My sole intention this morning was to remove the gearbox from the Zetec Cortina so that I could take it to a Ford gearbox specialist on Tuesday. Before I could do that though, I had to cure the sticking throttle issue on the Green Cortina so that I could move it out of the garage. This actually took a lot longer than I expected and I ended up fitting a modified Lotus Cortina pedal in place of the bodged effort that was already on there.
This took a good couple of hours, but is now a lot better. I'm still not completely happy with it though and I will be revisiting it at a later date. If I hadn't have had to take the gearbox out of the Zetec, I would have persevered with it.
Removing the gearbox was also a challenge as the twin cam Zetec engine is a lot bigger than a standard Cortina engine and space is tight. I ended up removing the bonnet to be able to get to the bellhousing bolts easier. Once the gearbox was out I also found traces of the cars original colour up inside the gearbox tunnel. It was originally Goodwood Green, which is the same colour as my four door Cortina. Whoever painted this car did a very thorough job, because although I knew it wasn't the original colour, I had never seen any panels showing the original paint. They obviously painted it inside and out.
By the time another three hours had passed, the gearbox was out and ready to be transported to Baldock in Hertfordshire on Tuesday It's going to be a couple of weeks before he starts it, so in the mean time, I'll be able to get some other little jobs on this car.
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