So, I've had this car for 20 years (21 in Sept.) and for one reason or another I haven't put it back together. Fast forward to present day, resetting my life and wife, the focus is to get Ruby (recently settled on name) back together and driving safely and I have my wife support.

It left the factory as a 1979 Esprit, featuring T-tops, tilt steering, 301 V8, 14" Rally wheels, and a rear deck lid spoiler. That was about it for options. I will be making it a T/A clone, painted red with a black and red interior, similar (not the same) to the 81 Turbo T/A Pace Car.


Recently I got the 301 running that was in Black Betty (donor car) and it sounded decent and had great compression numbers, after a good warm up. Just before Christmas, we pulled it out and set it up on the engine stand to be cleaned and painted.


Other things that were done to this car in the past were; repaired sheet metal damage to passenger floor and frame mount that extended up to the blower motor hole, rebuilt the donor sub frame that started life in a Camaro and collected various parts new and old. The most recent thing was the front suspension rebuild and the engine assessment. The plan is to have the engine and tranny sitting back in the car sometime this summer as I want to go back to doing body work on it for next winter. I haven't decided if I will tackle the rear end swap this year or leave it for another time. The one that's in there works and will likely remain there but we shall see.

Also, just before Christmas, I scored a used Atomic EFI set up, for $150.00 Canadian that will eventually see it's way into this build but for now I will use the carburetor until I'm ready to tackle this project.




It will get the 77-78 nose treatment but maybe not right away...we shall see...the nose on Black Betty is in good shape and would be an easy swap onto Ruby to achieve my "as soon as possible" deadline and the 77-78 nose needs tremendous amount of work to get nice again.

Wheels will be the 15" snowflakes also donated from Black Betty to start but the end game is 17" snowflakes and or Rally's

Decal treatment is yet to be decided but leaning towards TATA kit but that too won't be anytime soon as I don't need decals to make it road worthy.

I will be installing dual exhaust but haven't decided on the mufflers yet and I will get to this when I cross that bridge.

I don't need max performance at this point obviously because If I did I would make this an LS swap. I just want to drive it and have it start and go when I turn the key...the one and only time I drove her, was done illegally and not road worthy, when I brought her to my grandfathers place and stripped her apart!! I traded away all the original sheet metal at that time (what an idiot) and the original nose which was in mint condition at the time.

so that's my project in a nut shell

thanks for looking

BTW, this is Black Betty



Charlie

 

Since my last post, I was able to get the engine torn down a bit, I am super relieved that the inside looks good and I just need to disassemble, clean, and reassemble. I was worried I'd have to do a complete rebuild once I got it torn down some more!

All the cylinders look the same and all still have the cross hatch pattern and 0 wear marks. In the second pic it shows a clear indicator that it was bored out previously!!