Going to try to clean up the engine bay in my escort a little, looking for suggestions to make this go a bit smoother. What useless shit can be ripped out? Relocating battery to the trunk for starters.
I dont think there is anything under the hood that is useless. If the a.c. system no longer works, you could delete the rubber hoses, the compressor, and the condenser. Other than that, everything has a purpose and gets used. I have five 2nd gen Escorts for daily drivers in my family, and they are all stock under the hood. Its against federal and state law to delete any of the emissions equipment, even if you live where there is no emissions testing. None of mine came with cruise control, but I would leave that in if any of them had it. Its nice when driving across the USA. Why are you moving the battery to the trunk?
To make my engine bay less crowded of course. I'm probably going to swap this engine out for a 1.8l Mazda engine in the future so I figured just assessing what stuff should be tucked under the fenders and what stuff should be removed would be cool. probably going to put in a cheap garbage air intake and in order for that to fit the battery needs to be moved inside the car. Also tucking the majority of the harness and fuse box too. And as for emissions testing, I live in backwoods country bumpkin Wisconsin where the majority of vehicles on the road are lifted diesel trucks so I think I should be fine.
Cruise control is pretty much the only thing I took out because I never use it and the thing looked like a mutant meatball in the engine bay, moved some wires around and tucked some hoses. The fuse-box is now in the fender pocket on the drivers side with most of the wires tucked under the fender, have to separate the loom for the battery to be moved. It doesn't have to be spotless just has to be neat. Going to clean up and de-grease everything and paint the valve cover and intake manifold.