RS Motorsport :: Classic Speed Restored

Hi all, first time here on the RS forums although I'm sure a few here know me already as I've been around Escorts since the early 90's. My name is Scott Doyle, but my 'internet' name is one that I have used since the first forum I registered on many years ago. Makes it easier to remember that way, I hope no-one minds...

My first car was a Mk1 2 door which was a basic road car that I mainly used in motorkhanas, khanacross and autocrosses. Originally 1600, I ended up putting a 2ltr in it and It saw a couple of rallies until it's demise in mid '95.

Second one was a mk1 2 door, 1600 and compression struts, built by Bill Norris I think. It was a pretty basic car which once again saw quite a few motorkhanas and a couple of hillclimbs. Eventually the body got pretty sad and I parted it out.

A few years later I got hold of a 2 door Mk2 2ltr which I used as a road car, m/k and then built it up for rallies. Unfortunately it didn't quite make it thru rally #1 but I reshelled it and used it in motorkhanas and khanacrosses for a few more years before selling it to someone in Sydney (I believe it was painted red but that's as much as I know of what happened to it)

Currently I occasionally run my father's Mk2 in HRCC regularity events at Morgan Park and we should be going there again in a few weeks time, hope to see some of you up there. We've got some suspension work to do first though. It's an original 2ltr Rally Pack with not too many mods. I don't think we will ever seriously race it but it's enough fun for the times when we get it to the track. There's a plain 2dr shell waiting for something a bit more serious one day. Got too many other projects to finish first though.



Cheers
-Scott

Welcome Scott! Great looking Rallye Pack. I will be back at Morgan Park next month for the 3rd round of the B series SuperSprints, maybe we can catch up then?

Thanks for the welcomes everyone.

I drove dad's car for the first time on the track at the HRCC TTT day at Morgan Park in feb 2007. It still had the RS style seats in it then and needless to say I came away with a rather sore back by the end of the day. Up until then dad had driven it in the HRCC regularities at QR and their first few at Morgan Park. I ran my first regularity in it in May 2007 but we missed the August event. I then ran it in May and again in August 2008. For the May meeting we made sure it had a decent seat/harnesses and we fixed the brakes by the August event. Unfortunately I made a slight mistake in event 1 on Sunday and put it over the kerb sideways between turn 1 (kink) and turn 2 and bent some suspension bits. So we're currently fixing it up for the HRCC meet on the 25/26 July. We'll probably camp there like last year, hopefully it's not as cold this time:

g,day scott
your old rally cars sound interesting !
got any photos ?

I'd have to go digging for some pics of the Mk 1's which were before my digital pic era. This is the one that ended up going to Sydney, pretty much as it was in this pic:

great action shot scott
better get some pics of the mk 1 up too
or any others you have up your sleeve
ps
plenty of ppl here would love to see em
& a few motorkhana or rally storys
would be good eh ????

Well, the only other digital pic that I have at hand is the last one ever taken of the previous incarnation of the white car above. I bought the car in '96 sometime I think. It was an average 2ltr manual which I gave a quick paint job and stuck some low suspension in it for motorkhanas. I won C class in the Queensland Motorkhana Championship in it one year, mainly because Ken was Datsunless at the time if I recall.

It was prepared for rallying in early '98. It had World cup struts with taper wound coils, Bilstein Rear shocks and van springs, Sierra 5 speed and a quaife lsd. Brakes were standard but I had a pedal box in it which vastly improved the balance. The motor was nothing special but it was (and possibly still is??) very reliable. It had a pair of 40mm Dellortos and a set of extractors giving about 120 engine hp. The head I had made for the 2 ltr in my mk1 was re-used, the bottom end was supposedly fully balanced and it had forged pistons. The cam was nothing wild and it was centre drilled for oil delivery directly onto the cam lobes. I made up an aluminium cover to go over the cam posts to keep the oil contained. Never had any cam problems after that!

It never made it to the end of its first rally unfortunately. We were going along OK for the first few stages, slowly getting the feel for the car on gravel, getting used to what the suspension would take. It was a much better car that the mk1 I had done a few rallies in previously so I was generally enjoying it.

We were getting towards the end of the first afternoon stage when our rally ended. There was a fairly long straight section which we were to turn left off a couple of k's along. For whatever reason we came to this turnoff way too fast, but it was just a T junction off the main road so there was bunting across in front of us. Unfortunately there were some other obstacles in the way as well. The roadblock sign was spiked into the middle of the road and also the roadblock official's car was partly parked on the left hand side of the road. Natural reaction was to aviod these 2 obstacles by swerving to the right. That dragged us down into the spoon drain and we glanced a couple of trees before the front dug into the culvert drain crossing from the other side of the road (all the damage to the front of the car). Now I can't reall the exact mechanics of what happened next, but going by the scratches and dents we went end over, driver's side slightly down. Coming down the other side we collected a tree (which we broke off) but luckily that tree didn't fall all the way down and we rolled off it to the side, back on its wheels facing the direction from whence we had come. We were both OK, Larisa had stuck her pen thru her T-shirt and maybe had one or two scratches, but the car wasn't going anywhere on its own! We eventually flat towed it out of the stage and with a lot of friends and anonymous helpers eventually got it home. The saddest thing about that incident was that the main road was straight for at least another 100 metres after the roadblock. If we were able to go straight thru the bunting we would have been able to stop, turn around and continue on.

Danny might recognise the sump guard. Every time I trip over it at home I think that I should get it pressed straight and give it back...

Did you ever pay me for that!


Danny

I just found this other pic from Morgan Park in August 2008. We're currently getting the car ready for the meet on the 25/26 July where I'm driving in the regularity again. The car will be at Ken's on Monday for an alignment check so apart from that it's all ready to go. We'll be camping at the track again so maybe we'll catch up with whoever's going to be there.

- Scott

Some great pictures, and great stories. Look forward to hearing / reading more. Fantastic looking car btw, love the colour scheme.

Hi again, just back from the HRCC event at Morgan Park where I ran the Escort in the regularities. It was the first time I'd driven the car since the same event last year (where I sligthly bent the front left suspension..). The major change for this event from last year was fitting a set of coil-overs and going to a new set of tyres.



We ended up with 3deg camber and 3.5 caster from the set of strut tops we made. That combined with some new Kumho 175/60's (13") made the car a lot more stable than its previous outing. Best time for the weekend was a 1:17.87 in event 1 where I finished =4th with Jason Delaney who usually drives an Escort, but this weekend was in a Rent-A-Torana.



I would have been better off increasing my nominated time for the 2nd and 3rd events where traffic and other obstacles ate into my lap times too much. I finished 9th in the 2nd and then 6th in the final evnet. In the last event, on turn 1. Ashley Heffernan spun in front of me so I had to slow to get around him, then on about lap 3 coming into the esses someone (I think Darren Ferguson) had clipped the tyres on the inside and dislodged one which sat up and rolled into the middle of the road. I had to slow down quite a bit to go around the outside of that. For the rest of the laps, the remnants of the tyre bundle was left sitting on the ripple strip so getting a good line thru there was impossible after that.

All 3 events were 8 lappers which was stretching the friendship with the standard discs up front by the end. Overall it was a pretty successful weekend and it was good to catch up with a few of you up there. Once again a very smoothly run weekend from HRCC and thanks to anyone involved in the running of the event.

Looks like you had a great time too Scott!
That tactic with the tyre bundle by "Fergie" is just his normal form!!!!! Tell him I said that, next time you see him........then he will tell you about the time that I shot straight across his bows at turn one and on his Incar camera you can hear him pissing himself laughing!!