Lil Red 1999 Ford Escort Zx2

Yesterday I picked up 1999 escort zx2 for $800

I’ve been on lookout for cheap manual beater for awhile. Found this car at little used lot, but they were asking too much for it. After watching it for over month finally was able to haggle a deal for $800

Car has 226k miles on it , very rough around the edges but is mechanically sound. Goal is to make it into good cheap DD

The Good

Starts right up, engine pulls great,

brakes and clutch both engage good,

trans shifts smooth no grinding, and AC works!

The bad

While it does run great, has slight miss at idle. Hoping it’s just vacuum leak, a lot of old rubber under the hood.

shifter bushings are shot, easy to find gears but shifter has tons of play. Also clutch pedal needs adj. pedal engages lower then I like. 

Climate control Temp control is broke and is stuck on cold so no heat

The biggest issues is the rear bumper.. more so what’s left of it 

Not sure what happened here but not much left. Local junkyards don’t carry cars this old so might be pain get replacement quickly for cheap

heres some photos of the hooptie 

need wheels bad! 185/14 are  scary 

Only major rust is in the trunk, guessing either trunk seal or taillight seal is letting water in 

 Need to put together parts list, mostly on cosmetic stuff

Checked few for essentials today to make sure car would be good enough to drive to work Monday. 

Already had practically new air filter, fuel filter looked recent to. Coil pack and brake booster look newish also. 

One of headlights was out so I picked up new set up bulbs. Well upon closer inspection came accross this 

All wires had multiple splices, which are either corroded or just falling apart. I did get light working again, but of course I don’t have any butt connectors. Going to order whole new pigtail replace birds nest there. 

Carpet needs to come out and get major washing. But the front seat bolts don’t seem to want to budge.

Im a pretty big fan of the zx2, i bought mine with the same intentions. 35mpg if i drive it not so nice, 41mpg has been had if i drive it very nice.

Mine is parked for the winter now, i miss driving it

Tinkered around a bit today, mainly wanted to clean up and inspect few things

I was really hoping to take seats out, remove carpet and do full thorough cleaning. But the  seat bolts seem to be seized.. not worth hassle of snapping bolts just to scrub the carpet. I’ll most likely dye the carpet black to cover up the stains.

Headliner is barely hanging on. Need to get some spray adhesive to fix properly. For now half fixed it with stapler, not idea but better then it falling in your face. 

Both sides of front bumper looked like this 

Couple zip ties later

Went to check out my temp control issues. The temp knob would just spin. Had to handcraft my own tool,  Sacrificial clothes hanger and some snips 

And there’s nothing even hooked up to temp knob

Turns out I’m missing the whole cable that goes to blend door. There’s a wrecked ranger at my job I’m see if I can’t steal setup off of it to make work. For now I’ve rigged up zip tie since it’s suppose to be real cold in morning 

Trunk is the dirtiest part of car 

Looks like rusty mess, but turns out just needs really good cleaning 

Interesting finds in trunk 

Even found an iPod!!

And the worst thing I’ve found so far

Might be hard to tell but the belt is to narrow for all the pulleys. That will get fixed ASAP 

other then that replaced wipers, glued a crack in one of tail lights to keep water out. That’s bout it for now, hopefully weather will cooperate tomorrow so I can atleast get new belt on 

I've had a mild interest in the 90s escorts ever since RCR's review of the early 2000s hatchback version and the Zetec 4 cylinder of that era- but my desire for that is probably the same one I have for finding a CRX and dropping a K-series into it.

Neat thread.

Make a list of what you need and I'll see if any of these are sitting in the Houston yards when I get back to town. I'm on the list of people who like these. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

Main pieces I need are the back bumper and plastic piece that goes around the gauges. I was going to order bumper off of eBay but prices are around $300, might have to wait 

Great little car and the right color too. Sadly I think by the time I have the room, time and extra scratch these will all be gone.

Finally got really drive the car past couple days.  Car is very light and nimble. Has good decent low end torque and likes to rev easily. But probably slowest vehicle I’ve owned. Surprisingly drives strait as arrow on hwy.  I still need to get front end in the air and check out everything. Haven’t had reason to need to yet so hopefully can wait for better weather.

