My 1994 Ford Escort aka The Trusty Escort

[87gtVIC]

I'll look into it.

[87gtVIC]

I found the shuffle button cleverly disguised as the random button. I loaded about 20 albums on it...so right now it will only shuffle within an album/folder. I will have to go back into it and reload all my music under one folder. I love shuffled music.

[87gtVIC]

Got the MP3 player all set a couple days ago. 500 songs and some pictures of my rides on it. Sweet.


Today was in the low 50's so I primed up the escort gt grille....freaking forgot to take pictures of it with the glazing putty..it was not much at all but I wanted to show the steps involved.

Anyways here is how the grille came to me:



The grille was silver with a couple rock chips. I was able to feather some chips out but some needed some glaze in them. Got it all looking smooth then primed with filler primer:



Gotta purchase some scuffing pads to knock down the orange peel and paint spatter a bit on the grille...the can was acting up on me..After that is completed I will paint her up good.


Then I decided to pull off the wiper arms. They were rusty:



Cleaned them up good:



Then applied Rusty Metal primer:



Then duplicolor trim paint:



Finished looks tomorrow when I reinstall them.

And here is a picture of the mudflaps and fog lights to be installed. Still waiting on my Escort GT switch to arrive. The fogs will be getting powered directly by the battery through a relay.

[marquisman]

mud flaps? pierat would have a heart attack! lol what is the color code of your potential female escort...picker upper?

[87gtVIC]

Yes mudflaps.

Color code is XD...Light Santa Fe. You can see the little touch up container of paint I have for it sitting next to the Duplicolor black touch up paint container I have for my Crown Victoria grille, headlight bezels and ditch light bezels.

[87gtVIC]

Wiper arms installed. They look great as compared to what they used to look like. Cant wait to give the roof rail/rain gutter things the same treatment.

[1990LTD]

David is this a 2.0 motor?

[87gtVIC]

Nah. 1.9 liter under the hood.

[87gtVIC]

Today I stripped the rain gutters of all their plastic nastiness. Self etched primered the area, and then coated it with black trim paint. Came out good. Now I can wash the car without worrying about getting cut up by the dried out plastic knifes on the roof.

P.Side turned out a bit better because I was able to remove all of the plastic. The drivers side had some left over. Some tough adhesive was used or something...





Then I painted up my EGT grille. I had already painted it yesterday but a spot lifted on me and crinkled. I sanded it down later that day and resprayed it but it happened again. So I let everything dry over night and attacked it again this morning. I sanded down the infected areas with 220. Spot primed those areas, then feathered everything back together with a gray scotch brite pad. Re painted it in the shed (it was windy outside) then cleared it. I gotta say it looks damn nice for being done with only spray cans. I used Rustoleum filler primer as the primer, expresspaints.com base coat (XD Light Santa Fe) and Rustoleum Acrylic Enamel as the clear coat. VERY nice clear coat I must say for a can. Just take a look.







After that I removed the original dealer sticker from the car's trunk lid as it was old and fading



And I also painted up a license plate frame color matched to the car. May do one for my Crown Victoria...



I buffed the front bumper cover today as well but it did want to shine, so I guess I will have to live with it. I was hoping it would come back to life but It wouldn't give one bit.

[sly]

nice job. I used a dremel to grind the plastic off (along with the rust). I masked it a little better (down into the gutters), but my rails looked like crap afterward compared to those (gouges from the dremel and overly rough spots).

[87gtVIC]

nice job. I used a dremel to grind the plastic off (along with the rust). I masked it a little better (down into the gutters), but my rails looked like crap afterward compared to those (gouges from the dremel and overly rough spots).

Thanks.

This car had just light surface rust underneath the failing plastic. Came right of after a few passes with a medium grit sanding sponge/block thingy. But in order to even get to the surface rust I used a little flat head screw driver, razor blades and my fingers to pry up the cracking plastic. It was very hard to remove along the inside of the car...as of a result the screw driver/ razor blades slipped a couple times. That is the reason for the high masking job along the inside of the car..had to cover up the bare metal scratches. Works for me because It probably is not fun waxing in that tiny gutter area anyways. Ideally though I would have preferred to mask it tight along the metal as it was originally. I just hope it lasts. lol

Can you show me your page with all the little projects you did/do? I wanna see how your turned out...I was looking for it weeks ago but as you know the search function is acting wonky at times.

[sly]

I think I just posted it in the "what are you working on" thread... I'll go find it.

bah... can't find it. Here's a link to my "Myspace" blog that has it
http://www.myspace.com/myhomeintexas/blog

[87gtVIC]

Sweet. That is what I was looking for..just couldn't find it either.

[87gtVIC]

Last weekend I also installed the fog light harness and mounted the fog lights themselves. I think I put them in a pretty good spot, not like I had in min with the picture I posted a page back or so. So the harness was not bad to install at all, but the kit did not come with a ground harness so I had to make that up...

OH and the kit did not come with a relay so I looked through my bins of parts and found a relay harness and all from the fog light kit my dad purchased for my mom's Explorer a couple years back. Installed the relay last weekend as well and ran the trigger wire for the coil into the cabin and waited till I received my EGT fog lamp switch.

The switch finally arrived 3 and a half weeks later (with a post mark date of 2 days ago)...amazing how fast something can come from California via snail mail when you actually make some effort to ship the damn thing. Tested the switch and it worked fine. Tested the illumination for it and the bulb was out. What a tiny freaking thing. Took the switch a part and replaced the bulb from another aftermarket switch I had lying around and all worked properly.

This afternoon my dad and I installed the switch within the provided blank spot on the dash. Looks really nice. I will get some pictures of everything once I align the fog lights.

Next up is washing, claying, polishing, then waxing the car so I can get to installing the mud flaps I have.

[87gtVIC]

Installed some speakers I had lying around the house into the doors today. The stock ones were very crackly and it became apparent why when I removed them. The foam around the speaker cone was dried and missing in a lot of places. Newer speakers in and I can now listen to the radio with the loud function and not hear dying speakers. Yay. While I was in the doors my dad lubed up the window channels as well as the cable crank system. Everything is working nicely. Tried to align the foglights but it is too bright out to see anything so that will have to wait.