Project XR3i

Timing is everything... The Lancaster Insurance Escort gets a tuneup and meets some of its 1980s rivals.

Last month saw us tidying up the interior of the Escort but with the mysterious rough running having returned.

As before, I suspected a misfire and that’s definitely how it felt, but chatting to the professionals in the shape of my local garage suggested it was more likely to be a sticking hydraulic lifter. One of the selling features of the all-new Mk3 Escort back in 1980 was the reduced servicing requirements of the CVH engine compared to the previous models and one of the ways this was achieved was by using hydraulic tappets. Needing no manual adjustment at service time, they reduced the servicing time dramatically but are known for sticking in old age.

Like so many things right now, the blame for our issues was laid squarely on the pandemic which had seen the car sitting idle for several months after a long trip down from Peterborough to

Oxfordshire. There are a couple of cures: the first is the good old ‘Italian tune up’ which if you’re lucky will free off the lifter in question, but if this doesn’t work then a new lifter is the cure and they’re easy to change.

Expecting to be taking the latter course, I ordered a gasket and a set of lifters from Burton Power but before taking too much apart, we had the workshop check the basics: the compression and the emissions. All of which threw more confusion on the situation since the compression was a solid 100 psi across all four cylinders – pretty much ruling out a sticking lifter – with the hydrocarbon emissions within MoT specs, too.

Perfect timing?

It’s times like these when the difference between enthusiastic amateur and professional comes to the fore; while we were still wondering what to do

next, the boss was checking the ignition timing... which he immediately discovered to be out by a mile.

With the timing properly set, the car was transformed and was at least properly driveable again. It’s still not perfect and could probably do with a new rotor arm, something I’ve been prevented from doing already by the difficulty in obtaining the correct part for this Bosch distributor. As for why the timing was this far out in the first place when none of us has touched the distributor is something nobody has yet owned up to. That’s a job for another day though and at least the XR3i was fighting fit to face the period opposition for a video — watch it at www.classicfordmag.co.uk.

Two fast Fords from two different eras: our Puma project car and the Lancaster XR3i.

High point for the XR3i this month was a visit to Silverstone for a group test with some contemporary rivals. See the film on the Classics World YouTube channel.

We later discovered the ignition timing to be some way out. With this sorted, the car was transformed.

A precautionary compression test showed all four cylinders to be producing good compression, which rather ruled out our diagnosis of a sticking lifter.

Sticking lifter was first suspected and as ever Burton Power supplied the required parts from stock.