Wednesday 25th February - Bush removal!

 Whilst working on the underneath of the Lotus Cortina, it was evident that the car had had an oil leak for a number of years before it was laid up. (Most likely due to a leaking rope seal on the back of the crankshaft)
This has probably had a lot to do with keeping the floor rust and rot free, but had also had a detrimental effect on anything made of rubber! 
The special LC split propshaft has two rubber bushes in the centre and both of these had become seriously contaminated, as you can see from the pic below.

Whilst removing these, I also removed the gearbox crossmember and found that the rubber part of that was totally oil contaminated too. Needless to say, a new one has been ordered and will be replaced once it arrives. 

Sunday 22nd February - Catching up day!

 Since Christmas I'd been hoping to get the underneath of the Lotus Cortina painted, but the cold weather and the damp from the constant rain had been preventing me from doing this as quick as I wanted. I did however, manage to fit in the odd dry day here and there and eventually managed to get the floor finished. 
The first stage was painting two litres of red oxide which was then followed by a good dousing of stone chip primer. The final coat was two litres of Ford Ermine white. 
Once this had time to harden and dry it was time to start fitting up. Good friend Dave Maton came up for the day and we started making progress refitting some mechanical bits. 
The battery lead went on first. (The battery is in the boot, so the lead has to run from back to front.) The leaf springs went on next, followed by the back axle and hand brake cable. The differential was next and then we got down to the laborious task of making up brake pipes. 
Since I've had the car all I seem to have been doing is removing parts and cleaning and sanding, so it felt really good to actually start fitting bits back on. Progress at last!

With it being an ex-rally car it's had a had quite a hard time in the past and although the floor is rust free, the out riggers have taken a bit of a battering. They are still solid though, so I'm happy to leave them as they are. 
While Dave was here, I got him to help me remove the additional 'works' fuel tank. (So called as they were mainly fitted to the 'works' rally cars. 
This is a very rare item and I've already been offered good money for it. However, it's a vital part of the cars rallying history, (Along with the roll cage) so I will be keeping it. (See 'works' fuel tank below)

We'd had a good day, but by mid-afternoon we'd done all we could and called it a day. I appreciated the help from Dave and as said, I now finally feel that I have turned a corner and I'm now moving forward. 

Always carry a spare Maton in your boot! 😄

Saturday 21st February - Billericay Breakfast meet

 What with all the masses of rain and cold weather we'd been having lately, I really hadn't been up to much. Plus I was struck down for a week with the dreaded flu bug that had been doing the rounds. 

The weather for this Saturday looked promising, and I still needed to test drive the Green Cortina after trying another set of bigger size jets in the carburettor, so I decided to make the effort and make an appearance. 

It was a good turnout and there was some beautiful old Fords there. An added bonus was seeing friends again that I hadn't seen since before Christmas. All in all it was a good meeting and I'm looking forward to the weather warming up so I can get out to some more. 

My Green Mk1 Cortina with 1600 Mk2 Crossflow engine

Kelvin's beautiful Red two door GT with Harris engine and Keith's Lotus Cortina parked next to it

Neil Bell's lovely 2 door Corsair GT

John's 2.0 Pinto powered Anglia

After the meet I followed Keith back to his place to pick up some parts and it was good fun chasing his Lotus Cortina through the country lanes. The two cars drew quite a few looks from bystanders and pedestrians. 
My test drive had been good, and the car is almost there, but not quite. I'm going to try another set of bigger jets, but if that doesn't cure it, I'm going to book it in for a rolling road session. Watch this space. 

Monday 12th January. - Bye bye Zetec.

After having more than my fair share of messers, chancers and time wasters, I finally had contact from someone who seemed genuine with regard to buying my Zetec Cortina. Since buying the Lotus Cortina, I couldn't really justify owning three Mk1 Cortina's, so decided that the Zetec had to go. The Zetec, like the Lotus is a 2 door, aeroflow model and I couldn't see a need to have two of the same model. 

