Mk2 Fiesta XR2 rebuild/restoration
Discussion
Hi all, new member - long time lurker. Recently signed up as I thought you lot may be interested in my Mk2 Fiesta XR2 project.
I thought I'd better get a thread going on my XR2 project, seeing as I've had the car nearly 2 years already.
This is the 2nd time I've owned it! I bought it originally in 2011 and put a 1.8 Zetec engine under the bonnet, got bored and sold to a friend along with all the original bits to go with it. He used it at weekends and for shows for a couple of years and when he decided to sell I just had to have it back. I collected the car (and all the original bits too that had just sat in his garage) and that brings us to May 2014:
I decided to take it back to standard as I wanted a nice original car again:
Cleaning the CVH up. ALL the gaskets leaked oil which is the main reason I swapped for the Zetec in the first place. All gaskets and seals got replaced after a thorough degreasing and I rebuilt the head too:
That's all that happened until March 2015. The car just sat on the drive pretty much ready to run and drive but I didn't want to use it just yet.
I knew the battery tray was a bit knackered and there were a few other rusty bits on the car that weren't looking so good when you started to poke around. I bit the bullet and asked a local welder/fabricator to have a look. Really I could have saved a load of money by doing it all myself but I only had the drive to work on and it just wasn't practical. Things soon escalated from 'a bit of a tidy up' to full on 'lets's get this looking like new again'...
Front panel off:
Battery tray off:
Drivers side rear arch old dodgy repair:
Front passenger wing previous damage/rot and repair found:
I could only find a Mk4 Escort battery tray as a replacement... Welder/fabrator guy says 'leave it with me and I'll see what I can do...:
Couple of inner wing repairs (there were a couple more but I'll be here forever trying to find every single pic of the build...):
Drivers inner arch repair:
Battery tray fabricated to the same size/shape from a mix of the original tray and the replacement I bought. Pretty good, don't you think?!
Front panel now on and properly aligned:
Work from around the rest of the car:
Drivers rear arch wasn't too bad and only the rear end of the sill needed replacing. Passenger side sill/arch was completely ruined as you will soon see! Nice hole in passenger side of boot floor too, a bad previous repair was covering that up! Original front wings were saved and repaired where necessary as the welder said he wouldn't be happy fitting aftermarket wings as it wouldn't have looked as good.
As you can see, it was pretty rotten in some places. Looked good in the very first pic, didn't it... !
That brings us to June 2015. The car is now more or less rot free and back in one piece. I'd stripped the interior before it went in for welding as I knew it was going to make the job easier. Now the bulk of the welding was done it needed a paint job. I still didn't have anywhere to do the work needed on the project so it went in to storage in a friend's garage for the time being.
Here's the car all back in one piece but looking a bit sorry for itself. Taken at the welder's place just before we towed it to the garage for storage:
Obviously the repairs weren't fully finished - the primer was just put on to protect the work so far as he knew the car would be going in to storage for a while before anything further happened.
It sat untouched in a single garage at a friend's house until Nov 2015.
When I've got some more time I'll update the story! That's all for now, folks :drive:
I thought I'd better get a thread going on my XR2 project, seeing as I've had the car nearly 2 years already.
This is the 2nd time I've owned it! I bought it originally in 2011 and put a 1.8 Zetec engine under the bonnet, got bored and sold to a friend along with all the original bits to go with it. He used it at weekends and for shows for a couple of years and when he decided to sell I just had to have it back. I collected the car (and all the original bits too that had just sat in his garage) and that brings us to May 2014:
I decided to take it back to standard as I wanted a nice original car again:
Cleaning the CVH up. ALL the gaskets leaked oil which is the main reason I swapped for the Zetec in the first place. All gaskets and seals got replaced after a thorough degreasing and I rebuilt the head too:
That's all that happened until March 2015. The car just sat on the drive pretty much ready to run and drive but I didn't want to use it just yet.
I knew the battery tray was a bit knackered and there were a few other rusty bits on the car that weren't looking so good when you started to poke around. I bit the bullet and asked a local welder/fabricator to have a look. Really I could have saved a load of money by doing it all myself but I only had the drive to work on and it just wasn't practical. Things soon escalated from 'a bit of a tidy up' to full on 'lets's get this looking like new again'...
Front panel off:
Battery tray off:
Drivers side rear arch old dodgy repair:
Front passenger wing previous damage/rot and repair found:
I could only find a Mk4 Escort battery tray as a replacement... Welder/fabrator guy says 'leave it with me and I'll see what I can do...:
Couple of inner wing repairs (there were a couple more but I'll be here forever trying to find every single pic of the build...):
Drivers inner arch repair:
Battery tray fabricated to the same size/shape from a mix of the original tray and the replacement I bought. Pretty good, don't you think?!
Front panel now on and properly aligned:
Work from around the rest of the car:
Drivers rear arch wasn't too bad and only the rear end of the sill needed replacing. Passenger side sill/arch was completely ruined as you will soon see! Nice hole in passenger side of boot floor too, a bad previous repair was covering that up! Original front wings were saved and repaired where necessary as the welder said he wouldn't be happy fitting aftermarket wings as it wouldn't have looked as good.
As you can see, it was pretty rotten in some places. Looked good in the very first pic, didn't it... !
That brings us to June 2015. The car is now more or less rot free and back in one piece. I'd stripped the interior before it went in for welding as I knew it was going to make the job easier. Now the bulk of the welding was done it needed a paint job. I still didn't have anywhere to do the work needed on the project so it went in to storage in a friend's garage for the time being.
Here's the car all back in one piece but looking a bit sorry for itself. Taken at the welder's place just before we towed it to the garage for storage:
Obviously the repairs weren't fully finished - the primer was just put on to protect the work so far as he knew the car would be going in to storage for a while before anything further happened.
