Tuesday 22nd September - Rolling Road Session.

 Well the day finally arrived for the rolling road session for my Green Cortina. It was booked into BD Engineering at Sittingbourne in Kent and unlike Red Line Tuning, or Thurston Engineering, they didn't cancel my appointment at the last minute and honoured the booking.
I'd used them in the past to be honest when I had the Triumph and they did a good job. The only reason I don't use them often is because I have to make the journey over that bloody Dartford Crossing bridge going there and even worse, the Dartford Tunnel coming home. 

My booking time was 3pm, but because you never know if the Dartford crossing is going to be running smooth or not, we left at around 1pm. Luckily, we had a clear run and arrived there at 2pm. 
Even more luckily he had just finished his previous job and so pulled the car into the workshop straight away. 
Karen and I took our place in the waiting room and patiently waited while the man did his thing. One of the first things he discovered was how much air was being drawn into the engine via the inlet manifold. I must admit, I'd noticed that the engine seemed to be sucking really hard because removing the oil filler cap normally resulted in a 'tug of war' just to get the bloody thing off! 
He cured this by fitting a smaller fitting onto the inlet manifold so that not so much air could be drawn in. He then fitted slightly bigger main jets in the carburettor and made a few other minor adjustments. 

He had the engine up to just over 5000 rpm on the dyno run and it produced 86.5 bhp and 93.2 lb-ft. (Torque) Not bad for a standard 1600cc crossflow engine. He did also say that it was a lovely strong engine and that it sounded fantastic. It's always nice to get a compliment from an expert. 

We left there around 4.30pm which meant we'd be at the dreaded Dartford Tunnel at 5pm, right in the middle of 'rush hour'. However, it wasn't too bad and we made pretty good time. 
The traffic was actually worse on the A127 back towards Southend and it was pretty much stop, start all the way from the M25 right up to Leigh On Sea. It took a total of 2 hours, 5 minutes to get home!

I have to say though, even though we sat in all that traffic, the car behaved impeccably and never faltered once. It drives beautifully as well now, so the rolling road session was well worth the money. 
I will definitely be using him again as he knows how to tune twin 40 webers as well which will come in handy when I'm ready to have the Lotus done. Looking forward to it. 😉

Sunday 20th September - Battlesbridge Breakfast Meet.

Now that we are heading towards the end of September, the car meets will be coming to an end soon, so we decided to fit another one in while the weather was good. I had been hoping to get to a few shows in in the Lotus Cortina, but the ridiculous waiting times to have parts refurbished and manufactured has put paid to that, so it looks like the Lotus will have to wait until next year now. 

So, the Green Cortina was the car of choice again today and once again it ran ok, but still with the popping on the over run only not as bad this morning because I had adjusted the mixture screw before leaving. 

There were some very different cars at the meet today that I had never seen before. There was a very nice Thames 307E (I think) van and a very small Vespa 400 car. (I thought Vespa's only made scooters!)

My other favourite car was a Mk3 Zephyr in British Racing Green. I had one of these as my first ever car when I was 18 years old, although mine was a 2.5 litre six cylinder engine and this one was a 1.7 litre four cylinder engine. They were lovely cars though and I missed mine once I'd sold it. 

Another two cars that I'd not seen before were some proper old vintage cars. I don't even know what they were, except that they were both Fords. It's really good to see vehicles this old still on the road. They can't be easy to drive with todays cutting up and late braking that seems to be the norm now. 

It had been a lovely morning, but we headed home around 12pm as we had things to do. My car ran ok- ish but I'm really looking forward to getting it sorted properly. Not long to go now to the rolling road session and hopefully, it will be perfect at last. 

Saturday 19th September - Billericay Breakfast Meet.

 I was looking forward to this meet as I had missed the last two due to working and other issues. The Green Cortina ran well on the way down there with no popping or back firing and I wondered if I still needed to attend the rolling road session that I had booked for a few days time. 

There were some great cars there and I met some good friends that I hadn't seen for a while. The pick of the bunch for me was a Mk1 Cortina GT 2 door in a beautiful shiny red. It also came with a Harris Performance engine which is worth a lot of money on its own. 

There was some other lovely cars there and the attendance was a lot more than normal too. We left around 11.30 and after sitting in traffic on the A127 my car started popping on the over run again. Looks like I will be going to the rolling road session after all then! 

Wednesday 16th September - A new compressor!

