Project Ford Escort Mk3
Our restored Escort sets out on a journey to Wales, but not everything goes entirely to plan.
It should have been the final instalment and a pleasurable road trip, but disaster strikes our Escort near Nuneaton.
After all the work we’ve done to this car, it was time for a proper road trip to put the Escort through its paces and finish up our mini-series. The idea was that we would spend enough time in the Ford to really appreciate its strong points and its shortcomings, maybe even get some evaluation from family members who’d long since moved onto more modern cars. The plan was that I would head west from Peterborough, make a stop- off in Warwickshire, and then work my way through the increasingly hilly countryside towards Wales.
The comparative size of our Escort Mk3 in today’s traffic would suggest that people really did have things worse off in 1981. How, I wondered, did we fit all our luggage and passengers in back then? And more importantly, how was I going to fit everything in that I need for my planned trip cross country? Fortunately, as I opened the Ford’s simple boot hatch, the suitcase in my other hand seemed to shrink. Making a mockery of its perceived compact exterior dimensions, the boot is as generous as anything in this class today so in went the
suitcase, day bag, extended toolkit and a few other bits that, even if not strictly essential, might come in handy and would at least prevent the luggage from moving about in all the free space.
This left the passenger compartment free, apart from myself and a road map that would hopefully guide me to the final destination: the coastal town of Aberaeron in Ceredigion. Before that, I had a choice. Would I take the scenic route through Leicestershire and Northamptonshire or just hop on the A14? Unusually for me, I took the direct route for a chance to test the Ford Escort out on a bit of fast dual carriageway. Aerial up, the oldies playing just loud enough but not so loud as to distort the single speaker in the dash, I got to munching the miles. This also gave me time to think back over the restoration we’d carried out to bring this gem of a car to where it was now.
When we got the Escort it was a car in lovely original condition, but there were a few things that needed doing. The positive thing was that we had the opportunity to bring the car up to top notch condition without sacrificing much originality at all. During our first proper check- over, we’d set up the notorious automatic choke carburettor rather than replacing it, but found little else to tweak. The brakes were in first rate order, so we moved on to the natural upgrade for a car of this age: converting it to run on unleaded petrol. While at Q-prep for this work, the water pump and cam belt were also done.
With everything then put back together it was running smoother than ever, but the paintwork, while still eye catching, had a few blemishes of rust that kept it from looking truly tidy. So it went to Tiger Racing where the bodywork was rubbed down, a few plates welded in, and everything resprayed from the pillars down. Then, because the exterior was looking so sharp, we had to do something about the interior. While it had clearly been cared for, years of use had worked dirt into the fibres of the seats and carpets. A thorough valet at Petrolhead Detailing breathed new life – and to be honest quite a bit of steam too – into the old Ford’s interior.
Now, the stunning condition of the car wasn’t going unnoticed. As I was cruising along at an easy 65mph, one car lined up alongside, putting his overtake on pause so that an excited passenger could get a photo on his phone. As I glanced over, he was all smiles and thumbs up. This summed up the attitude of most on the A14 and M6 that crisp winter morning.
Before I knew it, I was leaving the M6 and heading due south through Rugby on the A426. Unfortunately, rather than the friendly nods and space afforded the Escort on the dual carriageways, the mid-morning traffic of Rugby was more aggressive.
Aggressive enough in fact that the poor old Escort would not leave Rugby without a good deal of damage. We’ve all been there; an impatient, careless driver edging dangerously close to our prized classic. Normally you can just relax if they overtake or pull off. Sometimes it’s even worth pulling over yourself. I wish I had. Instead, our distracted and spatially challenged Audi SUV driver smashed into the back of the Ford Escort as I was slowing down.
The damage to the Ford looked massive in comparison to the absorbed impact on the Audi’s grille but, as I would note later, it was a pinpoint central impact – she hadn’t braked or even begun to swerve. I knew immediately that this was the end of the road trip and that the car wouldn’t be going to Wales. The first thing to do was to make sure that everyone involved was OK. Fortunately this was the case; even the kids in the back of the Audi were not much more than surprised at the impromptu stop at the side of the road. I grabbed my camera and took a couple of shots of each car, the road, and of both cars together – these different angles are easy to forget in the heat of the moment, but can be important in later disagreements.