It sat untouched in a single garage at a friend's house until Nov 2015.
When I've got some more time I'll update the story! That's all for now, folks :drive:
Edited by Gallons Per Mile on Monday 20th June 21:23
Thanks everyone.
e21Mark said:
Nice work. I'd have been tempted to keep the engine swap but can see why you might go back. Will whole car be OE?
It'll be pretty much OE but with a few subtle bits and pieces. I've got a nice Magnex stainless steel exhaust, poly bushes and I'll probably tweak the engine a little. Thanks for your comments, everyone!
I sorted out some more pics so I'll carry on where I left off last time.
It's now November 2015. I've not even seen the car for about 6 months. Cue a friend's house move. Said friend is luckily as much of a petrol head as me. A double garage you say? A double garage but no projects to work on yet? Well, we could just put the XR2 in there and crack on I suppose... A plan was made to tow the XR to his house and get the project back up to speed before the existing garage got knocked down and an ultra-twice-the-size one gets built. I think I'll have to supply endless amounts of free labour during the garage build for the massive favour he did me!
Here's the car in its temporary home. Pumped up offending tyres and hooked it up to the tow car:
Through the magic of steel tow bars, a total shed of an A4 Avant and my friend hanging on tight in the XR, we made it the few miles to his house with no major problems. Apart from when he thought I was going to miss his turning and decided the convoy needed slowing down by using the handbrake on the XR!
Ahh, space at last!!
Onwards with the stripping down:
Still started no problem at all on stale fuel after sitting for 6 months. Just needs cosmetics but it's sound. Oh and will someone please remind me to top up the gearbox oil before I try to drive it anywhere! There's not a lot in there after chaging the drive shaft seals, which may or may not STILL be leaking:
Starting to look properly stripped now:
Seeing as we've gone this far, it would be rude not to clean the under side. The years of leaky CVH saved the day - the floor pans were caked in oil and came up virtually like new:
The welder/fabracator guy I used did the bulk of the work for me but hadn't got everything so we set about finding and removing rust. there was also an old alarm bracket on the passengers front suspension turret that needed the screws drilling out and holes welding up:
That hole in the chassis rail got welded up with some strong steel bar for strength and then plated on top so you wouldn't know it had been repaired. Can't find the pic of the finished item at the mo.
Well that's all the welding done. Guess we'd better start on making good the repairs then. Time for filler, much sanding and hours of head scratching deciding if swage lines are good enough or if they need more work:
Seam sealer where the front panel joins the wing (looks the same both sides so only one pic):
Painted the under side with some white epoxy mastic. By hand. With a brush. Found bits of paint in my hair for a while after that day! It wasn't intended for the car to look completely ultra show shiny in every aspect, and frankly the under side is going to get dirty and I'm not going to worry about it. I just wanted a good coat of protection on there so I can take it out in the rain and not be too bothered. In an ideal world I'd have welded up a spit and turned the car over to spray the epoxy on but this will do just fine for now.
And finally, a pic of the engine bay all rubbed down after bare metalling anything remotely rusty and splashing on loads of rust killer:
That pretty much brings us up to date. I've done a bit more in the past couple of weeks so I'll download the pics from my phone and update as soon as I've got a bit more time. More to come on that passenger rear arch too as I'm aware the pics above only show it ground back flat in bare metal.
Enjoy!
I sorted out some more pics so I'll carry on where I left off last time.
It's now November 2015. I've not even seen the car for about 6 months. Cue a friend's house move. Said friend is luckily as much of a petrol head as me. A double garage you say? A double garage but no projects to work on yet? Well, we could just put the XR2 in there and crack on I suppose... A plan was made to tow the XR to his house and get the project back up to speed before the existing garage got knocked down and an ultra-twice-the-size one gets built. I think I'll have to supply endless amounts of free labour during the garage build for the massive favour he did me!
Here's the car in its temporary home. Pumped up offending tyres and hooked it up to the tow car:
Through the magic of steel tow bars, a total shed of an A4 Avant and my friend hanging on tight in the XR, we made it the few miles to his house with no major problems. Apart from when he thought I was going to miss his turning and decided the convoy needed slowing down by using the handbrake on the XR!
Ahh, space at last!!
Onwards with the stripping down:
Still started no problem at all on stale fuel after sitting for 6 months. Just needs cosmetics but it's sound. Oh and will someone please remind me to top up the gearbox oil before I try to drive it anywhere! There's not a lot in there after chaging the drive shaft seals, which may or may not STILL be leaking:
Starting to look properly stripped now:
Seeing as we've gone this far, it would be rude not to clean the under side. The years of leaky CVH saved the day - the floor pans were caked in oil and came up virtually like new:
The welder/fabracator guy I used did the bulk of the work for me but hadn't got everything so we set about finding and removing rust. there was also an old alarm bracket on the passengers front suspension turret that needed the screws drilling out and holes welding up:
That hole in the chassis rail got welded up with some strong steel bar for strength and then plated on top so you wouldn't know it had been repaired. Can't find the pic of the finished item at the mo.
Well that's all the welding done. Guess we'd better start on making good the repairs then. Time for filler, much sanding and hours of head scratching deciding if swage lines are good enough or if they need more work:
Seam sealer where the front panel joins the wing (looks the same both sides so only one pic):
Painted the under side with some white epoxy mastic. By hand. With a brush. Found bits of paint in my hair for a while after that day! It wasn't intended for the car to look completely ultra show shiny in every aspect, and frankly the under side is going to get dirty and I'm not going to worry about it. I just wanted a good coat of protection on there so I can take it out in the rain and not be too bothered. In an ideal world I'd have welded up a spit and turned the car over to spray the epoxy on but this will do just fine for now.
