I figured I'd write up an old adventure from 2015, since many of us are stuck inside at the moment. I would like to apologise to Escort owners for what you are about to read.
A friend, Connor, came up with the idea of buying a cheap Mk2 Escort in another European country, one where such cars are cheaper, and towing it back to Scotland. Somehow myself and another friend were recruited to help fix the car up and get it road ready. Somewhere along the line, a date was set for the Nürburgring, and it wasn't that far away. I think we had about 3 months worth of weekends to get it fixed up.
So Connor went ahead and bought a Hilux specifically for the job, which he mostly ran on veg oil. (He later drove that Hilux all the way to Mongolia, on his way to China) He found a well priced Mk2 in Portugal, and promptly set off.
Lo and behold, he came back with something that needed LOADS of work. It was apparently used in some local rallies. Here are some early photos.
We had to replace both door skins. There were a few rust patches. We decided to employ someone more experienced to fix the rust.
I should explain that this thing was cobbled together very quickly and cheaply. And I don't remember all of the details.
We swapped the original 1.3 for a 2.0 pinto with a weber carburettor, Kent cam of some sort, and Accuspark distributor. This required a "world cup" subframe and a special aluminium sump. Being wrong-hand-drive, we had to buy a special starter motor. This caused a few headaches. If i remember correctly, the first one we bought didn't mesh with the flywheel.
We used Capri front struts and brakes.
We also re-wired the entire car. There's a surprising amount of wiring despite it being a fairly simple car.
The cage was already there, but it was just a bodged bolt-in cage so didn't offer much safety.
The body was tidied up a bit for paint. Clearly it had a few paint jobs in the past. We ran out of time (no surprise), and had to throw some "blackboard" paint on it at the very last minute, in a barn...at night...the night before leaving.
Being blackboard paint, we eventually caved in and drew a few silly things on it with chalk.
We didn't manage to find more suitable wheels to fill the arches.
Yes the seats are too big, but my tall friends wanted to use them anyway.
So it wasn't the cleanest of builds, but we were extremely excited to see it running & driving.
Surprisingly enough, it made it from Scotland to Belgium without fault. But that's when the real fun began
At a service station somewhere in Belgium, some locals came over to have a look. One said "Can it do a burnout?", so of course Connor dropped the clutch and BANG - no drive whatsoever. The locals promptly walked off, probably feeling a bit guilty. We popped the shafts out and found this;
If I remember correctly, it left a piece inside the differential.
There we were with no spare, no grasp of French, and generally no clue what to do. Commence lots of googling for garages (that probably wouldn't be open for long enough) and breakdown companies. After some time of frantic searching and struggling with language barriers, someone found an Escort specialist not too far away. What are the chances!
We called him up, and luckily he spoke some English. Not only that but he was willing to wait for us, regardless of the time. A few hours later we were loaded up on a truck.
Arriving at Andes Motorsport was like some kind of eureka moment. We couldn't believe our luck. This guy had been racing Escorts for many years, and had an amazing collection of cars and parts at his workshop.
After a quick tour, he dived straight in and helped us change the diff + axle. Not only did he give us a pretty good deal, he did all of this outside of normal working hours. Legend. (He didn't accept more money) We felt a bit embarrassed about our slightly shoddy Mk2 being surrounded by all these top notch race cars. However, Andes said it was cool to see young guys having a shot at something like this. I think the insurance costs prevent young Belgians from doing such things.
It must have been somewhere around 10-11pm by the time we left. We drove straight to our hotel near the Nurburgring, faster than strictly necessary, arriving somewhere around 2-3am.
The next day, all seemed well when we parked up near the track. Some Irish lads thought it was brilliant, and I'm sure they contributed to the chalk drawings but I can't remember exactly what.
Connor was first out on track, but didn't reappear. Eventually the Mk2 was spotted on the back of a recovery truck. It turned out that more than one problem had occurred. The engine had been spluttering and then shut off. It wouldn't start again. And the small control linkages that reach forwards from the rear axle to the body had snapped (not sure of the technical name for these).
We couldn't get it running again. As a last ditch effort we tried to get a recovery truck to take it to a garage. We managed to get to one garage, who pretty much glanced at it and said NEIN.
From there we had to admit surrender and attempt to get the Mk2 transported back to the UK. "Attempt" being the key word. This was a massive ball ache. We had previously checked that our insurance would cover breakdowns abroad, and figured they'd take it home if we told them that a garage has already said it can't be fixed. I don't remember how it came about, but we got transported to some kind of depot/office for a particular breakdown company. The driver said to wait there and drove off, leaving us here:
MANY hours passed. We tried calling the insurance company multiple times to get an update, but they were useless. Nobody knew what was going on, or if we'd ever get picked up! It was looking bleak.
Again my memory is poor but I think the outcome was that the Mk2 was eventually moved to a compound, awaiting the transporter from the insurance company.
