Door Barrels
First of all, what are you hopping to achieve? If your planing on fitting later locks from a MK4 for extra security, then don't bother! These locks are not much improvement over the original MK3 cars locks once they get a little worn. It requires a great deal of skill to fit them as well as the locating holes need to be enlarged and this isn't simple a case of making a round hole bigger. The holes are specially shaped, like two size holes together, to locate the barrel and prevent it from rotating. A better alternative would be to fit a set of after market locks, though these do tend to be rather on the ugly side. If you really must have MK4 barrels fitted then it is probably going to be a whole lot easier to just fit MK4 doors to your car. For details of this see further down this page.
De-Locking
The best bet is to fit central locking to the vehicle and an alarm with remote locking feature. The majority of car alarms now come with this feature and as most insurance companies are now asking for one to be fitted, especially to a modified Escort, you'll probably soon have one anyway. This means you can then remove the door barrels completely and weld up the holes with plates on the inside to 'De-Lock' your car. This provides a number of benefits, it's not just to make the car look pretty. If there aren't any door locks, then there's nothing for Mr Thief to try to force with his screw driver. Also, the absence of door locks immediately tells him that you have remote central locking that is more than likely operated by an alarm system. What you must make sure you do however is remove the part of the door lock mechanism that the door barrel was originally attached to. This just entails cutting off a lever. This prevents any coat hanger attempts from having anything to lift.
Internal Locks (Door pins)
This basically deals with converting your MK3 from the use of the door pin type internal lock to the MK4 style all in one unit built into the inner door release handle itself. It is another relatively simple and worthwhile modification.
You will need:
MK4 Escort/Orion
Inner door handles
Door latch mechanisms
MK3 Escort
Extra pair of inner door handle operating rods
The latch mechanisms need to be swapped over due to the revised operating lever set up. If you have de-locked your doors, cut off the now redundant barrel operating lever to help combat any coat hanger attempts on your car. You should be able to identify this lever when you remove the mechanism from the donor car. The mechanism will bolt straight into the MK3 doors. The handles will also fit the MK3 door and trims with no problems as they are of the same dimensions as the originals. However, the inner handles on the MK3 are mounted further forward than on the MK4 which is where the extra operating rods come in. You may need to make minor adjustments to them to fine tune the operation of the lock and release handle. You will also have to make an extra slot in the inner door skin to accommodate the extra rods guide, otherwise you'll encounter problems with the rod bowing rather than operating the latch mechanism.
