I've been by a few times and never posted, but thought I'd share my EA with you.
Have had many Fords over the years, about 50 all told from Escort RS2000s, 4.1 Cortinas, XF Ghia, XB GT coupe, couple of XHs, BA Fairlane and more recently an AU XR8 (still got that). But with work and buying houses we sometimes don't get to have a toy to play with. Mid last year I decided I wanted something to muck around with, so when this came in to my family's car yard I snapped it up:

It was really one of those cars that was right on the edge of going for scrap. It looks much better in that shot than it really was. Big dent in the rear quarter, paint stuffed, 320000km, auto (mad-rooted), electrics not working, oil leaks... but to be honest there was something about it I liked and I didn't want to send it for scrap. I have the full history of the car as well and after I bought it I realised I knew the car early in its life. It also had an engine rebuild about 30000km ago.
After fixing all the usual crap that goes wrong (windows, electrics, oil leaks, etc etc) and getting it registered, I did a manual conversion and ordered a turbo kit for it.
This is me trying it out in a local hillclimb event, completely stock except for the T5 - which was finished the week before.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/lRel-HoQffk[/youtube]
and
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt1wknj0OQU&list=UUJEJJHTskGRHjXHbwvCBVcw&index=4&feature=plcp[/youtube]
The day after that, it came off the road and got most panels repainted in the original silver. Apart from that it spent a lot of time under my house waiting for me to get time to do anything on it, but eventually I finished getting the turbo on there:

I bought the manifold and turbo, got it all ceramic coated and went for a liquid/air intercooler so I didn't have to chop the front bar. Has only done about 1000km since it's been back on the road and is currently running about 8psi. Maybe I'm too old now or something but for the most part I just stroke it along and give it a good solid squirt when I really feel like it. However, I really enjoy it and it does lift up its skirt and boogie when you give it some stick.




The idea of the project was for it to be a complete sleeper. It sounds a lot like a stock XR6 Turbo (not loud, at least when it's not on boost!) and nobody picks what it is. I have deliberately not gone down the road of overdoing the sleeper thing by putting roof racks, visors, kerb twangers, white walls etc on it - I've just left it as it is. I've put better brakes and nolathane bushes right through it but don't intend to lower it or put fat wheels on it.
Plans for the foreseeable future are to turn the boost up to about 10psi and then just to fettle it and get it running and working as perfectly as possible and enjoy it. The XR8 is the daily, but this is a good bit of fun and because it's not overdone the cops leave me alone and I can drive it to work (office job) without drawing attention to myself.
Not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but it's turned out just about how I like it. And it's been a great trip back to when I spent all my time doing cars up lol

Thanks for reading (if you made it this far lol)