Saturday 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. 

Thursday 2nd April - A busy day!

I had the day off today, so I thought I'd crack on with a few outstanding jobs on the Lotus Cortina. The main job on my list was to strip both brake callipers down in readiness for the new pistons to arrive. 
Three of the existing pistons were reasonably easy to get out, but the last one was a real challenge. Eventually, I managed to get the piston out far enough to clamp it in the vice and then tap the calliper away from it with a copper hammer. As you can see below it was in a bad way! The others were all knackered as well! 

I had to separate the callipers to be able to get the pistons out and the bolts proved to be quite tight as well. In fact I managed to break my 5/8th's socket before adding some heat to finally extract them.

With this done, I then jacked the car up and altered the steering track rod arms so that the wheels looked straighter. I had fitted new track rod ends a few weeks back, but couldn't adjust them properly until they were on the car. Once the wheels were straight the car looked much better. 

Another job to do was to fit the newly refurbished brake and clutch master cylinders. The brake cylinder was already in place, but had to be connected to the brake pedal. This is always fiddly, but I eventually managed it. The clutch master soon followed and is another job I can cross off of my list. 

The next thing to do was to remove the old rough black paint off of the cam cover. I used a brass brush attachment on an electric drill and luckily it came off quite easily. 
I then sprayed it with several coats of etch primer, before adding several coats of top coat. I have to say, I was quite pleased with the end result. It should look quite smart on the engine when it returns. 😊