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. 😊