Escort 500Se Cabriolet

This week I’ve managed to make some time in my busy life to go and see my mate Baz who helped us on the Chop Shop Lawrence Dallaglio Capri. I wanted to check on the progress on my Escort Cabriolet project.

I asked my mate Baz to take on the body side of the Escort project mainly because filling and paint is not really my thing, and seeing as he's multi skilled and can carry out the dent repairs as well as the preparation for the paint.... well, over to him.
He is also one of the best painters I have worked with and have carried many custom paint jobs on show cars. 

As with all skilled tradesmen, his work does the talking.

When I arrived at his workshop he was just finishing of the dent repairs which are spot on with only a light skim of filler.

Ideally for the best results when filling panels you should remove as much of the dent as possible. Less filler means the repair has less chance of sinking in the future.

Baz removed most of the dents with his hammer and dolly. He does this by beating out the dent from inside while holding the dolly on the outside of the panel where there is access.

In places where there is no access he uses a pin puller or Miracle System which welds a small pin or plate onto the panel then using a slide hammer pulls the dent out. The pin is then removed with a grinder giving you a surface to fill on to. All this sounds complicated when you could just slap some filler on. But then we are pros, and don't settle for second best.

While Baz was doing this I popped of to my workshop to pick up a spare vented RS turbo bonnet I had kicking about because the one on the car was so full of filler we decided to change it for a better one. This will help us get the car in Primer quicker.

After this I managed to get on to eBay (my favourite place!) and source my self a new roof for the car as the one on the car was knackered.
The roof wanted was blue mohair -  like it came from the factory -  not the cheap vinyl roof it had been replaced with at some point. Amateurs!

After lots of searching I found one, pressed the "BUY NOW" button... only to get told the next day they had sold it to someone else. I was not happy as they had broken eBay rules.
But I managed to find a black mohair roof complete with frame for £120. Not my ideal,  but being this cheap I had to get it and if a blue one comes up I can always sell it on .
It turns out it was only 20 miles away so me and Danny jumped in the van and picked it up and stored it in my workshop with the other parts.

Check my next blog as we will hopefully have the shell in primer and I’ll see if the engine will start for the first time...

In six months, fingers crossed...

Comments

[paintless dent repair]

Hi,

This week I’m all excited as my Escort 500se Cabriolet was going to get painted, woo hoo!
Baz my mate and all round body-work master rang me to tell me the prep work was finished and the car was ready for paint, so I got down to his workshop to take pictures of the process.Because I work in a body shop for a living - not just for the telly on Chop Shop! - as you can imagine I have seen many cars get painted but there is something special about watching your own car get painted, especially when it started as such a wreck. Seeing all the stages of the repair and watching the final coat go on is really satisfying.