Mk2 Fiesta XR2 rebuild/restoration

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Here are the pics from today:



Most obvious things are the windscreen and wipers now back on. I've done a few more of the small finising off bits and pieces in the engine bay too.



Sunroof is back in place, along with the fixings for it and seal that you can't see in that pic.



Rear screen and circuitry in place, rear wiper, lights and number plate light wiring in position too.

The interior still looks like a bomb has hit it, but to be honest I'm not too worried about it. It takes no time at all to get the dash out of one of these so I'll pop that back in next time I'm there. It's going to need a bloody good hoover and wet wipe down though, it's absolutely caked in dust from the painting pocess, so that'll be done before dash/underlay and carpet goes back in.

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Trevor450 said:

Stunning. MkI and II Fiestas are my favourite old Fords, especially the quick versions.

Thanks, though I wouldn't say stunning! Like I said up there ↑ 'Not bad for a first rebuild' :-) I've got a soft spot for XR2's and RS Turbos. I really need to dig the Escort out of the garage and get going on that project again too!

LanceRS said:

High praise indeed. Loving this thread, I really want another one of these. Just out of interest , are you going to use the earlier carb or the later one that it came with?

Thank you. Get another one before the stupid old Ford pricing thing happens in ernest. It's already started it seems.
This is a late car (reg '89) so it's got the later round top carb and heart shaped combustion chambers as standard. The earlier square carb hemi combustion chambered ones had a few more bhp but I'm planning on upping the power slightly anyway at some point.

poing said:

Are you planning to leave the body kit pieces in the black rubber stuff or are you planning to paint it?

They're going to be standard dark grey plastic. They're inside the car at the mo and covered in filth from the painting process. I'm a bit worried they won't look very good next to shiny paintwork but will hopefully clean up ok. If they look naff then I'll ask a local friendly paintshop what they would recommend. I know you can get plastic paints these days. A pet hate of mine is when people paint the kit a straight black. It looks rubbish when you realise the kit and bumpers are actually a very dark grey. I'll try the peanut butter trick on the plastics and put them on the car. If I decide they need painting I'll do that at a later date.

geeks said:

Loving the restore well done. I do have one question, why did you not clean and paint eh engine while it was out? I know its the bit under the bonnet no one really ever gets to see but you know, because restore?

Cheers! The engine was put in a corner of the garage and completely forgotten about. It had a semi thorough clean when I re-installed it after removing the Zetec conversion prior to this major rebuild project. It needs some love, unfortunately I don't have the time to sort it out while the car is in the current garage. My friend needs the garage back so I did the bare minimum with the engine - i.e just put it back in! If you think that's bad you want to see the air box... I'm planning on doing something about the cosmetics of the engine in due course but right now it just needs to be in one piece.

More updates to follow, probably at the weekend all things being even

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Kitchski said:

I've got a workshop, but it's probably more dusty than your mate's garage And I'd have to wrap everything in dust sheets!

I can give you one tip though - don't use Hammerite on anything you don't want to rust in the future. It's not what it was 25yrs ago! POR15 black works really well for OE black finishes, and is way more protective. Bit of a fuss to put on, but worth it IMO.

Keep up the good work

Yep, I gathered by the amount of AX's and BX's you seem to have acquired! I'd LOVE a workshop of my own - which reminds me that I really need a place to store the XR2 once it's out of my friends garage. It's a 4th car at the moment! Any local friendly PH'ers got a corner of a vast garage from being powerfully built directors free?!

Instead of wrapping everything else in dust sheets, you could just build a plastic greenhouse type thing around the AX. Long as you have enough room to swing a spray gun you've got a reasonable booth then.

Cheers for the tip on POR15 - do they do it in white? I've got some bits of underside to finish off properly.

budgie smuggler said:

Really nice work, enjoyed reading that. Well done

Thanks! Can't wait to add the finishing touches

Squadrone Rosso said:

Love it. I bought a brand new one on my 18th Birthday in May 1988. E430VWN.

Crystal Blue metallic with all the options.

