My Series 1's Transformation and Modernisation

[andy-mac]

good on you derek for having ago at making your own loom i am sure it will look and work great

it would not be me as i hate electrics

[SHIFTY]

[Dereksjoint]

It's been a long time since I last posted on this thread as the last few years have made it impossible to get any work done to my Series 1 or Fiesta Turbo. To give a brief recap of my misfortune I bought the wife a new car and we moved house down to Ayrshire. Shortly after moving I had an accident at work that left me sat at home for almost a full year with only statuary sick pay. After 11 months of sitting around I returned to work only to find my company was liquidated with no notice only 2 months later. I managed to get a new job fairly quickly but my new job is monthly pay with no where near as much overtime as the old job. It has taken me the last year and a bit to get back on my feet financially and get some savings back into the Series 1 fund which was raped repeatedly. I'm happy to report though that I've finally started working on the old Escort again although I've made a few key changes to my original plans.

After 5 years of the car sitting half stripped in various driveways I finally got round to stripping it completely lol. The front passenger footwell was soaking due to a leak on the bulkhead from under the old battery tray so the full interior was covered in mould. I wanted to put everything up into my loft in a ready to refit condition so that meant stripping the car piece by piece and deep cleaning everything.





























































After cleaning the full interior everything was tucked away in the loft and I turned my attention to prepping some parts that will be refitted to the car.

As you will notice the car will now NOT to be running 4x4 Cosworth running gear and I will be sticking with front wheel drive so I wanted to convert the rear brakes to disks. I had to buy a spare set of axle stubs and rear hub flanges as I need to keep my car rolling at the moment but as you can see the parts were in a very USED condition.









As will become apparent throughout this project I want everything to be New or as New as humanly possible so I set about cleaning up the scaby old hubs.









I then gave them 5 or 6 coats of acid etch primer front and back before several coats of Ford moondust silver







I already have a pair of NOS Front hub carriers and hubs and 4 new Ford wheel bearings along with a full set of AVO coilovers so I can now get all 4 legs built up ready to go on the shell once it's painted.

This is my new power plant and gear box setup








Decided to go with A Mk1 Focus RS engine and ST170 Getrag 6 Speed gearbox. The Gearbox has been completely rebuilt and the engine is over at PBS Engineering getting stripped down and rebuilt with all new gaskets, shells and some new piper cams.






That's my new single billet dual mass racing flywheel and clutch kit and my GT28 roller bearing Turbo



You know it's going to be good when you can fist the turbo

[jimmyson]

if a jobs worth doing its worth doing right
and you seem to be doing a cracking job on this one..........well done Derek !!!!!!!!!!

[Dereksjoint]

Well I've been keeping busy on the car over the last few weeks. My main focus was to finish mapping the full wiring loom which I'm happy to say is now complete. I have compiled a 42 page report listing all 492 terminal connections within the original loom and I have used this information to reverse engineer my own bespoke loom which will see all of the wiring hidden within the fabric of the car and the fuse box and battery relocated.





With that mountain successfully tackled I started poking about the floor of the Escort as it looked a bit ropey in areas when I lifted the carpet and sound deadening out. The cars almost 30 years old now so I was expecting the odd surprise








As you can see I have a water feature in the passenger footwell caused by a small hole in the bulkhead under the battery tray





Curiosity got the better of me after seeing rusty spots all over the place so I removed all the old bitumen sound deadening from the floors which was an absolute B*****D of a job lol














The rear passenger footwell has definitely seen better days, I thought the floor felt a bit soft the last time I stood in it with the carpet in lol. The seem seal along the floor sill was cracked and looked like it was getting pushed off by rust so I removed all the seem sealer as well.











The Drivers seat rear mount also needs some attention but luckily the chassis number is still intact. Started on the drivers front floor pan next which revealed some more surprises.











As you can see Stevie Wonder himself repaired the drivers floor pan back in the day lol I swear I've never used a welding gun in my life but I'm pretty sure I could have done a better job myself 1st time round. I had to put a blob of silicone on the hole under the battery tray just now to make the car water tight again but that's also on the repair list





The back of the car has become a bit of a dumping ground as I'm running out of places to put stuff in the house lol.








I also made a start on sorting all of my locks as my only key snapped inside the drivers door lock about a year ago. I managed to pick up a NOS Ford boot lock with 2 new keys so the plan is to rebuild the 2 door locks, the ignition barrel and the fuel cap to work with the new keys.

