From looking and getting around in the last few years, you would think it was only the bad parts of the 80′s that had come back to visit us (one hopes temporarily) things like mullets and clothing infested with horrible patterns of a fluorescent nature. The return of these alone is enough to make one want to kill themself or at least those who perpetuated this fashion nonsense. It’s only recently that the only important part of the 80′s, the start of the turbo trend in vehicles and hilarious digitised “space-aged” dashboards has become popular again with the masses.
Of course, as with all things there’s those that appreciated and took care of these cars right from the offset. Once such person is Ed. Some of you might know Ed or recognize the nickname from his numberplate. Ed is a key part of retro-classics, his dedication and love of cars was all part of the same passion that aided in retro-classics coming from a concept to a reality. His devotion (perhaps addiction is a better word) to cars from the 80′s has lead to him having an impressive and ever growing stable of 100% awesome. The focus of this entry however is probably his largest and longest automotive addiction, that to the Ford Laser.
1985 Ford Laser TX3 4WD Turbo (BFMRF)
After the sale of his previous car (a 1983 Mazda Familia XG Turbo), Ed was on the lookout for another car to take it’s place but it wasn’t to be just any car. The slate was not completely open and clean, there were specifics in mind in the rounded shape of a Ford Laser TX3, in January of 2002 the right car was spied for sale in the local Trade & Exchange (www.te.co.nz) after the viewing of the car it straight away came into Ed’s ownership and as you can imagine over the course of the years to follow from then until now it has undergone a few changes and enhancements to give it that slight edge and to keep it fun to drive, afterall cars are there to be enjoyed and if you don’t enjoy driving them then what’s the point?
From 2002 until 2009 has not been without it’s drama’s of course, in 2007 Ed’s Laser was involved in a little whoopsie involving a sodden lawn and the side of his own fixed residence. Yes, that’s right a house caused a detrimental moment to Ed’s beloved TX3. The damage seemed minor enough certainly to the point where most people would likely throw a few replacement parts on and pretend it didn’t happen.
Broken Nose
Minus the bonnet, not all bad?
It's really this shot that shows the extent of the impact
By pure dumb luck the car had taken it’s hit in exactly the same spot as an accident that had happened a few years prior in which some chap had failed to give way at an intersection and plowed into the front left corner of the TX3. The previous accident had been repaired by an “insurance approved smash repairer”, which basically means it goes to the cheapest quote to do the work and can often mean shonky or imprecise worksmanship. Ed mentioned the previous accident to his panel-beater, who advised him that it would probably pay to have a thorough check done of that location in case there was anything that could potentially be weakened from the last repair. So off it went to his workshop for an initial inspection.
Of course, with Ed having been involved with these cars for several years now, the finding of the parts he needed to get his precious hatch back on the road was completed before the inspection of the car had been. A new slam panel, front guard and lights (the panel-beater would be repairing the bonnet) were dropped off at the panel-beater’s workshop. Two days after which, there was an ominous phone-call from the beater asking Ed to make his way into the workshop to view the discoveries of the inspection and test fitment of the replacement panels.
After hammering out the existing rail and temporarily bolting up the new panels the overall fitment didn’t quite seem right, so with some careful inspection of the L/H rail there was discovered a large rusty kink which looked to be about 10 years old. A time before Ed had even come into ownership of the TX3.
The realization to why the wheel alignment on that left front wheel always kept screwing up and why the front gearbox mount was sitting at such a funny angle relative to the cross-member all made sense now. The previous repair that Ed was aware of had only served to make the damage worse as the metal had been heated during the process – causing it to become further weakened. Typically the insurance repairer responsible for the known previous work had been more concerned about getting the car back on the road straight away at the least cost and had chosen to ignore the offending kink completely. After-all, any competent panel-beater would have noticed it on the corner they were being paid to repair. At least you would think so.
The proper solution to this discovered dilhemma was to remove everything forward of the front seats (engine, dash, loom, carpet, underseal… everything) and graft another LH rail on from a suitable donor car. Most people would have called it a day with the car and bought a Lancer Evolution or some such but not Ed, who had the car trucked back to his house where he began pulling it apart and at the same time searching for a suitable donor vehicle to lift a replacement rail from.
Several months went by, eventually 2008 rolled around and still there was no luck in finding a donor vehicle. Despite this being a car of the 80′s it was already becoming evident just how thin on the ground these vehicles had become. Now joining the ranks of vehicles from the 70′s and prior for parts availability. However, in late January salvation came calling via the trademe.co.nz website; a BFMRF rolling body, chassis number 100603 with engine and box already gone. Perfect! Ed rang the seller to arrange a viewing.
Potential Donor Vehicle
With luck the front-end seemed to be in good condition and most of the bits and bobs of wiring and hose malarky had already been cleared from the bay. Photos of the potential donor rail were emailed to Tony (Ed’s panel-beater) who proclaimed the rail good enough to use. With this knowledge Ed agreed to buy the donor vehicle sans wheels for $200. With assistance from friends the donor was trailered straight to the panel shop where the strip down began. The front guards, rear hatch, bumpers, glass and doors were all put aside for Ed’s BFMPF track car (which will perhaps be featured another time). A few other bits such as the front struts, a-arms and brakes were kept as “just in case” spares. The remainder of parts were sold to recover some of the costs.
