So my older brother and I bought a 1982 Ford Capri 2.8 injection a number of years ago and after driving it for a while we decided that we would do something with it.
Since then we have stripped the car down completely and started doing the boring, tedious task of going over the car and repairing 30+ years worth of rot and rust which has now taken over a year to get about half way done.
This is because I'm a full time university student and my brother is full time in the police force so we only ever have the odd weekend were we can actually work on the car.
We have the idea that it will be a rear wheel drive turbo RB26 with a roll cage and full seam welded shell with an alloy fuel tank and we're debating on if we should go full rally spec but road legal or have some creature comforts like a radio and air-con.
In my opinion a 34 year old car should be restored to original. Get something more modern if you want to tune it up.
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"There is also some pretty crazy people here too, and aiming for the top of that tree is Bad Obsession Motorsport." "They say it can't be done, they might be right"
hi good to see you are taking a car that would otherwise be turned into a pile of recycled tin plate ( if there was much of it left (80's steel was prone to turning into dust ) .
my thoughts would be fit as much up to date running gear that you can afford to make it handle nice ( the last capri I drove didn't like doing corners without swaping ends).
then make it go with some nice modern parts .
good luck with it
thanks for the input guys, we thought about keeping it original but when it came to it the parts were difficult to get without spending a good bit of money on them and we wanted something that we could drive anytime we wanted and the 2.8 V6 in it has a tendency of doing about 3 mile to the gallon.
We have a full adjustable coil over set waiting to go in but we need to do some modifications to the strut towers before we can do that so handling will be up there when we get it back on the ground.
hi did have a 4x4 sierra estate (2.8 xr4x4 under a estate body ) it was very much a sleeper car that didn't shout it was a fast car and it did handle very well .
so why not see if you can find a xr4x4 or scorpio 2.9 4x4 ( later facelift had the better gearbox ) and make a 2.8 4x4 capri????.
now that would be a nice tool to give a few of the hot hatch a fright at the traffic light gp
thats a very good idea landranger, never thought of doing a chassis swap to a 4x4, would be a lot like Ken Blocks hoonicorn but sleeper. I'll put the idea to my brother and see what he thinks, could always buy another shell and put it on the original capri chassis and then have 2 maaaaaaaddddd cars to mess about in :)
if I remember correctly the engine and front diff are on a bolt in subframe on both the sierra and scorpio as a bonus the sierra 4x4 estate has a body mounted lds with lobro shafts in the back as standard , so a bit of fabrication required but then you would have coils all round
hi I was looking on ebay yesterday for 4x4 gearbox .
there are several ford 4x4 boxes including at least one mt75 (the later stronger box). just to let you know good luck