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! 😊