Camshaft wrote:
Hahaha, just stumbled upon this and thought "Whoa! Somebody took a pic of my car at work!"
oldisgold wrote:
Stationwagonguy, your escort could be so cool with that drop, and I've always liked the escort wagon.. A friend of mine has used spacers to raise his engine in the bay to offset the broken axle and low oil pan problem. It looks impossibly low but seems to work well, scrapes on the "crown" in the road.. I long for a slammed Focus wagon or late 90's Seville STS..
Haha, thanks! It's grown on me tremendously as well, even the odd salmon/fleshtone color, haha. I've thought about doing that as well if/when it comes to that time. I do know that even if I don't slam this Escort wagon, I'd like another to do it to.
Also, this is a very low local Focus wagon. Apparently Focus wagons had a different rear suspension setup than regular Focii, and this guy happened to nab a set of SEVERELY discounted KW coilovers built specifically for a Focus wagon... I think he paid like $200 for them brand new. So then he felt obliged to buy a Focus wagon, haha.
It was lower than this at some previous point in time as well.
john wrote:
Stationwagonguy wrote:
It doesn't look that low in the picture, but the trans pan was less than an inch from the ground like that.
There are fixes, if you want it bad enough. Most K-cars had plenty of clearance between the hood and engine. One would need to shim the engine up as high as possible. And an airdam wouldn't hurt either.
Of course, swapping in a Shadow/Omni 5spd trans would be a good call also. Way more ground clearance that way.
My 210 is going to be so low that I'm actually considering raising the engine up an inch or two.
Something like this. In this case, stance
will equal fun.
A 5-speed swap was planned in the Aries, but nobody seems to love that car enough to go through with it. I called and asked what happened to it yesterday, a friend still has it in his driveway- another friend bought it and has been paying for it in installments, but now wants to sell it again. Trans is leaking from some other point (he told me, I forgot) and this kid needs money. I'm tempted, but I've got my FWD wagon for now, haha. I think $1200 would take it away. Poor car, it starts and runs every time with a turn of a key and runs like a sewing machine... it just needs to stop being owned by idiots.
The Escort's oil pan is cast aluminum and it sits pretty high up in the engine bay as-is... so does the trans pan. So I don't think I'd really need to make spacers for it if I went that route. My issue is more with the quarters- I've already got issues when I hit bumps with 3 or 4 people in the car, the passenger rear wheel scrapes on something and it's literally CARVING off the sidewall in sizeable chunks. The sidewall looks like a record, I swear. Could be an alignment issue, but rolling the quarter wouldn't look right, IMO. And right now it's starting to rust there so I'm trying to be more gentle as to how I handle the situation.
I really do need to drop that thing to the ground. I do know someone who dailies this GTI year 'round (and has a Porsche 911 as a toy, used to have an S2000 and a BMW 2002, as well as several DSMs), and despite how impossibly low it is, he insists it's comfortable, and I've watched him go about anywhere in it.
And John, I can't wait to see your 210 that low.
Those racing series ones with the box flares make me want to build one every time I them.
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Camshaft wrote:
It scares the bejesus out of me that someone, somewhere ordered the Lusitania with front drum brakes.
