Sunday 23rd February. Canvey Island breakfast meet, then work!

 I had never been to the Canvey Island breakfast meet before and so decided it was time to check it out. I had been warned that it was mainly American cars, so I didn't bother digging the Cortina out and went in my every day car, a Peugeot 308 estate. (A good parts collector!)
I arrived at 10am to find the meet was already packed and I had to park outside on double yellow lines. A quick walk round showed that it was indeed mainly American with a few British cars thrown in. (Including a very rare Vauxhall Victor estate) I've nothing against American cars, but they aren't my thing at all, so after taking a few pics, I set off for home. 

Once home, I put on my work clothes and got to work on the Zetec Cortina. It needs new rear wheel bearings and I also needed to find out what the ratio in the differential is. 
Luckily everything went well and all came apart fairly easily. The half shafts were put to one side in readiness of someone pressing the new bearings on when they get time. I've never done these before, so I'm going to let someone else do them first so I can learn how. 
The differential was then marked up so I could count the teeth on the crown wheel and then also count the teeth on the pinion. Dividing one by the other will then provide the ratio. (As you can see below)

The differential actually looked in good condition, but it will still be sent to a specialist for checking over before going back in the car. I'm also considering buying a new crown wheel and pinion from Retro Ford which will give the differential a ratio of 3:31 instead of the 3:54. Basically, with the 3:54 diff, the car will be doing 3,800 revs per minute at 70mph. The 3:31 will reduce the RPM (revs per minute) down to 3,500 at 70mph. This will make a big difference when cruising on motorways and fast carriageways and hopefully I'll no longer need to carry out the massive, time consuming and expensive job of converting to a 5 speed gearbox.