And finally, a pic of the engine bay all rubbed down after bare metalling anything remotely rusty and splashing on loads of rust killer:
That pretty much brings us up to date. I've done a bit more in the past couple of weeks so I'll download the pics from my phone and update as soon as I've got a bit more time. More to come on that passenger rear arch too as I'm aware the pics above only show it ground back flat in bare metal.
Enjoy!
Edited by Gallons Per Mile on Monday 20th June 21:24
Thanks! I've always had a soft spot for XR2's and that era of cars generally. I'll have to start another thread on my RS Turbo...
Right, onwards with an update. A bit more has happened in the last couple of weeks and we're now living in real time, so the updates may be slightly slower from here on in.
We started prepping the sun roof as this was one of the last areas to look at. It looked mint until I decided I wanted to remove the tape that 'seals' the two panels that make up the roof skin and the sun roof recess. Glad I did - it looked absolutely fine but as soon as I poked the tape with a stanley blade I saw the brown stuff of doom... Looks like the tape created a nice air gap underneath itself so the join between the panels had air and moisture to go rusty. Great. We picked all the tape off had a proper look at the rusty stuff. It wasn't actually as bad as I thought. A good sand and some rust killer later leaves us with this:
Ok, not the end of the world, but another annoyance as I thought the sun roof had escaped any problems! I'll seam seal it before primer/paint.
All repairs pretty much done now, so time to go over the shell one last time and make sure everything's as flat as possible, then panel wipe it all down:
Looking pretty good in a rat-look sort of way. Almost tempted to leave it like this!
Time for some brushed primer over the filler to remove sanding marks and give a better base for when I spray the primer:
Repairs starting to disappear now the primer is on. Can't wait to get this flatted back and prime the whole shell. It should look immense then!
Final pic before we packed up for the night, guide coat over the primer once it was all dry to help seal it. It was pretty cold and I didn't want moisture getting in to the primer. Plus guide coat will be perfect for spotting imperfections when we come to flat it back before spray primer.
That's all for now. I've already had a go at flatting back the front wings to see how they'll turn out and they're looking pretty good. The drivers wing with the small repair has come out perfect, but the passenger one may need a little more work. I'll decide what to do next time I go play with the car!
Right, onwards with an update. A bit more has happened in the last couple of weeks and we're now living in real time, so the updates may be slightly slower from here on in.
We started prepping the sun roof as this was one of the last areas to look at. It looked mint until I decided I wanted to remove the tape that 'seals' the two panels that make up the roof skin and the sun roof recess. Glad I did - it looked absolutely fine but as soon as I poked the tape with a stanley blade I saw the brown stuff of doom... Looks like the tape created a nice air gap underneath itself so the join between the panels had air and moisture to go rusty. Great. We picked all the tape off had a proper look at the rusty stuff. It wasn't actually as bad as I thought. A good sand and some rust killer later leaves us with this:
Ok, not the end of the world, but another annoyance as I thought the sun roof had escaped any problems! I'll seam seal it before primer/paint.
All repairs pretty much done now, so time to go over the shell one last time and make sure everything's as flat as possible, then panel wipe it all down:
Looking pretty good in a rat-look sort of way. Almost tempted to leave it like this!
Time for some brushed primer over the filler to remove sanding marks and give a better base for when I spray the primer:
Repairs starting to disappear now the primer is on. Can't wait to get this flatted back and prime the whole shell. It should look immense then!
Final pic before we packed up for the night, guide coat over the primer once it was all dry to help seal it. It was pretty cold and I didn't want moisture getting in to the primer. Plus guide coat will be perfect for spotting imperfections when we come to flat it back before spray primer.
That's all for now. I've already had a go at flatting back the front wings to see how they'll turn out and they're looking pretty good. The drivers wing with the small repair has come out perfect, but the passenger one may need a little more work. I'll decide what to do next time I go play with the car!
Edited by Gallons Per Mile on Monday 20th June 21:26
RemyMartin said:
My first proper car was E910 AUR. Lovely little black XR2. Loved how these look and felt fast as feck back in the day.
Oh and mine needed more welding than yours...they do tend to rust a bit.
I had a black one too about 10 years ago. Got it for free as it was someone I sort of knew and it had been sat on a drive for years. It was too far gone though so I broke it for parts. Wish I'd kept them all rather than sold them on though!Oh and mine needed more welding than yours...they do tend to rust a bit.
neilbauer said:
Good work, I love the mk2 XR2 will follow with interest
Thanks! I won't be doing anything on it for a couple of weeks I think as I'm busy with work but I really can't wait to get it painted and built back up now.The original Nick the Greek said:
Fantastic.
I bought a new XR2 on 1st August 1985.
Following this with interest.
Ha! I was -2 months old then!I bought a new XR2 on 1st August 1985.
Following this with interest.
MH82 said:
Nice work, looking really good.
Can't beat the standard look and the XR2 really suits the black bodykit rather than being body coloured.
Like the way you are going back to CVH, the sound and the torque delivery really takes you back. I have the XR3i and it is so torquey low down in the revs. The CVh wears it's camshaft very quickly, replacing even with a standard cam restores power and quietness
Cheers! The kit is actually dark grey, when people paint them black they just look completely wrong. Don't know what I'm going to do about the kit yet. It's not in bad condition but I think it's going to look a bit tatty compared to a freshly painted car. I'll Cross that bridge when I come to it.Can't beat the standard look and the XR2 really suits the black bodykit rather than being body coloured.
