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Big day today. The Escort is home at last Covered in dust First time washing it since December 2020 *not me in the photo* all nice and clean at last. ready to go into its new home. this is how you clean the inside, right? its fine, there is no interior at the moment Engine bay looks so pretty In it's new home. the shed is a little squishy with the car running this way across the shed, but once i get some shelving into the shed and a bit more storage ill have space to move.

Mark sent these through today. Bonnet and grill fitted and aligned. This makes me smile seeing it look a little more like a car again

Pre crossflow use the same cam bearings as xflow, its an extra hole for the pre xflow to oil the rockers as they have an extra oil gallery to supply oil to the head and rocker shaft, that gallery gets supplied from the top of the cam journals, whereas xflow use the lifters and pushrods to supply the rockers with oil, its no real biggie just interchangeable bearings

Well, last Saturday was an epic day and has given me and my mate confidence and inspiration to push on harder than ever with the restoration of Granddad's old XC... After liberally lubricating each cylinder and leaving it for a week, we gently turned her over by hand. There were NO tight spots, weird sounds or unwanted friction at all and she turned beautifully... Battery was connected and carby was primed and after about 6 attempts, she briefly coughed and died... A few more attempts were made until, incredibly, the super fuel that was still in her tank (no, it HASN'T gone off at all) made it to the fuel pump and she ran long enough for me to get this very quick video. Pretty much a testament to the strength and engineering of the mighty crossflow engine...

Here's an old video circa 2007 with my phone taped to the steering wheel running from zero to 180 kph (i was inventive back then) of my pick a part special 4.0 it made 144rwkw around this time, and it made 177 rwkw with a tune later on (video quality is representative of its time) it was in my xh ute with an ex taxi au short motor (from memory had more than 860,xxx ks), ef xr6 head (94 dt) ea cam, el bbm intake, super cat extractors, crow vernier cam gear, yella terra billet flywheel, high flow cat 2.5 inch exhaust, t5 and 3.45 gears, it was a lot of fun to an 18 year old me, I put over 180,xxxks on that engine before it let go when the stock valve train decided that 2 years of turning to 7000rpm was enough and it dropped a valve, after it was tuned the rev limiter was set to 7200rpm and it saw it every time it was in 1st gear (18 year old me was hard on the equipment) and sometimes more often than that, I wouldn't mind getting another e-series one day and replicating this combo, although it would be really fun in something lightweight like an xp falcon

Been through some changes since this photo.

Ok block is cleaned and painted and put the core plug set in tomorrow will drop the crank in and maybe a piston or 2 Sent from my SM-A125F using Tapatalk

Hard to believe that there's so much interest in Clevo's in the good ole US of A, that Tim Meyer and such will go to the lengths of making new ones...!!!! At the same time, deleting some of the inherent issues from the 1960-70's model. Bravo fellas. If I was in the 'States, I know what I'd be saving for right now.

Finally my cam plate came so on with the rest,nice xe black 1982 heads. Sent from my SM-A125F using Tapatalk

Hi Bear, Thanks for your input as well, Sorry about the message and then the addition of the topic, Greg doesn't accept direct messages lol, added the topic hoping he would answer. Greg, 3500rpm on the highway no thanks. I will need to revisit the cam. Great input, I really appreciate it.

I also had my reproduction stickers turn up today. Dealership sticker and rego sticker

