1986 Ford Capri "S" - RR Weekender or Bust

This was in January of this year, and hoping to get this car to the RR Weekender next year as well as Le Mans, there is a fair bit to go as well as be updated!

Having seen the MOT sheet, I noticed that the car had an advisory for the TREs having play in them, combine this with the splitting steering gaiters and the new lower control arms, it made sense to refresh these parts, especially as the passenger TRE had fallen apart. So I jacked the car up on one side, knocked out the TRE, and noted down how many turns it took to take it off.

Then pulled off the old steering gaiter which was held on with twisted wire? This was the good side!

The rack was greased, new gaiter fitted, and cable ties tightened up although I think I may replace these with proper metal ties.

The new TRE was fitted, making sure to put it on as many turns as the old one took to come off, slapped some copper grease on both threads, and torqued it down (my counting of numbers may have been a little off judging by the subsequent tracking)

I was pretty pleased with the progress for 20 minutes of work! So cracked on and got the passenger side done before moving onto the first big thing which was removing and swapping the door for the new one Mark had dropped off to me. In order to get to the 6x 13mm nuts that hold on the door in the A pillar you have to drop the glovebox down by undoing the two nuts at the back on the bulkhead, and the screws along the front where the catch is, and then the plastic A post kick trim can be removed. On the drivers side you need to remove the dash fascia, take out the gauges by removing the screws holding it to the dash frame, removing the plug and oil pressure line, unbolting the eyeball vent from behind (x2 13mm nuts) and unscrewing the lower trim where the bonnet release handle is sat to remove the A post kick trim. Hopefully that helps anyone looking to remove their doors in the future.

The door was ready for scrap, although thankfully I didn't chuck it as will be discovered in the future!!

The new door was fitted by sliding the studs into the A post, and holding the rear with a jack, and then bolting up!

This was a good first day on the car, but next came the best part of fiddling with an old car, conducting some carcheology on the inside, and checking over the engine bay under the years of dirt and dust...

TBC

I decided I had to clean the inside of the car, having being sat with no window, in the damp, on a farm/barn. It was full of random parts, rubbish, broken glass and god knows what else, and smelled like a silage heap inside. Sadly the dash has a few cracks in it as any Ford of this age does, a few bits of trim could do with tidying up, the headliner has a couple of rips in it, and the seats have some odd patches stuck onto the bolsters.

The carpets have stained and faded, so all of the interior had to come out to be cleaned and any small bits repaired, and also to inspect the floor pan to check for any rot or damage. I also cleaned out the boot whilst doing this, and found a multitude of parts including;

- Spare Front ARB

- Spare Front Subframe

- Broken Ashtray Panel

- Mudflaps and spotlights

- Spare fuses, bulbs and NOS Coolant hoses

It looked a lot better cleaned up, although it will all be coming back out again to clean it up properly and replace parts. I had taken the car on a short drive down a farm track and noticed a few issues that needed rectifying. The exhaust was blowing badly and knocking the body of the car where some old rubbers had split, although it is a 2" sportex so does sound fruity! The tracking was out (whoops) and the brakes didn't really work at all, pedal goes to the floor and stayed there with no braking effort, this will be tackled in the next update. The engine bay was next on the list to check over.

It was pretty dirty under the bonnet, but because it hadn't been cleaned up I could see it had no leaks, and the engine does run smoothly with no tapping or knocking, and no smoke out the back. Win! I double checked up behind the hinges to make sure there was no rust hiding, and gave it all a wipe down before everything bar the engine was taken out to be restored on bit at a time, and so that the engine bay could be painted up.

Filthy but no rot.

Oversprayed, dirty and electrical issues a plenty. That's for a future update though, for now this will all be coming out.

A little cleaner and can see what needs doing. The plan is to fit 3.0 strut reinforcing, remove everything that can be taken out and sort out the wiring. Next time: Sorting out the non-existent brakes.

Cheers, Jack

So the work I'm about to summarise actually took months but for the sake of keeping it relatively short I've bunched it all into one!

When the car first arrived, it had no brake fluid in the reservoir and I was told that there has been a leak in the slave cylinder on the O/S/R. I topped it up just a tiny bit and sure enough the fluid disappeared soon after. The brake pedal had no feeling at all and the car didn't stop so the system had to come apart. I took off the rear wheels, slid off the drums and sure enough it was sopping wet inside and looked pretty tired.

I swapped over the slave cylinder for a new one and found the lines were looking crunchy, cleaned up the inside with de-greaser and put the drum back on.

I then filled up the reservoir with new fluid, stuck my pressure bleeder on and connected it to a wheel and tyre with 15psi in it and regretted it! Brake fluid poured out of the rubbers between the M/C and res, pouring all down the crusty servo and down the inner wing, chassis rail and all over the floor. curse word. I cleaned up everything I could and washed down the inner wing, although noticed this must've been happening for a while considering the booster and chassis rail had pickled paint and rust on them, and it definitely hadn't happened in the past 5 mins. I therefore took the chance to remove and replace the servo, M/C, brake lines, shoes and hardware to try and eliminate any more issues. Here's the dreaded leak, note how wet everything is and how rotten the servo is.

Removing brake lines that snapped due to rot, and an inspection of the fronts look like relatively new calipers, and fairly new hoses although these will be getting replaced with stainless braided items.

Manage to source a new servo from a friend but when we got back from picking it up it turned out to be an ATE unit from a 2.8, whereas the 2.0 uses a Girling unit. This meant a new M/C had to be sourced, but thankfully he kindly dropped one off and a decent servo was made up out of the two.

With new seals and everything cleaned out, it was re-fitted to my car after the bulkhead and inner wing had been sanded and repainted, with the brake clevis pin cleaned up and greased also. Once back in it looked great, ignore the painted engine bay, that update is still to come! Its hard to explain how little room there is to get to the four nuts holding the servo on, but its harder than trying to fit your hand in a Pringles tube to get the scraps at the bottom. The vacuum tube was repainted and new hoses we're re-fitted.

New brake lines were fitted painted in the OEM green, the new shoes and fitting kit went on and the system was ready to be re-filled and bled. You may wonder why the fronts weren't touched, but I'm planning on upgrading them in the future and we're replaced not too long ago.

Fluid back in, bleeder attached at less pressure, around 8-10psi, and success! No leaks anywhere, no fluid lost! The car was up in the air with the N/S/R and both front wheels off, as the Capri has 3 bleed nipples. Starting from furthest and working around to the shortest line, the system was bled with an amazing amount of air coming out. After going around the car twice, no more air bubbles were coming out, and we had a nice firm pedal that springs back to where it should unlike before! Thank god after replacing that much! And don't worry, the suspension and diff will be getting some TLC in a future update.

So that's that. A write-up on Capri brakes that could rival War and Peace, thankfully the next updates are a little shorter! Cheers for reading, Jack.