After a few emails back and forth, the potential buyer decided that he liked the car enough to make the long 230 mile journey from his house in Oldham, Lancashire to my place near Southend. He liked the look of the car when he arrived and must have also enjoyed the test drive as on return to my house he made an acceptable offer and wanted to take the car home there and then. This made such a nice change as ebay and facebook market place seems to be full up with total dickheads that just want to piss you about! Anyway, the paperwork was completed and I watched my Zetec drive off to it's new home. 😌

So, I am now down to just two Cortina Mk1's. (A few months ago, I had four!) I have my 1964 Pre-aeroflow, four door model and my aeroflow two door Lotus Cortina. (Ex rally car) 
These are both great cars and I have to confess to liking the idea that neither of them have any modern electronics and ECU's etc. (I haven't got the patience to learn about map sensors and throttle sensors etc!) The sale of the Zetec car will also help fund the restoration of the Lotus. 😏

Tuesday 30th December - A little progress!

 After weeks and weeks of scrubbing, cleaning and rubbing down the floor on the Lotus Cortina, I was finally in a position to get some red oxide on the floor before the stone chip primer goes on. 
I finally decided on red oxide first as it's a rust inhibitor as well as a paint, so anything that makes the car last longer has got to be a good thing. 

Dave Maton came up to help me today and he is a bit more experienced at spraying than I am, so he took the lead and got started. We had a couple of small issues due to the spray gun partially blocking up, but once we found the offending obstacles we were going good. 

It didn't take that long and it certainly looks a lot better. Just need to wait for some warmer weather now so I can get the stone chip primer on. 

Saturday 15th November - Jets & Bearings!

After being let down by Atspeed racing regarding the tuning of my Green Cortina, I spoke to Webcon about the jet sizes in the carburettor. The guy I spoke to had a wealth of knowledge regarding Weber carburettors and after telling him about the issues I was having, he recommended changing my 135 primary jet to a 140 and my secondary jet from a 140 to a 145. 

So, I ordered a 145 jet and this morning set about changing the two main jets. It didn't take long and once done I took the car for a couple of drives around the block. It immediately felt a lot better and a lot faster. Once the engine had cooled down, I removed the spark plugs and they looked the correct colour as well. I do need to take it on a longer test drive, but the initial results are good. 
The price of the jet was £2.76 plus postage and vat, so came out just over £9. That's a lot, lot cheaper that what the idiot at Atspeed would have charged me if he could have been bothered to tune it! 

Once I was happy with the Green Cortina, I decided to replace the leaking half shaft bearing on my Zetec Cortina. This was made more complicated by the fact that I have converted this car to rear disc brakes. So, instead of just removing the drum, I had to remove the brake discs, the brake pads, calliper, the half shaft securing plate and of course the half shaft. 

With all these removed, I then removed the offending leaking seal and replaced it with a new one. Luckily the rain held off until I was able to get the car back together. I also fitted 3mm wheel spacers on the back as I was pretty sure that the grinding noise I had heard the last time I tried to use the car, was the wheel rims scraping on the calliper. 
A quick test drive revealed that the grinding noise had gone and it looked like the 3mm wheel spacers cured the problem. 
I was really pleased with my days work, It's always good when things go according to plan. 😊

Saturday 8th November - Billlericay Breakfast meet

The plan for today was to take the Zetec Cortina to the meet and give it a run out. However, pulling away from my house we were met with a horrible scraping noise that was obviously something catching while it was rotating. 
Not having time to investigate, we switched over to the Green Cortina and went in that instead. Due to our poor experience and waiting so long for our breakfast at the Cosy Cup Cafe at the last breakfast meet, we decided to stop at the 'My Place Cafe' on the way down there. This was a much better experience and the food was spot on.
We arrived at the meet which already had a quite a number of cars there. Good friends Gavin and Keith were there and John and Rachel arrived soon after.
There were some quite unusual cars there including a Bond Bug. I haven't seen one of these for ages and I'd forgotten how 'quirky' they are. 

It was a lovely morning and very mild for November and it was very pleasant looking around the cars. We had to leave around 11.30 though as we had other plans. It had been a lovely morning out though and well worth going.