I was needing new pigtails for pass head light and on of license plate bulbs. There’s  a wrecked ranger at my work I was able to steal parts from

Don’t think anyone will miss few things missing 

Glad to be able to get rid of this birds nest 

Pulled timing belt cover to have look, although something looks like rubbed outside of belt brief moment belt looks fairly new.

pulled all plugs and all looked great too 

Since I can’t get seats out I hit up dollar store for cheapest carpet cleaner and started scrubbing. Got fronts done need to do back still. Nephew decided to help too!

Water has been getting into trunk for what seems like long time. After looking closer noticed a wire grommet was completely dry rotted, covered it up with gasket maker and everything seems to be staying dry!

Still quite few little things need to taken care of 

car did come with decent pioneer deck but old enough there’s no aux in or Bluetooth. Most likely will order that one from Walmart others here have used. And front speakers don’t work either

needs shifter bushings BAD

theres an old alarm system that needs to be pulled. 

Needs new spair tire . Old one is very rusty from sitting in water 

Need to get cable assy for my temp controls , currently have pair pliers holding blend door on heat. 

Sure there’s other little things I’ll come accross. Trying to get car to back to my standards so I can just drive it. Would like to use this car to get into auto x this spring. so prob won’t be any mods for awhile.

Been awhile time for update!

 I’ve put about 1500 miles on car so far. Averaging out around 28-30 mpg, which is great compared to my infinit getting 22ish on premium! More I’ve driven this the more I like it, almost prefer it over the nice leather and VQ powered Infiniti. 

I ordered some parts from rockauto, and unfortunately some of parts were either wrong or listed incorrectly. One thing is shifter bushing. Apparently the one they list and sell is for a shifter stabilizer bar, even though it’s old and worn too. But doesn’t help me fix a super wobbly shifter. 

Second was serpentine belt. I somehow received belt for non AC or PS car. Unfortunately the condition of the current belt couldn’t wait for process of getting correct one reshipped. 

Besides the hole, you can see old one was just tad narrower, and not by choice. 

There was also clunk coming from front left , easy enough just needed new end link.

After owning this car for nearly 3 months now this is first time I’ve had front end in the air and tires off. I know, $800 car, who buys $800 car and doesn’t even check everything. Well front end always felt great and drives strait, so I never bothered looking. 

The car has always handled great, like really great. Just thought it was due to car being small and nimble. Well what is this....

Cool someone actually put something decent on here. But upon further research these appear to be the tokico’s off the limited S/R model. Score!! Although I’ve noticed my top hats are starting to crack pretty good. 

Another issue was the lack of battery tie down. I was going to rob one off wrecked ranger at my work. But of course after the 2 years it’s been sitting there they finally hauled to the scrapper. Oh well BMF zip tie for now 

Earlier this week SES light popped on, scanner pulled P0125, failure to reach operating temp. My temp gauge was already acting little funny. Going to replace thermostat, Ecu temp sensor and gauge sensor. Figure no sense in trying to figure which is culprit and just replace it all in prep for 100+ heat this summer. 

Another issue  I’ve noticed is the AC comp kicks on in various climate settings. Found a separate wire running down to the compressor. 

Kinda hard to see but will need to investigate, but ac does work great so I’m pushing that off for now. 

Noticed yesterday on my weekly fluid check brake fluid was getting low. One thing I do not like about this car, it has drums in the rear. Drum breaks are my archnemesis. I’m suspecting one of wheel cylinders is starting to seep a bit. I’ve noticed brake pedal get lil squishy, but assumed they just needed to bled. Hoping this issue will be okay for a bit. Hoping to be able to score whole rear axle setup from escort GT so I can convert rear to disc. We shall see how that plays out. 

Im moving to Austin Tx here in couple weeks. Going to be nice to actually live somewhere where I can finally get into racing local. Hopefully I can take this car to compete successfully. I’m all in with this car for less then $1200 so far, and it’ll be awesome to have fun on budget! 

I'm kinda surprised you were able to make a deal with someone who ever thought that was worth more than $800 because that makes them sound like a pretty unreasonable sort! Those are fun cars and I've done a little bit of work on them. Never driven an S/R which i'm slightly sad about. I don't remember if the ac compressor clutch is one of the things controlled by it but they have a funny integrated box of several relays which i've seen cause some weirdness on a customer car before. 

Papabishop said:

Finally got really drive the car past couple days.  Car is very light and nimble. Has good decent low end torque and likes to rev easily. But probably slowest vehicle I’ve owned. Surprisingly drives strait as arrow on hwy.  I still need to get front end in the air and check out everything. Haven’t had reason to need to yet so hopefully can wait for better weather.

