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Group Buy: 1982 Ford Escort bASe. Purchased.


BorniteIdentity

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3 hours ago, BorniteIdentity said:

This is all very queer tbh.

Checked for continuity on both the body earth and chassis earth - all gravy. Doesn’t appear to be any fuse of any description on the positive wire from battery to box. Can’t find any voltage at the fuse box by poking about. No voltage on red wire up to the ignition. 

A nice 12v across the battery. 

I’m not an auto electrician but it’s very queer. There’s a slightly iffy looking connection on the wire at the battery so I pinched it up and stuck it back on as tight as it’d go. No fucking dice. 

It’s a bit of a rat’s next under the steering wheel but I’m certain nothing got knocked as I was driving along. 

I will swear at it more soon. Any suggestions and help, as ever, more than welcome!

Hope this doesn't come across as prickish but when you say continuity are you using the "beep" function on a multimeter or the actual ohmic value (your going to tell me your an electrical engineer now and to wind my fat neck in, I can feel it 🤣🤣) as the two surprisingly differ a lot. 

Has this very issue on my old vanette, measured on a beep tester and all good, measured in ohms and had something like 200 or so. Turned out the copper grease I thought was helping was actually providing a parallel path of least resistance hence no dice. 

Removed and cleaned off grease from connection and off she went. 

I take it literally no electrical circuits working anywhere, fag lighter etc? 

If someone can bring up the wiring diagram from an old HBOL I could talk you through where to look and what to test? 

I've stripped a few mk3/4 escorts over the years and seem to think most of the main box wiring goes under the scuttle and towards the fuse box terminating underneath? 

Their pretty basic to be fair but see if you have any perm lives (even the lights of that era were mostly perm lives) meaning you can rule out inside the car compared to outside the car first. I can also recall a huge earthing point somewhere near the battery that was prone to fail? No perms means you're getting nothing to the board and no switched (dash lights etc) would be from the ignition switch and so on. 

That burnt out fuselink mentioned above sounds promising though. 

Good luck sir. 

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12 hours ago, vaughant said:

Hope this doesn't come across as prickish but when you say continuity are you using the "beep" function on a multimeter or the actual ohmic value (your going to tell me your an electrical engineer now and to wind my fat neck in, I can feel it 🤣🤣) as the two surprisingly differ a lot. 

Ha.  You're giving up your time to help me fix a car, I'd never tell you to hush your gums!  You grossly overestimate my ability to do...err...anything actually.  I'm pushing 40 and still haven't discovered what it is I'm actually good at!  

I was using the continuity setting on my multimeter.  The one that looks like a little diode.

Unfortunately, I couldn't do electronics at school and was told to do woodwork.  Fat lot of fucking use that's been since!!  I should do an evening class or something.

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11 hours ago, BorniteIdentity said:

Ha.  You're giving up your time to help me fix a car, I'd never tell you to hush your gums!  You grossly overestimate my ability to do...err...anything actually.  I'm pushing 40 and still haven't discovered what it is I'm actually good at!  

I was using the continuity setting on my multimeter.  The one that looks like a little diode.

Unfortunately, I couldn't do electronics at school and was told to do woodwork.  Fat lot of fucking use that's been since!!  I should do an evening class or something.

Phew don't feel so bad now!!! 

Yes that's the one with the diode symbol and it can give you a path but not a true value. 

Switch it round to the ohms symbol and try again, you should ideally be as close to what the meter reads with your leads touched together as possible,this gives you the resistance of the leads as well which can sometimes be a good few ohms. Check the range your on as well. If the meter has an auto range setting, use that or go to the highest setting otherwise (usually 20 Meg ohms) and take it from there. Anything more than about 30 to 50 ohms max and I'd be concerned. 

You may need to "scrape" the lead into the connection a bit to get a good path, bit like trying to cut into a tough steak but not like you're digging your way to Australia. 

You're about 200 miles from my nearest location otherwise I'd gladly come over and have a look. 