Taking a breath, I took a closer look at the Escort and thought: ‘Yep, insurance.’ It didn’t seem that anything structural had been hit – the back panel and bumper had been pushed in a fair way, but not quite to the fuel tank. I picked up the loose pieces from the broken tail lights and put them in my jacket pocket, then went to the boot for the note pad in my day bag. But the boot wouldn’t open, so I had to revert to the 21st century solution and use my phone. We exchanged details on the side of the road, a dead straight suburban section of the A426, and I wondered not only how on earth she’d managed to run into me, but also whether I could manage to get to my next stop off, with family nearby.
The car drove fine, but I don’t recall ever enjoying the act of driving less than on those 10 miles out of Rugby. Once arrived at my folk’s place, a breather with a cup of coffee got a plan together in my mind. Rather than being a flying visit, I’d stay
there the weekend and prepare the car as best I could for the drive home on Sunday morning – hopefully on nice, quiet roads.
First off, I needed access to the boot. Fortunately, the Escort’s rear bench folds down easily enough, although curiously it requires both rear doors to be open to clear the rear arm rests. I could then extract my luggage and toolkit. With a keen hope that I still had something bought years ago, I rifled through the toolkit looking for the temporary solution to those broken rear tail lights up. My luck was in and I did indeed have a set of red, orange and clear translucent tape designed to cover broken tail lights. What were the chances of that?
I had planned to take my grandad out for a drive in the country to see how the Escort compared with the two later generations of Fiesta that make up my grandparents’ two- car garage, but instead I enlisted his help with some repairs. Equipped with the tail light repair tape, scissors and a light cloth, we got to work by first cleaning the dust from around the damaged area of the lens. Then we measured up the tape, cut it and removed the protective backing. The driver’s side only needed a single piece of orange on the indicator and red on the tail/ brake light, but the passenger side’s unit had a good chunk of plastic missing – well, almost all of the red section was still in my jacket pocket. This needed some more thought. I’d need three lines of tape positioned vertically to cover the gap, so I started on each side and then carefully lined up the central piece.
Now we at least had tail light units that were mostly back to their original colours. A quick test of the lights, including brakes and indicators, and the Escort appeared ready for the drive back to Peterborough. But there was another thing that was bothering me. The impact had forced the centre of the bumper in, but the ends had splayed out and away from their mounting points. This meant that, on the driver’s side especially, there was enough sticking out to serve as a bit of an errant danger. While not quite as dangerous as an Audi Q5, we thought it best to tuck this potential weapon back in towards the car.
After some wrestling with string around the mounting point and the bumper, (a job best done with two pairs of hands,) we had the bumper’s freedom successfully curtailed. We couldn’t bring it back fully into line with the mounting point, but it would be good enough for the drive home.
Having become familiar with the amount of resistance put up by the bumper to our poor string, we decided we wouldn’t be able to improve much on the passenger side. So we called the job a good ’un and on the Sunday I set off back to Peterborough. There were no further accidents, and in fact the car ran faultlessly, exactly as it had before. There was just the sad sense that the occasional appreciating stare had an element of pity as the damaged rear came into view. It didn’t deter some people from tailgating on the
A14 though, even on a quiet Sunday.
Back at the office, next on the list was to get a proper estimate arranged. With the insurance already notified of the situation, I took the car back to Tiger Racing where the bodywork repairs had been carried out so recently. Paul was good enough to give the car a look over while Jim made up a brew and we discussed what had happened, what needed to be replaced and what could be repaired.
‘You might have difficulty finding a back panel. We can fix it, but it would be much easier to replace,’ they said. We also needed a new bumper and, of course, new tail light units, but the boot floor and the tailgate, those could be repaired. Also, Paul had pointed out as he looked in from behind the rear seats that the boot floor had taken punishment from the impact, in two places in particular.
We found a back panel at Magnum Classic Ford Panels, and with the bumper and tail light units widely available, it looked like it wouldn’t be too difficult to repair the damage. The labour required for the job wasn’t too steep either at around £800, although Tiger were probably being nice to us, so then there was the question in our heads: is it worth going through the insurance? This will be familiar to anyone who’s been in a minor accident like this with a car that can prove to be inexpensive to fix. On this occasion we’ve decided to go ahead with the work outside of the insurance, and will bring you a final round-up of that as soon as it is completed. Maybe then the Escort will get its road trip after all, although you’ll forgive me for taking the quiet route next time.