so first off why would you do a t5 conversion? for most people its going to be fuel economy and lower RPM cruising and are not likely to be giving this thing a hard time so a t5 should do the job fine, so why convert a single rail bellhousing and not buy a rod shop bellhousing? well last i looked it was going to cost me almost $900 to my door and that's a lot of fuel money my friends. So if your looking to do this conversation you've probably already done some research but if not, you must use a 6 cylinder t5 from an xf or whenever they started using them to an el Falcon, au and onwards will need custom tail shaft and shifter won't line up, can't used v8 bellhousing or gearbox it would be way too much trouble, 6 cylinder t5 is almost identical to the single rail. This is to document my experience with converting from a single rail with a bellhousing that has only been drilled for single rail in an XC falcon with an almost stock cleveland with an EB diff running 3.27 gears currently sitting on about 2800rpm at 100kmph using about 20.5l/per 100km Ok let's get into it, after you've got your bellhousing/gearbox out first thing you'll need to do to your t5 is turn down the input bearing housing about 1.6mm so it'll fit in the hole, if you don't have access to a lathe a machine shop will make very light work of it and won't cost much at all to get done. i had an empty case to help me work out how to go about it. Then that's done fit it back to the gearbox and after you've got straight as you can you can start working out where your going to tap your new holes, the two top t5 mounting holes can be used so do them first use a punch to mark the holes (transfer punch would make this easy) and then drill and tap, I used 12x1.75 bolts that come with my T5. Bolt the gearbox back onto the bellhousing and now you can workout the two bottom mounts, as you can see the bottom t5 mount's are lower then the face of the bellhousing so what I did for the right side is make a mark just above the t5 hole, drilled and tapped it then bolt the gearbox back on and center punched the case from the inside of the bellhousing and then drilled the t5 case, as for the bottom left there is no meat in the bellhousing casting inline with the t5 case so I tapped a hole just beside the case and used a clamp style mount on this side that consists of a spacer that falls just short of the thickness of the case and another plate that overlaps the case making it clamp down when tightened against it, this could also be used on the other side if you don't want to drill the case. So this should have us sorted for mounting the box to the bellhousing now we'll move onto the cross member, measuring from the face of the box there is about 43mm difference between the two so I used part of the EB cross member and welded it to the back of the cross member about 45mm back (you could use a bit of plate or that ever will pick up the mount,plenty of adjustment no need for it to be perfect just needs to be centre) thinking it would be a great idea to use the square hole but it ended up making it very hard to bolt them together it kinda got stuck between the gearbox and the exhaust headers and I couldn't get it low enough due to the exhaust to get the gearbox mount bolt in the hole. so I think if this hole was slotted it would go much easier. So getting the gearbox in the car I bolted the bellhousing on to the engine and made a few attempts to slide the gearbox on, what I ended up doing is cutting the shifter hole in the floor all the way to the back of the hump mine had about an inch of over hang and that had to go so the shifter housing could get high enough, I also found I couldn't have the shifter Bolted to the gearbox and the hole in my shifter hump is too small to out it through the top so I hung it in the hole with a screwdriver and bolted it on the gearbox after it was in the car. And as I said I struggled with getting the cross member on, I almost dropped one of the headers but ended up getting there. So everything else goes on just like the single rail,. The internet said to fill it with a half and half mix of vmx80 and dex3 ATF and it seems to shift nice, I made a gear stick with the same bend and thread as the single rail and used the knob to make it look like nothing's been changed. Final thoughts are, first gear is a bit short but not the end of the world gets off the line nicely, it doesn't have as positive feel when shifting but still alright, down shifts much nicer than the single rail, sits on about 2200rpm at 100 in 5th. Will have some fuel economy numbers after a few hundred k's. Hopefully this helps I've probably missed something but anyway I did my best. rotio's , i'm told the EL box is the best one to get as its a 'world class' and its a bit stronger. EA T5 1st: 3.50:1 2nd: 2.14:1 3rd: 1.39:1 4th: 1.00:1 5th: 0.78:1 EB2-EL T5 (6 cyl) 1st: 3.25:1 2nd: 1.99:1 3rd: 1.29:1 4th: 1.00:1 5th: 0.72:1

It's 50 bucks bro, go for the higher comp ones Sent from my CPH2197 using Tapatalk

You wouldn't think it's the same block after I spent all day on it ,turns out it is STD bore with plenty of ware 4.374 is the largest bore so she has done a lot of miles Sent from my SM-A125F using Tapatalk

Yeah I dunno, if you grind that hump out, it actually looks decent. The inlets might look big, but the shape doesn't look great (that's what she said). I reckon the inlets are the restriction here. It looks typically Ford of that era, with a ramp up on the floor and a sharp turn before the throat. Pretty much just 2V Clevos but slightly scaled up. Sent from my CPH2197 using Tapatalk

We did it years ago The old RDP ute , Factory clevo block from the wreckers , C302B heads , 2 x 88mm Turbos 1273 RWHP . It went on to run 8.50 That factory block never let us down . And i can verify it was every bit a factory clevo block.. Was grouted to welch plugs . The only thing in the block was some fretting of the main caps @ 8200 rpm That same day I got to take that car ontrack for powercruise . It was fast 1273rwhp Ford BA Xr8 Ute by RDP Motorsport USA - YouTube Ford Ba XR8 Twin Turbo Ute at the Drags Testing Built by RDP Motorsport - YouTube Twin Turbo Ford XR8 Ute by RDP Motorsport - YouTube

just a small detail, but a bit of joy in this shitty lockdown, My switches for the Escort have been restored by a fellow RSOCV club member. this will just finish the interior off.

Header clearance Drag link/pitman arm Sent from my CPH1920 using Tapatalk