Sunday 7th September - A new toy to make life easy!

After my recent exploits underneath the Cortina and getting covered in crap, I had decided to look into 'car tilters' or 'rotisseries'. The bottom side of the car is actually in very good order and still retains its original floor pans. 
However, it also has a lot of flakey paint and grease which will need a good wire brushing and de-greasing. I really don't fancy laying underneath the car and doing this job, so I decided to look for something to make life easier. 
Two days after making this decision, I found a rotisserie on ebay. Even better, it was already set up for a Mk1 Cortina. I contacted the seller and we came to an agreeable price and I collected it on my way home. 

So today, I had a bit of free time and decided to set it up. The  seller had made some printouts for me, so it was easy enough to follow and put together. It's absolutely ideal and my initial fears about space were unfounded. 

This really will make life easy and speed things up somewhat. Spinning the car on its side will allow me to get at all of the floor and also remove the front suspension and clean and re-bush that too. I was very lucky to find this marvellous piece of equipment and the beauty of it is, I can always sell it once I've finished with it. 😊

 

Sunday 31st August - Fuel tank removal (One of them anyway!)

I had a spare hour or so today, so I decided to quickly remove the fuel tank on the Lotus Cortina. It didn't actually take long as most of the 'lip' that connects it to the boot floor had rotted and was missing anyway! I think I undid a total of about four bolts and it came out! 
As you can see from the pics below, it was in very poor condition indeed and is only fit for scrap. 

Whilst underneath the car I noticed that the some kind of 'shield' was fitted to protect the tank. It's almost like a sump guard, only for a petrol tank. Bearing in mind that this used to be a rally car, I think years and years of wet mud had been getting stuck in between the shield and the tank causing it to rot out. (See tank shield below)

The other odd thing was that when I went to disconnect the fuel lines from the tank prior to removal, I found that there were no fuel lines attached any way! 

What my car does have though is an additional fuel tank in between the rear wheel arches. It's actually a Cortina Mk1 estate tank. 
Now, when Fords were having these cars 'homogolated', whatever extras were fitted to the 'works' rally and race cars, had to be offered for sale to Ford customers as well. So it looks like whoever owned this car from new, requested the additional fuel tank. (I'm not surprised, the standard Mk1 tank only holds 8 gallons!)
I have a picture of one of the tanks from a works car in a book and the tank and the mounting bracket are identical. (Although the filler neck is in a different place. (See below)

This is a fantastic period addition and I've already been offered good money for it. However, its part of the cars history and will be staying put. I wouldn't mind betting that there are very few cars left with this set up, if any at all! 

Saturday 30th August. Work begins!

 Pushing the Lotus Cortina off of the trailer and into the garage the previous Sunday hadn't been difficult, but hadn't exactly been easy either. It was evident that some of the brakes were partly stuck on and my visit to the garage this morning had revealed that two of the tyres had gone soft as well. 
So, I jacked the car up, got it on axle stands and removed the wheels. The wheels are all genuine Lotus '881A' steels, so that's good. Not so good is that they have fifty year old Dunlop 175x13 tyres on, so they will be removed at a later date when I have the wheels refurbished.

I then removed the front brake callipers and was happy to find that theses were the correct 'P16' and 'front facing' type as well. I also checked the struts while I was at it and was pleased to find that these are the correct 39cm struts as opposed to standard 41cm Cortina struts. (A lot of Lotus Cortina's were robbed of their 'sporty and upgraded bits' back in the day, so I wanted to check if anything was missing)

I then moved onto the rear brakes and found that these were a bit more challenging. None of the brake pipes to the wheel cylinders wanted to come undone, so it was a case of cutting the brake pipes to release the fluid and then using a hammer to knock the brake drums off. Once again, I found that the rear drums and shoes were the correct type for the car. 

While I was underneath the car and already very dirty, I decided to remove the exhaust. This needed a bit of brute force in the form of hammers and an angle grinder and promptly disintegrated while I was attacking it. In fact, it left so much rust on the floor, that when I picked up my spanners, their silhouette remained! 

Sunday 24th August. I finally take possession of my dream car!

 When I was a small boy, we had next door neighbours named John and Margaret. John loved his fast cars and one car in particular always had me rushing to look out of the front window when I heard it coming up the street. (Which also led me to being told off by my Mum for messing up her curtains!)
I loved the sound of it and I loved the look of it. I've loved them all my life, but never thought I'd ever be able to afford one.
They have always been way out of my price range and the only way that I would ever be able to own one was if a restoration project was to come up for sale. The trouble is, they are so desirable, that when they do come up for sale, they get snapped up straight away.
This time though, I'd had been lucky. I was told of a car in Harwich and made arrangements to go and look at it the same day that I heard about it. A deal was done and finally, finally, I had my dream car!

