down with the uscp-ua cossie engine and what a piece of kit it is. Now while its a very nice engine I had to fit a much bigger turbo
to help it embarass the other competitors v8s (I'm building it for the mcm cannonball) I used an hks turbo from hobby design but I left the stock manifolds. Theres not much roon left in the bay but i've made a little more by trimming theside of the bay and moving it back so it sits square now. I also modded the slam panel above it to match. Nwxt up willbe sorting the front suspension crossmember to fit the engine. Its pretty deep so it should just be a flattening of the centre. The blue painted parts will be getting some metaliser powders used and should go steel colour then




the bare bits shouldn't be a problem, i will be adding some age to the engine. Incidently, the head is black instead of red or blue to simulate have been built and tuned by holbay

Oooh, I am digging this progress.

Watching this space...

Some more progress. I started by adjusting the front suspension crossmember to get the engine sitting properly. To do this I added some styrene sheet to the front of the crossmember as the centre was stopping the engine from dropping down where it should be. I then cut away the majority of the centre

Now with the engine sitting where I want it I could turn my attention to the cooling. I took the rad from an alfa coupe kit and sanded away the aircon piping from the back of it which was not needed and had the bonus of thinning it a fair bit. I fitted it to a hobby design intercooler but it was still hitting the engine. I tried to thin down the inside of the body but it just wasn't enough so I had to cut the front panel to fit the intercooler. I'm hoping the mesh will hide it somewhat, but at least theres now a little space between the engine and rad. The white squarea on the sides of the bay are a common mod on these escorts, its called plating in the rally scene and its done to upgrade the stock mounts as they have a tendancy to fail under enthusiastic driving



At the rear suspension the basics were there but lacked much of the detail with the axle mounting onto 2 lumps of plastic. I removed these and found some shocks leftover from a bug to replace them (not shown in pic as in paint) and made up a connecting rod for the back. There was a large open hole above the axle so it has now become a huge fuel tank to reduce stops as I blast past all the v8s in the cannonball.


Then it was time to start on the interior. The dash was a bit of a mess, there was loads of flash and a pretty big sinkmark in the switch panel. To fix it I just filed the entire panel flat and drilled some holes to fix styrene rod into. I will be trimming these down. Since this kits decals were scrap and falling to bits on the backing paper I decided not to waste any time on them. Instead I've cut down a sunvisor tv which will now be a heads up display. I'll find some gagues in my leftovers to fit, and will be adding a smaller display on a dash tv to the passenger side


Nextup is the roll cage, 4 points might have been enough in the 70s, but since the power is now 3 times higher I'll be adding some more bars to it and probably make it a stronger 6 or pointer tied into the suspension mounts

Got some more work done on the chassis today. I added rally type reinforcing to the sills and removed the mlding for the air jacks as they wont be much use on a road car. I also found some pics of a grp2 zakspeed escort rear suspension so the previous support bar has been replaced with that and the spring mounts have been given some reinforcing too.

Looks like you've got alot going on back there with the diff on this. Looking forward to seeing the work all come together.

Loving the fab work and attention to detail.

This is great stuff Les.

Carry on sir....

That rear end set up looks excellent!