[coyote-x]

Okay, I finally got a digital camera, here's my ride, if you can call it that.

http://members.cardomain.com/coyotex

I'll get some better pics up tomorrow, I was a little eager to do it... Night pictures don't turn out so good without proper lighting and all. Whaddya think?

 

[siragan]

looks pretty good... the 3rd gens are just as plain as it gets though... there's really nothing you can do about that. The whole body style doesn't lend itself to rims, kits, or even lowering. It's really too bad, but it's just the way the car was designed. Small, efficient, economical.

It looks like you take good care of it, but in all honesty, if I were you, I'd just leave it alone and save up for something a little sportier in the future. The 3rd gen escorts, imo, just aren't tuner cars at all. I've NEVER seen a well-done 3rd gen escort. They're always cheap looking and chinsy. I'm sure you could pull it off, but just be careful. Do the stuff that really counts, like rims and suspension, before you start slapping on stickers and the god-aweful color yellow that I see on far too many escorts.

And if you put a fart can on that thing, I'm gonna have to slap you. Every time I see some punk with a fart can and stickers in town thinkin he's the shizzle, it makes me cringe. Please don't ever rice out your car. It's the most obnoxious thing in the world.

There's this one guy in potsdam who has a red 3rd gen escort with a wing and stickers... dude, if you're on feoa and you see this, please please please take that crap off. It looks horrible.

I don't think it would look quite right lowered, who gives a crap. Go ahead and lower it if you've got the money. I lowered my egt a bit, and even though I did it to improve the sub-par stock handling, it really improved the stance of the car a bit too. So that's always an added bouns. Best of all, it greatly improved braking, acceleration, and general stability, and it didn't hurt my gas mileage. So I think it was money very well spent, and I'm very happy I did it.

Here's a little eye candy... just a little reminder that you can make your escort look good without chrome and stickers:

 

[coyote-x]

Dayum... That is /nice./ Both the car and the photography. I'm gonna wash it and take some more tomorrow. I dunno how it's gonna look lowered but I figure I can do that for four hundred. I don't like chinzy stuff, makes the car look like crap, would never put that kinda thing on there. (Well... Probably not, at any rate. )

 

[hotscort]

nice car man its realy coming togeather! you def need to lower it like i did with my scort

 

[James92Scort]

Nice coyote. very uh... dark I didn't know you could even get 3rd gens with a Tach... yours has gotta be the FIRST i've ever seen. but m ost are autos around here anyway. I say turbo the SPI. as Greg said, plain, jane...economical... LITTLE MOFO OF A FRIGGEN SLEEPA!! w00t! (no I'm not drunk) but yeah. cool


Oh and Greg...nice picture...now all you need to do is take off those ugly as sin pin stripes (like I did to the Si)

 

[Stilgar]

I am glad to see its a manual other than that its a nice car that gets great gas mileage and very dependable(i think the lx's were)

 

[Electronikal]

Dont listen to them lol ! Your car is kewl

 

[Beaverboy]

Nice ride, Coyote! I especially like that you went ahead with pedal covers... the stock pedals are so crappy, those things will help you immensely with car control. Your car has lots of potential, but like they said, just keep it clean.

Congrats on the digicam

 

[Zeemax]

Coyote - Siragan's right, there's really not much you can do with the 3rd generation. It's not a bad looking car, it's just a car. At least with a 1997 LX model however you got better damping and a more powerful engine than a 1996 LX. I never understand though why Ford bothered continuing the Escort line when the Contour was so close in size.

And Siragan, that's the cleanest, prettiest EGT I've ever seen. I now thoroughly despise you. You and your BMW equipped headlights.....(envy envy envy)

 

[coyote-x]

Nice ride, Coyote! I especially like that you went ahead with pedal covers... the stock pedals are so crappy, those things will help you immensely with car control.

If you look underneath those, I actually wore holes in the stock rubber covers because of the way I was 'heel and toe'ing' (although it was more like the right and left side of my feet than that) anyways, they were kind of a must, my feet kept slipping off. :lol:

 

[Beaverboy]

I use the sides of my feet too... well.. big toe & ball of my foot on the brake.. pinky toe on the gas.

 

[siragan]

I'm seriously considering pulling the pedals off a junkyard car and modifying the accelerator so it comes down right next to the brake pedal when the brake pedal is applied. It will really make the 2-to-1 double clutch a LOT cleaner in turns.
Most people don't do the 2 to 1 shift in autocross, they just keep it in 2, but if you're comfortable getting it into 1st gear, holy crap... the EGTs pull like raped apes if you can keep the rpms up in turns. Too bad it's FWD w/o LSD.
Most people think that the EGT doesn't have enough power. That's a common misconception, imo. If you're good at gearing it correctly, you can really get that thing going around the cones. The real problem is putting the power to the wheels in the right places.

Also, about the pedal covers, I think the stock ones (at least on the 2nd gens...) are fine. What makes a BIG difference are the SHOES. Whenever I drive long distances, I use rock climbing shoes

You'll find that the racing shoes that formula 1 racers and the pros use actually aren't much different from rock climbing shoes. Makes a huge difference in my driving ability.

 

[coyote-x]

Well with the stock pedal covers the pedals are almost 2 inches apart. I put on the metal ones and that gap shrank to almost a half an inch, to where I can comfortably put my foot on both pedals. Generally I don't go down into first gear - it only gets you up to about 25-30 and when you're using it you've got an awesome chance to have your front end start pushing (as I learned with a little run-in I had 2 years ago with a mailbox on a tight curve). The engine is torqy enough second gear will usually do it.

 

[Jeffescortlx]

Your lucky you have a 5 speed, much better starting plate form for making it quicker.

It does seem to be harder to make a 3rd gen look good. But I have seen a few that I really like. Some lowering springs and the right choose of wheels will improve the look a lot, more sporty and less grand ma. As long as you stay away from park bench wings and stickers it will look tastefull.

 

[coyote-x]

I got some day pictures up so you can actually like... /see/ it now.

 

[coyote-x]

Coyote - Siragan's right, there's really not much you can do with the 3rd generation. It's not a bad looking car, it's just a car. At least with a 1997 LX model however you got better damping and a more powerful engine than a 1996 LX. I never understand though why Ford bothered continuing the Escort line when the Contour was so close in size.

I kinda disagree, I've seen some on ERDT that are very nicely done, some with some without body kits. Myself, I'm not gonna kit it, I like the way they look but once you do that you can't really lower it too much. I'm planning on like a 2" drop, but I'm not sure what kinda rims I wanna use to go with it. Big ones look nice, but they're /very/ expensive to get the good lightweight ones and the 15" rims are even lighter anyways. The real hard part about making a third gen look good is choosing the right wheels, though, I think. I've seen some aftermarket wheels that looked terrible and then some that looked good. Silver seems to look good (not chrome, like brushed aluminum looking type silver)... So I'm thinking about that. There's plenty you can do to the engine, just ask Jeff. anything he can do to his SPI I can do to mine.

Also, I believe they continued the Escort line because contours were slightly more expensive, and people trusted the Escort name more. (I.E. the last one of these I had was great, I'll get another for my son or daughter.) Now that the Focus line has had time to estabalish itself and they've seen it doing good, they're getting rid of the Escort. Also, the Contour sold like absolute crap. The car magazines loved it but it actually had less back seat space than an Escort, if you can believe that.