 A few weeks back, my ancient air compressor decided to retire. It's done well because I bought it eighteen years ago and it was second hand then! It had been proving difficult to start up in recent months and now it had got to the stage where if it did start, it wouldn't restart once the pressure dropped. Then it suddenly announced its retirement one day by refusing to start at all! (It had been trying to tell me gradually I guess)

I tried replacing a few parts that might have been causing the issue such as the air pressure valve, the starter capacitor, but nothing was curing it. I even had the electric motor checked out by a firm in Southend. (The guy there wouldn't believe it was made in Czechoslovakia because that hasn't existed since 1992 and it's been the Czech Republic since then!) 
However, once he had it front of him with the manufacturers plate in front of him he had to accept that it really was that old! 

I managed to find another guy that would come round and see if he could bring it back to life, but after various checks he pronounced it unrepairable. The main thing was that even if he could get it running, the pump wasn't up to much and replacing it was impossible as it was so old, you just can't get the parts anymore!
Even the air tank was built by BMC (British Motor Corporation) for one of its heavy duty trucks and had a date stamp on it from 28th July 1976!

So, I decided to bite the bullet and treat myself to a new one. SGS were doing a good deal, so I dug deep and purchased a brand new one. (Free next day delivery too!)

I also cleaned out the old air tank and stripped all of the motor, engine and switches off of it and my compressor man is going to come back at some point and plumb it in to new tank so that I can have double the capacity. It'll take longer to build up to pressure, but once up, it will last all day. 😊

 

Saturday 12th September - Wheel bearing adjustment

 Not much to do today, so I decided to adjust the wheel bearings on my Green Cortina. I'd become aware of a slight knocking from the front which I first thought were the strut tops coming loose. 
The strut tops were fine however, and it did indeed turn out to be the wheel bearings needing adjustment. 

This didn't take long and while I had the wheels off, I tried on one of my other rims that I'd been experimenting a different colour on. 

I'd chosen a dark Gray, but I don't think this will suit the car at all. I'm toying with the idea of changing to a darker coloured wheel, just for a different look, but it has to look right. 
I did try my dark Group five alloys on the car when I first got them. (See below) I thought they looked alright, but decided they looked better on my Zetec Cortina. (Now since sold)

I shall keep persevering until I find a colour I'm happy with, or I could just leave it as it is. 😁

Saturday 5th September. A startling discovery!

 My good friends Graham and Dave came up today to see if we could finally fix my Green Cortina. I still cant seem to cure the popping that I'm getting on the over run. 
Graham is a proper qualified mechanic and has spent a good deal of his life working on cars, so I was grateful to have a bit of expert knowledge available. (No offence to Dave, but Dave's like me: self taught!)

The first thing we did was to blank off the remote brake servo as this takes its air feed from the same pipe as the breather box from the engine. This made no difference. 
Then we removed the pipe from the breather to the inlet manifold and just left the breather pipe floating free. This did exactly what I said it would do and the test drive resulted in blowing oil out of the dipstick tube. (I'd tried this before and seen the result)
It states in the workshop manual that the pipe from the breather box needs to go to the inlet manifold and the inlet manifold will the suck the gasses from the breather box and distribute them evenly back into the cylinders to be then expelled via the exhaust ports. 
While investigating this Graham noticed that the outlet in the centre of the inlet manifold had been welded closed. (See below)

With this being welded up, somebody had then drilled and tapped another hole in the inlet manifold and then added another fitting in the top of the inlet manifold. (See below)

The issue with this is that the hole had been drilled between inlet ports three and four, so therefore the gases aren't entering the inlet manifold centrally and so cannot be transferred equally into the four inlet ports.

This would also explain why, when I've taken my spark plugs out after a long run to see what colour they are, the front two have always been a sooty black and the back two have always been a lean white!
Because the front two are getting hardly any air, and the back two are getting too much. 

Now, whether this will be the cause of the popping on the over run, I don't know, but it certainly isn't right and needs addressing. So, our work finished there and then and will have to resume once I've bought another inlet manifold that hasn't been bodged or butchered. (Four years I've had this car now and I'm still finding bodges on it!) 

It was still a good day though as I hadn't seen Graham for a good few years now, so it was good to have a catch up. 😊

Sunday 23rd August. Period Steering wheel!

 Whilst the suspension legs and front springs are away being refurbished, I've been very limited as to what I can do with the Lotus. 

So, I decided to try a different steering wheel on the Green car. The Lotus Cortina was missing its original steering wheel when I bought it, but there was a period after market steering wheel in its place. I already have a proper Lotus steering wheel to fit onto the Lotus Cortina, so I thought I'd try the after market wheel on the Green car. Sometimes, these aren't interchangeable due to being different models, I.e Pre-aeroflow and Aeroflow. (The steering columns are different)

The first fitting revealed that the bottom of the steering wheel boss was making contact with the column shroud. However, after adjusting the shroud, I found that the after market steering wheel fitted perfectly. 

