Not an Audi

[amanda]

Out and about today and spotted this, not seen one of these for a while

[Coxy]

Bloody hell, didn't know they still existed!!

I had one years and years ago!! a 1977 Fiesta on an R plate. it was red and I put a ferrari sticker on it, and it made it go faster! I remember taking it to the jet wash and when I was jet washing the front wing, a huge chunk of rust fell out!!!
Got rid of it 2 weeks after that cos the MOT was due!!

[amanda]

I was supprised to see it to be fair, but it looks as though it is being looked after which is good cos all early fords are prone to tin worm

[90Quattro]

wow that is in good nick. is that an original colour?

[TheTwelveQuidKid]

Oh please don't get me started on old Fiestas. Oops, too late.

I didn't get into them until the MK2. The local authority I worked for in the late 80s had loads of then as pool cars. They also had a few old Metros and a couple of MK1 Fiestas, but no-one wanted to drive them if they could help it, as they didn't even have radios or reclining seats. I ended up using one of the dreaded Metros for a trip from Chichester to Haywards Heath, and on the way back, the clutch mechanism seized up, and the pedal jammed. I think there was some sort of recovery service (must have been, seeing as the council had a fleet of their own trucks) but I just wanted to get back to the office, so I carried on driving it. I knew it was possible to change gear without using the clutch, and that journey was some good practice. I only stalled it once, and that was on the roundabout near Butlins in Bognor, where there was a traffic jam. I put it in 2nd, turned the key and it lurched back into life. Got it back to county hall, but there was a delivery lorry blocking access to the car park, so I put it in the only available space out front, reserved for the chairman of the council. The car park gestapo attendant came over with the usual "you can't leave it there" comment, so I gave him the keys and wished him luck.

I actually quite enjoyed driving the MK2s, and had many hours of fun driving them. The added bonus was none of them were my car, and I wasn't paying for the petrol. Even better, employees could use the cars privately for a nominal fee (11p per mile) outside of working hours. When borrowing one for the weekend, it was of course cheaper to disconnect the speedo and put your own petrol in, but I didn't. Funny thing is, on all the cars, the speedo cable was finger tight. Can't imagine why.

They got 2 brand new Fiesta 1.1s one week, and I had to go to Lewes crown court every day for the whole week, so I just booked out the same car for the whole time. It only had about 135 miles on the clock the first time I drove it, so I was careful not to over rev it, and I nursed it along all the time I drove it. It ran really well, smooth and quiet. Then, halfway through the following week, I needed another car, and this time I got the other brand new one. Whoever had been driving this hadn't been kind to it, and it ran really rough.

It was a few years later by the time I could afford one. It would have been about 1995 or 96 by then. I got a 957cc base model for a nice cheap price because the woman who owned it thought there was something seriously wrong with the brakes. There wasn't, and all it needed was a new set of brake shoes to get rid of the excess pedal travel.

It had a very quiet engine but after a few weeks, I was really noticing the lack of performance, so I started looking for ways to make it go faster. I know there are head modifications and other things that can improve things a bit, but that wasn't really the route I wanted to go. Then I found the ideal solution in the local free ads, in the form of a 1.6 cross flow engine from a MK1 Fiesta XR2. This had the gearbox, driveshafts, front suspension legs, weber carb etc, all included, and I got the lot for £45. The mate I was working with at the time helped me collect it on a beavertail transit. It was in some bloke's back garden and he promised me it hadn't been thrashed, (yeah right) and didn't burn any oil.
Anyway, to cut a boring story short, it had a burnt out clutch, and very poor compression. Still a bargain at £45 ! I took it apart and found that the piston rings were gummed up and were stuck in their grooves. The piston skirts were scored up pretty badly as well, but I decided they could stay like it. I went shopping and got a set of rings, big end shells and a clutch plate (friction plate only, I hate spending money when I don't have to).

Once finished and put back together, it took me about a week, off and on, to get it into the car and running right. I had to drill one extra hole in one of the inner wings for an engine mount bolt which wasn't on the smaller engine. As far as I know, Ford didn't fit the bigger cross flows to the MK2s, which I think is a shame because I never did like the CVH. The friend with the recovery truck was a proffessional welder and he adapted a MK2 XR2 exhaust system to fit the car. Apart from the engine and gearbox, the only other modification was to the front suspension. I used the springs that came with the XR2 engine because they were a bit stiffer. I kept the car looking original. I did fit a rear anti roll bar off a 1.4s. No body kit, no stickers, not even alloy wheels. I got a set of slightly wider steel rims off an Escort and fitted 155/70/13 tyres. The car had some crappy plastic aftermarket wheel trims so I kept them on. Anyone looking at the car would have thought it was just another scabbly old Fiesta. Having started life as a 957 L, it didn't even have servo brakes, which could be interesting at times.

It was definitely fun to drive. At the point where you might normally change up from 2nd gear to 3rd, you could just floor it and it would get up to about 70 before running out of revs. Sometimes, people would decide to overtake it at the beginning of motorway slip roads. Partly because they weren't expecting to have to try very hard, not many of them suceeded. By the time they realized the car actually could accelerate very quickly, it was too late and they'd missed their chance.
The engine was brilliant, although it would rattle very slightly when cold, unless I used Castrol Magnatec (the thickest grade).
Obviously, being a Ford, it was hopeless in the wet, and anything other than moderate acceleration would cause it to go sideways on roundabouts. I'm glad nobody ever stole it because I'm sure they would have killed themselves in it if they had.

It was rust that killed it in the end. If it hadn't been for that, it would probably still be on the road today. It was an A reg 1984 model, and according to the VIN number chart in the Bosal exhaust catalogue, it was a UK built one. I bought and sold about 20 of those Fiestas over a couple of years, and the ones that were the most rusty were the Spanish and Portugese built models. UK and German made cars must have had better rustproofing I guess.

You can't have as much fun with the newer stuff

[pimpdriver]

nice story!