Like the way you are going back to CVH, the sound and the torque delivery really takes you back. I have the XR3i and it is so torquey low down in the revs. The CVh wears it's camshaft very quickly, replacing even with a standard cam restores power and quietness
I love the noise of the CVH too - My dad bought an XR2 brand new in '88. There's a picture somewhere of me as a 3 year old standing in front of it. I remember there being loads of XR2's in the car park when we did the weekly shop but these days you never see one. Can't remember the last time I saw one out on the road.
Yes, the CVH does have cam shaft wear issues - I'm planning on changing the cam or having it re-ground at some point.
Small update on progress from today - My friend and I got the car pretty much ready for spray primer but ran out of time to fill the gun up and actually do the spraying. The whole car is rubbed down now (all brush primer nice and flat) and my friend even spent a few hours yesterday re-doing the repairs on the passenger front wing as we both weren't completely happy with it. The swage line almost perfect compared to the other side which has 0 repairs on the swage line so I don't think anyone else will be able to tell now! In other news, I'm not so sure I'm happy with the drivers rear arch repair either. Might end up getting the flap disc out, bare metalling it again and re-doing the repair. I'm going to see what it looks like in spray primer first and then decide.
Update time!
I was itching to get on with the project as it's all starting to come together now. My friend and I found a free day to get on with it and some progress was made. We spent the entirety of Sunday morning just masking up the bits we didn't want to get sprayed, rubbing a couple of rough spots flat, scratching heads about whether our repairs were good enough and generally trying to make sure everything was up to scratch before putting paint in the gun and priming the whole car.
All masked up and ready to go:
Better get the primer mixed up and in the gun! We had to thin the primer down loads more than anticipated as it was just too thick for the 1.4mm nozzle. Really, we needed a 1.8mm but it was still do-able once we'd thinned it out:
So, how did it turn out? Firstly, the pics:
In answer to my question: not too badly! We've got a few runs that need to be sanded out. I'm blaming this on being a bit excited that we were actually on the spray prime stage of the project and the fact that we had to thin the primer rather a lot to get it through the gun. Next time, I'll be a bit more careful! Also, the roof and some other areas have 'lumps' of primer showing where the primer was too thick in the first place when we started to try to spray. These should also sand out and leave us with a nice flat finish ready for the colour coat. That's the theory anyway, I'll update in due course...
After all our hard work, it would be a shame to let it get ruined in the garage while we wait for a free day or two to get get some paint on the car. A light guide coat applied to seal the primer:
That's all we had time for on Sunday. It'll probably be another couple of weeks before I'm able to do anything more but it's a good feeling knowing it's all coming together. 99% of the parts to put it back together have already been bought so once the paint is on it should come together really quickly.
Really can't wait to get it on the road in the summer!
I was itching to get on with the project as it's all starting to come together now. My friend and I found a free day to get on with it and some progress was made. We spent the entirety of Sunday morning just masking up the bits we didn't want to get sprayed, rubbing a couple of rough spots flat, scratching heads about whether our repairs were good enough and generally trying to make sure everything was up to scratch before putting paint in the gun and priming the whole car.
All masked up and ready to go:
Better get the primer mixed up and in the gun! We had to thin the primer down loads more than anticipated as it was just too thick for the 1.4mm nozzle. Really, we needed a 1.8mm but it was still do-able once we'd thinned it out:
So, how did it turn out? Firstly, the pics:
In answer to my question: not too badly! We've got a few runs that need to be sanded out. I'm blaming this on being a bit excited that we were actually on the spray prime stage of the project and the fact that we had to thin the primer rather a lot to get it through the gun. Next time, I'll be a bit more careful! Also, the roof and some other areas have 'lumps' of primer showing where the primer was too thick in the first place when we started to try to spray. These should also sand out and leave us with a nice flat finish ready for the colour coat. That's the theory anyway, I'll update in due course...
After all our hard work, it would be a shame to let it get ruined in the garage while we wait for a free day or two to get get some paint on the car. A light guide coat applied to seal the primer:
That's all we had time for on Sunday. It'll probably be another couple of weeks before I'm able to do anything more but it's a good feeling knowing it's all coming together. 99% of the parts to put it back together have already been bought so once the paint is on it should come together really quickly.
Really can't wait to get it on the road in the summer!
Edited by Gallons Per Mile on Monday 20th June 21:27
Update time!
Unfortunately no pictures just yet as I'm busy with work and family but I'll try to provide photographic evidence of progress as soon as I can!
Basically, yesterday and the preceding days went something like this:
Wednesday night was a bit of a write-off as I ended up not having much time left in the evening, so we only got about an hour's worth of actual work done. Just rubbing down panels etc.
Thursday night wasn't too bad as we got a clear run in the evening and started to make progress getting the guide coat rubbed back off the shell so it was all smooth ready for a coat of paint. It was clear that we wouldn't have time to get all the panels primed and ready for painting on Saturday so just concentrated on getting the shell ready. Even that wasn't even half rubbed down by the end of Thursday evening, so we knew we'd have to get it done on Saturday morning and then hopefully apply some paint in the afternoon.
Saturday morning - I turn up at my friend's house and he says he's got something funny to show me in the garage. It turned out that Nick wanted to bring the plan back on schedule and spent all of Friday evening (until about 2 am!) finishing the rubbing down of the panels and then spray priming them! They were all hung up in the garage just awaiting a final flatting down for top coat. I was amazed! This meant that getting the entire car and all the panels painted was just about achievable if we got on with it. Massive thanks to Nick for cracking on with it by himself - I had an event to attend with the g/f's family that night.
We got busy with rubbing the rest of the guide coat off the shell and flatting back the panels ready for some colour to be applied. MANY hours later we had a smooth primer finish, blasted the car, panels, and garage with an air line to try to remove as much dust as possible and were just about getting ready to mix up the paint. We ran some panel wipe over everything we wanted to paint, double checked and got mixing...
