Progress on 4ag-escort

Since my last attempt at a successful trackday, I have been switched on to other distractions such as the daily Pano and Phil the Corty.  Anyone involved in motorsport has felt the lowness of travelling thousands of kms to get a hit of adrenaline but falling short because of a mechanical failure. Its devastating. Procrastination has come to an end now that I have a goal to race it this year.

Im talking about my 16v Toyota Escort. I decided to change the fuel pump because of an inline fuel pump failure which ended the weekend . Now it has a commonly available Falcon fuel pump to deliver the pressure.

Sometimes you have to be creative when not everything is available for purchase. I got some 3mm stainless flanges laser cut to help me retro fit a modern intank pump to the old fuel tank. Yay more boot space.

The nitrile safe electrical connectors were purchased from efi systems and they made installation easy as.

With the old sender hole leaking like a sieve, I decided to completely block it by TIG welding a cover over it. While I was cleaning for the weld prep I got carried away and wire brushed the whole tank to bare metal (haha) so I decided to clear coat it with pressure pack.  It looks better anyway haha.

The next job that needed to be tackled was replacing the wretched Pommy fuse box that comes standard with these cars. The ceramic fuses are held captive by 2 preloaded copper blades. In my experience they muck up all the time. If im getting this car right I will need to get rid of the devil fuse box. I didn’t feel like cutting the wires and wiring in a blade type box, so a plug play option sounded nice. Though nothing seemed to be on the market for my model.

I started off by machining some pins out of 6mm brass and fixing wires via grub screws. these should fit between the new blade fuse box and the retro loom plug which means nothing was hacked up to bad (shit yeah) The first try was a super snug fit. Now im sure that the fuse box is no longer  a lurking gremlin the next job is wiring in a diagnostic plug to figure out exactly whats happening. (such a luxury compared to the trial and error of the van) I love brass but im not finished with the aesthetics just yet. I will keep you guys posted.

Jesse