as they all begin , bought my first car "17 year old" payed 500 bucks for it, off an old guy who said he had built it for his wife, but after she blew up 3 clutches in it, he couldnt be bothered replacing another one, . so after the 3rd clutch, it sat in the front yard till i came along ,
so at the time, it looked like i was buying a burgandy 2ltr manual ford escort, with a flat battery, and a blown clutch,
got it home, and after starting pulling it apart and replacing the clutch, we found the head gaskit was gone too, so after removing the head, and sending it off, to get machined up, it was told that it had been run for a while on the blown head gaskit, and had worn a lip inbetween cyls, so after a chat with the engine builder, it was decided to see if he could shave the head back enough to get rid of it, and then put it back on and hope the bottom end could cope with the extra compression, so that along with a decient cam, and some nice other goodies, along with some attention on the flow bench, got thrown at the head, anyway a day or so, after taking the bottom end in to get assembled with the reco'd head, i got a phone call from the engine builder, and he told me that the block was not only suited to the extra compression, , but that after inspecting it, he found that it had a sierra 2.3ltr crank, rod, and piston combo, so that was a bonus, along with noteing that the block had been o ringed, and there was a lot of balanceing holes, in nearly all the bits in the bottom end
so back together it went, 
after getting it all back in the car, i now found out why the last owner had gone through clutches, this thing flew, anyway, finally started looking at and working out what to do to get the thing rwc, turns out it was not to be, as a closer look at the body, and it turned out, it was twisted, and had a lot of rust in the floor pan, so the search for a new donner body was on, a few weeks later, and a 600buck win on ebay, "sight unseen" i picked this up from balarat,
it had coped a hit in the back quarter, and had a bad attempt at knocking it out , and the owner that i bought it off, had used it as a work run around at his factory for about 3 months, "so he said" , but other than that, it had 51xxxks , which after a lot of inspection into the condition of the rest of the car, we belive to be all original, and first time around on the speedo, ill let the photos do the talking, but everything was there, all anti polution gear, working correctly, back seat looked like it had never been sat on, and the decals on the seatbelt release buttons conferm it, as they were in as new condition,
in getting it ready for rwc, found that the diff , steering rack, had water sitting it for a long period at one point, so after rebuilding them, got it rwc'd, promptly put a round light grille and set of hotwires on ,and started the joys of driving a 18's first car.
a few months passed, and i managed to pick up some 13x6.5 and 13x7 hotwires, with some 205 rubber on them, after fitting them, "greatly to the better look of the car" soon found that i needed the guards flared, as i promptly chewed out the two back tyres with the razor sharp guards ,
a few months later, at work, we got a new customer a panel shop, and they made a deal with me, i wire their factory, they would fix up the escort and paint it, deal was done, and the car was brought in..
the end result was more than i expected, . guards rolled and pumped, rust repairs done, and a respray with a gold, now with a yellow pearl in it, turned out like this
it wasnt long after that, car got cleaned up ready for its first decient photos ,
this one really shows the yellow pearl,
it wasnt long after this, that i got a bit tired of the stock 2ltr and auto, it was good, but not as nice as a manual, so work began on the conversion , to fit the stroked 2ltr and manual from the first escort into it,
anyway got the sierra hybrid motor in, after 6 days of it being back on the road with the manual and new motor, i took it to trade school, and then took a few up bush, long story short, a tree jumped out in front of me
after enjoying the power of the little motor, i promptly found out i should practice before having to much fun, not sure what speed i was doing as, the speedo cable had broken, but, it was moving,
as the photos show, it pushed the front passengers wheel 6 inches back from where it should be, and turned the passengers rail into what looked like spagetti, thankfully the battery and radiator took the brunt of the damage motor wise, but it was still salvageable, but the body wasnt, .the drive train later got put into another body, as most of the drive chain was still salvageable, look at "mk2 magic"s build thread to see what happened with the goods out of it,
anyway hope ya like the story, sorry bout the amount of pics