And that's were the plan fell over slightly.
We started by spraying the insides of the panels as this was the least problematic area if anything went wrong while we got used to how the 2k paint went on. All seemed good, so we carried on with the outside of the panels. One spray gun full of paint applied, all seemed good so far and we mixed up the next batch. More spraying and everything seemed ok so we moved on to the front end of the shell. Once the engine bay, front panel and one wing had paint on, something seemed to go wrong. We started noticing odd 'blobs' in the finish... We went back and checked the panels. Some of them had the same problem but not as badly as the front of the car. Nothing we could do by this stage so we stopped spraying as there was no point carrying on until we worked out what had happened. If you look closely it looks like there are 'bits' that have landed on the wet paint. I know the panels were dust free when we started as that's the point of panel wipe. I think there was just too much dust in the atmosphere and it hadn't settled by the time we started spraying - we'd not long before blown the whole garage through with the air line to try to remove as much dust as possible from all the rubbing down. I don't know what it's looking like now it's dry so I'll have to wait for Nick to update me on that one.
Annoyingly I won't be able to get back to his garage until the weekend at the earliest. More plans will be made this week to work out what to do next and try to get the car painted properly and actually looking how it should. It was all going so well
Unfortunately no pictures just yet as I'm busy with work and family but I'll try to provide photographic evidence of progress as soon as I can!
Basically, yesterday and the preceding days went something like this:
Wednesday night was a bit of a write-off as I ended up not having much time left in the evening, so we only got about an hour's worth of actual work done. Just rubbing down panels etc.
Thursday night wasn't too bad as we got a clear run in the evening and started to make progress getting the guide coat rubbed back off the shell so it was all smooth ready for a coat of paint. It was clear that we wouldn't have time to get all the panels primed and ready for painting on Saturday so just concentrated on getting the shell ready. Even that wasn't even half rubbed down by the end of Thursday evening, so we knew we'd have to get it done on Saturday morning and then hopefully apply some paint in the afternoon.
Saturday morning - I turn up at my friend's house and he says he's got something funny to show me in the garage. It turned out that Nick wanted to bring the plan back on schedule and spent all of Friday evening (until about 2 am!) finishing the rubbing down of the panels and then spray priming them! They were all hung up in the garage just awaiting a final flatting down for top coat. I was amazed! This meant that getting the entire car and all the panels painted was just about achievable if we got on with it. Massive thanks to Nick for cracking on with it by himself - I had an event to attend with the g/f's family that night.
We got busy with rubbing the rest of the guide coat off the shell and flatting back the panels ready for some colour to be applied. MANY hours later we had a smooth primer finish, blasted the car, panels, and garage with an air line to try to remove as much dust as possible and were just about getting ready to mix up the paint. We ran some panel wipe over everything we wanted to paint, double checked and got mixing...
And that's were the plan fell over slightly.
We started by spraying the insides of the panels as this was the least problematic area if anything went wrong while we got used to how the 2k paint went on. All seemed good, so we carried on with the outside of the panels. One spray gun full of paint applied, all seemed good so far and we mixed up the next batch. More spraying and everything seemed ok so we moved on to the front end of the shell. Once the engine bay, front panel and one wing had paint on, something seemed to go wrong. We started noticing odd 'blobs' in the finish... We went back and checked the panels. Some of them had the same problem but not as badly as the front of the car. Nothing we could do by this stage so we stopped spraying as there was no point carrying on until we worked out what had happened. If you look closely it looks like there are 'bits' that have landed on the wet paint. I know the panels were dust free when we started as that's the point of panel wipe. I think there was just too much dust in the atmosphere and it hadn't settled by the time we started spraying - we'd not long before blown the whole garage through with the air line to try to remove as much dust as possible from all the rubbing down. I don't know what it's looking like now it's dry so I'll have to wait for Nick to update me on that one.
Annoyingly I won't be able to get back to his garage until the weekend at the earliest. More plans will be made this week to work out what to do next and try to get the car painted properly and actually looking how it should. It was all going so well
Edited by Gallons Per Mile on Sunday 3rd April 07:27
Right, time for some pictures now I've done the uploading!
As per previous post, here are the pics of what went on:
As you can see, much contamination. We decided it was just down to too much dust hanging around in the air and settling on the car, combined with not using a tack rag to wipe the car down with immediately before painting. Lesson learnt, so we tried again.
This time, we decided on a different tactic; Spray all the door shuts, re-do anything that can be seen on the panels (ie bits not hidden by trim panels etc), attach panels to car, mask up newly painted shuts etc, rub down the whole car to remove the blemishes and prime the surface for a new coat and put a top coat over the whole car.
Here's how it went:
Not bad, looking much better - paint seems to have gone on well and most importantly there were virtually no blemishes or 'fish eyes' as I have learnt they're called. Excellent, this means we're on the right road now.
Confidence restored, we carried on. Panels were attached to car and lined up 100% so they didn't need to be moved around later on. Bonnet was left off as we needed to paint the engine bay fully still. Then, everything got rubbed down, checked and doubled checked, and some paint went on...
Fully painted!
[Red Dwarf mode] An excellent plan, sir, with only two minor drawbacks[/Red Dwarf mode]
That was last weekend, and I went back to the garage last night to see how it had dried and to start flatting panels down and seeing how they'd polish up. It seems that while we put exactly the right amount of hardner in to the paint we didn't put quite enough thinners in the mix as the finish was rather orange peely in my perfectly dry and hard paint... Not really what I wanted to see after a 12 hour working day and rushing around after work to get over to where the car is stored.
