Sunday 18th May - Battlesbridge Breakfast meet and aborted steering box fitting!

 Today was another classic car breakfast meet at Battlesbridge Antiques Centre. I set out at about 8.30am and when I turned off of the A127 and onto the A1245 dual carriageway I found myself sitting behind a 4.2 litre E type Jaguar. As soon as he saw my little Cortina Mk1 in his mirror, he pushed the loud pedal down and tried to put some distance between us. However, he didn't know what my little Cortina has under the bonnet. (A fuel injected twin cam Zetec engine) Needless to say, at 80mph he gave up the chase as he knew he couldn't get away from me. I do like being able to surprise people with this car. 😊

It was a good meet and made all the better by my friends Russell and Jan who I hadn't seen for over a year attending. Gavin and Peter were there too and we all had breakfast together. 

There was some unusual cars in attendance as well and one of the things I like about this meet is that there always seems to be different cars turning up. It's never just the same old cars. 

(The E type that thought he could get away from me!) 

Around 12pm I left as I wanted to get some work done on the Green Cortina. The steering box had been refurbished and I had collected it on Thursday. I had spent time on Saturday de-rusting the toe board and making it look better. (Even though it can't be seen when it's in position.)

So, I got the car up on axle stands and started re-installing the steering box. It did seem a bit awkward, but eventually I managed to get it in position, but it still felt that something wasn't quite right. 
After a short investigation, I was dismayed to find that during its refurbishment, it hadn't been put back together properly. There are some mounting brackets on the column and these should sit vertically. The problem was that my brackets were all sitting horizontally, so they wouldn't line up with the fitting brackets that they were supposed to. How bloody annoying! I was hoping to fit the steering box and then refit the engine as well, but now the engine will have to wait until the steering box is corrected.