AWA Escort

[Chris Kitzen]

To be honest I don't really know and I don't know if he knew what he was talking about either. I guess it had something to do with strengthening the shell as it was a time before roll cages of course. I've seen the Alan Mann car in the UK and had a good look at the Fahey car during restoration and didn't notice any outriggers on either whatever they may be, The Fahey car is very special and massively modified in the chassis department from a standard Escort of any kind. It actually makes a full spec rally car with four link suspension and turrets look very pedestrian. I have never seen anything even close to front suspension on another Escort. If anyone can shed any light on the outriggers I'd be interested in hearing about them.

[Bailey]

Wow! Awesome pics Ross.

The Frist Escort in behind the AWA Escort in the bottom picture, had the best sounding 4 cyl
engine I ever heard, probably until the M3 BMW group A cars in the 1980's It was driven
pretty hard too, from what I remember FVC powered ? Where is it now ?

[BMCBOY]

Another photo I found for Chris showing Bryan Blackberry in the Frist Escort with the AWA car. Looks as if there has been some "close" racing happening by the tyremarks on the door of the front car.

[Steve Holmes]

How are you progressing on the restoration of this car Chris?

[escorthvn]

To be honest I don't really know and I don't know if he knew what he was talking about either. I guess it had something to do with strengthening the shell as it was a time before roll cages of course. I've seen the Alan Mann car in the UK and had a good look at the Fahey car during restoration and didn't notice any outriggers on either whatever they may be, The Fahey car is very special and massively modified in the chassis department from a standard Escort of any kind. It actually makes a full spec rally car with four link suspension and turrets look very pedestrian. I have never seen anything even close to front suspension on another Escort. If anyone can shed any light on the outriggers I'd be interested in hearing about them.

Chris, Those outriggers may have been the extra inner strengthening part of the 'B' pillar and under the roof skin done by Gomms pre roll cagers as the world cup cars and a Raydens car.???

The only outriggers I have had were on my game fishing boat,now you have the 2.0 ltr cosworth iron block you need to start the resto. Pete

[Steve Holmes]

Another photo I found for Chris showing Bryan Blackberry in the Frist Escort with the AWA car. Looks as if there has been some "close" racing happening by the tyremarks on the door of the front car.

That Frist Escort is a cool looking car. What is the history on it? Does it still exist?

[Chris Kitzen]

How are you progressing on the restoration of this car Chris?

Well I haven't got much further actually Steve as I'm waiting to get a shed up at home so I have somewhere to do the work. Nearly there finally.

I did manage to get my hands on the original engine block about a month ago. Long story but until recently it was basically still in the same workshop where the car was maintained in the 70's. It ended up in an Escort rally car with pushrods and a pre-crossflow Cortina head on it. It's approx 89mm bore so nearly 2 litres.

It's a special casting with a boss added on the oil gallery for an external oil feed. Alloy blocks are the same because there isn't enough room for the oil gallery to run through the engine with the bigger bore. They were totally bored out and the liners were vacuum brazed in. This is how you got 2 litres out of a BDA engine before alloy blocks were thought of.

I need to get it crack tested to see if it's useable and it will need a bore if it is as it's scored in No3. A nice bit of work actually and really pleased to have it.

[Steve Holmes]

Wow, that is a great find Chris! I love stories like this. Really great score.

[Terry S]

As to the question of "roof outriggers", RS2000 supplied this on TNF:

"The Mann biography refers to welding in a "top hat" shaped cross brace to the roof in a not obvious way and that this proved the provenance of some of the cars much later on. Without ploughing through the Appendix J "freedoms" I can't recall when body strengthening became free in Gp2 but this was perfectly permissible in Gp2 in the final years but probably not then. Roll cage mountings were very limited then with none of the massive constructions used today that attach everywhere. The weakest point of a Mk1 Escort shell was by the A pillars whereas on a Mk2 it was below the C pillars. Either way, it was presumably seen as important to shell rigidity and would have been concealed by the head lining. The permitted cage then was little more than the initial hoop behind the B pillar. Later the "14 point" cage was the norm right to the end of that Appendix J - the final Escorts in the 81 WRC still had no rear diagonal, not least because the passenger seat needed to be reclined.

My main concern in later years was that we had removed the standard production roof cross brace from a Mk2 International Rally car as weight saving rather than added anything, although I'm sure it was not standard production on all Mk2 models. I don't think Mk2 RS shells had it but mundane models did, suggesting that on standard cars it was more about "NVH" or whatever the term is."

[Chris Kitzen]

Awesome thanks.

My shell has some extra strengthening in a couple of areas. Across the top of the windscreen inner panels front and rear (the front has the interior light fitted in it) have both been spot welded to the roof whereas as a standard shell is only spot welded in the windscreen aperture with sealer between the other edge. Of course spot welding them to the roof panel means the spot welds all have to be filled with bog. You can see it now as the shell has been sand blasted but you would never know when painted. The rear seat cross member is also extended up to the top of the 4 link mounts, out through the inner quarter panels and brazed to the outer quarters. Not sure how extending it out to the rear quarters helps but they must have thought it did something.

[Chris Kitzen]

Found these a little while ago as well so my question some time ago about when it came to NZ has been answered

From Motoraction 22 Aug 1975



... and from Motoraction 14 November 1975