I was needing new pigtails for pass head light and on of license plate bulbs. There’s  a wrecked ranger at my work I was able to steal parts from

Don’t think anyone will miss few things missing 

Glad to be able to get rid of this birds nest 

Pulled timing belt cover to have look, although something looks like rubbed outside of belt brief moment belt looks fairly new.

pulled all plugs and all looked great too 

Since I can’t get seats out I hit up dollar store for cheapest carpet cleaner and started scrubbing. Got fronts done need to do back still. Nephew decided to help too!

Water has been getting into trunk for what seems like long time. After looking closer noticed a wire grommet was completely dry rotted, covered it up with gasket maker and everything seems to be staying dry!

Still quite few little things need to taken care of 

car did come with decent pioneer deck but old enough there’s no aux in or Bluetooth. Most likely will order that one from Walmart others here have used. And front speakers don’t work either

needs shifter bushings BAD

theres an old alarm system that needs to be pulled. 

Needs new spair tire . Old one is very rusty from sitting in water 

Need to get cable assy for my temp controls , currently have pair pliers holding blend door on heat. 

Sure there’s other little things I’ll come accross. Trying to get car to back to my standards so I can just drive it. Would like to use this car to get into auto x this spring. so prob won’t be any mods for awhile.

 

 

 

 

 

They are not slow cars, 7 ish sec 0-60 when new, makes me think something is a bit off. Or youve owned a lot of fast cars lol

In reply to Vigo :

Well this one isn’t an S/R, just that someone upgraded the struts to that models. One thing that amazes me about this car is what’s all been replaced already, although the belt being that horrible shocked me. They’ve even replaced brake/fuel lines that run from front to back with OEM lines. As far as the getting it for $800. Imagine the ugliest scrappiest most scammed out car lot, the ones where people buy $5000 cars that are worth hundreds. I found this turd there. They wanted $2500 first time I looked at it. After few weeks talked them down to $1200. And after few weeks later I walked in and dropped $800 on table and drove off with it! 

A  240sx was definitely the slowest car I’ve owned. I describe this car to people that it’s not fast, but quick. Car guys understand, others not so much. But yea after owning turbo pontiacs, 3.5 Altima, 3800 Buick, a wrx and Infiniti for awhile it def felt slow haha

Subscriber-unavailabile said:

A  240sx was definitely the slowest car I’ve owned. I describe this car to people that it’s not fast, but quick. Car guys understand, others not so much. But yea after owning turbo pontiacs, 3.5 Altima, 3800 Buick, a wrx and Infiniti for awhile it def felt slow haha

I get what you are saying, i usually just tell people its suprisingly fast. I think its in a good range for a DD, fast enough to be fun, but not so fast that you get yourself in loads of trouble

Another interesting find  I forgot to share 

someone actually ran Royal Purple in this thing! 

But car just died on me twice today while coming to a stop. No hesitation, miss or bogging. Might be time to replace all vacuum lines see if that does anything. But of course it’s cold and raining . Again

Missed the earlier posts--congrats on the car.  

It is a very good car for FSP if you go full-prep.  It does not fit particularly well in Stock (narrow wheels) or Street Touring (little too heavy vs the fast cars there, rules limit tire size)--at least at a high level. 

That said, feel free to ask once you get the the point of needing setup advice--been in the auto-x ZX2 game since 2008.

Started with this in 2008:

...and now have this

In reply to FSP_ZX2 :

Nice! I will defiantly ask if/when I get to that point. I’m torn on if I want up start auto x this car vs keeping a cheap beater. Clutch is already to point where I’ll have to shift “nicely”. And if I have to do clutch on car mine as well do something with motor since it has 226k miles on it, and I’ll be flogging the crap out of it. Then again if I blow up an $800 car it’s not end of the world lol

Subscriber-unavailabile said:

Another interesting find  I forgot to share 

someone actually ran Royal Purple in this thing! 

But car just died on me twice today while coming to a stop. No hesitation, miss or bogging. Might be time to replace all vacuum lines see if that does anything. But of course it’s cold and raining . Again

These cars are well noted for their PCV valve problems, specifically the elbow below it leaking causing vaccum problems apparently

Haven’t had chance to work in car as much as I’d like but she’s ticking away!

I am finally done with rock auto. Twice in row now I’ve gotten the wrong parts. And while it’s nice to save some money it’s huge pain in ass to wait for wrong parts. Didn’t get chance to take any pics but got thermostat changed out. Was going to replace temp sensor while I had everything apart but of course it’s wrong and won’t fit. 

