customreader’s restoration:load-lugger escort rs turbo
“WE WERE GOING TO PAINT IT WHITE, THEN JUST AS IT WAS
HEADING OFF TO THE PAINTSHOP WE CHANGED OUR MINDS”
September 2019 95the gel badge in the steering wheel centre. Once in
the workshop we stripped it to a bare shell and it
wasn’t in bad nick,” remembers Rod, “the back
panel had a rust hole but it came with new front
wings and a front panel. The chassis rail on the
passenger side was cracked — they often are —
and we had to repair a couple of areas of the
fl oor, we cut out the driver’s side from base of
the bulkhead and replaced it with new metal
from Magnum Panels but generally it was fairly
sound.” Not having a sunroof meant it hadn’t
rotted. “The second owner got in touch and
confi rmed the 77,000 miles showing on the
clock were almost certainly original. We did a bit
of metal replacement around the wheelarches
and the sills, too. The bodykit had some damage
and a few broken rivet holes around the front
spoiler/wheelarch join that we repaired with
Powertec Airless Plastic Welder.
“Mechanically it almost ran and drove,”
continues Rod. “Mick pulled a carrier bag’s
worth of loose wires out from under the dash
where various alarms and immobilisers had been
fi tted over the years. He ended up going
through it all wire by wire and restoring it back
to the factory-style heat-shrink coating. Our
only electrical modifi cations were adding central
locking and a radio aerial in the dashboard.”Fade to grey
“We took out the massive speakers that were in
the back and recovered that area of the interior
in black since we couldn’t get any grey material.
We then painted the dashboard and various
other components with Innotec grey paint; the
seats were mint condition and the rest of the
interior was really good.
“Those carpets were down to Mick,” laughs
Rod, “he spent about two days using every type
of cleaning product known to man to get them
back to like new condition. We added two layers
of sound deadening, there’s a new heater matrix
and we rebuilt the heater motor, and I fi tted
new gas struts to the bootlid. We’ve had
comments that we should have done the interior
in black leather, but they didn’t have that fi tted
from the factory and I think it would look
cheap. I was after a more subtle look and besidesthe standard seats were virtually perfect. We
were going to paint it white, then at the last
moment I changed my mind. It was heading off
to paint and I suddenly thought how boring it
would be to have another white one... That’s
how it’s ended up Schwartz Black non-metallic.
“The body is stock Series One, the bumpers
were painted purely because they were rusty on
the inside. We did most of the bodywork
preparation including applying the epoxy primer
then Autospray in Darlington had the car for
nine weeks respraying it with four coats of paint,
three of lacquer. The fi nish is like glass. Once we
got it back from paint it took us four days to get
it back together. Not counting the time it was
away, the build took 12 weeks in total. They’re
simple cars. That’s why we like them.”
“I saw the wheels and immediately knew
they’d work on the car. They’re Raceline RL7s,
though at least one person has asked if they’re
off a Peugeot GTi. We had the centre discs
made in billet with the engraved RS logo. We
powdercoated the wheels and certain other parts
in copper such as the head, springs, Spax shocks