Got written off by a taxi driver in the December. I was gutted. No fault and all losses recovered but still.

Can't wait to see the finished article. Please keep it as original as possible

Shame about your car. Did you go straight out and get another?

It's going to be pretty original apart from a couple of subtle things. The original ride height just looks a bit wrong with standard springs to my eye so my re-coated Spax ones are on there for now. I've also got a Maxnex exhaust which was reportedly the one to have on this car back in the day. I've got a brand new standard (not genuine Ford unfortunately) exhaust too just in case.

JonJon2015 said:

What a great thread. Sterling work, OP. Looking forward to seeing the finished result.

Thanks! You won't have too long to wait.

2 sMoKiN bArReLs said:

Mine when it was shiny & new (can it really be 30 years ago?! )




Can't wait to see OP car finished!

Wow! If only mine could look that good. I really need to get some number plates with the 'proper' font on them. That car looks lovely. There's a picture somewhere of me when I was about 2 years old standing in front of my dad's new E reg XR2. I'll have to dig it out and post it up...

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Another update! I've been busy the last couple of days doing a few more things on the car.

Firstly, I finally tracked down some refurbished brake calipers. The best thing is that they're genuine Ford with the correct part numbers on them too. The geek in me approves! Unfortunately the new discs I bought didn't fit, so I had to wire brush the old ones and give them a bit of a clean up. There's not really anything wrong with them so they'll do for now. I forgot to buy new pads anyway, but the old ones are nearly new by the look of them so they got cleaned up and placed in the new calipers. The carriers got cleaned too, so they're only cosmetically challenged... My mate who I sold the car to and bought it back from painted the carriers/calipers red!I'll spray them silver to match the calipers when I have a chance:



More bits on the front end:




And the rear end:



Interior starting to look a bit nicer now with the bulkhead sound deadening and dash back on:



I also wanted to cover up anything on the floorpan that had been welded, primed and seam sealed before I put the carpet back in just to give it some protection and also to make it look a bit neater. I bought some white Hammerite as it's only inside the car and it does the trick. I may give the boot floor a proper respray in future though.







I also put the battery on now the dash is back together. Ignition came on and the car cranked over but really slowly as the battery needs to be charged. Just a test run to see if I'd forgotten to connect anything up, but all seems good!

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Yep, shame the bulge is covered up. I like it too!

I put the interior back in today:





The seats need a wet vac really but they'll do for now. Need to sort out some sound deadening in the front doors and a waterproof membrane, then I'll put the doorcards back on.

And the best news yet - charged battery went on, fuel lines connected up and I turned the key. IT'S ALIVE!!!!

Couple of minor niggles like the fact the fan switch doesn't work (fan checked with manual connector near battery and it's ok) so I'll get a new one. Also it's running a bit lumpy but that's to be expected when the engine's been sat for so long and the carb's not been touched. I didn't even check the ignition timing so in fairness I'm chuffed it runs as well as it does!

Just the rear trailing arms to put on when the bushes FINALLY turn up, bleed the brakes, put bonnet and wheels on, then it's MOT time!

Yes, I am aware I haven't put the body kit on yet, I'll get around to doing that asap, but it's not needed to get the car on the road, and it really needs to be out of my friends garage now!

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Red Spider said:

This brings back loads of memories, my first brand new car was a MK2 XR2 bought in 1986, in white followed by a grey XR2 in 1988. Before those I had a SuperSport.

Ooh, any pics of them?


Small update:

I fitted my rear trailing arms today. Turns out I've been a total knob and had left the old bush casings in the rear arms when they went off for powder coating. The original Flo-Flex bushes I bought (along with the kit for the rest of the car) were perfectly compatible all along! I had another look at the trailing arms earlier and realised what I'd done, went to my local friendly garage and got the casings pressed out of the arms for free, and like magic, my new bushes fitted like a glove. Basically, I've now got Powerflex rear trailing arm bushes in their standard purple colour and Flo-Flex everything else in bright orange! Not the end of the world as Powerflex are reportedly better all round bushes. I'll see how things go and over time I may change everything to Powerflex if the Flo-Flex ones prove to not be up to the job.