 

Judging by the nice property and area you live in you must be done something correctly.... 

 

Plus you own two terracotta (yes I know that's not the right colour) 80's ford's? 

Of that's not a measure of success than what the fuck is? 😂 😂 

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15 hours ago, vaughant said:

Judging by the nice property and area you live in you must be done something correctly.... 

 

Plus you own two terracotta (yes I know that's not the right colour) 80's ford's? 

Of that's not a measure of success than what the fuck is? 😂 😂 

Chief blagger.  Gift of the gab.  Or something.

This is all immensely helpful.  I will get probing again tonight, and have an extra pair of hands coming on Saturday to help with this and a couple of other pressing issues.

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A scrap of emery paper tucked into your belt and a tin of brake cleaner and a toothbrush would probably go well with the multimeter as you go. By the time you've checked all connectors and cleaned them up any that fall off in your hand will do, which is always a clue... 

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As always, thanks to @alf892for his stoic determination to fix it and properly. I really wanted it to be an easy but significant fix; not something that would take forever but something clearly broken that we could repair and thus eliminate from future drama. 

Here he is doing all the hard work whilst I take photos and make coffee.

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He does actually have a head too.

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Having checked the full path from battery to starter to alternator, we realised that they weren’t to blame. Alf couldn’t comprehend that a little wire from the battery to the fuse box could be responsible, so we started with the other route. Having checked everything, and hotwired it, we turned attention to the ignition (dead) and fuse box (dead). By complete accident I left the keys in the ignition and felt all the way along this pathetic lead and happened to squeeze the broken wire. Life. 

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A very small wire had been, inexplicably, grafted onto the main wire to the box. Once cut out, and the wire attached nicely to the battery direct, it works perfectly.

Huge thanks to Alf as ever for the assistance, kit, and for blowtorching my hand as we soldered the new battery wire on. They’re quite warm aren’t they?!

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Back in more natural surroundings for an estate car; the garden centre!

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Further news in Escort land.

There's definitely an ignition issue looming.  Yesterday I started it to move it, and it went first time.  I moved it, but when I went back to start it up again dead AF.  Nothing.  No lights.  I swore at it a bit and went to do something else, and 2 minutes later it was working again.  I wonder if there's an ignition switch failing here too.

That aside, we are now fully erect thanks to Febi

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And fully rubbered up thanks to @Skizzer

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Look at that width vs height ratio.  DANG.

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The datecode is, reassuringly, 4520 meaning they're not even 6 months old.  Here was me thinking that the demand for 155 80 13's would be vanishingly small!  I like Toyos and getting 5 felt decadent but sensible.  A bit like Skiz himself.

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My mum had a base Escort like this when I was a kid. Brings back memories! I think she had it until about 1995 and it was proper shitted up by that point. She replaced it with a low spec Rover 800 on a J reg. Moving up in the world. I looked that car up and it died in 2004. She had it until about 1998 when she got an M reg Discovery V8i with a manual gearbox but pretty much all other options. That was cool 

 

I don't remember what happened to the Escort and I can't remember the plate. Might be in a family photo somewhere. I imagine it was scrapped because it wasn't running well and was full of rust 

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cjhillman over on the blue has been having similar electrical maladies with his similar escort: https://forum.retro-rides.org/thread/180857/1985-mk3-pop-electrical-problems?page=10  Seems likely it's an ignition switch item for him too, though initially it manifested similarly to a poor main earth.  I learned through his thread, and by extension other posts, that the ignition switch is a fairly common Mk3 Escort issue and that there are numerous revisions to the switch itself.  That said, if you can find the correct switch it should be a very simple job to remove the old and fit the new.  It could also just be corrosion in the ignition switch pins, especially if the car has been sat around for a while doing nowt.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Yo pervs. 

Not a lot to report on this. Finally managed to get a gap at the local garage to fit me five Toyo tyres. Drove up there the other night and cycled back. They are hardcore enthusiasts of the blue oval; a Sierra AND Escort Cosworth along with a p100 are on their fleet, along with a super early MK1 Fiesta on an R and this Fez which is eternally waiting its turn. 
 

