Here comes a heap of trouble:

Took delivery on 12/08/07. A very rare '84 Escort wagon, powered by the 2.0L Ford/Mazda diesel motor. It's got a cracked head, as these motors often do, and finding a replacement is probably going to cost me more than the car did. But I couldn't let it go in the crusher!

First thing I did was clean it up a bit to make it look a little less "abandoned"; it got a quick 409 sponge-bath, I Windexed the glass, and swapped out the badly-cracked passenger-side headlight frame for a mint replacement part that I just happened to have in stock.

Apparently, the diesel can run, and did so up until about a year ago when the previous owner parked it. The crack only goes through an oil passage, not the water jacket, so it's not like it's making a milkshake or anything. The owner gummed up the crack with JB Weld and ran it that way for many miles, just topping up the oil periodically. Still, it's going to need fresh diesel, a fuel filter, and probably a big new battery before it'll turn over.

What a mighty powerplant! And would you believe that, when new, this baby got 46 mpg (68 on the highway)??

Interior is a little musty: needs a carpet and seatcovers, but the dash is basically good.

Check out the hot factory tach and the JVC tape deck! And I sure am stoked that it's a 5-speed...

85 mph, booyah! My Canadian Ford Escort is so much faster.

Um, the sticker came with the car. I'm going to have to swap it for a CarDomain one.



12/30/07:
Wow, I had the car all of one week and being such a total super-genius, I LOST my one set of keys (above). Then the locksmith I hired to make new keys for it somehow managed to wreck the car's ignition in the process: the actuator that runs off the ignition gear busted up into a whole bunch of little pieces while he was rattling things around. The result: there was no resistance whatsoever in the new cylinder he put in, and the ignition was permanently stuck on "run."

Fortunately he didn't try to be a dick about it. He actually went all the way to the Pull A Part and bought me a new ignition housing and switch, then spent a good part of the day pulling the steering column apart and swapping in the parts.

Now that I can get into the car and turn the wheels again, I decided it was time to see if I could make it start. The previous owner had told me that he "might" have been running 50/50 vegetable oil in it at the time he parked it. Great! Sure enough, when I went to change the diesel fuel filter/conditioner, a river of congealed slime flowed out.

So I changed the filter, filled it with fresh diesel, primed the injector pump, and tried to get everything all warmed up in an attempt to get that cold, gooey biodiesel runny enough to combust. Used my Eagle's side-dump exhaust to heat the Escort's tank, and a space heater to warm up the lines.

No big surprise: it didn't start. But the starter works and the engine turns over! Seems to need a giant battery with way more juice than my Eagle's to fire it up. That'll be the next step.

1/06/08, early morning

After loading in the BIG new battery (850 CCA, 1000 CA) and spending a good part of the evening warming and priming the fuel system, the motor turned over well, even popped a few times, but wouldn't catch. It was acting like the pump wasn't strong enough to draw all that congealed vegefuel into the engine. Sucks.

So I gave up and went drinking with my friend Doug. Looks like the whole fuel system's going to have to come apart and get de-gunked.

Then as I was saying goodnight, on a total whim, I decided to show off how much stronger the engine was turning with the new battery. I turned the key and to my total surprise, the diesel fired right up!!

Remember now. This is a car that hasn't run in well over a year, and has been stored outside for at least two winters with diesel and old fry grease in the tank and lines. The rotary-style injector pump isn't even supposed to be able to handle anything as viscous as vegetable oil, and certainly not in winter temperatures. But it ran just fine.

Check out the first drive! And don't forget to watch the VIDEO!

I still have to push it, because I haven't figured out yet if the reverse gear works. The shifter is real loosey-goosey, you can't really tell if you're in or not.

Look at all the crap pouring out of it. It's leaking diesel from a seal in the injector pump, and oil from the crack in the head. And look at how smokey it made the place!

1/24/08: NOS Score!!

Here it is: an original, never-installed, totally un-cracked and un-warped new-old-stock cylinder head for the Escort! I got it off eBay for a whoppingly huge pile of cash (I'm not used to paying more than a few bucks car parts, so WHOA. It's a bare head with valve guides only: valves, springs, cam, etc., etc., will have to be swapped over from the old head. I think I know where I can get new valves for it, and it'll get a new timing belt and seals as well.

And here's the NOS head post-hot-tank! The guys at Johnnie's Machine cleaned it up for me.

2/29/08: Maiden Voyage!
Haven't yet gotten all the parts to swap over the head yet, but I finally got my Washington-State insurace squared away and took the car out on the road tonight (and to the car wash!) under the cover of darkness. It clattered like crazy and left a huge cloud of noxious smoke.

3/1/08: Dieseling Around

Today I got the Escort out on the road for real. Took it out on the Interstate up to 65, 70 mph. No shakes or shimmies, rides nice! We went as far north as the Lynnwood junkyard and as far south as the Renton Wal-Mart. It continued to pour oil and diesel all over itself, but the smoke subsided as it cleared out its pipes and re-seated its rings. It makes really decent mileage even with the fuel leak; once all its holes are plugged up, this is going to be a really nice-running little 55 mpg ride! One major problem is that it seems to have no reverse gear, which got me in trouble only once, when I got stuck in a dead-end side street and had to make a 3 point turn (you never notice how steeply crowned those roads are until you try to push a car single-handedly up from a curb from a dead stop). Fun times!

Here it is at the Albertson's in Shoreline...

And out behind the Wal-Mart in Renton:

April 2008, The Head Swap (this has been a long time coming...)

I was paranoid about remembering the exact position of the cam lobes so as not to smuck up the timing on this scary interference motor. Fortunately there's these things called "timing marks," heh.

I guess these pics were supposed to help me remember where everything hooks back up. Good luck with that.

The fuel-delivery apparatus...

Bloody knuckles: pretty much inevitable, at least for me.

Busting the headbolts loose. Most of 'em actually required my huge cheater bar over top of this breaker.

Here's the cam on the way to the head shop!

At the head shop, John pressed in the springs from the old head, torqued up the cam bearing caps, shimmed the lifters, and adjusted the valve lash.

This is how crusty my old valves were. They were also junk, so worn that they wouldn't've been able to be refaced. Good thing I found new ones!

John let me mess around with the blast cabinet so I could clean one of the valves up some. Just to see.

Time to swap over all the remaining parts. Here's the two heads on my kitchen counter!

And apart...
...and the new one reassembled

Here it is back on the motor. I stayed up till 5am on a workday wrangling this back into place with the help of my buddy Austin. We had to lift the motor part way up, pull the cam gear, get at some really gnarly bolts holding down the timing covers, etc. This car's got two timing belts and we changed them both.

Still gotta repaint that valve cover and hook up all the wiring, fuel lines, vacuum lines, etc.
Come on back, there'll be more here soon!