Following that, we bundled into another friends car and went on to spend a number of days in Berlin. Overall, a great holiday!
A friend, Connor, came up with the idea of buying a cheap Mk2 Escort in another European country, one where such cars are cheaper, and towing it back to Scotland. Somehow myself and another friend were recruited to help fix the car up and get it road ready. Somewhere along the line, a date was set for the Nürburgring, and it wasn't that far away. I think we had about 3 months worth of weekends to get it fixed up.
So Connor went ahead and bought a Hilux specifically for the job, which he mostly ran on veg oil. (He later drove that Hilux all the way to Mongolia, on his way to China) He found a well priced Mk2 in Portugal, and promptly set off.
Lo and behold, he came back with something that needed LOADS of work. It was apparently used in some local rallies. Here are some early photos.
We had to replace both door skins. There were a few rust patches. We decided to employ someone more experienced to fix the rust.
I should explain that this thing was cobbled together very quickly and cheaply. And I don't remember all of the details.
We swapped the original 1.3 for a 2.0 pinto with a weber carburettor, Kent cam of some sort, and Accuspark distributor. This required a "world cup" subframe and a special aluminium sump. Being wrong-hand-drive, we had to buy a special starter motor. This caused a few headaches. If i remember correctly, the first one we bought didn't mesh with the flywheel.
We used Capri front struts and brakes.
We also re-wired the entire car. There's a surprising amount of wiring despite it being a fairly simple car.
The cage was already there, but it was just a bodged bolt-in cage so didn't offer much safety.
The body was tidied up a bit for paint. Clearly it had a few paint jobs in the past. We ran out of time (no surprise), and had to throw some "blackboard" paint on it at the very last minute, in a barn...at night...the night before leaving.
Being blackboard paint, we eventually caved in and drew a few silly things on it with chalk.
We didn't manage to find more suitable wheels to fill the arches.
Yes the seats are too big, but my tall friends wanted to use them anyway.
So it wasn't the cleanest of builds, but we were extremely excited to see it running & driving.
Surprisingly enough, it made it from Scotland to Belgium without fault. But that's when the real fun began
At a service station somewhere in Belgium, some locals came over to have a look. One said "Can it do a burnout?", so of course Connor dropped the clutch and BANG - no drive whatsoever. The locals promptly walked off, probably feeling a bit guilty. We popped the shafts out and found this;
If I remember correctly, it left a piece inside the differential.
There we were with no spare, no grasp of French, and generally no clue what to do. Commence lots of googling for garages (that probably wouldn't be open for long enough) and breakdown companies. After some time of frantic searching and struggling with language barriers, someone found an Escort specialist not too far away. What are the chances!
We called him up, and luckily he spoke some English. Not only that but he was willing to wait for us, regardless of the time. A few hours later we were loaded up on a truck.
Arriving at Andes Motorsport was like some kind of eureka moment. We couldn't believe our luck. This guy had been racing Escorts for many years, and had an amazing collection of cars and parts at his workshop.
After a quick tour, he dived straight in and helped us change the diff + axle. Not only did he give us a pretty good deal, he did all of this outside of normal working hours. Legend. (He didn't accept more money) We felt a bit embarrassed about our slightly shoddy Mk2 being surrounded by all these top notch race cars. However, Andes said it was cool to see young guys having a shot at something like this. I think the insurance costs prevent young Belgians from doing such things.
It must have been somewhere around 10-11pm by the time we left. We drove straight to our hotel near the Nurburgring, faster than strictly necessary, arriving somewhere around 2-3am.
The next day, all seemed well when we parked up near the track. Some Irish lads thought it was brilliant, and I'm sure they contributed to the chalk drawings but I can't remember exactly what.
Connor was first out on track, but didn't reappear. Eventually the Mk2 was spotted on the back of a recovery truck. It turned out that more than one problem had occurred. The engine had been spluttering and then shut off. It wouldn't start again. And the small control linkages that reach forwards from the rear axle to the body had snapped (not sure of the technical name for these).
We couldn't get it running again. As a last ditch effort we tried to get a recovery truck to take it to a garage. We managed to get to one garage, who pretty much glanced at it and said NEIN.
From there we had to admit surrender and attempt to get the Mk2 transported back to the UK. "Attempt" being the key word. This was a massive ball ache. We had previously checked that our insurance would cover breakdowns abroad, and figured they'd take it home if we told them that a garage has already said it can't be fixed. I don't remember how it came about, but we got transported to some kind of depot/office for a particular breakdown company. The driver said to wait there and drove off, leaving us here:
MANY hours passed. We tried calling the insurance company multiple times to get an update, but they were useless. Nobody knew what was going on, or if we'd ever get picked up! It was looking bleak.
Again my memory is poor but I think the outcome was that the Mk2 was eventually moved to a compound, awaiting the transporter from the insurance company.
Following that, we bundled into another friends car and went on to spend a number of days in Berlin. Overall, a great holiday!
