Saturday 27th June. A good start but a bad ending!

 Dave Maton came up again today to help get the wiring finished. I had started another job on the Friday night, but didn't get it finished as I was waiting for the paint to dry, so while I was waiting for Dave to arrive, I managed to get in finished. 
The job in question was the spare wheel bracket. For some reason my car had a standard one fitted rather than the Lotus Cortina/Corsair item. The standard one is 6 inches in length, but the Lotus/Corsair one is 7 1/4 inches. (See below)

Because of the wider wheel rims on the Lotus, the standard spare wheel bracket can't reach the centre hole properly and causes the wheel to lean inwards towards the centre of the boot. (See below)

So, I'd managed to find the correct bracket on ebay and re-painted it in the desired colour. With this fitted the spare wheel now sits where it's supposed to and provides a bit more space in the boot. 

By the time I had done this Dave had arrived and we started on the laborious task of cutting out all of the holes on the new binnacle. Although brand new, these are just a fibre glass moulding and you have to cut the required holes out yourself. The old one in the car had turned very very brittle and had cracked in the middle. (Plus I stuck my thumb through the end of it one night by accident) 

This binnacle has to house six gauges in total. Two have a diameter of 98mm (Speedo and rev counter) and four at 52mm. (Oil, water, amps & fuel) Plus it needs holes for ignition switch, headlight switch, wiper switch etc. Needless to say, it took a while to get this done, but it did look good when finished! 

With this done, we put the rest of the interior in and I was able to actually sit in the car for the first time since last August when I bought it! We probably jumped the gun here though as we hadn't tested the electrics at this stage. The previous week we had found three melted wires coming off of the ignition switch, so we replaced the wires with new  and couldn't see any issues. Unfortunately, there obviously was an issue, because the same three wires melted again this week ! 
Feeling absolutely deflated, we shut the garage door and called it a day. We will persevere again next weekend and get it sorted.

Sunday 21st June - Battlesbridge Breakfast Meet.

Another lovely sunny morning, so we decided to head to Battlesbridge for a morning out. I wasn't expecting a big turn out as the annual classic car show was on at the Lawns in Rochford which is always very popular. Its popularity does have a down side though and sometimes it can take well over an hour to get in! Also once you do get in, they like you stay until the shows end at 4.30pm. Hence my preference to go to Battlesbridge. 😊

It was still a good morning out though and we met up with some friends for coffee as well. I had things to do in the afternoon, so we left around lunch time. 

Saturday 20th June. - Time to sort out the wiring.

 My good friend Dave Maton came up today to help with the wiring. This being an ex rally car, there had been a lot of additional equipment wired up. Wiring for spotlights, a map light, a floor mounted dip switch, plus numerous other things.
Dave set about removing all the excess wiring while I finished my throttle bracket and then set about fitting new battery cables in the boot. 
My other friend (yes, I have two!) Keith Halstead arrived to see how my progress was getting on and also, have a cup of tea. Suitably impressed with my home made throttle bracket, Keith finished his tea and let me and Dave crack on. By now, it was getting very hot in the garage, so we pushed the Lotus outside. (It's only the second time it's left the garage since I bought it.)

The original dashboard binnacle in the Lotus is absolutely knackered, so I'd bought another one. I was hoping to get this fitted today, but it needs cutting out so that the gauges can fit in. We'd also discovered that the temperature capillary gauge didn't work, (I tested the probe in a cup of boiling water.) so I have another one of those to find. 

Dave had managed to cut out and replace a lot of melted wire due to live wires being attached to the original loom, but with no relays. I do actually have a brand new loom on order, but there is a 14 week waiting time, so we are having to make  do with what we have. 
We did manage to get power to the ignition and we also got the headlights, side lights, brake lights and indicators working, so I was very happy with that. 
Unfortunately time caught up with us, and we had to call it a day, but we are getting ever closer to getting this car living again. Another couple of weekends should do it. 😉

Friday 19th June - Matching Spotlights!

 I struck lucky on ebay on Sunday and managed to find another Spotlight exactly the same as the two Lucas ones that I had on the Lotus Cortina already. 
I purchased it instantly and luckily, it arrived today. I was home from work at a decent hour, so this was my first job when I went into the garage. It didn't take long to fit it and I was very pleased with the look. 

With this done I then set about making a throttle bracket to hold the end of the inner cable and also a throttle return spring. After plenty of drilling, angle grinding, filing and sweating I had the basis of what I wanted. It was still very warm and sunny, so I gave it a couple of coats of silver paint and left it to dry. I would finish it off the next morning. 😊

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. 😁

Sunday 17th May - The engine returns!

 Today was the day I'd been waiting for for some time. The twin cam engine for the Lotus Cortina was finally finished, complete and ready for collection. I had started to run out of jobs to do on the car, but now with the engine finished I can get ready to fit it and then see if there are any other parts missing and start working towards getting the engine running, and the car driving for the first time in FORTY NINE years! 

So this week, I will start getting the engine bay ready and fitting the engine mounts and start organising the engine electrics. (Plugs, leads, etc) The plan will be to fit it over the long bank holiday weekend and then take my time and make sure everything is spot on before the big fire up. I'm looking forward to it!

Saturday 16th May - Billericay Breakfast Meet.

 Today, at long last would be the day that I finally got to take the Green Cortina out for yet another test drive. I had had a bit of a play with it after I drove it last, but didn't have time to test it, so today would see the result. of my tuning.
We made the short trip to the Cosy Cup Cafe at Billericay and it drove a lot better with hardly any back firing or popping, so things were looking good.

It was a really good meet as well and good friend Matin brought along his beautiful Mk1 Cortina GT. He's had a lot of issues with this car regarding the fuel tank, so it was good to see it back on the road again. I think it's a great looking car and I think the blue and black colour scheme works really well. (See below)

There was another nice Mk1 Cortina there as well and this one had a Duratec engine fitted with the biggest Turbo I have ever seen. A proper wolf in sheep's clothing this one as the outside and inside looks very standard. It's only when you see what's under the bonnet that you realise that it's a bit special.

It was a good morning (Although the weather could have been a bit warmer) but I had things to do, so I left there around half eleven. The car still ran well on the way home, but I did get a couple of 'pops' at low speed, so I'm not quite there yet. It's so close to running perfect though, that I'm reluctant to put it in for a rolling road session. The reason being that no matter how little they do to the car, they will still charge a minimum £300 plus parts and vat, so I think I'll just persevere for the time being. 

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.