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I am a bit of a tyre snob but even I have been surprised by the sheer difference they’ve made. The quickest I ever dared before, even in a straight line, was 55. Tonight we managed just north of 70 and my ears still hurt now. Night and day difference though.

There are issues though. I think a wheel bearing is tired, the rear wheels make a horrendous noise on overrun and the wiring under the dash is bad. The radio wire, when knocked, stops the whole car (!). The rear suspension mounts aren’t good and there’s quite a bit of Wob near side front. The car never saw an MOT last November and I’m tempted to take it there soon just to see the look on the testers face when he realised he passed it just a couple of months ago. It will need money and time and more money but ultimately will be a nice old thing. For now though, I still find myself wanting to drive the Sierra more. 
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This weekend is Drive it Day.  My immediate neighbour is also a fan of motoring pursuits, so we thought it might be nice to go out for a trundle on Sunday for a spot of the old motoring.

What I thought was going to be three or four of us has now turned into about 15 fellow enthusiasts, with the promise of "Celebrity Appearance" through the friend of a friend.  

I'm now thoroughly embarrassed to be taking the Escort!  It's the only old heap taxed and MOT'd at the moment, otherwise I'd take the Sierra which is slightly less shonky.  I will probably put a little note in the window explaining the story of the car and profusely apologising for the smoking blot on the landscape that I'm causing.

My neighbour dug out a set of GEN-U-WHINE Escort roof bars.  Sadly they're for a MK6 and seemingly missing the brackets, otherwise they'd look COOL AF.

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I might see if I can pinch some brackets from other sets I have.  After all, the roof rack might distract fellow anoraks from the rest of the car's "patina"

(!)

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@BorniteIdentity...

"..I'm now thoroughly embarrassed to be taking the Escort!  It's the only old heap taxed and MOT'd at the moment, otherwise I'd take the Sierra which is slightly less shonky.  I will probably *put a little note in the window explaining the story of the car and profusely apologising for the smoking blot on the landscape that I'm causing.."

'MY OTHER CAR IS EMBARASSED TO BE SEEN WITH THIS!' .... sort of thing ?

;)

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On 4/22/2021 at 10:51 AM, BorniteIdentity said:

This weekend is Drive it Day.  My immediate neighbour is also a fan of motoring pursuits, so we thought it might be nice to go out for a trundle on Sunday for a spot of the old motoring.

What I thought was going to be three or four of us has now turned into about 15 fellow enthusiasts, with the promise of "Celebrity Appearance" through the friend of a friend.  

What a lovely trundle out. I will post more pics over in my memoirs post but, suffice to say, our famous visitor was very keen on the car. He spent about five minutes showing the car to his kids before proclaiming it “brilliant”.

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A thoroughly lovely run out also fearing Danny Hopkins off of Practical Classics smoking a lovely TR7. 

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And one more "Fan Photo" from yesterday.

It was a brilliant run out.  Initially I was a bit disappointed it wasn't longer (that's what she said) but it was 45 minutes in the sunshine with my 8 year old son barking out directions from the map and me pretending to not know where we were going.  Days like this have been few and far between in the last year so it was just nice to be out motoring.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

Just to bring this to a conclusion the. After a week of dreamers on Facebook; after two days on eBay I had three buyers. First to come took it away. 

Of the three old heaps, this was the best of them: I will miss it very much. However, it’s all got out of hand with various old piles of shit littering the place, so today I sold not one but two cars. 

Next? Dunno. But I do know we found it a good home where it will get plenty of love and plenty of paint. Really, that’s all I could have asked. 

Thanks to @Cheggersand @Skizzerfor going thirds. Sorry it wasn’t a longer stay, but we achieved what we set out to - and that was to get it a nice home. 

(We’re already talking about what to get next) 😳🙄

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  • 2 weeks later...

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