Some of you might remember I picked up this ropey mk3 Escort for daily runabout duties a week or so back. 1.1, left hand drive, four door, rusty.... just about as un-appealing as it gets!
I took a bit of a chance on it really, the add was very light on details but I stuck a half-arsed bid in for it anyway and won. So a 200 mile round trip ensued to bring the clunker home for assessment.
The verdict is, it's a bit of a heap! The vendors quality pictures from his 9 megapixel camera made it look suspiciously clean, and I decided that it was either going to be a minter that some old giffer has polished every sunday, or a total wreck that the old coffin dodger had clagged up and whacked over with a rattle can to make it look okay...... and it turned out to be the latter!
Eww!
But here at Street towers we never put a healthy car down, and as it had behaved itself impecably on the journey home I decided that it will become a kind of side project to the twin engined Escort project currently bieng undertaken.
First thing to do was give it a damn good valet inside. Years worth of munching petrol station pastry products had left the carpet with lots of crumbs and general nastyness between the seats and all over the carpet.
The only thing to do was rip the seats our and give it a jolly good hoovering:
10 times better! I also gave the seats a good clean while they were out, the dash got in on the action aswell.
With the formalities out of the way it was time to sort out some of the bodywork.
Drivers side door, fooked! Check out the inside:
All four doors are like this, and while they are easily replaced i'm not going to splash any sort of cash on this thing. That said, i'd rather see holes in the bodywork than wibblepoo filler work, so out it's got to go!
Look at that! About 3 inches thick. Repaired with bin-bags, tape, filler and a bit of paint.
I think you can see where this is going can't you. Not going to replace any panels, but not going to repair them.....yep it's going to be ratty as sin
The other problem with this particular door is that it's been bent over in some toss attempt at breaking in.
Rather than bend it back though, the previous keeper just beefed up the door seal with foam and duck tape to stop the resulting water leak
Great job!
Obviously I bent the door back and got rid of all that crapola, and now it's back to normal.
The tape is a bit of a theme with this car, he seems to have stuck it everywhere, mostly without rhyme or reason, like this:
No reason for that bieng there whatsoever!
The other thing silver tops like to do is paint stuff. Here's some of his work:
It appears to be underseal, all over the front bumper! I scraped it all off and I then decided to sand the bumper down through to bare metal in areas and leave it to rust, in keeping with the ratty theme.
Incredibly I even found filler on the bumper!!
I'll post pics of the bumper up later, it's currently bieng 'weathered'
More on the rest of the bodywork transformation later. Next it was time to get rid of the poxy wheeltrims:
Good old mk3 Escort 13" steelies underneath, gotta love 'em!
But this rusty Escort is missing something.... yep, it needs lowering! Even the shittest cars can look good lowered. lowering a rusty car makes it look like it's rusty on purpose. Looks like you have a plan.
I'll post up all the lowering capers tomorrow, it's all done but it's got to settle yet and it got a bit dark to shoot the results anyway.
What I will say though, i've driven this thing 800km so far, and I haven't put any petrol in yet!!!!
It's incredibly economical. I've driven it from Liverpool to Nottingham, then hoofed it down to Norfolk and back, then to Lincoln and back, then all around in between.... all on the fuel that was in it when I baught it! Unreal.
Fully reliable too, hasn't missed a beat although I did 'do a Pogweasel' when I first baught it- I flicked a switch under the dash that appeared to do nothing, then the next morning when I jumped it it it wouldn't start. I left it and came back to it later, then realised that the switch was in fact a giffer-fitted immobiliser, lolZ!
Stay tuned for the lowering episode, and maybe more bodywork if I get round to it
I took a bit of a chance on it really, the add was very light on details but I stuck a half-arsed bid in for it anyway and won. So a 200 mile round trip ensued to bring the clunker home for assessment.
The verdict is, it's a bit of a heap! The vendors quality pictures from his 9 megapixel camera made it look suspiciously clean, and I decided that it was either going to be a minter that some old giffer has polished every sunday, or a total wreck that the old coffin dodger had clagged up and whacked over with a rattle can to make it look okay...... and it turned out to be the latter!
Eww!
But here at Street towers we never put a healthy car down, and as it had behaved itself impecably on the journey home I decided that it will become a kind of side project to the twin engined Escort project currently bieng undertaken.
First thing to do was give it a damn good valet inside. Years worth of munching petrol station pastry products had left the carpet with lots of crumbs and general nastyness between the seats and all over the carpet.
The only thing to do was rip the seats our and give it a jolly good hoovering:
10 times better! I also gave the seats a good clean while they were out, the dash got in on the action aswell.
With the formalities out of the way it was time to sort out some of the bodywork.
Drivers side door, fooked! Check out the inside:
All four doors are like this, and while they are easily replaced i'm not going to splash any sort of cash on this thing. That said, i'd rather see holes in the bodywork than wibblepoo filler work, so out it's got to go!
Look at that! About 3 inches thick. Repaired with bin-bags, tape, filler and a bit of paint.
I think you can see where this is going can't you. Not going to replace any panels, but not going to repair them.....yep it's going to be ratty as sin
The other problem with this particular door is that it's been bent over in some toss attempt at breaking in.
Rather than bend it back though, the previous keeper just beefed up the door seal with foam and duck tape to stop the resulting water leak
Great job!
Obviously I bent the door back and got rid of all that crapola, and now it's back to normal.
The tape is a bit of a theme with this car, he seems to have stuck it everywhere, mostly without rhyme or reason, like this:
No reason for that bieng there whatsoever!
The other thing silver tops like to do is paint stuff. Here's some of his work:
It appears to be underseal, all over the front bumper! I scraped it all off and I then decided to sand the bumper down through to bare metal in areas and leave it to rust, in keeping with the ratty theme.
Incredibly I even found filler on the bumper!!
I'll post pics of the bumper up later, it's currently bieng 'weathered'
More on the rest of the bodywork transformation later. Next it was time to get rid of the poxy wheeltrims:
Good old mk3 Escort 13" steelies underneath, gotta love 'em!
But this rusty Escort is missing something.... yep, it needs lowering! Even the shittest cars can look good lowered. lowering a rusty car makes it look like it's rusty on purpose. Looks like you have a plan.
I'll post up all the lowering capers tomorrow, it's all done but it's got to settle yet and it got a bit dark to shoot the results anyway.
What I will say though, i've driven this thing 800km so far, and I haven't put any petrol in yet!!!!
It's incredibly economical. I've driven it from Liverpool to Nottingham, then hoofed it down to Norfolk and back, then to Lincoln and back, then all around in between.... all on the fuel that was in it when I baught it! Unreal.
Fully reliable too, hasn't missed a beat although I did 'do a Pogweasel' when I first baught it- I flicked a switch under the dash that appeared to do nothing, then the next morning when I jumped it it it wouldn't start. I left it and came back to it later, then realised that the switch was in fact a giffer-fitted immobiliser, lolZ!
Stay tuned for the lowering episode, and maybe more bodywork if I get round to it
