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I own one of these rare Escorts and I want to tell you about them. As soon as I saw this kind of fast ford I wanted one. They are quite fast and are slightly more discrete than the Series 1 RS Turbo. It also has a unuique alloy finned alloy rocker cover which is apparantly used to help damp out the extra noise from the solid tappets? They have the origional RS 7 spoke wheels and the best steering wheel ford ever fitted to a production car. It was a small diameter leather trimmed four spoke design with finger grips on the back located on a useful Ford motorsport boss. It has an interesting 5th gear which I think is a pointless novelty and economy lights that shine when the fuel is not being injected. I like this touch but some do find it a distraction when driving at night.
It is a common misconception that thr RSi (nick name) was based on the XR3i. It was not. In fact the XR3i was based in the RSi. The RSi began to be thought up at the end of 79'. Production delays meant it was only available to buy in 82'; most of this time was spent trying to improve the already very good XR3 rear spoiler. However the customers got the fastest ever RS to date, the firse ever RS with fuel injection, and the first front wheel drive RS with. A standard example could even out accelerate to 60mph the larger engined and much more respected RS1800 in road going form of course! In competition trim it was a somewhat different story. But as a road car it could hold its own against its contempoarys. (excuse the spelling!)
You perhaps may well know that the RS 1600i was built by ford of Germany to compete in group A motorsport. That puts the little 1600i in the same elite group as the Impretza, Mitsubishi Evo's, Cosworths and a whole host of other greater cars, although not quite in performance terms. Although the 1600i was not a great sucess on track, it has a heratage that most hot hatches do not. It may be slow in comparison to other road going rally cars but its still a cracking car. And in its day it was very fast. It goes to show how technology has devoloped as even Mondeo man can have similar performance today!
How did I feel when I first drove it.
What immediatly struck me about this car was the huge amount of grip. It was suprising to say the least, especially after the 1.3L Escort I had previously driven. Pushed hard the cars displays slight understeer. Oversteer can be induced by lifting off the throttle when cornering. It is possible to four wheel drift this car which goes to show its nearly neutral handling in ideal conditions. I think a damp road is required or a fantastic amount of speed. It has a similar feeling to that of steering a Mini. The steering has a positive and direct feel.
The engine also had interesting characteristics. Although very gutless in the low to mid range, it does not run out of puff at the top, apart from when the rev limiter decides that you are to slow down. This gives immence joy, a free revving motor it certainly has. However, don't expect it to get anywhere fast below 4500 Rpm. I tend to find that it gets moving at about 5000 rpm.
On my old engine it tended not to rev above 5750 rpm. A harsh vibration was felt and heard. I put this down to it being old. It was. Shortly after it blew up on the A3 and stoped dead in the fast lane. Not very good at all. However after tuning experts Power + Engineering rebuilt the engine it would hapily rev to 6000rpm. After carefully rinning it in for 1000 miles of course. Now 4000 miles later it will happily go to just over 6500 rpm. I don't realise that I am getting clost to this limit as the engine doesnt complain like before. Many times have I overtaken a car and been hampered by the electronic rev limiter cutting in. Still, at least one of us knows where to stop! Its a easy car to misbehave in. According the the designer of this engine it is capable of running reliable at 7000 rpm, so why was it limited to the inferior XR3 maximum engine speed?
Most of the other CVH engined cars did not require this rev limiter. This was due to the fact that they used hydraulic tappets that squashed and lost power over 6Krpm. The RSi has solid tappets and thus requires a more direct mechanism for achiving this.
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