A bit of a slow period due to the cold weather! My garage is pretty good but its just so cold even with the heater doing its best. Anyway, I have not made any significant progress it seems to be all little bits completed. The biggest of which was the handbrake cables. These came directly from the donor and were strangely new. However, I could see how the calliper end fitted but not how they were to fit into the two tubes on the chassis. My solution was to turn up two adaptors. I also used the opportunity to use the length of the adaptor to maximise the range of adjustment to the maximum.. Overall I am pleased with these.

I made up two foam buffers to stop the cables banging on the diff and diff cover (when made and fitted!!).

So, only a short update this time. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I should be able to make progress with the exhaust system, some seats and the fuel tank.  

Happy New Year everybody. With all the festive celebrations, family visits and other jobs out of the way I have been able to crack on with getting the interior panels in place. I have enjoyed all of these tasks as everything fits and the end result is very pleasing. 

I completed all the panels for the transmission tunnel before moving on to the two main exterior ones.

Sitting in the car making brumming noise got my head round to seats. Any seat would need to be narrow and browsing the internet turned up a few ideas. A call to Peter at GKD also helped me with what was needed. Anyway, I will let this filter through the brain before ordering anything (a bit like the fuel tank, I still have not made up my mind....).
I am going to leave the tops of the transmission tunnel until later as I going to build a centre console for the fire extinguisher and electrical cut out switches.

This got me to the two main exterior panels and a colour scheme..... I am going to follow others with a vinyl wrap instead of paint so a decision was required. In the end I went for white. Ambitious I realise but there was a precedent:

This was my last tarmac Escort. Anyway, to fit the side panels the cage had to go. With little space there was only one option. I rigged up a couple of anchors in the roof and hoisted it up out of the way. I was concerned that the front legs would damage the wrap and or panel when I was moving into position so I rigged up an expansion tool from an hinge and couple of bits of wood. The really helped as I had the cage up and down for drilling holes etc

Again, I think there has been a design change and the panels have not been modified. The picture below shows the strip I had to cut off and re drill to get the front edge to fit correctly for an effective joint and sealing.

With the fit corrected I had to wrap both sides of the panel and cut away for the Sikaflex adhesive.

With all the panels on I can now get the cage lowered and bolted into place.