It certainly looks better than the 1980's Mountey steering wheel that was on there and I'm very happy with the result. Success! 😊

Sunday 16th August - Battlesbridge Breakfast Meet.

 After yesterdays busy exploits, today was a time to chill, so we headed down to Battlesbridge. The weather had cooled quite a bit, so it wasn't as uncomfortable as it had been recently. (I don't deal with the heat very well)
Karen and I arrived there fairly early (as usual) and headed straight to the gazebo for some coffee. Before long we were joined by my Triumph mates Peter Silk and Gavin. 
We sat talking and drinking coffee for some time, before having a wander around the cars. My favourite car was one I hadn't seen there before and was absolutely beautiful. It was a Mk2 Consul estate. There's not many of these about now, mainly because there wasn't many of then built in the first place. Ford Motor Company wasn't making their own estates when the Mk2 Consul was being produced and the conversion to estate car was given to Abbots of Farnham. 

I even managed to find a picture that was taken inside the Abbots workshop which shows the conversion process taking place. 😊

Another estate that caught my eye was a Ford Anglia estate. Quite unusual these and one of a very few estate cars that had only two doors. The only other 2 door estates I can think of from back then is the Ford Escort and the Vauxhall Viva. 

Time was getting on and we had to make a move as I had to call in to my friend Keith's to collect some parts for my LC. I had been a good morning though and it was nice to just sit around chatting to friends. We need to get some more of these meets in, because before you know it, Autumn will be closing in and another show season will have passed. 😢

Saturday 15th August - Getting legless!

After my very short couple of drives around the crescent in the LC, I had a feeling that all was not well suspension wise. I took measurements once the car was back on level ground in the garage and found a centimeter difference between the nearside and offside springs at the back of the car, and a 2.5 centimetre difference at the front. 
The 1 centimetre difference at the rear is nothing to worry about really and can easily be ignored, but only if the front is level. 2.5 centimetres doesn't sound a lot, but its amazing how much it can affect the steering and handling. 
So, todays task was remove both front struts and strip them down in readiness to take down to Gaz Shocks in Basildon. Everything came undone easy enough as it had only recently been fitted up!
I must admit to kicking myself, because I should really have got these done while they were off the car for eight months, but hey ho!
By lunchtime I had both of them removed and stripped down and found that one of the inserts was virtually seized. I also found that one of the springs measured 33cm while the other measured 31cm. 
That will be why the car wasn't sitting level then! All I need now is to get them to Gaz so they can totally refurbish them. 

Wednesday 12th August - A vast improvement!

 Saturday morning I had spent a couple of hours or so of my valuable time making a second throttle bracket for the Lotus Cortina. The first one was the correct shape, but the metal I used was too flimsy and was flexing more than I liked when put under pressure. 
The second version that I made was built from thicker metal, but to my disappointment still flexed under pressure.
Whilst browsing online for something totally different I came across a much better version to what I had designed and built. I decided that the 'not cheap' asking price was worth the risk and would hopefully save me wasting any more of my time. 
Today, the said item arrived. It came Kelvedon Lotus and they must have now decided that I had spent enough money with them to warrant giving me a couple of free stickers. (I purchased a full set of brand new brake pipes, plus other goodies from them previously). 

My garage is immensely hot by the time I get home from work, but I resisted the heat and went straight out there to fit this new work of art. I have to admit, it's a much design than my one and the 'flexing' I was experiencing is now a thing of the past. Two very good results so far this week then! 😊

Tuesday 11th August - A very nice surprise!

 So, Monday morning I started making phone calls regarding a replacement radiator for the Lotus Cortina. I was hoping to find someone who actually had one in stock and I wouldn't have to wait for them to make it. Some of the lead times were 4 to 5 weeks!
Eventually I admitted defeat and placed an order with Coolex of Nottingham who promised no more than a week and a half. This would have been around 12pm that I spoke to them and said I would be eternally grateful if they could do anything to reduce the lead time. 

So, you can imagine my surprise, and delight when the new radiator arrived the very next day! I opened the box to make sure that all the fittings were in the right place and that they hadn't just sent me any old one they had laying around, but everything was as my specifications. Even the overflow pipe fitting being on the driver side. 