Biggest update is I’ve moved to bigger better place and for first time in 6 years I have a garage!!

saddes part is years of apartment living my tool selection has dwindled. But it’s gonna be nice to have nice clean place to work on cars. Especially in the shade this summer. And I need to meet my neighbor. He has cooler car than mine..

On good note though changing out thermostat gave me working temp gauge again. But of course I can confirm now my fan isn’t kicking on.  Hoping bumper to bumper traffic in Austin doesn’t kill my car before I can fix it.

I have worked on these forever and I guess the familiarity is comforting.

Having all those DPO (Damn Previous Owner) hacks under the dash and wiring is always disturbing, but just keep fixing them.

Shifter bushings advice. The bushings may be found through your local NAPA parts store. They may need to order them but they are cheap enough and make the driving pleasant. You will need 6 bushings to do it right if you include the center set on the shifter rod. The middle set needs grinding to remove and then replaced with another bolt just like the one on the transmission end of the shifter rail.

If possible, hit the local Pick-N-Pull with a list of the parts needed. Battery hold down, blend door cable and various plastic parts will make it seem like a great car.

Brake master cylinder seems to be a problem and I had to replace mine about every 80,000 miles on my 437,000 mile Escort.

Have fun! I do!

Bruce

Car is trying to fight me! Actually both my cars are this week..

Sunday morning family went to go out for the day and not only did I notice fluid under the ZX but also my Infiniti. Infiniti looks like it leaked out some PS fluid but level was barely low and I cannot find source of leak anywhere, and hasn’t leaked since...

The ZX has slow coolant leak from lower radiator hose. Guessing now that new thermostat is working correctly it’s testing everything else in the system. For some reason though someone put clamp on the block side where ac compressor is blocking any access to it. I also had the fan jumped to stay on since it’s warming up and ofcourse the fan motor burnt out today.grr

was really hoping for some maintenance free for awhile, trying to save money up for family vacation soon. Damn near tempted to say screw it and pull the thermostat for now to avoid any overheating issues 

Been awhile figure I’ll update this. Been DD car for awhile now with no major issues except alternator going out.

Yesterday I decided to get off my lazy butt and go to a junkyard to try to find a rear bumper and take advantage of 25% sale. Was insane , there was a line getting in and out of the place. But  Ofcourse out of the couple zx2 they had the bumpers were demolished. 

 I did happen to come across a 2000 S/R model though! Besides rear quarter being smashed in it  was sadly much nicer looking than my car. All black interior and power everything. I didn’t get any pics of taking any parts off. Was way to muddy and hot. I did however walkway with few goodies though.

Scored radiator fan, console with leather boot, front strut bar, B & M short throw, and ECU and CCRM. All for $127!!!

Sadly all the carts were taken so I had to carry everything with my tools. I also had a bezel piece for around my gauges but lost my grip walking, dropping everything and snapping it in half..

There was still more parts I hope to be able to go back tomorrow and get. Has factory Eibach springs, 19mm rear sway, Borla muffler, and  few other trim pieces I could use. Gauage cluster would be cool for the 150 speedo.

 Shifter wasn’t terrible hard to do

Loosen 4 bolts up top

Climb underneath, loosen up heatshield, drop exhaust and the hanger bracket because it will save you 15 mins of cursing, blood and a sore neck when you are trying to put it all back together.

Strut brace was fairly easy, had to bend the ac lines little bit to get around the brackets.

Took car for drive to make sure shift linkage was all good. Oh my this thing shifts sooo much better. Going to take minute to get used to how close the gears are, but wow it’s awesome.

 Still need to install the CCRM. The CCRM is ford being stupid, and putting all the relays that crontol the AC, rad fans and such. The ac is rigged to work by fooling the ECU it’s on so I have very E36 M3ty idle. Hopefully this is a good one and fixes that. 

The ECU I’m still researching. Google fu shows this will give about 13-15hp increase  . But from what I can tell you need to rewrite the maf since the S/R uses a 6 wire maf and mine is a 4 wire. Unfortunately all the write ups I’m finding are lost in time and I can’t find anything. Probably will just put it on this weekend and see what happens. 

All in all I’ve been extremely happen with the car. Been driving great, just need to get off my ass and make it to an event.

Also forgot to add. Best thing about this car is I’m all in it for about $1300. Can’t really beat that for a fun daily