Better see what I can do to get it looking nice. Test subject: bonnet. I started wet sanding with the usual 1200 one might use and, well, not a lot was changing on the orange peel front. I stepped down to 600 and a bit more came out, but you could still clearly see the surface was far too pitted. At this point I thought I might as well get the 320 out, get the surface actually flat and then work up through the grades of paper to give me a surface ready for polishing. Only problem is that there wasn't enough paint for this to work. The orange peel was just too thick and I started to see through the paint to the primer by the time it was reasonably flat. Bugger!
The rest of the car is looking very much the same as the bonnet did - far too orange peely. Plus I've noticed a few bits that got missed in awkward areas so that's going to need more paint anyway. Extra work, paint and time required, but the learning curve has been good. I'm a perfectionist with this sort of thing so it'll be right come hell or high water. I'm now thinking of this as a 'pre-top-coat coat'... :lol: Another lesson learnt!
As per previous post, here are the pics of what went on:
As you can see, much contamination. We decided it was just down to too much dust hanging around in the air and settling on the car, combined with not using a tack rag to wipe the car down with immediately before painting. Lesson learnt, so we tried again.
This time, we decided on a different tactic; Spray all the door shuts, re-do anything that can be seen on the panels (ie bits not hidden by trim panels etc), attach panels to car, mask up newly painted shuts etc, rub down the whole car to remove the blemishes and prime the surface for a new coat and put a top coat over the whole car.
Here's how it went:
Not bad, looking much better - paint seems to have gone on well and most importantly there were virtually no blemishes or 'fish eyes' as I have learnt they're called. Excellent, this means we're on the right road now.
Confidence restored, we carried on. Panels were attached to car and lined up 100% so they didn't need to be moved around later on. Bonnet was left off as we needed to paint the engine bay fully still. Then, everything got rubbed down, checked and doubled checked, and some paint went on...
Fully painted!
[Red Dwarf mode] An excellent plan, sir, with only two minor drawbacks[/Red Dwarf mode]
That was last weekend, and I went back to the garage last night to see how it had dried and to start flatting panels down and seeing how they'd polish up. It seems that while we put exactly the right amount of hardner in to the paint we didn't put quite enough thinners in the mix as the finish was rather orange peely in my perfectly dry and hard paint... Not really what I wanted to see after a 12 hour working day and rushing around after work to get over to where the car is stored.
Better see what I can do to get it looking nice. Test subject: bonnet. I started wet sanding with the usual 1200 one might use and, well, not a lot was changing on the orange peel front. I stepped down to 600 and a bit more came out, but you could still clearly see the surface was far too pitted. At this point I thought I might as well get the 320 out, get the surface actually flat and then work up through the grades of paper to give me a surface ready for polishing. Only problem is that there wasn't enough paint for this to work. The orange peel was just too thick and I started to see through the paint to the primer by the time it was reasonably flat. Bugger!
The rest of the car is looking very much the same as the bonnet did - far too orange peely. Plus I've noticed a few bits that got missed in awkward areas so that's going to need more paint anyway. Extra work, paint and time required, but the learning curve has been good. I'm a perfectionist with this sort of thing so it'll be right come hell or high water. I'm now thinking of this as a 'pre-top-coat coat'... :lol: Another lesson learnt!
Edited by Gallons Per Mile on Monday 20th June 21:28
Right, time for an update!
Since the pics above (so just over a month) we've been busy respraying the car again. We used the correct mix of thinners this time in the paint/harder/thinners love triange and this worked an absolute treat. The paint finish was at least as good as a factory finish and in some places better. Totally nailed it this time, and we were both really happy about that! We've done some flatting to lose pretty much all of the orange peel and leave just nice dull paintwork ready to be polished. I looked at a new car in my work car park the other day and realised I'm actually being a bit anal about the finish... It looked quite shiny but was ornage-peel-central when you actually looked closely. I think my car's going to polish up nicely even though there's a hint of orange peel in places. I won't bore you with pictures that look exactly the same as above of a white car and crack on with the more exciting stuff.
With the main paintwork done the only thing left to paint was the satin black that goes around the side windows and in part of the door shuts. I spent many hours with masking tape and pictures downloaded on my phone of other XR2's to try and match up exactly where the black should go. The curve to the back of the rear window was a total nightmare. I think I've got it as near as possible to original but it's never going to be exactly the same without some sort of template to mark the exact shape. I had to go by eye and my own intuition. I hoped it wouldn't come down to that! See the very first pic in this thread for comparison of before/after. I think I did OK, all things considered. Just the black pin-stripe to put around the edge of the satin to mask the join between black/white and as per the factory.
Masking up:
See what I mean about that curve at the back of the rear window?
On to the painting:
Not looking too bad. Better get that masking take back off and see if I cocked it up or not...
Quite happy with that! Comparing to the very first pic on this thread it's not exact, but I don't think you'd tell unless you knew precisely what it looked like before. Anyway, it still needs the black pin-stripe around the edge and that should make it look a bit better too.
I think that's it for the painting stage. Might be time to start actually putting bits and pieces back on the car once I've polished it all up
I'll start the polishing over the next few days.
Since the pics above (so just over a month) we've been busy respraying the car again. We used the correct mix of thinners this time in the paint/harder/thinners love triange and this worked an absolute treat. The paint finish was at least as good as a factory finish and in some places better. Totally nailed it this time, and we were both really happy about that! We've done some flatting to lose pretty much all of the orange peel and leave just nice dull paintwork ready to be polished. I looked at a new car in my work car park the other day and realised I'm actually being a bit anal about the finish... It looked quite shiny but was ornage-peel-central when you actually looked closely. I think my car's going to polish up nicely even though there's a hint of orange peel in places. I won't bore you with pictures that look exactly the same as above of a white car and crack on with the more exciting stuff.
