Saturday 2nd May. More work on the Lotus Cortina

 I was supposed to be getting the engine back this weekend and was looking forward to fitting that, and the gearbox back into the car, but apparently my engine builder is still waiting for parts. Very disappointing!

So, I decided to get on with other things instead. First on the agenda was the works fuel tank that I have decided not to use due to the amount of holes in it. It's still part of the cars rallying history though, so I decided to repaint it and put it back in the car.
I gave it a coat of grey primer before refitting it and to my surprise, the grey primer showed up a lot more pin holes than I'd originally spotted! Once the primer was dry I then gave it a few coats of satin black. 
While waiting for the paint to dry I found the spare wheel bracket and cleaned that up and secured it to its proper place in the boot floor. I then put the spare wheel in although the 175/70x13 tyre isn't too keen on fitting properly in the original spare wheel well, but it did go in.....sort of!

With the paint now dry, I then refitted the works fuel tank and bolted it in place. I also had to re-route the original fuel line as this will now have to feed off of the main fuel tank in the boot floor. I also fitted an inline fuel tap so that I have control and can shut the fuel off if ever I have to drain the tank, or have a leak any time.

My next job was to fit the rear bumper. I had this chrome painted last September and it's been sitting in my loft since then. I had to find some suitable nuts and bolts for the nearside as both of the captive nuts have been broken off at some point. This wasn't too bad a job and it certainly makes a difference to how the car looks from the back. 

With not much else I could do, (Not on my own anyway!) I decided to put the propshaft back together complete with it's new bushes for the centre bearing. I also then fitted the new clutch release bearing into the bellhousing complete with all the retainer mechanism and springs. (What a pain that was!)

By now it was getting on for 5pm, so I decided to call it a day. There is still plenty to do yet, but my massive list is definitely reducing. (Along with my bank balance!) I'm going to pester the life out of the engine builder over the next two weeks so that I can have my engine back and ready to fit on the next Bank holiday weekend. Wish me luck! 

Sunday 26th April - Battlesbridge returns!

After what seemed like a very long winter, the breakfast meet at Battlesbridge finally started up again. We must have been a bit keen to get there as we were only the second car to arrive. 
It was a beautiful sunny morning and plenty of cars started arriving. Before long the food and beer tent was open and coffee and sausage sandwiches were the order of the day. 

Good friend Gavin arrived in his Mk2 Triumph and it was nice to have a chat and a catch up as I hadn't seen him for a while.
There were some nice cars there including a Mk1 Cortina with a V-Tec engine in and a very clean Mk2 Lotus Cortina. It was a good day and I'm looking forward to more of these meets through the summer.

Once I'd got home I decided to go into the garage and do a bit more investigating on the 'works' fuel tank. I put the wire brush attachment onto my electric drill and attacked the areas where I'd found the holes the day before. 
I also went right along the bottom of the tank and found six smaller areas where it looked like some smaller holes had been soldered. (Or possibly lead filled) 
I'm now undecided on whether to try and have it repaired or just re-fit it and not use it. It is part of the cars history though and it's a rare bit of kit, so I'd like it in there if only for display purposes. I have some thinking to do! 

 

Saturday 25th April. A good start, but a disappointing finish.

 After the disappointing faux pas of the previous weekend,  I had spent the week making sure that I had all the correct parts to be able to complete the rebuild of the Lotus brake callipers. This time I had the correct parts and rebuilding the callipers with new pistons, seals and bellows was pretty straight forward. 
I then refitted the callipers back onto the car and also fitted the last two of the brand new set of brake pipes. I finished off with a brand new set of brake pads, so other than bleeding the brakes of air, the braking system is now completely finished! 
I then finished fitting the washer bottle and the bonnet securing catch and I was done. It was good timing too as the welder arrived to weld up a couple of holes in the boot floor. I left him to get on with it and went indoors for some lunch and have a relaxing afternoon. 

However, a couple of hours later, he knocked on the back door to tell me that the fuel tank in the car was leaking. I went out to investigate and found it was the additional 'works' tank that was leaking. We quickly unbolted it and tipped the petrol out of it. Luckily I had only put about a gallon in it the week before.
This was also the same tank that I had put some acid in to get rid of any rust a few weeks back. Closer inspection of the underneath of the tank found a couple of odd 'bumps' under the paint. The 'bumps' turned out to be filler that had gone soft and started rising. Removing the filler revealed tape that had been placed over a hole and then had filler applied. Obviously the acid and petrol had been eating away at it for the past fortnight and this was the end result. 

I also found another area in the corner where the same 'repair' had been carried out. When I get time, I will clean this tank up a bit more and see if there are any more holes hiding anywhere. Luckily, I still have the original main tank I can use, but it's very disappointing that the 'works' tank isn't usable. (At the moment anyway!)

Sunday 19th April - An open day.

 I had planned a drive out today to a breakfast meet at Chappel near Earls Colne. However, I learnt of a breakfast meet a bit nearer to where I live which was an open day at Pristine Classics at Stambridge near Rochford. (I was glad of the local distance in case I had problems with the car after replacing the fuel tank.)
We arrived around 10am and to be honest, we were lucky to get in. It obviously starts a lot earlier than the 10am that I was told, as the place was packed and they had stopped letting people in shortly after we arrived. 
There were plenty of cars there although a bit too much modern stuff for me. (My version of modern is 80's and 90's stuff, so not really modern, but modern to me.😂) I did see a nice Jaguar that I liked and a very rare Di Tomaso Pantera. (Haven't seen one for years!) 
The Green Cortina performed ok with no fuel leaks, although I still haven't got the tuning 100% spot on, so more attention is needed there. I shall persevere! 

