My 1984 Escort Laser daily driver. New wheels and now lows!

That sounds like quite a steal!

And yup, I found one! forum.retro-rides.org/thread/209858/1987-porsche-944s

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Very nice.

And these non brand specific meets are so much nicer imho.

Nice T-shirt ✅


Traction Avant and others together, yup, I would be happy there.

Ohh, is that the one in Burscheid? A think a friend's grandfather visits there occasionally.

Escort looks so good in the pictures, it's understandable why People would come check it out! It's been forever since I've last seen one in the wild (admittedly, I did see a super clean RS one pull in at Classic Remise last week, but I think it's been easily 5 or more years since I've last seen a low spec Mk3 escort in good nick).

Also, that 911. Can you say coke dealer? <3

When I get a new car I like to give it a general once over so that I know that it is at a good level and that I can just use it.
Being a mechanic by trade helps with this a lot and what is even cooler is that I now have a boss that lets us use the workshop at work on evenings and Saturdays.






Yesterday's jobs were new discs and pads on the front, oil and filter, gearbox oil change, adjust the rear brakes, spark plugs wheels balanced and alignment.
I started off with the front brakes, I could have left these for a little while but the discs had quite a big lip on them and they are very cheap for me (another perk of the job.)

Out with the old.


In with the new OE Ford discs and pads, I am not one of those people who has to have OE parts or whatever but I work in a Ford garage so get them cheap!







Next up was to adjust the rear brakes. I forgot to take photos of this but it was a really fun job. When I was an apprentice this was part of my daily life. I worked in a private garage in Chorley and on every service the rear brakes would be opened up, checked for leaky cylinders, cleaned up then adjusted and the lip on the drum filed back. That is exactly what I did to the Escort yesterday and I got lots of cool nostalgic feelings and then thought "Rob you are mental, it is a set of drums!)
I balanced the wheels and swapped them front to back and whilst cleaning the back of the wheels up to stick weights on I saw that under the bronze paint they are chrome! Maybe I will remove the paint and have chrome wheels again just like on my S-10!



After that I quickly changed the engine and gearbox oils and had a first proper look underneath. This car is so unbelievably clean the gearbox was this dry with no oil on it just a bit of dirt!




Dropped the ramp down and put the new spark plugs in. This was needed as I think the old spark plugs where around 10 years old. Sadly no pictures again.
Now it was time to drive it over to the other ramp for a bit of wheel alignment. This is something of a speciality for me but I will get to that in a minute.



The steering wheel on the car wasn't straight when driving and when I tried a bit of accelerator in the corners it seemed to have a bit of a tree magnet built in that wanted to kill me! After checking the alignment it was obvious why, over 1 degree of negative toe on the right wheel! And the left wasn't much better!





I set the toe to a bit of positive on the front.



Now looking at that picture I know what you are all thinking "Oi Rob! That's still red so it's wrong" in which you wouldn't be totally wrong in saying. But let's get back to that speciality for a second.
My first proper job in Germany was working for a company that specializes in all sorts of wheel, tyre and suspension set ups. I worked on many cars ranging from regular run of the mill cars that had vibration problems, steering problems etc. To cars like 911 gt3 cup contenders that would be set up for outright performance.
In the four years working there I learned a lot about the importance of a decent set up and I also learned how to calculate settings and did so many that I can now do it in my head. Like everything things move on and the ideas behind setting up suspension in 1984 are different to what I have researched and developed. That is why my set up is different but I can assure you all it is better for both performance and for tyre wear.
Ok enough about me let's get back to the car and more importantly the test drive called my journey home.
The car drives 10000% better! The brake pedal feel is perfect and the brakes are sharp enough and pull to a stop surprisingly quick. They will obviously get better after a few hundred KMs but they are brilliant and the adjustment of the rear shoes has also a lot to thank for this.
The car now no longer wants to go into trees and I can throw it into a corner and it just takes it in its stride. I am no racer and I have 69hp but the difference from before is night and day.
With just a couple of hours work I have changed the car from a perfectly good car to an almost perfect car!
Next week is timing belt and new radio time.

Cheers for reading.
Rob

Had a bit of an afternoon play with the Escort after work and managed to check out why the horn wasn't working. First put a bit of power to the horn itself to check if it was alright, it was. After that moved over to the horn push on the indicator stalk and after taking it off I saw the wire for the horn was broken where it goes into the horn. I quickly soldered it back on and jobs a good'un.

After that I thought I would have a play with the notoriously temperamental carb. Mine runs smooth and everything but I saw on the spark plugs that I changed last week that it was running pretty lean (the electrodes were very white)
Putting on the emissions tester i saw that I was correct! The mixture screw on these are very sensitive so it only requires a small movement for a big result. I turned it literally 1/14th of a turn and that was enough for it to be running better.
Driving it home was a pleasure. I enjoy how this car just keeps getting better.

I assume this is running the VV carb? They get a lot of stick but when working they're fine..

Cool that you ended up going with my recommendation!! I had thought about getting the same for my 944, but I really wanted something able to play tapes so I got a Blaupunkt from '94.

Sucks to hear about the car acting up, but that's old cars for you! Luckily you seem to be a crack at finding and fixing the problems it has!

I am proper happy with it it's perfect for what I need. Just need to get some tunes on a USB and then I am sorted.

Will remember this ZXRob I tried a couple of Ford garages in manchester for simple things and they couldnt get me anything, they said to me they only stock parts up to 10 years.