The first rebuilding stint

Due to the nature of the suspension, and the differential needing replacement, we decided to strip the car down and rebuild it using a Ford Escort Mk2 rear axle. This is more in line with what the car should have had to start off with. In addition, the construction of the car was abysmal - welding was either too much (and blobby), or too little, particularly with the steering column.

The initial idea was to just replace the rear axle, but due to the number of things that needed changing to the structure, all the interior was removed and replaced with steel tubing. This increases its strength considerably.

This stint was primarily aimed at getting the rear axle in place, with kickups strong enough to support a larger engine. We had aimed to use a Nissan Sylvia 1.8 turbo engine, but due to the electronics, we resorted to the original Escort 1.6 XFlow engine. Unfortunately, it needed rebuilding, which was no bad thing as we put a fast road cam, a larger valved head, and some pistons from the 1.3 engine to increase compression. This should take the engine to over 100bhp.