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Kitchski said:

My experience with poly bushings (I do a lot!) is that Powerflex is the real deal, and everything else is a bit......st.

I've heard the same. But I've bought Flo-flex before for another XR2 I used to own and they seemed fine for the short time I used the car before I ended up selling it.

LanceRS said:

I've got Powerflex on my Cosworth, they've been on there for at least 18 years now! They are still fine despite all the oil under there.

That's good to know. As above, I know Powerflex have the best reputation out there.

Richyvrlimited said:

This is well worth a watch RE bushes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z6OEohnPKw

Personally I'd bin the flowflex bushes whilst you still have everything easily accessible.

Thanks for a link, I'll have a look at that when I'm not at work! I'm happy to give the Flo-flex a go for now, as per above. If they turn out to be rubbish then everything's pretty easy to get to on this car so it's not an arduous task to swap them out.

Looking forward to MOT time, will provide updates when I get the time to sort out the last few bits and get it MOT'd!

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Bit more work done last night, car is now back on its wheels! I bled the brakes, swapped out the dodgy fan switch and oil pressure switch and set the static timing:





I went back in the evening yesterday and put the spoiler on too:



Only jobs left before MOT are to put the bonnet on and do the hub nuts up tight.

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Thanks for the comments all!

I've since done up the hub nuts and put the bonnet back on. Not taken it for MOT as there's currently little point - I'm on holiday next week so it'll be sorted after that. I've done a couple of test drives up and down my friends drive just to make sure everything is ok. It drives fine as I expected, at least in 1st, 2nd and reverse as the drive isn't very long, but I think I need a new brake cylinder on the driver's side as I'm getting a clonk. I should have just renewed them both along with the shoes/drums when putting the car back together but I thought they were all working. Not a difficult job but it means taking the rear bearings apart again and then making sure they're adjusted properly afterwards. It's annoying to have to re-do things when I could have just bought new parts like I should have!

Anyway, have some pictures of the car actually out of the garage and ready for MOT. I'll replace the shockingly bad tyres as soon as it's MOT'd and ready to go on some adventures!

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Thanks, Jon!

Well, time for another update:

We (the car and I) went for our first serious test drive today. It was supposed to be direct to the MOT place but I ended up making friends with a layby for quite a while. Fuel didn't seem to be getting through and the car kept cutting out. I whipped the carb off and took it apart to discover it was REALLY gunky inside. Not surprising really, but I thought I'd get away with running it to the MOT place without a rebuild as it started and ran ok in the garage and up and down my friends drive. I stripped the carb down and cleaned it up as best I could, then put it back together again. Hey presto, a working XR2 again! I drove gingerly back to my friends place and got him to follow me in his car armed with a boot full of tools and a tow rope just in case! We made it to the MOT place no problems but the carb does need properly stripping, cleaning and rebuilding. The car ran a it warm all the way there and then the sump gasket sprang a leak as I arrived and tipped oil straight on to the downpipe, meaning I arrived in a cloud of smoke... I think the running a bit warm problem is all down to the carb. Once that's set up properly it should run a lot better. MOT man has kindly let me keep the car in his garage for a few days and he's going to sort the sump gasket for me as I'm short on time this week. Once that's sorted he'll MOT it and give it the once over to check for anything I've missed. All in all, not a bad first drive and only a couple of easy issues to sort out!

A few pictures of when it was on the ramp so we could check where the oil leak had sprung from:







Unfortunately no pics of me at the side of the road rebuilding the carb as I was in a hurry!

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Biker's Nemesis said:

That's a cracking job, give yourself a pat on the back, you have every right to feel proud.

Thanks, I was pretty pleased to get it out of my friend's garage and on the road!!

threespires said:

Congrats OP. It's looks perfect.
How refreshing to see a project car on these pages that actually gets finished.

Cheers! I wouldn't say perfect, but it's not bad

Riskins said:

Love this and the work which has gone into it, a credit to you.

