Ford 20M RS......

[bluelightning]

Howzit Guys....

ok, so i got the car for about 2years now.....

finally decided to rebuild the motor.... Bt then i find out it's a 2.5L.... Shit.....
And i dont wanna put in a V8.....

My Question is....

Should i rebuild the 2.5( put 3l crank & Pistons) original engine.....

OR

Buy a 3l motor and rebuild dat motor??????

wanna put a V66 cam, port & gas the heads, twin carb.....
& 4speed bullet box

Good street car.

any advise appreciated.

thanx
Blue Lightning

[bluelightning]

pics

[bluelightning]

pics1

[Shaunp]

Is the 2.5 not the original

[Gunter]

If its a genuine 20m RS, it must have the 3.0L essex motor in. Most tell tale items say its an RS...boot and cubihole badges, high back RS seats, correct bonnet and black out - more or less correct side stripe( the black,not the white stripe), you have the correct centre console gauges,angled to face the driver. You can pm me your reg docs vin and engine number - i will compare it to the 2 x genuine RS's i had....if i remember correctly,the engine number starts with EC...then a few digits.

[bluelightning]

Not sure....

some ppl say it came 3L, and
others say say it Originally came 2.5...

Does any1 know how to match the engine No. to the Body...(tags)wer?

[Gunter]

Believe me - if its a genuine RS, its has to be a 3.0L. That shape 20M came out with a 2.5L v6( i had 1 of them when i had the 2 x genuine RS's) , but was not a RS. You also got a 17m RS, same shape car,same stripes etc, but that had the v4 engine.

[bluelightning]

Im not a specialist, but wen i removed the intake...
it was pointed out that the ports was oval shaped....
so this proved its a 2.5l....

Is this true?

and wer about in the car is the other tags?(besides the trim plate in engine compatment)

[jmvv]

Oh, this brings back memories.

I had a metallic charcoal 20MRS in the late 1970's.
Vermeulen Street was our playground and Ray's Roadhouse our Sunday hangout.
I blew up the motor on that thing so well that only the inlet manifold remained intact. Replaced it with a complete brand new engine from Basil Green for the princely sum of R999.00.

As mentioned, you got a 17M RS with the 2 liter V4 and the 20m RS with the 3 liter Essex.
Only the base sedan had a 2.5 liter V6

The paint on your car looks quite original, judging by the fading of the go-faster stripes. The stripes were painted on, not decals, like nowadays.

The headlights and grille are incorrect on your car. The RS had a different grille with two round integrated spotlights and it had the large single rectangular headlights.

Mine had the same dual headlights as yours (off the 20M XL sedan) with the spotlights in the grille. I thought that it looked really cool and the lights were great, but I got into regular trouble with Johnnie Law about contravening the six headlight clause in the RTA in those days

[KSF]

Im not a specialist, but wen i removed the intake...
it was pointed out that the ports was oval shaped....
so this proved its a 2.5l....

Is this true?

No, both the 3l and 2.5 had those oval ports back then, it just proves it is a period correct engine. On the MkIII Cortina's (last to use the 2.5) the easy way was to check the engine number as they started with 30U and 25U respectively, but I am no longer sure if those early ones were like that too. Engine number should be on top of the block behind the intake manifold. The blocks are otherwise identical. If you have the engine out or gearbox off, then the flywheel's counterweight will tell you which it is, the 3l has a lot less. Once the sump is off the crank counterwieghts is the identifier, 3l has 6 in total, 2.5 only 4. Or if a head is off, measure the stroke (3l is 72.42mm and 2.5 is 60.35mm).

Your engine no longer has its original intake and carb on (their ports were oval to match the head and they did not use the 38dgas Weber), but outside of that it has the correct Lucas distributor, the glass dome fuel pump and so on. It would be tempting to keep it period correct, perhaps just rebuild using the late model EFI engine's pistons (lightweight and 9.5 CR) and the period correct Meissner MV1 cam. It is designed to work in an otherwise near std motor. (V66 is a nice but also fairly hot cam that needs about 11:1 CR to work, also much more carburation and so on)

Also just note a couple things if you consider a swop for more modern 3l, your oil sump sits in front of the crossmember, the newer ones sit behind. So not a straigth fit, but can be made to work. Your car's dipstick should also be in the timing cover at the front, not on the driver's side out the block.

Those blocks are not identical to the later ones, the oil pump mounting position and depth is different. You can put newer model heads on that block though.

Also, those engines and the early Capri engines used a different and hard to obtain pressure plate.

.