An enjoyable trip over to Martin Buckleyʼs marvellous car barn in Gloucestershire provided an opportunity to call in at St Maryʼs church in Fairford to enjoy the extraordinary windows. Religion, as Edie Brickell once sang, is the smile on a dog, but here are some of the best-preserved 16th-century stained-glass windows anywhere, and theyʼre well worth a visit.
The 100-odd miles went by uneventfully, just after putting the motor back together following a blown head gasket at Goodwood (Our classics, January). How much fuel the Escort uses is an educated guess: the gauge only reads up to three-quarters even when the nine-gallon tank is full, and there are two gallons left when it hits the red. The trip used a bit less than half a tank; Iʼve always reckoned on about 25mpg on the road, so that sounds about right.
There was then lots of fiddling ahead of The Pomeroy Trophy at Silverstone. Most of the coolant hoses had been on the car for at least 27 years, so I swapped them for a new set, mostly silicone, with fresh Jubilee clips. The heater-tocarb pipes had been missing since I had junked the thermostatic autochoke quite early on, so the local hardware store came to the rescue with a 15mm (still known in plumbing terms as ʻ½inʼ) copper connector to link them.
The Bosch distributor was actually cobbled together from two old ones, ages ago. It runs a Hall sensor instead of points and appears to give the right amount of advance both at tickover and above 4000rpm, but I am not convinced that the sparks are always where they should be. A new non-vacuum unit advertised at Ignition Car Parts as ʻfast roadʼ for only £85 tempted me enough to give it a whirl. The ʻfast roadʼ bit refers to the lack of vacuum advance, which the Bosch didnʼt run, either – thereʼs no point with a bumpy cam. Thereʼs no noticeable difference in performance, but the hot starting is easier.
I raised the rear ride height by an inch, too; not only because I was fed up with hammering my backside on the bump-stops, but also to see if 185/70 tyres would fit (60s look anaemic; 70s are an inch taller). It was simply a matter of swapping the 2in lowering blocks for 1in items. Pleasingly, they came in very 1970s Grayston packaging featuring a Mk1 Escort. I also shortened the U-bolts to avoid unnecessary spannering-up of the redundant threads.
Climbing about under the car led to the discovery that the 25-year-old, partially handmade exhaust was fractured in t
