Ford gets rushed into surgery
Istill felt pretty terrible about our classic Mk3 Escort and its unfortunate meeting with an Audi Q5. The impact was dead straight on and hadn’t damaged the chassis rails, so at least there was some silver lining to the inattention of the woman behind the Audi’s wheel. But I had certainly imagined a different course to my weekend than patching up the lights with translucent coloured tape and nursing the car back home.
I had to get it fixed. Fortunately, Ford’s Escort is a popular classic, so parts availability isn’t so much of a worry. I’d taken it back to Tiger Racing, who had become rather familiar with the car since respraying it only a couple of months earlier. They quickly sourced a new back panel from Magnum Classic Ford Panels that would replace our dented one, and a new bumper and taillights too. It would have seemed to me that these last items would have been the easiest to find, but when it came to looking, there were actually very few taillight units out there for sale. I spotted the odd one on eBay, but it turned out to be the case that I needed a lot more patience than for buying the other parts. Maybe the Mk3 hasn’t quite reached the optimum parts supply stage after all.
It was good to be back in the driver’s seat after a couple of weeks, and the easy 40-minute drive over to Tiger Racing in Wisbech was just what the Escort needed. As with most old cars, you get the sense that
their mood is improving over the course of warming up. It was a clear, dry day, the heater blowing air into the cabin just so and the long wave radio picking up the golden oldies at just loud enough to hear over a 65mph cruise.
After pulling up to the workshop and having a cup of coffee thrust into my hands, Paul at Tiger Racing and I had a look over the car again and discussed how we’d go about sorting it all out. Our Escort has a wonderful originality to it, and so I was glad that Paul approached the task of replacing and repairing the various panels with patience and caution. The damaged back panel would be removed carefully along the original seam welds and replaced just as it would have been at the factory, down to the brushed weld finish. This would all take time, but the result would be worth it.
Similarly, it was decided that it would help matters all round to try and push the rear back panel out a touch from within. Using a hydraulic ram to push the rear of the wheel well would also help reform the slightly dented boot floor. Straightened out like that, the back panel-to-boot floor join would be much less fragile and prone to damage on removal. A few strategic cuts and the panel was relatively loose, enough to allow some prying apart of the welds, and another cup of coffee later – at least for me on the side lines – the panel was almost off. To keep the join tidy for our new back panel, Paul took his time with the grinder, chisel and hammer to work the old metal loose and to keep the join straight.
Simply cutting out the large square of the back panel was far from having the job finished, however. Next came the detail. Cutting around the taillight surrounds required fine edging with the grinder, picking the way around and double-checking progress as it went along. Although the shape wasn’t nearly as complex for the lower back panel, there was some finesse and patience needed here too, particularly on the left side where the panel was so closely married to the boot floor lip that it had to be finely ground apart. Only when the metal was thin enough to blue could it be removed. Clearly, Ford had done too good a job at welding!
High standards to match, then, but I was pretty confident that Paul could sort it. He’d done a fine job on the respraying before, and now he’d be back respraying – the back anyway – again! I was looking forward to seeing the results and to see another
accident-repaired car having the care and attention lavished upon it to make an invisible repair. Many people, as Paul was telling me, would just cut the boot floor level and make a new welding point rather than spend the time picking apart the original welds. This seems a shame as not only would that have lost some originality, but also some of the inherent strength of the original panel. I was glad it was being done properly.
Still to do is the lining up of the boot with the new back panel and welding it into place, then a respray of the rear end. The little dents in the boot and floor need sorting too, then new rear lights fitting. Then our Escort will very nearly be box fresh, wanting only for a new boot strut – which I was going to do long ago!