Saturday 27th June. A good start but a bad ending!

 Dave Maton came up again today to help get the wiring finished. I had started another job on the Friday night, but didn't get it finished as I was waiting for the paint to dry, so while I was waiting for Dave to arrive, I managed to get in finished. 
The job in question was the spare wheel bracket. For some reason my car had a standard one fitted rather than the Lotus Cortina/Corsair item. The standard one is 6 inches in length, but the Lotus/Corsair one is 7 1/4 inches. (See below)

Because of the wider wheel rims on the Lotus, the standard spare wheel bracket can't reach the centre hole properly and causes the wheel to lean inwards towards the centre of the boot. (See below)

So, I'd managed to find the correct bracket on ebay and re-painted it in the desired colour. With this fitted the spare wheel now sits where it's supposed to and provides a bit more space in the boot. 

By the time I had done this Dave had arrived and we started on the laborious task of cutting out all of the holes on the new binnacle. Although brand new, these are just a fibre glass moulding and you have to cut the required holes out yourself. The old one in the car had turned very very brittle and had cracked in the middle. (Plus I stuck my thumb through the end of it one night by accident) 

This binnacle has to house six gauges in total. Two have a diameter of 98mm (Speedo and rev counter) and four at 52mm. (Oil, water, amps & fuel) Plus it needs holes for ignition switch, headlight switch, wiper switch etc. Needless to say, it took a while to get this done, but it did look good when finished! 

With this done, we put the rest of the interior in and I was able to actually sit in the car for the first time since last August when I bought it! We probably jumped the gun here though as we hadn't tested the electrics at this stage. The previous week we had found three melted wires coming off of the ignition switch, so we replaced the wires with new  and couldn't see any issues. Unfortunately, there obviously was an issue, because the same three wires melted again this week ! 
Feeling absolutely deflated, we shut the garage door and called it a day. We will persevere again next weekend and get it sorted.

Sunday 21st June - Battlesbridge Breakfast Meet.

Another lovely sunny morning, so we decided to head to Battlesbridge for a morning out. I wasn't expecting a big turn out as the annual classic car show was on at the Lawns in Rochford which is always very popular. Its popularity does have a down side though and sometimes it can take well over an hour to get in! Also once you do get in, they like you stay until the shows end at 4.30pm. Hence my preference to go to Battlesbridge. 😊

It was still a good morning out though and we met up with some friends for coffee as well. I had things to do in the afternoon, so we left around lunch time. 

Saturday 20th June. - Time to sort out the wiring.

 My good friend Dave Maton came up today to help with the wiring. This being an ex rally car, there had been a lot of additional equipment wired up. Wiring for spotlights, a map light, a floor mounted dip switch, plus numerous other things.
Dave set about removing all the excess wiring while I finished my throttle bracket and then set about fitting new battery cables in the boot. 
My other friend (yes, I have two!) Keith Halstead arrived to see how my progress was getting on and also, have a cup of tea. Suitably impressed with my home made throttle bracket, Keith finished his tea and let me and Dave crack on. By now, it was getting very hot in the garage, so we pushed the Lotus outside. (It's only the second time it's left the garage since I bought it.)

The original dashboard binnacle in the Lotus is absolutely knackered, so I'd bought another one. I was hoping to get this fitted today, but it needs cutting out so that the gauges can fit in. We'd also discovered that the temperature capillary gauge didn't work, (I tested the probe in a cup of boiling water.) so I have another one of those to find. 

Dave had managed to cut out and replace a lot of melted wire due to live wires being attached to the original loom, but with no relays. I do actually have a brand new loom on order, but there is a 14 week waiting time, so we are having to make  do with what we have. 
We did manage to get power to the ignition and we also got the headlights, side lights, brake lights and indicators working, so I was very happy with that. 
Unfortunately time caught up with us, and we had to call it a day, but we are getting ever closer to getting this car living again. Another couple of weekends should do it. 😉

Friday 19th June - Matching Spotlights!

 I struck lucky on ebay on Sunday and managed to find another Spotlight exactly the same as the two Lucas ones that I had on the Lotus Cortina already. 
I purchased it instantly and luckily, it arrived today. I was home from work at a decent hour, so this was my first job when I went into the garage. It didn't take long to fit it and I was very pleased with the look. 

