1975 MkII Ford Escort RS1800 Rally

Another archived build. The kit is by Italeri so I expected warpage, rough surfaces and bad fits. It didn't disappoint.
Let's start with the bodywork.






Holes filled, sinks filled, bonnet untwisted, superglued and de-lumped, front lip added and filled.





I put a couple of panels across the back light holes as I don't think there would be anywhere to hold the glass.
All primed including the underside and side doors. I hate using my primer because It's so precious. And I'm a miser.




Put down coats of pure white.




Let's gather the engine next.

Looks like you have a bit of work to do.

I can hear that BDA engine already.
I’ve built a few in the past, but replicas of other peoples club cars......don’t expect to make any profit if you are thinking of doing the same thing.

One of the most iconic cars ever built, both the MK1 and MK2 Escorts are legends...

Old Esci kit Dave, they were impossible to find for reasonable money.

It's great to see you building the repop, it's not really that bad... :54

On to the lump today. Not many bits so much work required. Let's see what I can come up with.




Based with steel and washed with blacks and browns.





Ive painted the top plenum a mix of light blue and silver. Shaded & detailed. I've added the "FORD" letters individually as decals. I've detailed the exposed timing gears and detailed them with teeth as best as possible.


I painted the filter, made some points for the plugs along the top and made a rudimentary distributor which is really well hidden underneath the filter.






Now I'll have to get to work on the underneath before I can put the engine in and finish it off.







Engine secured after the underneath was completed and weathered up. A dodgy coil scratched by me.





After making some throttle linkages and a return spring I decided to scratch up an oil tank, cooler and filter with it being a dry sump.




I took quite the adjustments to get the stance correct. It was a good 10mm out in some places.
I hand painted the tyre lettering.





More to come later.

It's coming along nice.

Hi Dave,

This is sweet looking Sir; love the little engine details you've added...

Andy...

Excellent work on the ride height and track width, these kits do need a bit of surgery to the front struts, I have an old Scale Models mag with pics somewhere.

Great to see the WIP Dave.

Finished up the radiator and whatever I could for now.



On to some interior next.
I ran some fuel lines through the cockpit and put the fire supression in. I used scrap decals to make the extinguishers more 'interesting'.
That red wire is from the battery in the boot. I made some basic mats and test fit the dash after painting it.





I broke out the beige seatbelt material, cut some belts to size and dyed them with blue ink.
The kit does have buckles but it recommends just throwing them away as it now has decals for the belts, no chance.





Seats installed, time period labels added and belts attatched to a spare part from my Alfa at the back.
Constructed the roll cage and finished up all the details.





Next we'll be working on the body decals.

Fantastic detail, looking really good .....can’t fault it !

It's looking great! I love the detail work.

Morning. As I mentioned before, I placed a backing behind the rear lights which you can see here. The lenses were really bad and needed quite a bit of fixing.





I gave the body a run over with Tamiya compounds first then got down to the sweary process od the decals.
I did manage it in around six swear words. There was gaps which I touched up. The hard part was mixing the right colour.
All hail Microsol.






After finishing up the easy decals and replacing the 'Dunlop' with 'Good Year' I added some final details to the engine bay.







I elected to have the spotlight uncovered so I used a bit of the Molitow pen for the chroming.
I did the final final engine bay by adding a throttle cable and tubing the bottles up right.




I scratch built some mud guards. I don't know why there wasn't any provided.




I added an aerial using wire and just as I was sick of looking at the whole thing, it was done.








Italeri are fun if you put the effort in to them.

Hi Dave,

Excellent work Sir, she is a real beauty...

Andy...

Yes, excellent job. ....I know the Esci models need a bit of fettling to look right, but this looks ace !

Looks like another great build!

Great result Dave, You don't often see these built up well, let alone detailed out.

Certainly better than one of those that I built, and the only archive photo I have. ......sold it on Ebay many moons ago.

Usual story here Ron, built one as a teenager.

Looked for one for years, payed a fortune for an original Eaton's Yale sponsored original Esci that came from Canada of all places.

Then they repop the bleeding thing. Typical! lol

What? people would actually buy these things built up? I didn't think there was a market for it.

There is a market out there - a few years ago I sold most of my collection, and unbuilt stash, over several weeks on Ebay.
Admittedly, many to repeat buyers, I sold them in pairs, for no less than £20 plus postage. Many went well over that price.
They have to be packed well.
I have photos of some of the kits I built, and sold, and was thinking of uploading them on here.....for nostalgia’s sake.

Dave, if a kit is impossible to get, you buy a properly built up one and start again, not a glue bomb. Never had to do that yet but some of the old Johan stuff is like hen's teeth these days, they're even looking at 'reverse engineering' whole kits.

Any pics welcome Ron.

Hi,

Bravo!!
This is a really beautiful build!
I love the colored engine.

Pascal