With the main paintwork done the only thing left to paint was the satin black that goes around the side windows and in part of the door shuts. I spent many hours with masking tape and pictures downloaded on my phone of other XR2's to try and match up exactly where the black should go. The curve to the back of the rear window was a total nightmare. I think I've got it as near as possible to original but it's never going to be exactly the same without some sort of template to mark the exact shape. I had to go by eye and my own intuition. I hoped it wouldn't come down to that! See the very first pic in this thread for comparison of before/after. I think I did OK, all things considered. Just the black pin-stripe to put around the edge of the satin to mask the join between black/white and as per the factory.
Masking up:
See what I mean about that curve at the back of the rear window?
On to the painting:
Not looking too bad. Better get that masking take back off and see if I cocked it up or not...
Quite happy with that! Comparing to the very first pic on this thread it's not exact, but I don't think you'd tell unless you knew precisely what it looked like before. Anyway, it still needs the black pin-stripe around the edge and that should make it look a bit better too.
I think that's it for the painting stage. Might be time to start actually putting bits and pieces back on the car once I've polished it all up
I'll start the polishing over the next few days.Edited by Gallons Per Mile on Monday 20th June 21:28
Time for another update!
I've been away on holiday but spent a small amount of time either side of that doing some polishing. The car's pretty much done now, although the boot and the drivers wing need some *more* paint as we rubbed through in a couple of places while flatting back...
1x machine polisher, Farecla G6 compound and some microfibre cloths:
The results:
Looks quite shiny now! The best thing about using florescent lighting in the garage is it shows up ALL the imperfections in the paint. If you look at the right angle you can see some flatting marks still. The roof looks a bit scratchy - I think the P1500 must have had something trapped on it when the roof was flatted as the scratches are deeper than 1500 would normally be. It looks like the roof's been through a dodgy car wash at the moment but those marks should polish out. I'm just concentrating on getting the paint to a decent shine and I'll faff around with perfecting everything over time. Likewise with the bonnet, there are a number of bits of dust that settled on it while it was still wet, but it's polished up pretty well for now.
I've been away on holiday but spent a small amount of time either side of that doing some polishing. The car's pretty much done now, although the boot and the drivers wing need some *more* paint as we rubbed through in a couple of places while flatting back...
1x machine polisher, Farecla G6 compound and some microfibre cloths:
The results:
Looks quite shiny now! The best thing about using florescent lighting in the garage is it shows up ALL the imperfections in the paint. If you look at the right angle you can see some flatting marks still. The roof looks a bit scratchy - I think the P1500 must have had something trapped on it when the roof was flatted as the scratches are deeper than 1500 would normally be. It looks like the roof's been through a dodgy car wash at the moment but those marks should polish out. I'm just concentrating on getting the paint to a decent shine and I'll faff around with perfecting everything over time. Likewise with the bonnet, there are a number of bits of dust that settled on it while it was still wet, but it's polished up pretty well for now.
Edited by Gallons Per Mile on Monday 20th June 21:29
My pictures have gone walkabouts as Virgin Media are no longer giving free web space!
Unfortunately for the time being you'll have to imagine what some new shiny parts look like bolted to my Fiesta. I'm excited it's all going back together after so long being in pieces.
I'll fix the webspace issue soon and show you how it's looking now.
Unfortunately for the time being you'll have to imagine what some new shiny parts look like bolted to my Fiesta. I'm excited it's all going back together after so long being in pieces.
I'll fix the webspace issue soon and show you how it's looking now.
Pics fixed with Photobucket account!
Time for another update, now that I can actually show you what's going on :-D
I started putting the car back together last week. It started out with a couple of bits and pieces:
I took the brake servo home as it was minging and needed a good clean up. Strip wheel on the grinder did this:
And painted with a a bit of black Hammerite - no time to spray it which would have been preferable but I think it came out pretty well considering I brushed it on. Two coats gave a good finish:
Next, lets get the new rear suspension bits all laid out and ready to go together:
All together and on the car:
Note, no rear trailing arms on the car yet as Flo-Flex sent the wrong bushes... Waiting on replacements as we speak.
Refurbed servo and a cleaner master cylinder than my old one now fixed to the bulkhead with shiny powdercoated brackets:
Driver's door mechanisms back in place:
Headlights and indicators back on. The car has a face again!!
Heater matrix back in position:
I've just had a run of days off work so things picked up a bit more quickly from here. All the rest of the pics from here down are taken over the last few days.
Glass back in the drivers side! Took me ages of faffing around with the door window - they seem to be a pig to get on to the runners! Got there in the end though, and with the mechanism re-greased it works like new:
Time to get the engine back in the bay. The shell of the car is fairly light with nothing in it so I was able to grab the front panel and lift the front end of the car up while a friend put some bricks and bits of wood under the axle stands to give enough clearance to slide the engine straight under:
We then lowered the car back down to original height on the axle stands to make it easier to lift the engine in to position with the crane. Note the use of many old curtains to avoid scratching anything! I was paranoid about creating paintwork jobs for myself!
Engine back in the bay! I forgot just how easy it is to do on a MK2. It took a couple of hours including getting the car raised/lowered and sliding the engine about on the floor. We weren't rushing at all and it just fell in to place with the bolt holes lining up first time. Result!
The engine/box and ancilliaries really need a bit of a clean up but I'm under time pressure to get the car back in one piece and out of my friend's garage, it's rather dusty as you can see but I've given it a cursory wipe over since the pics. I'm sure I'll get around to making it look prettier in due course.
Next thing to do was make a start on the rear brakes. I should have sent the back plates away for powdercoating but evidently forgot to package them up with everything else. I cleaned them up to make them usable but they'll have to be stripped and coated at some point as they look awful!