Without any hesitation I went straight out into the garage to trial fit it and make sure all was well. I can safely say that it was and within half hour I had my new radiator fitted. 
I'd been a bit disillusioned with some customer service recently, but this was breath of fresh air. I know who I'll be going to with any radiator issues in future! 😊

Saturday 8th August - I finally drive the Lotus!

 Todays main task was to finally drive the Lotus Cortina out of the garage and hopefully round the block a few times. I still had a few things to do on the Green Cortina first though and being my only show car at the moment, this has to take priority.  I had carried out a compression test on the car just to see if I had a head gasket problem. The engine had been rebuilt a couple of years ago and to be honest I can't remember re-torquing the cylinder head. 
So I had carried out a compression test and re-torqued the head during the week, so this morning I just had re-fit the rocker cover and air filter and then carry out another compression test. The results of the two tests can be seen below. There's not a great deal of difference, but they are at least within 10% of each other now. Plus it rules out any head gasket issues. 

My next job was to re-fit the rear bumper again. I wasn't completely happy with the finish when it was hydrochromed, so the guy who did it offered to do it again free of charge. It looked much better this time as you can see.

Next on the list was to make a thicker throttle bracket for the Lotus Cortina as the previous one I'd made was a little bit slack. I used thicker metal this time and although it still flexes a bit, it's better than it was. After prepping the car I was ready to start it and it fired up no problem. I spotted an initial water leak, but this was only a loose jubilee clip. With this tightened the dripping stopped. 
I then drove it round the crescent a couple of times. It drove great and sounds great too. However, lifting the bonnet revealed that the repairs my mate Gavin had done to the pin holed radiator hadn't taken and it was spraying out water and it was also  leaking engine oil from somewhere. How disappointing. 😔

I quickly got the picture I had been waiting to get ever since I bought the car, (see below) and then put the car back in the garage. 

Further investigation revealed that the oil leak could be a crankshaft seal, and after speaking to my engine my engine builder, we've decided to sort the rad out first, then the car will be going to his workshop for investigation and repair. 

I was very disappointed, but the at least the test drive revealed that the brakes, clutch etc are all fine and it's only these bits that need doing. (it will need a rolling road session though to set the twin 40's up properly. 
The main thing is though, I have now driven my dream car, the Mk1 Lotus Cortina. And I loved it! I will persevere and I will make this car this great again. Watch this space! 😊

 

Sunday 2nd August - Cortina Mk1 OC National Day-Stratford Racecourse.

I was hoping to be able to take the Green Cortina to this event, but with Thurston Engineering letting me down, I ended up taking my every day car, my Peugeot 308 estate. Karen and I decided to repeat last years plan of booking somewhere to stay for two nights and travelling up to Stratford Upon Avon on the Friday night. So, Karen collected me from work Friday afternoon from Hockley at 3.30pm and we drove straight to a farmhouse B&B that we had booked, arriving at 6.40pm. 
Saturday was Karen's day, so we just mooched around the town looking in shops and just chilling out with an ice cream in the park. It's a beautiful place with plenty of lovely old buildings to admire and it made a nice change not to be working on cars for a change. 

Sunday was bright and sunny and we arrived at the show location around 09.30am. Already there were some beautiful cars there with more arriving through the morning. As well the Cortina Mk1 Owners Club having their national day there, so did the Lotus Cortina Owners Club, (Of which I am also a member) the Mk2 Cortina Owners Club and also the Ford Anglia 105E Owners Club. So there was plenty of cars there to look at. 

There was also a lot of auto jumble stands there, although I never bought anything. There was only one thing I was looking for and that was a bonnet catch for my Lotus, but I never managed to find one. Once we'd finished looking round the auto jumble we moved onto looking at the cars and there were some really lovely cars in attendance. My favourite car was there as usual and as usual I couldn't resist getting (another) photo of it. (See below) 

There was a also a couple of Mk1 saloons for sale, but despite being tempted due to my troublesome pair, I managed to resist and keep my hand in my pocket. The yellow car below was well priced at £6K and the White car priced at £9125. Both pretty good prices, but I've got enough to do at present. 

A car that would have tempted me if it were sale was a Mk1 Cortina GT estate. A very rare car in itself, but also in one of my favourite colours of Goodwood Green (Same as my four door) with a Sherwood Green flash. (The Lotus Cortina Green) I must admit, I really like the Sherwood Green flash and I'm now thinking about having one painted onto my four door. 

I couldn't leave without looking at the Lotus Cortina's and there were some gorgeous examples present. Looking at these just made me want to get my one on the road. These really are a special car in my eyes and have been my dream car since I was a kid. I've been a passenger in one, but I've never even driven one, so I need to change that soon. 

