Okay, stop the laughing.  This is my diesel Escort.  It's no normal oil burner though, 17" alloys, in car adjustable boost, a sound system to make your ears bleed.  What more could you ask from a car?

I brought it a few years ago when I was working in East Grinstead.  I wanted a turbo diesel Escort, but I also had to have a two door.  Ford however didn't make to many two door TD's, so this one was a lucky find.  Driving 84 miles every day in a Renault 5 GT Turbo wasn't too cheap on petrol (220 miles to a tank if I didn't boot it), so this car saved me a lot of money.  I must admit that when I test drove it, I was shocked at how nippy it was in standard form.  But there is a difference between nippy and quick, and believe me you can make a diesel quick.

Standard the turbo was pushing out a kittens breath 8 psi.  Hardly anything to be proud of.  This was sorted out with a nice bleed valve taking the boost up to 15psi at first.  Then came a nice electronic switching valve on the injector pump.  Basically it means that at a flick of a switch inside the car, I can have the fuel pump work over time, or have it be lazy.  That meant I had a car that could go fast, or a car that could drive over 450 miles to a single tank!

I then needed to sort out the sounds.  Out came the nasty standard Ford stereo and in went a nice Pioneer head unit and limited edition 6 disc multi changer.  I also stuck some nice 100 watt Pioneer speakers in the back, then two 12" Sumo Subs in the boot, a nice Alpine amp, and a purple neon to light it all up with!  The amp needed a lot of power so I upgraded the battery to something you could power your whole street off.  It's huge.  I also needed to use gauge 4 cable to run the amp.  This stuff is so thick that it looks like a tow rope.  And it's all connected up with some nice gold terminals.

The wheels were next on my list.  When I brought the car it came with some nice Wolf Race Genisis alloys.  Being only 15's they looked silly in the arches, so I needed something bigger.  I'd seen a couple of cars with Wolf Race Voodoo's and I think they looked great.  I went to the local Wolf Race factory and they sold me a set of 17's for £25 each!  That's £100 for a set of brand spanking new alloys!  RM Tyres in Strood then sorted the rubber out for £65 a rim, so I was laughing.

With my car fast, loud and gorgeous I wanted an alarm better than the standard Ford jobbie.  I brought the whole kit for a couple of hundred quid and fitted it myself.  It took the best part of 8 hours to do, but I am still well impressed with the job I did.  I now have interior and exterior motion sensors, a tilt and knock sensor, power drop sensor and a few other toys which were a sod to set up.  But it's all installed neatly without a hanging wire in sight.

As I'd had the car for a while now, and I sold my Renault 5 GT Turbo.  I started to get bored with the performance of my car.  I then fitted a nice boost gauge on the dash, got a police speed trap detector, some RS2000 side skirts and some clear repeaters.  I'm still yet to do the side skirts and repeaters (busy with other things).  I also turned the boost up to 20psi!  A diesel running 20psi boost!  Cool huh?  You should have seen the black smoke it chucked out when you booted it under load.  Loads of un-burnt fuel all going to waste.  The fuel economy dropped to 380 miles to a tank, and the boost pipes needed bigger clamps to hold them on!  Since then the car is just sat lonely on my drive way though.  I plan to do some more work to it soon, get it ready for the winter so I can leave my MR2 in the garage.  But as ever, if you want to know more about the car, drop me an e-mail.

Tech Spec