MKII ESCORT VVM 122S – 1988 rebuild!

MKII ESCORT VVM 122S – 1988 rebuild!
Those were the days, buying a MKII Escort 1100 Popular Plus for £20, I don’t think I ever paid the guy
for the car. It was an accident damage write off and had been stood in a yard for some time. Kids had
smashed every piece of glass there was and robbed everything but the rolling shell. The crash damage
consisted of a lamp post dent in the passenger side door and sill. All the doors, front wings, bonnet and
boot were dented or rotten so they quickly ended up in the bin.
Well this is how it once looked.
Before long I had welded some new panels on.
You can see from the next shot, it was once quite rusty in areas.
I replaced the passenger side rear wheel arch and fitted all new doors, wings and bonnet and boot .
The next job was to fill out all the small dents. This took a long time! At this point the car had a
1600GT Pinto engine in, this unfortunately never ran in this car.
This next photo shows the rear wing in primer.
I was quite chuffed with this panel as it was rather badly dented and it was the first sill I had fitted
without too much panel distortion. I went a bit mad with the welder a few days before this shot and had
rolled the car on its side and stitch welded all the chassis rails and seams.
I also made some RS style strut top mounts and tack welded them into place to give it an authentic RS
look. The under bonnet shot is how it started. The battery tray was cut off and replaced for a new one,
as was the vent scuttle panel.
I had paint stripped the under bonnet area and sand blasted badly rusted parts. It was then primed with
2-pack primer and painted.
This paint should have cost me £300 for 2 ½ litres but a nice sales person got it for £50. This is the
paint that Rolls Royce use, you can fry an egg on it without marking it, and it is one of the most
resilient to stone chips.
The strut tops are just visible in this shot. I had remade the wiring harness with all the extra goodies on
that you don’t get with a Popular Plus model, like heated rear windows, hazard warning lights. I had
put provision in the loom for spotlights and a radio, including all the speaker wires. I had intended on
fitting an RS2000 nose cone when I built the car but could not get a bonnet and as I was unemployed at
this time I didn’t have enough to buy one at the going rate.
Well after using this paint I went crazy and painted anything that was the original blue colour as can be
seen.
This was quite a good finish and it made the shell look like it had just rolled off Fords production line.
Now the work began. Hours of searching round scrap yards for the best parts in as original condition as
possible. I found enough parts to make an RS dash.
This looked absolutely mint. The clock’s came from a Cortina GT and were modified to fit the escort.
That is a genuine RS clock pod on the passenger side dash area. The glove box was also a rare item to
find. I had cut the gearbox cover out where the gear lever protrudes and fixed a larger one on with
rivenuts. This made it possible to fit the RS2000 gearbox and quick shift gear lever. In later years I
fitted a Sierra 5 speed gearbox, which made the car much more fun to drive and quieter on the
motorway.
Back to the build. Here is the car just before I painted it.
It had taken some 3 months work to get to this stage. There was about 4 litres of primer on the shell and
2 pack primer is very tuff stuff to sand down. I had removed most of the dimple marks from the shell,
but when it was painted I found a few more.
This was the painted product, before it was buffed.
I was very pleased with this and had the bug to finish it. I think it took two weeks from this photo to
getting it through an MOT. It failed the first test on a small hole in a chassis rail that I knew about but
didn’t think was important. Two minutes of welding saw it re-tested.
Here are a few shots of the final build.
Most of the parts had been sourced from wherever they were coming from and cleaned up. After
checking that they worked properly they were all bagged with the relevant fasteners and fixings. Things
like the windscreen wiper motor and heater motor had been built up from many different cars using
only the best parts.
I painted the rear panel in the traditional RS black, and had found 2 nearly new rear lamps with no
scratches in the plastic. The roof lining had been removed and painted black to match the rest of the
interior.
On this next shot I had fitted the engine, gearbox, all the electrics, and had fitted my Dunlop Formula R
tyres. The seat was the trusty old Recaro type as fitted by Ford in the RS model.
The headlamps were Cibie replacements with high wattage bulbs. I had to fit the spoiler on the front
because I didn’t replace the front panel and it had a load of dents in where we had towed the car home.
The front bumper was soon replaced for a new one and this finished the front off nicely.
The engine was another chance find. A friend had bought a short block and couldn’t be bothered
building it. I bought it off him for £100. I took the con rods to work (I had a job by this time) and
balanced them using a very accurate weighing scale and a milling machine to remove unwanted metal.
I did the same with the pistons and then built the engine up using the lightest flywheel I could find and
a bullet proof clutch from Ears Rally – a Lotus plate none the less. The whole thing ran on a standard
twin choke Weber and a four branch manifold. This was all complemented with a Luminition ignition
system. This was a very strong engine and although it would not rev high, it was very torquey and very
smooth.
Here is a picture of the engine bay the day I sold the car.(some 2 ½ years after it was built)
As you can see it looked mint, and very original.
Those RS strut top plates I made turned out so well I struggled to sell the car. People who viewed it
were convinced it was a genuine RS shell, and thus a ringer! So most walked away.
I think I sold the car for £1600 in the end, which back in 1993 was a good payout. I never did tot up
how much I had spent, but I bet it was nearer £4 – 5k
Replaced the car with a 309GTI, and my days of spending lots of money on my everyday car came to
an end.
And some of the previous car! 1987 to 89
Good old Mk1 Escort – built this when I was 17. It got a lot of attention at the Chatsworth house stage
of the Lombard RAC rally.