With early afternoon approaching, we decided to make a move homewards. We had well over 100 miles to cover and it was starting to get very hot as well. We'd had a lovely chilled out weekend and will be looking to do it again next year. Hopefully in a Cortina! 

  

Monday 27th July - The Lotus Cortina awakens!

 I had my engine builder coming round tonight to assist in the re-generation of the Lotus Cortina. I had carried out a few jobs in readiness of his arrival: Put petrol in, fully charged the battery and made sure there was a spark at the distributor etc. 

I had also filled the engine with 20/50 Valveoline VR1 engine oil and so the first job was to pump the oil round the engine. We did this with the spark plugs out and soon had enough pressure to fire the engine. 

It seemed to not want to go at first, but then we spotted that the ignition wire had fallen off of the coil. With this replaced the old girl fired into life. 

What a moment! This car had been sitting in a garage with the engine removed since 1977, so this was the first time it had been running for

 49 years! Amazing! 

As you can imagine I was very pleased. I've revived cars that have been standing for 23 years and 26 years before, but 49 years is definitely a fantastic achievement! 

Unfortunately, we found that the radiator was leaking slightly, so that's something else that will have to be looked at. Still a brilliant night though and I'm getting closer to driving my dream car! 😊

Friday 24th July. A free day courtesy of Thurston engineering!

 Today was the day that I was supposed be taking the Green Cortina over to Thurston engineering for a rolling road session. 
They sent me a long list of things to check before bringing the car over and I just happened to ring them on the Wednesday to query one of them. (It was to do with suppressors in spark plugs) 
Whilst on the phone to them, they then decided that they wouldn't be able to do my rolling road session due to 'staff shortages' and 'their equipment suddenly developing a fault'. What a load of old bollocks!

I pointed out to them that their check list that they sent me also so stated that I would still have to pay an hours labour if I should cancel the session inside a week. (£140 plus vat)
So I reminded them that I had booked a day off work out of my holiday allowance for today, so would they be able to reimburse me a days wages? What do you think their answer was? Yes, you are right. So, word of warning, if you need a rolling road session carried out, be very wary of THURSTON ENGINEERING of ONGAR. They are totally unreliable!

There is a guy who works in a garage near where I work who owns a very quick, fuel injected, Mk2 Lotus Cortina. So I went to see him to see if he knew anyone that could help. He didn't, but he did offer me the use of his gas analyser so I could see what my emissions were reading. 
So we got the car into his workshop and placed the probe in the exhaust. No matter what we did, we couldn't get the emissions down. I told him that I had been trying bigger jets in an attempt to reduce my 'popping' on the over run and he said that's probably why the emissions wont come down. He recommended going back to standard jets to start with and just adjusting the mixture. 
So, that's what I'm going to try. It's a standard engine with a standard camshaft and standard carburettor, so it shouldn't need oversize jets in it. It's just a shame that Redline tuning and Thurston engineering cant honour their bookings otherwise this would have been sorted by now. Very frustrating! 

Wednesday 22nd July - Hydrochromed bumpers collected.

 A short diversion today saw me collecting the rear bumper from the Green Cortina and the quarter bumpers from the Lotus Cortina. 
Normal chroming has become ridiculously expensive and the last quote I had to do these was £800! (I remember when I used to buy complete and running cars for that!)

I was put in touch with someone last year that did 'Hydrochroming' so I thought I'd give him a try. He did do a rear bumper for me before, but it turned yellow for some reason. To be fair though, he took it back and worked on it again and this time it came out well. 

Once home, I wasted no time in fitting them (Even though it was baking hot) and they really looked the part. There's nothing really wrong with the bumper on the Green Cortina to be honest, but it's an estate one. These have a small cut out in them so that you don't graze your knuckles on them when you are opening the tail gate. Saloon bumpers seem to be few and far between now, so it was good to finally get the right bumper on the car. 😊

Saturday 18th July. More electrical work!

 Dave Maton was able to come up again today and the plan was to investigate the wiring issues on the Lotus Cortina. Over the past few weeks I had replaced the dynamo and the voltage control box. (Another £150 spent!)
Dave spent a lot of time delving into the main loom and trying to find out why the ignition light wouldn't illuminate. Eventually, he had some success and managed to get it working.
With all the burnt wiring cut out and replaced, we were satisfied that nothing else would short out and that everything was working and so we set about refitting the dashboard and interior.
We even managed to finally fit the glove box that had been laying in the spares tray since I'd bought the car. 
All in all, a successful day. 😊