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! 😊

Friday 5th June - Twin 40's next!

 I had a free afternoon today, so I ventured into the garage with the intention of getting my recently refurbished twin 40 Weber carburettors fitted. 
I could have had these refurbished to look brand new, but I thought they would look odd on a car that has that has a look of 'Patina'. Therefore they were just tidied up a bit with anything worn or broken being replaced.

So, I fitted the carbs, then set about making up fuel lines and connecting them. I have to say, although not perfect, the engine bay is stating to look pretty good. I'm very pleased with it and and every job I do brings me closer to hearing it running for the first time in many years. 😊

Wednesday 3rd June - Piper Manifold!

It was time to get back to the Lotus Cortina and tonight I decided to get the new Piper exhaust manifold fitted. It comes in three separate parts. I assume that if it came in once piece you could never get it fitted due to the thermostat housing being part of the cylinder head casting on the Lotus engine. (As is the inlet manifold) 
This is a four branch manifold that goes into to one collector box, so the first two branches and joined together, but the third and fourth branches are totally separate. The trick is getting the two joined branches of the manifold onto the studs while making sure that the two separate branches fit into the collector box all at the same time. Not easy! 

Needless to say, it was quite a struggle and a considerable amount of swearing and cursing was involved! I was just about to give up and ring Piper to complain when all of a sudden it all twisted into place and slotted into place. 

The next mission was to get all of the eight nuts tightened up with very limited access. (Especially the ones behind the thermostat housing) However, eventually they were all tight and I had to admit, the new manifold looked beautiful! 😊

Sunday 31st May - Arena Essex Reunion Meeting

 Today was a day for all the old drivers that used to race at Arena Essex Raceway before it was closed down and sold a few years ago. It was also a classic car show as a lot of the old racers now actually own and restore classic cars. 
The weather looked good, so we set out just after 9am and headed down to Aveley football club which was the location for the meet. I took my Green Cortina and enjoyed giving it a run out. 

I think the organisers underestimated how many cars were coming as we arrived around 10am and couldn't even get into a designated parking space because they were all taken. Even after we parked up there was a constant flow of classic cars and lorries still arriving. 

I met up with a few people I know and no doubt  there were more people that I didn't recognise as well. (I last raced at Arena in 1990) There were some great cars there as well with a lot of them being American, but a few little Fords there as well. 

I was a good day, but we left around 3pm. I wanted to get home and cut the rear lawn before the rain came down. Which it did about an hour after I cut it, so my timing unusually, was spot on! 

Saturday 23rd May - A very long, very hot, but rewarding day!

I had a very early start this morning as Dave Maton was coming up to help install the Lotus engine and I had a few jobs to get done before he arrived. The first job was to install the new engine mounts and this was straight forward and didn't take long. 
Next was fitting the dynamo bracket as I thought this would be a lot easier to do whilst the engine was out of the car. Again, this was fairly easy although I did have to re-cut the thread on one of the bolts as it wouldn't go all the way into the block. 
Dave arrived just as I finished this job and after a brief chat and catch up we mounted the gearbox onto the back of the engine. Before we joined the two properly, we had to adapt the spacer plate with a bit of cutting and grinding. Due to the new alloy sump and the new rear crankshaft seal plate, the original spacer plate doesn't fit properly, so it has to be adapted.
With this done we then got the engine crane ready and lifted the engine and gearbox into the car as one lump. It wasn't too bad a job and we had it done fairly quickly. 

The gearbox is a 2000E item only with a remote gear change so this had to be removed before the gearbox was fitted in the car and re-fitted once in the car. (Which isn't easy!)

The split propshaft was next on the agenda and the centre bearing bracket has to bolt through the floor, which means moving the carpet out of the way. This wasn't too bad a job though and again, we had it done fairly quickly. 
We decided to bleed the clutch next, but this is where our problems started as the clutch pipe didn't seem to want to screw into the brand new slave cylinder. With numerous attempts all failing, we then removed the slave cylinder and managed to persuade it to behave once it was on the workbench! 
Eventually we had a working clutch with no leaks, so with our confidence restored, we decided to bleed the brakes as well. 
However, before bleeding the brakes, we had to adjust the handbrake. These cars were fitted with a 'self adjusting' system, but like every other car built in the sixties, these never work, so we had to adjust the brake shoes manually. After doing this we then bled the brakes. This took some time as the car has been fitted with all new brake pipes, rebuilt callipers, new rear brake shoes and a rebuilt remote servo as well as refurbished clutch and brake master cylinders, so the brake fluid had some ground to cover before it reached the bleed nipples. Eventually though, it all came together and we now have a good brake pedal. 
While I was tidying up, Dave fitted the starter motor and by now it was around 4pm and my garage was extremely hot. Before we gave up and because we are both big kids, we wanted to see what the engine looked like with the newly refurbished twin 40 Weber carbs on, so we put them in place without bolting them on properly. I have to say, it does look good and I cant wait to hear the car running. There's still quite a bit of work left to do before then though. What a buzz that thought gives me though. 😁