With this done I then set about making a throttle bracket to hold the end of the inner cable and also a throttle return spring. After plenty of drilling, angle grinding, filing and sweating I had the basis of what I wanted. It was still very warm and sunny, so I gave it a couple of coats of silver paint and left it to dry. I would finish it off the next morning. 😊

Wednesday 17th June - Centre Console!

 I had a couple of hours free after work tonight, so I thought I'd give the centre console for the Lotus a clean up and check over. It's been sitting upstairs in a spare bedroom since about last September, so I thought I'd better make sure it was fit enough to go back in the car. 

The first thing I found when I looked inside the centre pouch was a book of matches from Trust House Forte! These were a big hotel chain all over England before being taken over by Granada. 
There was no date on these matches, but the London phone number on them started with an 01 phone code. (London later changed to 081 and then 0207 for inner London and 0208 for outer London.)

Anyway, I cleaned up the centre console and refitted it. It's not the prettiest console I have seen, but it will do the job until something better comes along. 

Saturday 13th June. Billericay Breakfast Meet.

 It was another test drive this morning down to Billericay to see if I had finally cured the 'popping' on the run down in my Green Cortina. I am gradually increasing the size of the idle jets in the carburettor in an attempt to stop it from running lean.  I am now running jet sizes 70 & 80 and if this doesn't cure I will only be able to go up one more size. (80 & 90)
Anyway, after a good breakfast in the cosy cup cafe, we had a quick look around the cars. Luckily, my friend Keith Halstead was there in his Lotus Cortina and so I took the opportunity to have a look and see how his throttle linkage fitted together as I had been struggling to see how mine worked. (My car has trumpets on the twin 40 carburettors instead of an airbox, so the set up is different.)
It was a good meet and a few interesting cars there, including a Ford Sierra with a huge V8 engine. It also had not one, but two remote brake servo's fitted, I assume one for the front brakes and one for the back brakes. (But hey, what do I know?) 

Around 12pm we made tracks as I wanted to get home and get more work done on the Lotus Cortina. It was a nice morning out though, especially now the weather is warming up. Unfortunately, my recent efforts on the Green Cortina have proved to have little effect and I still have my 'popping' issue. 😔

Once home I went into the garage and carried on with the Lotus. Todays task was to get the motorsport battery box fitted to the boot floor. This can be somewhat tricky when you are holding a spanner on a nut underneath the car, whilst attempting to tighten the bolt inside the boot, but somehow I managed it. 

I then turned my attention to the spotlight bar that came with the car. After a couple of crude attempts, it came to light (No pun intended!) that the spotlight bar was bent to buggery! 
It has mountings for four spotlights, but when these four spotlights are fitted they would be leaning like a drunken sailor! (See pic below)

Luckily, I had bought another spotlight bar some time ago, so I thought I would give that a try. This one has only three spotlight mountings, but in a triangle position, similar to the Mk1 Cortina GT that won the Safari Rally back in the 60's. 

This fitted much better and I liked it a lot. The only issue was that I never had three matching spotlights, so I temporarily fitted a smaller one in the middle and will search for a matching one on ebay. 

Pleased with my efforts, I called it a day as my garage was now getting rather hot and I was feeling quite knackered! 

Saturday 6th June - Work continues!

 A free day today would let me carry on with the many numerous jobs I still have to get done on the Lotus Cortina. You also need to remember that I bought this car mainly in bits, some of which I don't even realise are missing until I go to put things back together! 
After fitting the twin 40 carbs the night before, I connected the choke cable up. I then tried to connect the throttle cable up, but found that I am missing a vital part. (See what I mean?)
I then moved onto fitting the fan belt, but found that the plastic dynamo pulley was hitting the dipstick tube whenever it turned. Luckily, I found a smaller, metal pulley, so I fitted this one instead. 

I then fitted the radiator into the car (After polishing the brass header tank) and connected the heater hoses and radiator hoses. Next I removed the front side lights and indicators and gave them a wash with some washing up liquid and hot water. While these were soaking I painted the black inserts on the front grill and re-fitted the all important Lotus badge. 

With this done I jacked the car up and put it on axle stands so I could get the exhaust fitted. However, by now it was getting quite late and I was struggling to twist, turn, balance and hold the exhaust up all on my own, so I will save that for another day. I was pleased with what I managed to get done though, but there is still quite a way to go yet. But I will persevere! 😊