ford escourt xr3i

hi i have a budget of £3000 to mod a escort xr3i any ideas on what to do i have a few ideas like suspension exhaust sound system but does any one else know what else to do?

Reply to
Parkie
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Parkie raved thus:

:: hi i have a budget of £3000 to mod a escort xr3i any ideas on what :: to do i have a few ideas like suspension exhaust sound system but :: does any one else know what else to do?

Set it on fire and use the money to buy something else... Heh, I've a soft spot for the mk1 XR3i though!

Abo

Reply to
Abo

Sell it for, oh, about £500 if you're lucky.

Add this £500 to the £3000 you already have and buy a decent car.

'You can't polish a turd'.

HTH.

Reply to
SteveH

Sell it, and buy an Older Scooby, or a decent Saab 900 Turbo convertable.

Reply to
MeatballTurbo

OI, I wont have anyone dissing XR3i's they are a great car !!!!!!

But whats an Escourt?

Reply to
Ron

Part of an Essex mating ritual?

Reply to
Pete M

a MK1 XR3i is a fantastic car, I'd love to own a minter...

explain why you think they are turds Steve.

Reply to
Theo

Rust, rust and a bit more rust for good measure.

Utterly horrible CVH engine (valve stem seal problems, hydraulic tappet failure, thrashy, crap power output)

Stodgy handling.

Poor ride.

Heavy steering.

Poor quality interior.

Weak gearbox (diff. bearings tend to give up the ghost at 80k or so miles)

I think that just about sums up the MkIII / IV Escort. Of course the MkV was even worse.

The only MkIII / IV Escorts worth buying are the RS1600i (nice solid tappets) and S1 RS Turbo. But nice ones are rare and expensive.

Reply to
SteveH

Says the lover of all things italian.

Remember the Lancia/Polish steel problems?

Reply to
MeatballTurbo

Lol, look at Alfa's first

Very reliable, 115bhp 1.6 injection is great, 0-60 8.0's faster than most

1.6 litre cars nowadays

Tappets, 50 quid a set takes 20 mins to install

No problems with mine, although the MK4 was a little too soft

As above

wide tyres + no PAS = heavy steering on any car

Lol the interior was one of the best quality cars I have owned, the seats velour was sexy, recaro's on the Turbo were amazing, and all the switches work, always :)

Maybe I dont know, but costs 300 quid to replace a gearbox, how much is it on a Alfa?

Oh like my brother's

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Reply to
Ron

Sound advice.

You can get a genuinely decent car with £3500.

Reply to
Nom

You mean the ones that were more or less solved by the time the MkIV Escort came along then?

The same problems that Ford only got to grips with when they launched the Focus?

Reply to
SteveH

Yeah, lets look at my 2 and the one before that, should we. 13 years old, and nothing bar a little corrosion in at the bottom of the rear arches where the mud gets trapped.

Let's take an especially close look at my 112k miles / 13 year old 75 that is utterly solid underneath. Not a spot of corrosion, nor a single patch welded anywhere. Just a little spot under one of the rear light clusters.... for some reason they _all_ go there, but only on the nearside.

Not forgetting an honourable mention for my 1979 Fiat Spider. OK, so the body was a little crispy around the edges, but it was close on 25 years old. However, the structural bits were solid and had never seen a patch or welding torch.

Whereas the only 2 Fords we've owned (MkII Fiesta and MkIV Escort) needed loads of welding done. (Both were F-plate and only 10 years old at the time).

Fiesta - front strut tops, sills, jacking points. Escort - Boot floor, sills.

*cough*

Been reading Max Power?

Standard power output for a MkIII / IV XR3i was 103bhp at the crank.

Not entirely sure about performance figures, but I reckon low to mid 9s is more accurate.

*bollocks* - maybe the valve stem seals would be that easy, but I think you'll find that the hydraulic lifters are a little more expensive and harder to fix than that.

They wallow and steer with the accuracy of a canal barge.

But you drive an Audi A4, so you don't really know much about handling ;-)

Thrashy, crashy stuff. Totally at odds with the squidgy handling. Especially the MkIV.

Doesn't have to be that way.

Acres of hard plastic, and vinyl trim that peeled off the armrests on the front doors in the heat.

For my 75 with it's rear-mounted box - £250 for the box, plus fitting. For a FWD Alfa 33 - £75 for a box and 2 hours to fit.

For an Escort - about the same as a FWD 33....

Nice. Very nice.

But remember, a S1 RS Turbo is a massively different car to the XR3i and S2 RS Turbo. The chassis was closely related to the RS1600i, which still is a _very_ competetive hot-hatch.

Seriously, the MkIII XR3i was pretty good in it's day - until the MkII Golf GTI came along, anyway. It was a terrible car by the time the MkIV was launched. Even Katie's 33 1.7IE out handles and out-performs an XR3i. My Cloverleaf would eat them for breakfast.

Reply to
SteveH

Golf VR6 or Corrado immediately spring to mind.....

Or an absolutely mint Alfa 145 Greencloverleaf, Alfa 155 V6, Fiat Bravo HGT.... mwhahahahahaha ;-)

Reply to
SteveH

haha you have obviously never driven an Audi A4 Quattro, no its not a sabaru or a lancia EVO but it will take most cars on the road today on cornering, look at the touring car's, in the end they had to ban it lol after giving it stupid amounts of weight penalty's

Dont even try and compare a 2wd A4 too a Quattro, they are a totally different car.

Reply to
Ron

Or keep the escort, buy a BX 19 DTR for a few hundred (just so happens i know of one for sale ;)), and fight them to the death. THEN go and buy a decent car :)

Reply to
Carl Gibbs

108 with the early cars making 105 115 rings a bell though, but wouldn't like to say without checking first
Reply to
dojj

dojj waffled on in a quite bewildering manner to produce...

115 bhp was the RS1600i, with the hand ported head, solid lifters, and totally unreliable twin coil pack ignition. Lovely alloy rocker cover though.

XR3i's were 105 bhp.

RS Turbos were, comically, 125 bhp, might have hit the heady heights of 130.

Reply to
Pete M

132 for the S1 132 for the S2 133 for the fiesta ;)
Reply to
dojj

erm, wtf! I reckon I can ring any gbox recondintioners and get prices 2-3 times that much.

where you getting yours?

Reply to
Theo

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