Also make me quite nostalgic as my first 'fast' car was an E reg Diamond White XR2 back in '95, was an absolute rust bucket bought for £1700, but I loved it nonetheless.

When are you adding the rest of the body kit to finish off the exterior?

Cool! I remember my first one about 11 years ago being my first 'fast' car too. It was also diamond white. I remember smiling about the fact I could accelerate up a dual carriageway hill near me rather than struggle all the way up.

I need to investigate some rivets with plastic washers but basically I want to get the kit back on as soon as possible. On the outside it's just the kit and the spot lights to do - spotlight brackets need powder coating as I forgot to put them in with the pile of other bits I got powder coated ages ago.

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Wow, excellent pics there! Loving the nostalgia :-)

Thanks for comments, everyone.

As I'm here I'd better tell you all the latest. MOT passed - 0 advisories but my MOT man did put some split pins in the track rod ends for me as I'm using old castle nuts rather than nylock nuts and it would have failed otherwise.

The car was hanging around for a while at the garage waiting for a slot to sort out the sump gasket first before the MOT. I was in no rush anyways as I've only just got back from a week away in Scotland. While it was there the ignition module that sits on top of the distributor decided to fail. No spark at all, and tested with a spare coil to rule that out too. A new ignition module was fitted, timing set up properly as it seems I'd either not done it very well with my timing light or the ignition module was already playing up and throwing the timing out. If you remember, I rebuilt the carb quickly too, on the side of the road on the way to try and get the MOT done. Well, as the car was sitting around at the garage, I stole the carb, bought a rebuild kit and built it back up with new gaskets and more cleaning inside. I discovered the emulsion tubes were completely missing!! They're supposed to sit between the main jets and air correction jets, but there was just a hollow carb casting with no brass emulsion tubes to be seen. Luckily I've got a spare carb in the garage so I had a look inside that one, found some emulsion tubes and swapped them in to my main carb. Unsurprisingly, the car runs better than ever now that MOT dude has put the car on the gas analyser and set the mixture perfectly. We're running 12 degrees of advance too but if it's a bit pinky I'll retard it slightly.

I picked up the car earlier on with the leaky sump gasket fixed, ignition module replaced, timing and mixture set up and an MOT pass sheet. All went swimmingly on the 5 minute drive home but as soon as I pulled on to the drive the sump gasket sprang a leak again... Straight back to the garage in that case!! We're a bit confused because the gasket was fully checked on the ramp and held oil just fine all the time the car had been running while the timing and mixture was set up. He's going to investigate and let me know. I'm suspecting something more sinister like head gasket failure putting pressure in to the sump but at least it'll only take me half hour to take the head off if I need to. I'll update with the result!

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Wow, this thread hasn't been updated in a while... Time flies!

Re: the above problem with my leaky sump gasket. I bought a brand new sump and had that fitted instead. Killed two birds with one stone as the new one doesn't leak and the old one needed painting anyway!

On to some updates: I entered myself for the 'Oh So Retro' show last September and decided that the car should look a bit more finished before I show it. That meant putting the body kit back on and tidying up a few bits and pieces.








The brown stuff is Dynax something-or-other that prevents rust. I sprayed it all over the place as Ford didn't really bother with rust protection. I've currently got a very rust-free Fiesta and I want it to stay that way! It's going to be used whenever I fancy and I won't worry if it gets wet.

Don't worry about the missing side skirt. It went on the next morning.

I also gave the air box a very quick repaint as it looked a bit terrible.

Before:



After:



Quite a bit better but I may re-do it at some point as it was a very quick job.