Saturday 18th April - Brake calliper set back!

 So, not having time during the week, I geared myself up to get the fuel tank finished on the Green Cortina and also rebuild and refit the brake callipers on the Lotus Cortina. 
Getting the tank finished on the Green Cortina went well and before long I was refilling it with petrol to make sure there were no leaks and that everything was good. The only small issue is that because it's a Mk2 tank, I've had to use the Mk2 Sender unit and therefore it no longer matches with the fuel gauge in the car and gives a false reading. (It reads way too high- I'll address this at a later date) 

With this done I then moved onto rebuilding the brake callipers. The first job was to fit new seals into the callipers and this is where it all went wrong. Upon trying the new seals that were supplied in a rebuild kit, I found that they were too small! Bugger! The box of seal replacements I bought had P14 seals in instead of P16 seals. (Even though the box said P16)
So, that was the calliper rebuild buggered then. With nothing more I could do, I called it a day and went indoors and set about ordering the correct seals from the internet! 

Saturday & Sunday 11th & 12th April - Club Triumph Historic Counties Rally.

 Despite not owning any Triumphs anymore, I am still good friends with quite a few Triumph owners that I have met over my years in the club. 
One of them, Colin Wake needed some co-drivers to be able to take part in this years HCR, so he enlisted myself and Dave Maton as his assistants. I met Dave at the junction of the A130 & A12 around 11.30am and we drove up to Colins place arriving at 12pm. 
We then went and found a cafe and had a good breakfast before heading for the start at Petersfield in Hampshire. 
We had a reasonably trouble free run down to Hampshire in Colin's Mk1 2.5 Pi, although we did have a quick stop at Clacket Lane services where we found that the electric fuel pump was leaking slightly. None of us fancied driving around with a headache all weekend caused by the smell of petrol, so we set about changing it. 

With repairs carried out we carried onto the start where we enjoyed a coffee, before setting off into the night. 

The HCR is pretty much a scatter rally and the main objective is to travel through certain counties and points of interest. Photographic evidence has to be provided of where you have been and finding county signs can be quite challenging as well.
 After plotting our route, we left Hampshire and headed through the counties of West Sussex, Surrey, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire before arriving at the halfway point in Monmouthshire around midnight. 
It hadn't rained all night, but on arrival at the services it started hammering down and refused to stop. We all had to start plotting the second half of the rally in our cars as the seating area that we had been promised would be open, wasn't! Not helpful at all! 

Soon after leaving the services, we discovered that the full beam on the car wasn't working and also that the nearside windscreen wiper was catching on the windscreen trim, so it was removed! Pitch black country roads in lashing rain with no full beam and only one wiper! Interesting! 

Our second half route took us through Brecknockshire, Radnorshire, (Both in Wales) Shropshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Rutland and finally finishing in Northamptonshire around 8.15am. We had also captured a lot of village names as extra points and so as a result of this we thought we had done really well. 

A nice breakfast was on offer at the finish and after this had been consumed, the results were read out. However, they only announced the top three places and we wasn't in any of them, so we hadn't done well after all.  

Despite not doing well, it had been a good weekend. Dave and Colin are excellent company and we all had a good time. It was good fun driving a Mk1 Triumph saloon again, although I have to say, I definitely prefer the Cortina's now. 

Monday 6th April. Fuel tanks!

 Dave Maton came up again today to help with a few things. The plan today was to remove the Mk1 fuel tank from my Green Cortina and replace it with a Mk2 version.
The original Mk1 fuel tank on the Lotus Cortina was completely rusted through and so the guy I bought the car from gave me a Mk2 tank for it instead. However, there was also a very, very rare 'tank guard' fitted to the Lotus which I assumed (wrongly) would only fit underneath the Mk1 fuel tank. (See below.) 

So, my train of thought was that because the Green Cortina has a five speed gearbox it is more suitable to be used on long journeys or events. Therefore, it would also make more sense for it to have a Mk2 fuel tank. (Because it holds ten gallons of fuel compared to the Mk1's eight gallons.)
We got the Mk2 tank into the Green Cortina, but were unable to get the job finished as a new seal that I'd ordered for the sender unit hadn't arrived. 

So, we got on with the job of fitting the Mk1 fuel tank into the Lotus and also fitted the very rare tank guard. With this done, we then refitted the secondary fuel tank which was an optional extra for Cortina's back in the day. It's actually a Mk1 Cortina estate tank, but fitted into a tubular metal frame. You can also see where the original filler neck would have been, but this has been welded shut and another filler neck has been crafted into the middle of the tank. (See below.)

The Mk1 estate tank is the same capacity as the Mk1 saloon tank, so the twin tanks on this Lotus Cortina now gives me a capacity of sixteen gallons. That will make a difference. 😊

Our next job was to start running some more new brake pipes. I haven't yet received the new pistons for the front callipers that I ordered, so unfortunately we wasn't going to be able to get the brakes finished today. 
However, we did fit the newly refurbished brake servo and ran some new brake lines from the master cylinder and four-way valve across to it. 

The brake pipes do need lining up a bit better, but time was now up and Dave had to make tracks and get home. We were very pleased with what we'd achieved though. Every bit of work carried out is a step closer to bringing this car back to life.