1974 Ford Escort mk1 - Upgrades & Track preperation 1
In early 2004 we started major work on upgrading the Escort; it handled well, had great stoppers, was light, nippy and pretty economical... it did however, leave certain things to be desired...
Power... and the lack thereof, corners were great, but is just no good
on anything straight...
A completely standard back end...
Weak gearbox...
The first thing to address was the lack of power. Now there are loads of options for modifying Escorts, possibly some of the widest ranges available for any car. We could have uprated the Kent, but that would be throwing money away in my opinion - as I just don't like them - they're completely outdated IMHO. We could have gone for a capacity increase with a 2.0 Pinto, but we've already done that in the '7'.
The last option we looked at was a modern engine, in this case the 2.0 Twincam 16v Vauxhall engine, so called the 'Red Top'. It develops 156bhp in standard form and is regarded as tough as old boots!
So we picked one up and set about hacking holes in the Escort engine bay!
As the Vauxhall engine is normally mounted transversely, to the front axle, in the Escort engine bay it sticks quite a way back. Thus we need to cut out a section of the bulkhead. We decided while we were on, to remove the heater and fan assembly to ease things later on.
Because we didn't want the expense of a mappable ECU, we would be going with a traditional distributor system - hence even MORE had to be cut out of the bulkhead, to allow the distributor to be removed in-situ if the need arose. In fairness, you wouldn't need to take this much out if you were using an ECU.. or if you weren't so paranoid about the engine hittin things!
This page updated: 4/Feb/2007