Second and third generation Ford Escorts share the same throttle body bolt pattern as many other mid 90s Ford vehicles. One of which is a great example is the Ford 3.8 Mustang. BBK designed an upgrade throttle body for the 3.8 mustang which usually resells for about $ 200 on eBay and other places. While a bit expensive, sometimes they can be found for less than a $ 100 if they are used. Since a throttle body does not degrade with age other than minor corrosion and dirt, restoring one to the factory finish is quite simple.

The upgrade brings a great increase in flow and throttle response, throttle sensitivity becomes really high but easy to adjust to for an experienced driver. To install the throttle body in the ford escort the following has to be done.

Procedure

1. Uninstall the entire air intake assembly, throttle cable, and intake manifold! As can be seen from the pictures below, the difference in the throttle opening is quite large, going from 44mm (3rd gen) or 40mm (2nd gen) to 56mm. Another major difference is the side of the throttle position sensor and the throttle cable. The throttle position sensors do not have to be changed.

   

2. Take a piece of paper and put it flat against the BBK TB and then rub your dirty hands on it to create an outline of the opening, then cut the opening out of the paper. You now have a template of the BBK TB opening, make sure it includes the bolt holes. Match it against the intake manifold and ue a marker to mark the extra metal that has to be removed.

   

3. Removing enough to create a smooth flowing match for the BBK will take a lot of time, during the process the TB should be put against the IM (intake manifold) and opened to see how good the match is. Note that removing the metal is best done with a straight carbide bit, in an angle grinder. I made the mistake of using a drill the first time due to lack of a compressor powerful enough to power a die grinder, and far too much time was consumed on the simple task.
4. Once done porting the TB opening, the intake manifold has to be flushed out with a degreaser many times! This is extremely important, because if any metal makes it's way into the engine it will scar the cylinder walls and cause other damage. There will be lots of material in all the passages inside the cast aluminum intake manifold, therefore it should be cleaned repeatedly until no more metal particles come out. Another option is to take it to a local machine shop and ask them to steam clean it or hot tank it, this usually does not cost much.
5. Reinstall the intake manifold with new gaskets. It is recommended to eliminate and plug the EGR entrance to the IM because otherwise it will be a more difficult task to mount the throttle cable. While hard to see in the picture below, it serves to show one example of how the throttle cable can be mounted to the intake manifold. With a simple aluminum bar slightly twisted and two holes on each end in order to mount a cut up section of the old throttle cable mount, while bolting to the intake manifold in one of the old egr system's threads.

   

   A quick way to get the car running is to simply put the throttle cable end into the throttle body as seen in the picture on the right. If the angle is right, it will not pop out due to the tension of the cable. However, modifying the mount for a better retention should not be too difficult.

Idle control valve elimination

Another modification that was done in conjunction with the BBK upgrade was eliminating the idle control valve. While some may wonder as to the purpose of such a modification, simplifying things is always nice and the car was being prepped for MegaSquirt fuel injection computer. To avoid the headaches of rigging up an ICV to the MegaSquirt computer, it was decided and confirmed that it is not an essential component of a car's operation. Plugging the two holes was done with polyurethane, which was easy to sand on the inside and the outside of the TB for a smooth finish. The butterfly valve stop screw was adjusted, which was quite a fine process, to allow enough extra air through the larger crack of the butterfly valve during it's closed position, for the engine to idle. One downside of this modification was that when the engine is cold it would have not have enough air to idle, so usually giving the car a little bit of throttle during the first 30-60 seconds of warmup was enough to avoid this. On hot summer days sometimes it was not necessary all together. There were no other problems with the idle, or the rpms.

Also see

• Alex's 98 Escort build, 97 Escort build, and 97 Tracer build for more examples and application.

  The latest 97 Tracer build includes new modifications to the BKK TB.

• Escort 3.8 throttle body upgrade
• Escort SPI intake manifolds
• Idle control valve elimination
• Ford Escort & ZX2 section for the entire index of all Ford Escort and ZX2 related articles.