99
The suspension had weathered the years
better, as Barry explains, ‘I took the driveshafts
apart, regreased them, and put them back
together with new constant-velocity boots.
It was just as well that the driveshafts could
be reused, because you can’t get original-
specification replacements any more.
‘The rest of the suspension parts were taken
off, media-blasted, etch-primed and painted
- not powder-coated,’ Jonathan stresses.
‘Two-pack paint is more durable, and with
wax over it too, it’s far better-protectedfrom
stonechips and abrasions. You can also get
paint into nooks and crannies that powder
coating just can’t get into. Powder coating
also cracks, water gets underneath it, it flakes
off and you’re back to square one. Two-pack
painting is a little bit more expensive, butwill
save a lot of money and hassle in the long run.’
Engine
It was Barry’s task to overhaul the rough-running engine.
‘Performance-wise, it was very laggy,’ he says. ‘Power would
come in as a big surge from nothing. People had played with
it over the years, ignoring the underlying state of tune of the
Collins Performance conversion.’ The Cheshire-based tuner has
specialised in performance Fords since 1976, preparing racing
cars as well as creating supercar-baiting road machines. This
conversion endowed the RS500 with 400bhp – up from 224 – and
sophisticated electronics straight from the racetrack.
‘We did know it was a Collins car, but in the absence of data, we
didn’t fully understand what that entailed before the restoration
began. Collins lowered the compression to 7:1 from 8:1, increased
the boost on the turbocharger, revised the injection setup and
ECU, and added a wastegate, breather system, dump valve and
added inlet holes to the air filter housing. But what we initially
thought was an adjustable boost controller turned out to be
connected to an experimental traction control system!
‘The cam timing was out. Someone had put a cambelt on
incorrectly at some point. Not with the adjustment far enough out
to cause damage, but it had interfered with the car’s performance,
causing wear and tear requiring a refresh, with piston rings, valve
guides, bearings and seals all needing attention.’
This specialised engine needed the attention of a
competition-car expert, so Jonathan called on the advice of Julian
Godfrey, the rallycross specialist who built the
engine in the Pikes Peak hill climb Ford RS200.
Explains Julian, ‘I machined the cylinder
block, and set it up properly again. Ian wanted
balanced performance, smoothness, reliability
and strength rather than maximum power.
‘I fitted longer, stronger locating studs –the
RS500 engine, designated YBD 200, has a
unique thick-wall cylinder head so these could
be fitted without compromising it. I also putthe
compression back up to 8:1, and remappedthe
ECU electronically, so the turbo didn’t needto
deliver so much pressure to generate 400bhp.
The crankshaft didn’t need regrinding, but it
was still checked for wear, polished and refitted
with new bearings.
‘New valves were needed, and I overbored
the cylinders by 0.020in, upping the overall
capacity by 100cc, just to take out the wear,
and fitted Mahle pistons and Vernier pulleys
on the cams, so valve timing could be more
accurately adjusted. All RS500s had a second,
disconnected set of injectors fitted from the
factory, but it was just for racing homologation
reasons. Collins had connected them to
increase the fuel feed for the 400.’
All engine parts were refinished to replicate
factory appearance, the cam covers coated
in two-pack high-performance paint, and the
whole engine was assembled on-site by JAR
before being taken back to Julian Godfrey for
initial running-in and dynomometer tuning.
‘We had to upgrade the clutch with a
diaphragm-type assembly, removing the
plastic self-adjusting ratchet mechanism
and replacing it with a modified pedal and
adjustable cable,’ said Jonathan.
‘It’s still the original at heart and it’s heavy
duty enough to suit the power, but anything
more substantial would have been too heavy,
andunsuitableforregular road use.
‘Italsoneededa new exhaust – the one fitted was aftermarket
and looked like a drainpipe, loud and boy-racerish, with a silly
five-inch bore that did nothing for performance. Standard RS500
exhausts aren’t available, but this replacement from Mongoose
works well with the setup and, crucially, is unobtrusive.’Electronics
Although fiddly, car electrics usually form a relatively
straightforward part of a restoration, but the Collins RS500’s
electronics proved fiendishly complex. ‘I spent many hours sorting
it all out,’ Ben Nankivell recalls. ‘Years of modification meant
anything and everything had been fitted – alarms and immobilisers
mainly, also trackers and an automatic window-closing system.
But successive owners had just kept fitting these things without
taking the old ones out. No fewer than seven separate additional
control units had been fitted, all cut into the fuel pump control
wiring and held in with cable ties and tape. Wires – some naked –
were everywhere. The fuel feed ran straight through this spaghetti- the car was in very serious danger of catching fire. Also found
was a hidden, leaking secondary backup battery dated from 1993.
‘On top of that, there was the Collins ECU. The wiring was easy
to trace and follow, but because it had been fitted to a finished car,
it was all over-length to fit around everything already there. It was
all hard-wired into the vehicle’s ECUs and couldn’t be removed
easily. I had to take the entire dashboard out just to get at the
wiring, so we decided to rework it to make it easier to access once
the car had been put back together.
‘Its wiring looms were displaced throughout
the car. We laid them out inside the bare
interior bodyshell to work out where
everything needed to be routed, and repaired
the mounting brackets once the aftermarket
alarms and immobilisers had been removed.
Once refitted, it needed testing, but it was at
this point we realised the ABS wasn’t working.
And the Collins Trakbyte traction-control
worked via the ABS.
‘We needed a wiring diagram, so we
contacted Collins Performance, only to learn
that they didn’t have any. Dan, our contact
there, called the company founder Sue Collins,- now retired and living in Spain – to ask if
she had any old wiring diagrams. She didn’t,
but came back to us with an explanation of
how the system worked. I replaced the ABS
sensors – they’d come to the end of their lives - and cleaned all the electrical contacts. The
reassembled system worked just fine.
- now retired and living in Spain – to ask if
Ford RS500 [Epic Restoration]‘That’d have to be the Sun
Vantage,’ says Ben Nankivell. ‘It’s
a heavy-duty multimeter and
oscilloscope all in one – everything
you need for working on car
electronics, especially such a
challenging one as this. I used it
to work my way through all of the
Collins RS500’s sensors and ECUs,
working out what worked, what
didn’t, what was necessary and
what wasn’t before refitting them.’MY FAVOURITE TOOL
High point
‘Firing the engine
up for the first time
after all that work,
and realising we’d
got the state of tune
just right. The low-
down responsiveness
and broad spread of
torque is phenomenal
for an RS500’
Jonathan Rose