Monday 27th July - The Lotus Cortina awakens!

 I had my engine builder coming round tonight to assist in the re-generation of the Lotus Cortina. I had carried out a few jobs in readiness of his arrival: Put petrol in, fully charged the battery and made sure there was a spark at the distributor etc. 

I had also filled the engine with 20/50 Valveoline VR1 engine oil and so the first job was to pump the oil round the engine. We did this with the spark plugs out and soon had enough pressure to fire the engine. 

It seemed to not want to go at first, but then we spotted that the ignition wire had fallen off of the coil. With this replaced the old girl fired into life. 

What a moment! This car had been sitting in a garage with the engine removed since 1977, so this was the first time it had been running for

 49 years! Amazing! 

As you can imagine I was very pleased. I've revived cars that have been standing for 23 years and 26 years before, but 49 years is definitely a fantastic achievement! 

Unfortunately, we found that the radiator was leaking slightly, so that's something else that will have to be looked at. Still a brilliant night though and I'm getting closer to driving my dream car! 😊

Friday 24th July. A free day courtesy of Thurston engineering!

 Today was the day that I was supposed be taking the Green Cortina over to Thurston engineering for a rolling road session. 
They sent me a long list of things to check before bringing the car over and I just happened to ring them on the Wednesday to query one of them. (It was to do with suppressors in spark plugs) 
Whilst on the phone to them, they then decided that they wouldn't be able to do my rolling road session due to 'staff shortages' and 'their equipment suddenly developing a fault'. What a load of old bollocks!

I pointed out to them that their check list that they sent me also so stated that I would still have to pay an hours labour if I should cancel the session inside a week. (£140 plus vat)
So I reminded them that I had booked a day off work out of my holiday allowance for today, so would they be able to reimburse me a days wages? What do you think their answer was? Yes, you are right. So, word of warning, if you need a rolling road session carried out, be very wary of THURSTON ENGINEERING of ONGAR. They are totally unreliable!

There is a guy who works in a garage near where I work who owns a very quick, fuel injected, Mk2 Lotus Cortina. So I went to see him to see if he knew anyone that could help. He didn't, but he did offer me the use of his gas analyser so I could see what my emissions were reading. 
So we got the car into his workshop and placed the probe in the exhaust. No matter what we did, we couldn't get the emissions down. I told him that I had been trying bigger jets in an attempt to reduce my 'popping' on the over run and he said that's probably why the emissions wont come down. He recommended going back to standard jets to start with and just adjusting the mixture. 
So, that's what I'm going to try. It's a standard engine with a standard camshaft and standard carburettor, so it shouldn't need oversize jets in it. It's just a shame that Redline tuning and Thurston engineering cant honour their bookings otherwise this would have been sorted by now. Very frustrating!