Come early February 2008, Tony’s shop was starting to fill up with other classic restoration projects belonging to folks with lots of money and even more influence. It was decided that he’d chop the rail off the donor vehicle and put it aside for now because (due to his workload and customer demands) work could not start on Ed’s car until May.
Replacement Rail
As the rail swap would require the engine to be pulled out, Ed used the panel-beater delay to haul the car down to his mechanic’s and get the engine removal done with the help of a hoist which as you can imagine, makes things a million times easier. Whilst at the mechanics to get this done, it was decided now would also be a pertinent time to remedy an oil use issue.
Before the requirement to take the car off the road it was going through a litre of oil roughly every 200km. Certainly not the sign of a healthy engine. The VF8 hybrid turbo was taken off to be inspected and reconditioned on the off-chance that the seals were shot. The verdict came back from the turbo shop: the seals were on their way out, but certainly not seriously enough to cause the amounts of blow-by being experienced. With the turbo ruled out it was devised that the issue lay with the bottom end (which had never been touched at all during Ed’s ownership) The decision was made to pull the motor down. The cause of the over-consumption of oil was to be blamed on the oil control rings which had shrunk in the bores and so the bottom end was to be rebuilt, at the same time the engine would receive a Cometic metal head gasket to replace the ACL one. With the engine side of things getting taken care of the rest of the rolling body was taken back to Tony’s for the rail replacement to begin.
The BFMRF was mounted on the car-o-liner and Tony and his workmate Greg set about drilling out the old rail, stitching the new one on, re-measuring the chassis tolerances, etc.
Old rail
No Rail
New Rail
It turned out that the old L/H rail was measured to be 20mm out compared to factory, which as you can imagine is a fairly sizable discrepancy and more than explains just why the replacement panels wouldn’t quite line-up during the initial attempt. Greg followed the rail work up by fixing a few rust holes in the firewall and some in behind the vents (a notorious area for rott in BFs) fortunately the amount to be resolved was nothing serious. Once this work was sorted, the slam panel re-attached etc, the car was moved along to it’s next port of call. The painters. Not before the doors had been removed to be more closely inspected for rust, as some had become evident. Further digging revealed that they would need some repair. One door from the donor car was used which was obviously black and would also need painted after-wards. So in addition to the guard, bonnet and front end, both of the doors would require painting also.
I can hear you reading this now and thinking “Well, if you’re going that far.. then you might as well do the whole thing” and that’s exactly what Ed decided to do.
With the front end painted and with all the wiring and the like attached back to it’s rightful place in the engine bay (a task that took a good few days to complete) the car was ferried back to the mechanics to have the engine put back into the essentially new front end looking like this;
Oooh, you could eat off it.
The freshly rebuilt engine and turbo were dropped back in around the middle of September and then the car went on a transporter again for final rust repair work and eventual respray. After all this time the time-frame for completion was not really a factor in the process anymore, what was though, was the rapidly increasing spiral of costs involved in the intensive series of processes being undertaken. Tony and Greg decided that in order to keep these costs down that they would find time in-between other projects and after hours to work on Ed’s car, for which he (as you might well imagine) is eternally grateful.
Due to these changes in timespan and working hours it was not until the end of November that rust repairs were complete. It included work done on both doors, sills by each front wheelarch, under the rear spoiler and around the rear 3/4 windows and tail lights, but thankfully the majority of the car was free of the dreaded tin worm. John the painter came to evaluate the final product and a reasonable budget for painting/prep was set, a tidy paintjob worthy of the restoration effort was asked for but nothing so mint that Ed would be afraid to drive it ever again.
The TX3 entered the paint booth mid-December, and was completed on christmas eve. By some small stroke of luck, John still had the original paint mix and codes on his computer from when he used to do collision repairs on BFMR/BFMPs about twelve years ago when they were at the peak of their popularity, as a result the final finish was as close to factory as one could possibly hope to get, with the Dover White upper and Lustre Silver metallic below.
Fresh!
and Clean!
From then until now, in 2009, and the car was sent back to the panel shop where the lengthy process of putting it back together began, Ed had been working on the car after his regular work from 7pm until 11pm getting the interior re-fitted and the exterior moldings and such like re-attached.
Interior In-place
Spoiler and rear bumper, sorted.
Front end sans Grille
With the majority of this done it only left a few bits and bobs to be sorted, the main one being a few electrical issues for an auto-electrician to resolve, the man responsible for this currently being off work until this coming week means that very shortly, Ed’s beloved TX3 will be seeing the road again for the first time in almost 2 whole years! I’m sure you, as I, can imagine his excitement. So it is as this point I’ll say well-done to Ed and to all those involved in the process of thoroughly restoring a car that most people would likely have given up on a long time ago. The perseverance and dedication to a job well-done is something that everything should admire and strive for.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks and we’ll provide a Wallpaper shot of the finished product.
If you would like to read the project in a little more detail with larger images, you can view it on a few forums, the most obvious being the fordlaser forums.
http://fordlaser.com/viewtopic.php?t=71902
You can see pictures of the TX3 from before the accident on Ed’s flickr here;
Ford Laser TX3 4WD Turbo Photo Album
Ed would like to thank and I would like to commend the follow businesses on their contributions to this project;
Panelwork: Custom Metalshapers Ltd, East Tamaki, Auckland, NZ
Paint: Cascade AutoFinish, Pakuranga, Auckland, NZ
Mechanical Work: Papakura Mechanical Services, Papakura, Auckland, NZ
-Michael
Beautiful – top marks Ed