Front spring/shock absorbers built back up. Do you like my 'stealth' spax springs? I had them powdercoated along with the rest of the suspension as they were looking rusty and the original coating was falling off:
Another day, and onwards with fitting out front hubs and suspension. The bearing races were a total pig to get in to the hubs even with a proper bearing pusing tool. I managed one hub just about but the other one wouldn't play so I ended up taking it to a friendly mechanic who had to use a large press to get the bearing races seated in the hub properly. Even he couldn't believe the amount of force it took to seat them... I'll keep an eye on the front bearings once the car is on the road. The rears were no trouble at all and a few taps with my bearing tool was all it took for those.
Lastly, I put all the coolant hoses and radiator in the engine bay. Also connected up all of the wiring - which took about 5 mins as there are only about 6 electrical connections to the engine!!:
That's all for now. I want it out of the garage ASAP so with any luck it'll be on the road one way or another by next week. Watch this space
Time for another update, now that I can actually show you what's going on :-D
I started putting the car back together last week. It started out with a couple of bits and pieces:
I took the brake servo home as it was minging and needed a good clean up. Strip wheel on the grinder did this:
And painted with a a bit of black Hammerite - no time to spray it which would have been preferable but I think it came out pretty well considering I brushed it on. Two coats gave a good finish:
Next, lets get the new rear suspension bits all laid out and ready to go together:
All together and on the car:
Note, no rear trailing arms on the car yet as Flo-Flex sent the wrong bushes... Waiting on replacements as we speak.
Refurbed servo and a cleaner master cylinder than my old one now fixed to the bulkhead with shiny powdercoated brackets:
Driver's door mechanisms back in place:
Headlights and indicators back on. The car has a face again!!
Heater matrix back in position:
I've just had a run of days off work so things picked up a bit more quickly from here. All the rest of the pics from here down are taken over the last few days.
Glass back in the drivers side! Took me ages of faffing around with the door window - they seem to be a pig to get on to the runners! Got there in the end though, and with the mechanism re-greased it works like new:
Time to get the engine back in the bay. The shell of the car is fairly light with nothing in it so I was able to grab the front panel and lift the front end of the car up while a friend put some bricks and bits of wood under the axle stands to give enough clearance to slide the engine straight under:
We then lowered the car back down to original height on the axle stands to make it easier to lift the engine in to position with the crane. Note the use of many old curtains to avoid scratching anything! I was paranoid about creating paintwork jobs for myself!
Engine back in the bay! I forgot just how easy it is to do on a MK2. It took a couple of hours including getting the car raised/lowered and sliding the engine about on the floor. We weren't rushing at all and it just fell in to place with the bolt holes lining up first time. Result!
The engine/box and ancilliaries really need a bit of a clean up but I'm under time pressure to get the car back in one piece and out of my friend's garage, it's rather dusty as you can see but I've given it a cursory wipe over since the pics. I'm sure I'll get around to making it look prettier in due course.
Next thing to do was make a start on the rear brakes. I should have sent the back plates away for powdercoating but evidently forgot to package them up with everything else. I cleaned them up to make them usable but they'll have to be stripped and coated at some point as they look awful!
Front spring/shock absorbers built back up. Do you like my 'stealth' spax springs? I had them powdercoated along with the rest of the suspension as they were looking rusty and the original coating was falling off:
Another day, and onwards with fitting out front hubs and suspension. The bearing races were a total pig to get in to the hubs even with a proper bearing pusing tool. I managed one hub just about but the other one wouldn't play so I ended up taking it to a friendly mechanic who had to use a large press to get the bearing races seated in the hub properly. Even he couldn't believe the amount of force it took to seat them... I'll keep an eye on the front bearings once the car is on the road. The rears were no trouble at all and a few taps with my bearing tool was all it took for those.
Lastly, I put all the coolant hoses and radiator in the engine bay. Also connected up all of the wiring - which took about 5 mins as there are only about 6 electrical connections to the engine!!:
That's all for now. I want it out of the garage ASAP so with any luck it'll be on the road one way or another by next week. Watch this space
2 sMoKiN bArReLs said:
keep it coming!
Kitchski said:
Only just spotted this one. Great thread, never been a massive 'fast' Ford man, but always liked the mk2 XR2, especially in white. The exhaust note was so distinctive!
Paint's come out well considering it's a home job too, you should be chuffed with that. I've got a white AX GT ( http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...) which is ripe for a respray. You're giving me ideas about trying it myself now!
Watched!
Thanks! I absolutely love the exhaust note too. Even with the Zetec conversion I ran before, it still had a very similar exhaust note because I was using a sporty system designed for an XR2. When I was a kid I used to always know when my dad was driving in to our road in his XR2 because of the sound of it.Paint's come out well considering it's a home job too, you should be chuffed with that. I've got a white AX GT ( http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...) which is ripe for a respray. You're giving me ideas about trying it myself now!
Watched!
Home repsrays are fairly straightforward. It's all about the prep and and a clean environment - the latter of which left something to be desired in my case. My friends garage was a bit too dusty really but the paint's not come out too bad. I might end up spraying the bonnet and boot again in the future just to get them perfect. Your AX should be an easy respray if its as solid as it looks. It's only a small car like my XR2 so a bit of prep and about 1.5L of paint should see you sorted
Like I found out, if it turns out a bit rough you can just do it again!!! Btw, I've been following your thread too, your car's coming along nicely :-)mwstewart said:
Cracking job!
Cheers! I'm putting in the category: 'Not bad for a first rebuild'. I'll be taking pics once it's fully together and showing all the bits that I think need improvement and so on.I'll upload today's antics in a min
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