The Escort Strikes Back

Hmm...it seems the blog has gathered some dust, which is natural, as the car has largely been doing the same. Since we've been away, Team Resignation co-founder Alan has moved to the Sunshine State to take a writing and editing gig at some magazine or something. Which means that the team has been left in the (in)capable hands of co-founder Eric with massive help from (actually capable) team members Kiko and Johnny.

With the gorgeous weather last weekend, Eric headed to Team Resignation team headquarters to pick up where the team left off in April. The wiring harness was largely in the car but just needed to be plugged into the proper places. As it had been sitting two months, Eric and Kiko had completely forgotten what most of the notes on the connectors meant. After much trial and error and a few accidentally hacked wires, the important plugs had found their equally important homes and the car seemed ready to start:



Almost.


After a bit of troubleshooting, Eric and Kiko figured out that the engine wasn't getting any fuel. A bit of backtracking led them to figure out that some integral parts weren't grounded, including the Fuel Pump Driver Module (the little bastard pictured below), which one might figure helps drive the fuel pump.



Alas, the problem was solved¹:



Johnny showed up a bit later, and he and Eric schemed some secret plans for the car. Expect more on this soon.



¹ It's important to note that the differences between a 99 ZX2 and a 91 LX are significant enough that the car doesn't have a working radiator fan or a low brake level indicator at the moment. But those should be easy enough to splice. Also the headlights, taillights, and turn signals will probably be one huge kludge. Meh.

Suspenders!

This little bastard is all that was keeping us from completing our spring swap. It's what was left of a bolt that had seized inside the rear upright. It's the one that holds the strut on. We broke no less than 4 drill bits in it over many hours of work. 

On our last wrench day a couple of weekends ago, the team's most experienced (read: oldest) member cursed and hammered and drilled at it for a few more hours and finally got it out. Then we drank beer.

 Now we have complete suspension! The brakes? We still haven't found the leak. add another item to the "projects for another day" list.

One of our other projects that weekend was to swap the Escort LX's clutch and brake pedal assembly for the one from the ZX2. This was so we could properly mount the steering wheel at a decent angle. Before this, it was mounted at an angle worthy of a school bus. There were some compatibility issues between the different Escort generations, but we made it work.

We also finished pulling the wiring harness from my old car (the donor of the Lemon's current engine).

So Eric and Dave got to work putting it in.

 Here you can also see the half-painted roll cage. We still haven't finished that job.

 There they go!

 I helped too.

My dad and I worked on the engine bay and fender side while Dave and Eric took care of the interior. That's not all done either, so the car is still not in running condition. But hey, when it's done, we'll have fully functional turn signals, brake lights, headlights, and most importantly, instruments! We can't wait!

We HAD pretty excellent brakes

It might be hard for the uninitiated to tell, but that engine is pretty far forward. Look how close that exhaust manifold is to the radiator.

Notice that the manifold is actually melting the fan shroud. It turns out that our front engine mount completely collapsed under the heroic forces our brakes put on it. I can't fault Ford for this. Rubber that's 10-20 years old really shouldn't be asked to handle race duty. We'll have to come up with a solution for the next race.

Also, we somehow lost ALL our brake fluid while the car was parked this winter. That's bad. We'll have to track that down, or the only heroic part about our brakes will be how we sail it (heroically) into an embankment and burst (heroically) into flames.

In other news, we're fighting with this stubborn bolt in one of the rear struts. We got a good better set of springs to put in, but this bottom bolt here was 100% seized in place. We tried all kinds of things, eventually breaking off a drill bit inside it. The team's self-proclaimed Old Fart got out a grinder and ground off what was still sticking out so we could at least finish the spring swap, but this piece still remains. After last weekend's work we put the strut back on with just one spindle bolt (the upper one you see here), and had so much negative camber as we rolled the car to its parking spot that the tire was rubbing on the strut body.

These are just two of many, many things we have still to tackle before the next race: American Irony at Gingerman this July!

More engine surprise!

We took the cylinder head off today to have a look at the engine. The cylinder bores are near pristine (for an engine with this many miles). The head gasket, of course, was damaged, and there was burn-through on the aluminum head. We'll either have to mill the head or figure out some appropriate Lemony repair involving JB Weld, but the bottom end is certainly still usable. Picture of the head damage below. Look between cylinders 1 and 2.

Wait, he says he's not dead!

The engine that died such an awful, horrible death in October of last year may not be entirely dead after all! It's been sitting in the trunk of my former daily driver since the race, and it had definitely seized on race day. But it seems to have come free! The bearings aren't in great shape, but they might serve, according to the team's resident old fart. We hope to install this back in the former DD and see if it fires up sometime next weekend. With some fresh oil in it, of course. 

^^^ Hey, Look Up There!!!

That's a fancy new header for the blog, eh¹? That photo was taken by the esteemed Murilee Martin, Chief Justice of the LeMons Supreme Court.









¹ Please disregard once this blog post is old and moldy.

Team Resignation nabs (kind of) coveted Ununhexium Medal

Judge Phil released his award winners from the 2010 24 Hours of LeMons season. We are in some esteemed company, which includes the POS Racing/F'ed Up Express E30, the Corsa Nostra Alfa GTV6, the Double Jeopardy Fiero, the one-lap wonder Hoonatic Racing guy, the epic Team Schnitzel Merkur XR4Ti, a guy who exposed himself to Judge Phil's camera on the back of a car, and a number of other amazing teams.

Read about it here!

If you're wondering what an Ununhexium Medal¹ is, it's like winning a bronze medal in Olympic handball. Judge Phil also nominated Unununium ("Gold") and Ununquadium ("Silver") medals. You can read about those teams here and here, respectively.

Eric and Alan are already making arrangements for an improved, faster, and explodier Escort for 2011.


¹ We enjoyed having our medal, but the 60 millisecond half-life of Ununhexium kind of precluded placing it on the mantle for more than about 300 milliseconds. Maybe we'll aim for an Unununium award next year, so we can have it for a full minute or two.