Then, I hit problems. The car decided it didn't want to run properly the day before the show. It wouldn't idle and was a pig to drive as it would cut out every time you dipped the clutch. It had to be a carb problem but I couldn't find it in time and I didn't make it to the show. Shame when it looked so good next to a friends Porsche:



I went to the show in the Porsche instead but really I wanted to be driving my XR... This lead to many hours of taking the carb apart, putting it back together and finding that nothing had changed. I tested everything for air leaks, changed the plugs, leads and distributor just in case but none of that worked. It seemed a bit like an air leak and I even changed the inlet manifold for a spare too but of course there was no change. I had the carb back to bare components and completely rebuilt it:



No change still! This saga carried on all winter and I was no closer to working out the problem. The weather started to get better in March and I decided I wanted to start using the car so something had to be done. I booked the car in at a local carb tuning specialist who luckily are just down the road from me:



The next morning I was told my car was running perfectly and I'd missed a blockage in the idle circuit. I was kicking myself that I'd missed it but at least it was something simple. There's not much to go wrong on these cars anyway! The idle jet was also a bit blocked and that was cleaned and drilled out by a fraction to give a nicer idle. It was all set up again so it should be good on fuel and will pass the emissions part of the MOT again.

Since then, I've used it on the odd day when I've been off work and I even took it to work one day last week. It didn't miss a beat but did highlight that the old brake discs I thought might be ok to use really aren't. New ones on order. Also, my water temp is a bit higher on the gauge than I'd like. The water temp sensor is new and so is the fan sensor, but the water pump didn't get changed before I put the new cam belt on and put the engine back in the car as I was running a tight schedule to rebuild the car when it was in my friend's garage. I've already got a new pump so I'll put that on soon and see if things change. There was no danger of overheating as the temperature was rock steady on the motorway, just higher than I'd like. Other than those things, I've got a new 'XR2' sticker to go on the boot (one currently on there isn't 100%) and I think I put it on slightly wonky anyway. I've also got the red pin stripe to go on, a new aerial for the wing, and I've got to get around to putting the door cards back on...

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I'm aiming to keep hold of it once it's fully finished, I've already sold this one once and bought it back again... It's my 5th XR2 and I always seem to regret selling them and have to get another one. I've built it up to my perfect spec too - slightly lowered, nice exhaust, polybushed suspension and it'll have a reasonable quality set of speakers with USB head unit so I don't get bored on longer trips. The intention is to use it as a second car as and when the mood takes me, and store it away and forget about it when I'm doing other things.

By 'other things' I mean restoring the Escort RS Turbo that's been in my main garage for the last 5 years untouched... Oh and doing something with the M3 that is currently taking up valuable drive space. Too many projects and not enough time!!

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Shiny happy brake disc update!

As you may have seen in the last update, I've been actually driving the car a little bit and even had a 20 mile spin along the motorway to work in it. All going quite nicely apart from the terrible braking situation. Pressing relatively hard on the pedal from motorway speeds in an effort to stop somewhere before the back of the queue at the traffic lights on the slip road was a slightly trouser-soiling experience. The car needed to feel a lot more positive for this pedal pressure and much less vibration was required too. You'll remember from previous updates I had to put the car back together pretty quickly as my friend needed his garage space. I'd already got new calipers and brake flexi lines. Obviously, there was fresh fluid in the system, but I hadn't quite got around to buying new discs so the old ones went on - after all they weren't lipped, just needed a wire brush so I thought I'd get away with it. I was wrong!

Just to let you know. Since the car went on the road last summer, I had been trying to buy new brake discs as I thought I'd put some on at some point anyway. It seems Mk2 XR2 brake discs are some wierd height/offset like seventeen point ten milimeters or something. Reputable Ebay shops proclaiming their stocks of XR2 brake discs to me didn't have any such thing. Eurocarparts reckoned they had some too, but they didn't. My local friendly garage reckoned they could find some, and duly supplied a pair of discs which sat in the car all winter as I'd got fed up taking the wheel and caliper off to find the latest set of discs I'd bought don't fit. Guess what? These didn't either. They're now taking up space in my garage...

What to do? Well, Burton Power reckoned they could supply a set as they were listed on their web site, again marked as definitely being Mk2 XR2 brake discs. I thought I'd give them a shot as they usually know what they're on about with old Fords.

Old discs looking a little shabby but in 'more or less working' condition. I compared old and new discs while still on the car.



Hmm... These seem quite similar! I'd better take the old disc off to compare properly.