[Stu/RS]

Cars actually not too bad Derek, considering its age.

Some good work so far. See James at Ford Van Centre about lock parts if your stuck.
Sure you can still get the repair kits to have al locks keyed alike.

[JPA]

Looking good Derek !

Ref the rear hubs are they the ones I gave you away back whenever , if so remember they are 16i and where they will fit the rear wheels will have wrong camber

All the best anyway mate

John

[Dereksjoint]

[Goafer]

Derek Mk3 Escorts always let in water even when they were new

So your S1 has stood up well

[Dereksjoint]

Been fairly busy over the last couple of weeks with work etc but I still managed to get a small amount of progress with my loom.

I purchased myself a new toy to help with the loom building, it's an all singing and dancing Dymo Rhino Printer





I've now completed the full rear section of the loom, I just need to terminate the wiring in to the new connectors but I'll wait until the car is painted and the full loom is installed before putting the connectors on, anyways here's some pics of my new loom


























I will be running the wiring through the void in the sill then up behind the passenger kick panel to the new fuse box position in the glove box I just need to add the wiring in for the fuel pump and sender.

[gibby]

Will look the business with the custom tidy loom derek

[Dereksjoint]

[DALSY]

yes loom looks very professional Derek, well done

Look forward to seeing this done. I like Paul Collins MK4 RST with the Focus RS engine in it, this will be another level up me thinks

All you need is a set of forged pistons and rods to compliment the rest of the build, I wonder where theres a set for sale BNIB

[Dereksjoint]

[john-v6]

Looking good Derek. Can't wait to see it back out. Think I've only seen her in the flesh once the hole time I've been in the club.

[Dereksjoint]

[peterRST]

Been looking at the SPL treatment as well Derek - gotta say it looks the ultimate as far as shell preparation is concerned would be great to get a shell back to better than factory standard

[andy-mac]

doing some great work there Derek , dipping would save alot of time stripping it all back

especially the under side

[Dereksjoint]

[Dereksjoint]

Well it's been another busy couple of weeks but I'm still chipping away at the new loom. As you can imagine it's a time consuming process which I have made a bit harder by redesigning almost all of the loom layout.

The first main branch which I made earlier was also the easiest as most of the rear loom layout is as per the original layout with a few tweaks here and there. I did however learn a few things which helped in building the rest of the loom although I did have to put on the old thinking cap to ensure the cable routes, cable sizes and length of runs were all correct before building.

I started out by making a cut list, the cut list is every cables size, length and start and end location within this section of the loom. The list starts at the furthest point in the branch listing every connector and cable on the way back. Each time I finish wiring a new set of cables I mark them off the list with a green highlighter to avoid confusion.





The next most important thing I learned with the first section of loom was making sure the cable markers correct. I have now changed the way I was marking the wiring so now each cable has a marker at each end showing both the start and end locations for that cable. This should make any future fault finding a lot easier along with any design issues when I fire it up if I have any.




I make each section of loom up one cable at a time and then stitch them together with a bit of insulating tape to hold them in place.








Once the wiring is complete I start to place braiding over the main sections of the loom first, then all the little mini branches get braiding. I hold the braiding in place with insulating tape then once all the braiding is complete I heat shrink all the joints together.








I have once again run out of braiding, the smallest size this time round but unwilling to let that stop progress I decided to test fit my new sections of loom. I had to drill 2 x 25mm holes on the inner wings behind the dash to start my new cable routes.








With holes drilled it was time to poke the wiring through so I could check that all my estimations were correct. This first few shots are all inside the wing and show the proposed cable routes with wiring to be held in place by wrap round clips. I'm planning to have 6mm threaded studs welded along the tops and fronts of the wings so the wiring can be secured in place











Wiring for headlights, side lights, fog lights, indicators, fans, horn, washer bottle and various others all get into the engine bay via the chassis leg hole




















After finding that every things a good fit I removed all of the new sections of loom so that I can build the last dash section then link all the looms together into one new super loom.








I got the 6 speed box out a few days ago to give the housing a good clean but I still haven't managed to get round to that job yet lol




More updates coming soon as I'm working on the last Dash section of the loom at the moment so fingers crossed the wiring should all be finished soon just some 300 odd terminals and connectors to make off after that lol