Saturday 21st March. -- Billericay Breakfast Meet.

 Today was to be another test drive day for the Green Cortina. I had fitted another set of idle jets since the last test drive, so I wanted to see if it had made any difference. 
I decided to stop for breakfast before I got to the Billericay meet this time as the cafe at Billericay is very good, but the queuing and waiting time for food and drinks is ridiculously slow. 
My cafe of choice this morning was the 'My Place' on the A127, but when I slowed to pull in my brake pedal seemed to stick, but then free itself quite harshly. 
I had noticed the sticky brake pedal feeling a few times recently, but nothing as bad as this morning. I suspect that my remote brake servo is on the way out.
 Once I had eaten I carried onto the breakfast meet with no further issues. When I got there I adjusted the tick over on the carb as I felt the engine was running too fast and also adjusted the air mixture screw to give it more fuel.

There were some nice cars at the meet, including my friend Keith's Lotus Cortina and a Mk2 Cortina with a turbo and injected Lotus V8 engine. This engine also has four camshafts and a secondary radiator in the boot as the radiator under the bonnet is not up to the job of keeping the engine cool! 

On leaving the meet I had to endure my sticky brake pedal again only this time it got much worse as I had to dab the brakes on on the A127, only this time, they stuck on and stayed on. 

Luckily a parking lay-by was very close by, so I pulled in and opened the bonnet. My suspicions were the brake servo, so I removed the hose that runs from the inlet manifold to the servo and a loud gush of air escaped out. With the air released the brakes then freed off and I was able to drive the car home. So it was indeed a servo problem. I'll get one ordered and fit it when time allows. 

Once I was home I decided to go and play with the Lotus for a few hours. I had fitted the front axle on Wednesday evening after work, so the next stage was to refit the anti-roll bar and track control arms.
This turned out to be a bit of a mission as I had replaced all of the bushes, and being an anti-roll bar everything has to be very taut with hardly any movement. 
After a couple of hours, everything was fitted and as it should be and now that I'm finally bolting things back on instead of removing them, I feel that I'm actually moving forward. 😊