Mk3 escort van, rwd and maybe a V8

[Lemon-Ade]

Saw the feature in classic ford its looking awesome, well done Neil  any more updates?

[dr knockers]

Saw the feature in classic ford its looking awesome, well done Neil  any more updates?

Thanks Ade! I need to sit down and do an update, it's moved on a bit since the mag grafters. In the meanwhile  i have some extra pictures from the day of the shoot that the mag very kindly sent me!

[capri v8 driver]

Nice pictures!

[Dave]

This is looking great!

Gonna be some fun this van, great job! 

[dr knockers]

Thanks guys

The update as promised....

Lots been happening! Moved workshop and classic ford did a grafters. It's been hard staying focused and keeping the motivation flowing, but touch wood all is good thus far....

Anyways had to widen the chassic rails at front but this meant disturbing the front arb captive fixing nuts. Made a jig to keep the locations in the right place and inserted some crush tubes and welded it all back up.





I them carried on filling in the foot wells, using 16 gauge as the original tunnel mouth contained some chunky steel - 2.5mm in places



From that I moved on to the tunnel, wanted to use the original sierra one as a base and to add/extend to suit. Fortunately i had a spare pan to scarific for sections.




Cut into the side section just below the gear stick hole and put in a L shaped piece to double up as space needed for bucket seat bolsters and also as platforms to tube reinforce for gearbox X member pickup points



Looking pretty ugly atm but its only gonna every see my arse



Progress came to a halt on the tunnel after a visit from a local hot rod builder who advice was to determine the propshaft line on full bump and droop as I could do all the tunnel work and prop hoop install and find I was getting interference....

This meant sorting the rear axle fully and mocking up the ride hide with engine at correct install, all these things had every only been fudged and much research and head scratching ensued.

Pinion angle, instance centre, link bar lengths, bracket design, rods ends strengths, shear planes, anti tramp lines, anti squat calculations.... it was information overload for a while

First things to sort was what axle?

I felt a 9" axle was too heavy and that an 8.8 mustang would be upto the job. Google pointed me in the direction of the ford explorer axle - 8.8 pigs head with 9" half shafts 31 spine. Was looking good except because they are 4x4 the pigs head is off centre and the run a C clip axle retainer design, bad when you need half shaft making as u have only a couple of mm error ratio.

Sourced one from Si on here, he had it already shorten but still C clipped. I wanted 9" ends on mine and no c-clips





Ordered some 9" ends and the install kit from strange in the states and got on with centring the pinion and shorting the axle.



Then I chopped the ends off, not a critical measurement yet....



Bit of cleaning, welded a cupped wire brush on some tube with a 19mm bolt welded to the other end



Few seconds with the impact gun....

Video


Video


Before




After



The most extreme wheels I will every run will be a pro mod  15 x 15. To have these fit under the van the hub face to hub face would be 1150mm. This is we're critical measuring was needed...

Decide in the end to use the prop flange as the rotating centre to mark points on the tube. It's was what I was centring too so might as well use it as a compass.





All is needed was to make sure either end mark was at the same level on each tube..... Got out the laser!





Big fat centre point to mark the length to cut to



Wrapped a piece on A4 paper round and alined edges to mark a line as square as possible for me to cut to



Bits of etch to mark the line and I got cutting




Next up was the axle brackets, I alreday had the bars which i used to centre the body brackets so I knew the distance apart would be the same when doing the axle, but just needed brackets centering to pinion, used the compass trick again.

Also key was the angle that the brackets would be fixed to the axle at. The pinion angle is critical and needs to reflect the angle of the output shaft from the gearbox, it's to do with propshaft phasing.

My engine at ride high sits bang on at 90degrees so the g/box output shaft is at 0 and therefore pinion flange needs to be at 0 when axle is resting and at ride height. Simple enough when you grasp it but a ****er to set the entire car and driveline up when nothing is really fixed.







Anyways I tact welded up brackets ready to be properly welded by Wayne at OddRods. He has a proper jig to align the 9" ends so I dropped it into him one Sat morning and had it back in the workshop by the afternoon.... His work is really quite special. He also welded up the tubes to the pigs head for me!

[dr knockers]

For a mockup I needed some shafts, I had an old knackered Tina axle but I couldn't get the half shafts out for love nor money. Resorted to the only way I knew.... Angle grinder time!





Lathed some packing bungs to act as bearings







Machined down some nuts to give me something too grip when adjusting the link bars.

Video





Ordered some 1  1/4CDS which had the right ID for the L/hand R/hand threaded bung ends from McGill Motorsport and got welding...



Fitted up the axle to make sure I got it all o.k

[capri v8 driver]

There is some serieus fabrication going on. 

[v6gerry]

will be one COOL van when finished keep at it fella 

[TwinTurbo]

is this going to be IVA'd and street legal in the end? or just for thje Strip?


TT

[dr knockers]

Thanks all!

Yes street legal, BIVA is the latest from my understanding, but legislation is a mindfield to say the least. Will be on a Q plate

[kevchard]

Hi
My twopenneth
I'm presuming IVA and SVA regs are similar. With our SVA, all we had to do was prove that 2 major components eg engine / gearbox or front / rear axles came from a specific vehicle. If you could prove the registration plate of the donor vehicle, then you can get an age related plate.
Cheers
Kevin

[Lemon-Ade]

Wow Neil  so much work going into this 

15inch wide on the rear that's some rubber!

This is going to be an absolute hoot once its going, keep up with the good work and updates