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! 

Sunday August 3rd - Cortina Mk1 Owners Club National Day.

 This weekend was the Cortina Mk1 Owners club national weekend in the beautiful town on Stratford Upon Avon. Rather than get up at stupid O'clock on Sunday morning, rush up there for the day, then rush straight back, Karen and I decided to make a weekend of it and booked a hotel for the Friday and Saturday night.
I finished work on time on the Friday and we left around 16.45 to make the 150 mile journey. To our surprise, traffic was very light and the only hold up we had was a half mile queue from the M25 onto to the M40.
We had a lovely day walking around the town on Saturday, followed a by a lovely meal at a Chinese restaurant in the evening. 
Sunday morning, we were up early and arrived at the show ground (Stratford Race Course) at 9am. The Mk1 Cortina club always invite other clubs to attend and this year was no different with the Ford Anglia and Mk2 Cortina club in attendance. 

There were some lovely cars there and lots of my favourite model , the MK1 Lotus Cortina. (I still dream of owning one) It was great day and I even managed to buy some parts I was after from the auto jumble as well.
However, by about 12pm, the rain clouds were gathering and Karen and I decided to head home as we still had a long way to go and both had to go to work on Monday. It was a great weekend though and one we will probably look at repeating next year. 

Saturday 26th July. Billericay breakfast meet.

 Today was the Breakfast meet at the cosy cup cafe and a good chance to meet up with some like minded classic car enthusiasts. It's a good meet, but dear God! They need to get organised in that cafe. It took close on 30 minutes in the queue just to get to the counter to put an order in!

Anyway, good friends Gavin, Keith, Martin, John and Rachel were all there and one of my old work mates, Russell was there as well. I didn't get a chance to take many photos as I was too busy talking to people! There were some nice cars there though. 

I had taken the Green Cortina with me today for only its second run since its engine rebuild. I thought it was all going well until I pulled up on the drive and spotted some oil on the floor. Opening the bonnet revealed that oil was once again leaking from the dipstick tube, so the problem I thought had been cured.....hasn't. Very disapointing. 😑

Sunday 20th July. A bit of a washout!

 Today was the Maylandsea classic car show. Good friends Andy and Sharon were also going, so it would be a good chance to catch up. 

We got there about 10am and the rain held off for long enough around to look around the other cars. (Only once though!) There was another Mk1 Cortina there which I hadn't seen before and also another favourite car of mine. 😉

                                        

Unfortunately , just after 12pm the heavens opened and it looked like the rain was here for the day. We suffered it for about half hour, but then decided to call it a day and followed Andy and Sharon back to their place for a barbeque. You've got to make the best of a bad job haven't you? 😏

Saturday 19th July. Dave Maton returns!

 Dave Maton returned today to hopefully finish the wiring on the race car. I had bought loads more wiring and also a gas powered soldering iron, so we were looking forward to getting everything working. A lot of the original wiring loom was missing, so we started from fresh which was challenging at times. 

We also had to fit a rotary switch with four positions on the dashboard because the original headlight switch layout was totally missing. (These are the moments when I wonder why I bought this car!)

Anyway, while Dave worked away at the wiring, I got on with fitting the seat belts. (It didn't have any of those either!) I managed fitting the driver side seat belt, but for some reason there is just a hole where the captive nut used to be in the B pillar, so I will have to make up a plate and captive nut for that another time. 

By late afternoon we had side lights, dipped beam, full beam, windscreen washers, and a hooter, so I was very pleased with the days work. 😊

Friday 11th July. New shoes for the race car.

 When I bought the race car I had been warned about the road legal ''slick' tyres on it. The seller said to me ' They're ok in the dry, but you'll soon find yourself facing the wrong way in the wet.'. 
Not being a fan of facing on coming traffic, I decided to look for something with more grip. The problem is, with the wheels being 13 inch diameter, there's not a lot of choice out there. 

Eventually, I found a reasonably prices set of 185/70 x 13 tyres from Oponeo and ordered them. I also ordered a 'Minilite'  style wheel from JBW, so that I had a spare. (Although it was silver, so I would have to paint it. 

The new tyres arrived and I took them to my local tyre man to have them fitted. He wanted to keep the slicks, but I brought them home as I plan to sell them. 

With this done, I made a trip to Halfords to seek out some matching Gold paint for the spare. I managed to get it close enough as makes no difference and so spent the afternoon painting and lacquering. With the new tyre fitted, it looked pretty good. Another job off of the list.😉

Saturday 5th July. The wiring marathon starts!

 Good friend Dave Maton came up today and brought his wiring and soldering iron kits with him so we could get started on the electrics on the race car. Being a previous race/track car, it had no rear number plate lights, windscreen washers, hooter, side lights or full beam! I'm eventually looking at putting this car back on the road with a full MOT, so all of these things need to be present and working. 

The first job on the agenda was the rear number plate lights. I didn't want a big bulky number plate holder, so I opted for some LED lights, which also serve as number plate bolts. I thought these looked quite good, so I was happy with them. A good start! 

Next on the agenda was sorting out the indicators. They did work, but diagonally! I.e. if you indicated right , you got the offside front and nearside rear working, and if you indicated left, you got the nearside front and offside rear working! 

Now I should also explain that this car has very little of it's original switches and dashboard left and just had a bank of switches for: Left indicator, right indicator, windscreen wipers, electric fan, and a blank. So, the two switches for the indicators were removed and merged onto an indicator stalk bought from car builder solutions. It's not ideal, bit it is a lot better than what we had. 

We then moved onto the headlights which were a bodged LED conversion. Luckily I had a pair of original Lucas headlights in stock, so these were going to be the replacements for the LEDs. Unfortunately while trying to convert back the original headlight set up, we found that somebody had cut most of the original wiring loom out and there was no wiring there for side lights or full beam either.

Time had now caught up with us and Dave had to start heading home, so we called it a day. I would have to buy lots more wiring and Dave would have to return at another point to help get the job done. Not a great start, but at least it's a start. 😏