Things that are being fixed (with pictures!!!)

Dave and I worked on the car for a bit this weekend. We did some minor work, such as plugging firewalls and filling the radiator. We also changed the broken front strut mount.


Here's what an intact strut mount would look like.




Here's what ours looked like:




So we trucked on over to Auto Zone to rent a spring compressor. An hour or so later, we'd replaced the strut mount on the strut and thrown it back on the car.








Since I haven't posted actual images in forever, here's a brief overview of what else we've done this year (in part):

Dave and I plugged the firewalls with 3/8" bolts and 1-1/2"-2" washers.




However, two of the holes in the firewall were behind our pedal assembly and unreachable from inside the car. So I had to improvise.




I also installed the ZX2 radiator and the motor mount from last year's Autobahn donor car:




The ZX2 radiator had an extra out for heater hose, so I had to plug that.




Johnny and I also put the seat back in and mounted the harness.




Finally, one of the problems we've run into when swapping harnesses is the difference between the light assemblies and the related connectors. The solution? Sheet metal screws and ZX2 taillights. I'm pretty sure these are JDM, right¹?




Finally finally, I finished painting the rollcage. It looks pretty great from at least 10 feet away.




And here's a picture of the car I like looking at:





¹ Is joke, yes?

Blah blah blah fixed stuff blah blah blah

Since I didn't take any pictures while working, here's a summary of the last two weekends working on the car:

- Finished painting the roll cage with a coat of white paint. Looks great from 30+ feet.

- Replaced the destroyed front motor mount with one from last year's donor car (a.k.a. Alan's old daily driver)

- Swapped LX radiator/fan out with ZX2 radiator and fan to accommodate ZX2 wiring harness easily. The quicker fix would have been to just swap fans, but the bolts that hold the ZX2 fan on are stripped or something.

- Tied up the wiring some more inside the cabin. This is clearly a never-ending process.

- Put rotors and mounted pads on the car. Super stopping power again!

- Mounted seat and harness

- Mounted wink mirror higher than last year, improving visibility by probably 10% or so.

- Swapped in new ECU to make a couple more horses at the crank.

- Wired up main brake lights and rear turn signals.


Naturally, in doing these things, we found more things to do/more broken things:

- The ZX2 radiator has an outlet for the heater core that the LX radiator did not have. This hose outlet will have to be stopped up and clamped. We'll have to flush the system of antifreeze and check the water pump before we can fill it with H20 for testing and racing.

- The wiring could be a little tidier, and we still need to find some way to mount the instrument cluster. A 5-inch tachometer and shift light may be in the works.

- We will want to flush the brake system and use DOT 3 & 4 fluid. We'll need to bleed the brakes anyway, so this shouldn't be much more additional work.

- We'll still have to wire up the high-mount brake light. And the brake lights currently stay on when the battery is hooked up. And there's the gauges, which don't work. But hey, who needs them anyway? Oh, right. We're pretty confident these electrical quirks are the product of poorly or completely ungrounded wires.

- What we initially thought might have been a bad front left wheel bearing appears to actually be a blown left front strut mount. We bought a replacement for $32, which is considerably cheaper than a new bearing. Still have to put it on, though, which should be exciting.


There are a handful of other tasks to take care of, but the engine runs and the car could probably move on its own, though we won't try too hard to do that until the radiator is hooked up and fully functional. As a point of reference, the car didn't drive on its own until mid-September last year. Yay us!

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.