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Hi Kieth, I think the reason some of these 70s colours (also noticed BL Pageant Blue, Russet brown and Tartan Red plus Ford Daytona Yellow and I think Purple Velvet metallic!) are still in demand is not so much for classic cars (although that is a bonus) but because they are good strong basic colours for non car related projects and crafts. As long as there is the demand Holts etc will probably keep on making them! Chris

This week's progress on the Escort: Started with the exhaust - found some galvanised wire in the garage, which was easier to bend into shape than trying to do plastic rod - and, being galvanised, has the advantage of looking very exhaust pipe like! The kit exhaust features a single oval silencer under the boot whereas the road cars have an oval silencer ahead of the axle and a second, round one, under the boot so I recycled the kit one as the front box and made a back box out of plastic tube, with a bit of brass small bore tubing as the tail piece. At

We used to call them Marina convertables! My 1972 Triumph 2000 came to me with pressed black aluminium plates and one of the first things I did was change them. I was originally going to go with raised letter reflectives but I was swayed by the sales brochures from the time which showed white on black raised letters and I really liked the look of them. Technically OK as a 72 car but it was an expensive car when new and the double barrelled named fella that bought it new arranged to get it for the 1st August 72 to get the new L registration so I doubt he would have scrimped on the number p

I have found that they actually look more obviously too thick on reflective plates! Slightly thinner plates may have helped though Must dust my models better before photographing! Separate letter reflective plates were really only used up until the late 70s/early 80s. For later cars I got off ebay some self adhesive vinyl 'make your own' ones which are quite effective for Perspex type plates but you didn't get that many out of a pack. I used them on my 25th Anniversary mini in my mk3 mini conversion thread. They also do ones for white on black and silver on black but, al

Hi Anteater I found that if you use the method I did where you use a think coat of satin black to stick the letters on some of the black will come up the bottom of the letters and reduce there apparent thickness a little, but yes, they are a little too thick for scale! cheers Chris

I have been doing a few conversions of mini coopers to standard minis (my latest mk 3 is on britmodeller here) and one of the conversions I want to do is to make the revell cooper into the Mk1 Austin mini super used in Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased). I have managed to get some mini super type wheels from Motobitz but have been struggling to find the standard Austin wavy grill, which I looks like yours has - is there any chance I would be able to buy one off of you? Would save me a lot of work! cheers Chris

Set myself quite a bit to get done this week and despite (or maybe because of) working from home managed to get a lot of it done! Took the plunge and cut out the Revell diff and fitted the one from the Lotus 7. The Escort has a two piece prop shaft with a sliding joint rather than a universal joint at the gearbox end so it was relatively simple to extend the lotus one to reach the gearbox. Like most of the kit's steering components the steering rack was useless so created my own using tube and the gaiters/arms from an old Airfix 1/32nd kit (possibly e type?). Steering has been

So some tangible progress this week, albeit slow! Scratch-built an exhaust manifold. These were rough cast iron so I have tried to simulate that by soaking in liquid cement and stippling with an old tooth brush, hopefully will look ok when painted several shades of rust! Word of warning though - I built it in a wooden jig and managed to glue it to the wood doing this and took some careful work to get it out in one piece! Not had too much luck with the inlet manifold yet but have now found some good images on the net so will try and do that this week. Problem is most available image

That's a very interesting link and it certainly looks like the Tamiya has the 1500 5 bearing pre crossflow kent engine built by Cosworth. Also interesting about the back axle - as a life long Standard/Triumph owner I knew the remote change was from a Herald but didn't realise that the back axle was from a Standard 10. For this project I have partly been using the Airfix 1/32nd scale Mk1 Escort as a point of reference and, whilst not absolutely identical, the Ford axle is certainly close enough to the Standard 10 one for it to be usable, and definitely closer than the rally one supplied in

Hi Alan, You are not wrong! I am converting the pre crossflow kent from the Lotus 7 into a crossflow Kent - the bottom end is basicaly the same (enough for modelling purposes anyway!) and am making up new inlet and exhaust manifolds, carb, air filter etc. The sump also had to be reversed from the Cortina/Classic orientation to match the escort one. cheers Chris

The Tamiya kit is a Lotus 7 series 2 which used the engine and gearbox from the early 60s consul classic so I would guess that the back axle came from a similar source - certainly it looks like the one I had on my Anglia! - so should be pretty close to a road going escort one I would think? Rocker cover is a Cosworth one, who I think modded the Ford engine for Lotus at that time. The basic shape will be correct once the ribs have been removed and the filler will need moving to the front to clear the large air filter mk2 escorts had. cheers Chris

I'm going to try and post something on this once a week if I can! This week I have been continuing work on the engine & gearbox plus the ancillaries. Lucas alternator finished (photographs can be unflattering but looks good from normal viewing distance) - adjustment bracket is fragile and may not survive! Fan belt got broken on removal from the donor engine and I had to run a thin strip around it to repair - will thin this down at some point. Engine mounts have been made in one piece - there is a convenient hole through the Tamiya engine for

Having hit a bit of a wall in trying to make a standard interior for this car I have decided to pursue the idea of trying to convert the Tamiya Lotus 7 engine into an 1100 cross flow kent. The Tamiya Lotus is a series 2 and research on the internet reveals that the car was fitted with the pre-crossflow 1340 kent from the Consul Classic/Capri with a gearbox from the same source or from the 105E Anglia, with the remote change from a Triumph bolted on. Now I owned a real Anglia for 20 years and, while that does look like an Anglia box (and it is definitely a Kent engine), proportionally

Interior in the kit is no use for a road car - no back seat anyway and buckets in the front. At least the resin shell I bought has a RHD dashboard, albeit a pretty poor one. I am carrying on with the engine for now and hope to post some progress later today, although you are right - it is a mammoth task! Chris

Thanks for the kind words everybody! My understanding is that the 1100 and 1300 at least inherited the crossflow kent from the mk1 escort. To be honest after the amount of time the body has taken I wasn't going to bother with an engine, especially not the kit one, but then I found this in my bits box It's a pre crossflow Kent from the Tamiya Lotus 7 kit. It's going to involve a fair bit of work, including crossflow manifolds, and, going by my Airfix 1/32nd Mk1 escort kit, the starter motor needs to be on the other side. Engine mounts will need to