I'm glad I was sitting down. The new discs were actually the same as the old discs. Wooyay etc. Shiny copper grease on a freshly cleaned disc:



The finished article:



Yep, you saw the red carriers didn't you. I'll get around to making those silver soon. They're annoying me too. You can't really see them with the wheel back on though.

The pads need some time to bed in to the new discs, but they've only done probably 150 miles on the old discs so I'm not getting new ones. That should help the braking situation at the front. As for the rear, the drums and shoes are the old ones I had before the rebuild so really I'll need to change those too and it should be all the better. I'm thinking a brand new master cylinder wouldn't be a bad idea either but I can't find the correct one anywhere. I think there are rebuild kits available so that's plan B.

I hope you enjoyed my brake discs as much as did

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Kitchski said:

JackP1 said:

Car looks amazing

One question, and by no means to offend. Do you prefer the body kit plastic to look a bit more "used" as it looks greyed out a bit.
Cant help but think it would looks a whole better if they were brought back to life a bit.

Give him a chance, he's only just put it back on

Haha! Jack - no offence taken. I was looking at it yesterday while changing the discs and it does look a bit rubbish. There some primer over-spray that must have got through an edge of the paper that covered the windows/door holes too as the kit was stored inside the car during spraying. I'll give it a really good clean up and post pictures for your approval

Justin S said:

Looks fantastic . Really nice to see one again as pretty rare these days. As regards to temperatures , have you changed the thermostat before you start stripping cambelts etc . Its the usual issue with ford CVH engines.

Thanks! Thermostat and temperature sensor in the head have been changed for new. Pump is unknown as I've never changed it and neither did a friend when he owned the car as the CVH was in the garage and not in the car! Taking the cam belt off is literally a 5 min job. The worst part of changing the pump is spilling the coolant. I'll get that job sorted soon and again post up the pictures.

joe_90 said:

Jesus, this is giving me flashbacks...

Back in the day I had a white one too (E Reg) , and it would just periodically start playing up.. So many times I would just take the carb to bits at the side of the road, clean (blow) out the jets and other bits, and then it would work again for a few months.. Never got to the bottom of that issue.

Sounds like good old gunk in the carb blocking up the circuits and/or the jets. Mines been really good now it's been checked over by a pro. I'd done 90% of the work anyway but these carbs are supposed to be the 'less good' version compared to the earlier XR2s (pre '87).

helix402 said:

Super rebuild, you can get clear Dynax too if you don't like brown stains.

WOOT. Wish I knew that before I bought brown... Would have made my underside look even prettier. Not to worry though. I've built it to use and not be a show pony so I'll only be getting underneath and cleaning when it needs some proper maintenance.

Squadrone Rosso said:

Still a great thread

If I could find a mint 1988 XR2 in Crystal Blue like mind I'm pictured with below I'd buy it.

Thanks! I love blue XR2s.. My father bought a brand new XR2 in '87 in Tasman Blue as that's my favourite XR2 colour for sure. White is a close second. I nearly painted my car Tasman Blue but decided to keep it original. Crystal Blue is a lighter version of Tasman and I believe it only came on the pre '87 cars?

Cheers for the comments, everyone!

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I didn't know that. They seem pretty rare anyway. I've bought a master cylinder seal kit for a tenner so ill try that first and see if things improve. Ive not really tested it with the new discs on yet so hopefully that'll have made a good improvement already

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hoegaardenruls said:

Just seen this for the first time, and have read the whole thread in one hit - awesome work OP!!

Thanks!

I've got the 'pleasure' of being at work today... I decided to take the XR to make things a bit more fun. On the plus side the front brakes feel lovely now, but I've noticed I have a split inner CV boot. Grease sprayed up the bulkhead/ back of engine! I'll take pics once the ordered CV boots have arrived

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Have a few pictures from just now, as it's a sunny day. Work car park backdrop will have to do for today!

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Thanks all!

grahamm said:

Should this be moved to the crap parking thread?

I knew someone would say that! Look beside the car, There's a whacking great bike shed that's taking up the rest of that end of the car park. The lines didn't get repainted, but that space is effectively 1.5 spaces wide, hence why I parked there