PROJECT
Mk1 Escort cosworth turbo
Blast fab fit engine gearbox and paint Focus electric orange
Rear arch cut out ready to have bubble arch fitted.
Rear bubble arch clamped on in place
Bubble arch welded on very carefully so not to distort the panel.
Front arch cut out ready for bubble arch. You can also see from this side the tidying up that has been happening in the engine bay.
Bubble arch welded on.
The same with the N/S arch
Rad MOD been carried out & the holes in the front panel
Slam panel fitted
If we are fitting a cosworth turbo engine we make a new slam panel so you can remove the intercooler and rad.
Rad & intercooler mocked up
Bulkhead support plate fitted, lip removed & welded.
Petrol cap removed and plated
The floors are now being started, this is the O/S going in.
Filler tacked in
All fully welded and cleaned up
Before putting the new floor in we zinga the chassis rails and inside the sills, zinga is a galvanic product it was designed for ships.
Here you can see the floors are in and the fire wall is removed ready for the turrets
Here we have done a mod to the fuel tank stand for a swirl pot.
After the floors were fitted we made a new gearbox prop and diff tunnel
The strut brace mounts are welded in
We have modified the front x member to take the cosworth engine.
Mocking up the fire wall we can't fit it yet as we are fitting a roll cage.
Cleaning up the welds on the tunnel
Turrets fitted behind the fire wall.
Because of the fuel filler we have put the turrets behind the firewall and raised the shelf to give room when fitting the tank back in
It will look good when its all in
Cleaning up the engine bay
Turrets finished
Six link cover
Underneath finished
Inside veiw showing gearbox mounting
The handbrake fixing points
Wheel arches filled in
The cage and firewall are finished.
The roll cage has been tig welded in.
We have fitted the seat bars and a rear support.
We have found a good bonnet and that fits well too.
Checking the panel fit
The cage looks good.
The fuel hose through the firewall.
We have put in three fixing for the harnesses.
The car looks good after the a good clean up
Before we put any filler in the wheel arches we use fibreglass first.
Then some filler after they are rubbed down they are sprayed with spray filler rubbed down then primed two coats rubbed down then two more coats and rubbed down.
A bit of filler on the tunnel
Hand brake brackets fitted
Engine bay ready for etch prime
Underneath seam sealed and cleaned
Stone guard
After the stone guard is baked it is then primed and baked then we rub over with scotch and degrease then it is ready for the top coat.
The inside all primed ready for a rub down.
Underside re-primed ready for a rub down and top coat.
We even guide coat the engine bay and rub it down by hand
New doors fitted and tweeked they look good with good lines all round.
Filler work all complete ready for the spray filler.
Here the car is in spray filler we use spray filler so we can fine tune the lines and curves if you look at any of our mk1's you can see the lines are very sharp this is done by taking the time to prep them by hand at every stage.
Next we will be guide coating and blocking down the spray filler, followed by 4 coats of primer guide coating and blocking by hand, then rubbing down and painting the inside.
Here the car has had the spray filler rubbed down and is ready for the first prime coat
all primed up ready for the guide coat
The panels are up to primer and have now been guide coated and the inside of the doors have been prepared and bass coated kermit grey.
The inside has been rubbed down and seam sealed after this we coat any break throughs and spray a coat over the seam sealer.
All the unused holes are taped up if there are any you need it is easy to cut the tape off
Because we use an electrostatic gun to spray the inside we have to cover the car up realy well as the paint searches for an earth.
Here is the inside with the first coat of bass coat on it after this we will inspect the coating and tack it to remove any dry spray then on with the next coat and so on.
This is the gun we use to apply the bass coat it charges the atomised paint to 85,000 volts so evan chris will end up kermit grey.
Here is the engine bay after rub down and seam sealer
The boot after rub down and seam sealer
After the seam sealer we prime all the sealed areas then the first ground coat is applied
The orange ground coat is very weak so we have had to use a pre ground coat ground coat.
Her is the engine bay after prime and pre ground coat
This is the ground coat
More ground coat
Then the pearl coat
One coat of clear coat
Three coats of clear coat
Starting to prep the outside
After all preped we have primed all the breakthroughs
White pre ground coat
Ground coat
More ground coat
Even more ground coat
This is what we do once the clear coat has been baked and left we rub it down again then we use a three stage polishing system to polish it back up
OOOps!!!
This is the car after 4 coats of clear coat
Here is the pic of the car polished
This is the result of trying to polish in a blow in this was after we repainted the door shut because we had a white line round it
As soon as you paint over this colour it changes as you can see the door shut is a shade out
So we made jigs up to hold the doors boot and bonet and we have painted the car again
Here it is in the pre-ground coat
Here the car is after the clear coat
Here we go again flatting down the clear coat
We have made new four link bars they are now the right length.