The object of my desire? A Lotus Cortina Mk1. A very special car indeed. The first 'Fast Ford' and one of only 3,306 Mk1's ever built. A famous car that was responsible the demise of the Mk2 Jaguar in saloon car racing (The Jags couldn't keep up with the Lotus!) and also becoming infamous as one was owned by master criminal Bruce Reynolds and used on reconnaissance prior to the Great Train Robbery. (In case he needed to make a quick getaway!)

So Sunday morning I drove up to good friend Colin Wake's place north of Colchester where we jumped into his Land Rover Discovery, hooked up his trailer and made the short journey to Harwich to collect the Lotus Cortina. 

We loaded the twin cam engine first as it was out of the car, and then loaded the car backwards onto the trailer as most of the weight was in the boot. (Cylinder head, radiator, starter motor etc.)

The car has been used for rallying in its past, hence the black bonnet, wing tops and doors. However, it's also been off the road since 1977 which will present me with quite a challenge in getting it mobile again. Being built in 1966, it's only actually spent 11 years on the road, although it's still close on 60 years old, so there's a lot that will need replacing. (Plus, I suspect those 11 years were quite gruelling!)

We had a good drive from Harwich to my place where upon arrival, we had to move my other cars out of the way, so that we could get this one in the garage. 

With this done and after some lunch and a cup of tea, we then loaded my four door Cortina onto the trailer as due to my lack of space, this is now going to live at Colin's for a little while. 

Now as much as I love Cortina's, four is just too many. Parts for a Lotus Cortina can also be ridiculously expensive, so I've made the decision to sell the Zetec Cortina and the Nissan powered Cortina to free up space and also provide some funds to restore the Lotus. 

It was a brilliant day though and I now finally have my dream car. I'm over the moon! 😊

Saturday 23rd August. An MOT pass.

 This morning saw a very early start as I had an MOT booked at 07.40. I booked it early as I wanted to get out and get back before the bank holiday weekend traffic built up. I had had also had a little bit of an over heating problem while test driving it previously, so that was another reason for not wanting to get caught in traffic. (The electric fan wasn't cutting in, so I'd used the manual override)
However, I'd given the radiator a real good flushing out since then and I had no such problems whilst driving to the MOT station. 

The MOT went well and a clean bill of health was pronounced with no advisories. I celebrated by taking the rest of the day off. 😉

Sunday 17th August - Battlesbridge Breakfast meet.

It was another beautiful day today, so attending the Battlesbridge breakfast meet seemed like a good idea. I had had to work the day before and then had to do some work on my front driveway, so chilling out and doing very little seemed like a plan.
It was a very good turn out and I met up with good friends, Gavin, Peter, Keith, John and Rachel and even Dave Maton and his wife Kerry joined us as well. Karen and I went in the Zetec Cortina just to give it a run out. 

As usual there were some great cars there and we even found a Nissan SX200. (See below)

This has the same engine as I have in my race car, 1964 two door pre-aeroflow. (The CA18DET 16 valve, twin cam, turbo engine)
I was hoping to catch the owner so I could see if he had any dump valve, or blow off valve fitted, as I think that's what mine will need, (My car still makes the 'Turkey Gobble' noise from the turbo.) but unfortunately I didn't get to see him. 

Around lunch time, we called called it a day as we all had other things to do. It had been a great morning out though and thoroughly enjoyable. 

Saturday August 9th - Finally ready for MOT!

Dave Maton was free again this Saturday, so he paid me a visit with a view to finishing off the last little jobs on the race car. (I really should stop calling it that!) 
I spent time re-fitting and lining up the headlights, while Dave fitted the new seat belt to the passenger side B pillar. (Somebody had cut out the captive nut for some reason, so I had to weld in a new section to be able to bolt the seat belt in.)
Trying to line up the bonnet was the next job so that we could open it without it catching the scuttle panel, but we had no success with this. It appears that the bonnet hinge on the driver side is knackered and has a lot of play in it which creates excessive movement. 

 We had to give up on the bonnet hinge and instead gave the car a few runs around the block to test all was working. Unfortunately the electric fan wasn't cutting in when it should have done and the engine ended up getting a tad warm which then deposited rusty water all over my block paving through the over flow. The fan can be switched on manually though, so I will have to do this for the time being until I get time to find out why it isn't cutting in automatically. (I also need to find out why the temperature gauge isn't working!)

It does drive well though and is scarily quick! I think it's the only car I've ever owned That I'm frightened of! Despite these small issues, I've booked the MOT for Saturday 23rd August at 07.40am. I know that's early, but I don't want to get caught in the traffic with the auto electric fan not working. I also couldn't do Saturday the 16th as I'm working, so........ fingers crossed!