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. ManOpener said:
My mum had one of these when I was much younger, in that kind of grey-blue lots of the advert cars were in. D787 EYX.
Wonder if it's still alive? It survived being T-boned by a drunk vicar in an old Volvo...
According to the DVLA TAX site:Wonder if it's still alive? It survived being T-boned by a drunk vicar in an old Volvo...
✗ Untaxed
Tax due: 01 November 2001
MOT
No details held by DVLA
I suspect it's a gonner.
Nice to see one being properly tidied up - there are hardly any of these left and they used to be so common.
We had a few of these back in the day they were always good fun to drive, but rust was the killer.
I remember we scrapped a 1 owner in white like yours, it was only 8 years old and looked OK from the top but the floor, sills, chassis legs and front cross member were all rotten, too far gone to weld up; thats' what the Scottish harsh winter weather and salty roads did to 1980's Ford metal.
We had a few of these back in the day they were always good fun to drive, but rust was the killer.
I remember we scrapped a 1 owner in white like yours, it was only 8 years old and looked OK from the top but the floor, sills, chassis legs and front cross member were all rotten, too far gone to weld up; thats' what the Scottish harsh winter weather and salty roads did to 1980's Ford metal.
Munter said:
ManOpener said:
My mum had one of these when I was much younger, in that kind of grey-blue lots of the advert cars were in. D787 EYX.
Wonder if it's still alive? It survived being T-boned by a drunk vicar in an old Volvo...
According to the DVLA TAX site:Wonder if it's still alive? It survived being T-boned by a drunk vicar in an old Volvo...
? Untaxed
Tax due: 01 November 2001
MOT
No details held by DVLA
I suspect it's a gonner.
Mind you I do remember it having to be welded back together several times.
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
Good lad, always good to see another one of these being saved. I like many others had one of these, always loved them. Would never have imagined that one day they would be rare. Funnily enough I found a photo of my friends white one about a week ago when looking through some old stuff. Scared the hell out of me when I realised that the picture was 25 years old!
Anyway, as I said, good effort. I shall follow this with interest. I'm now off to reminisce about the good old days.
Anyway, as I said, good effort. I shall follow this with interest. I'm now off to reminisce about the good old days.
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.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
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
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