Tuesday 22nd September - Rolling Road Session.

 Well the day finally arrived for the rolling road session for my Green Cortina. It was booked into BD Engineering at Sittingbourne in Kent and unlike Red Line Tuning, or Thurston Engineering, they didn't cancel my appointment at the last minute and honoured the booking.
I'd used them in the past to be honest when I had the Triumph and they did a good job. The only reason I don't use them often is because I have to make the journey over that bloody Dartford Crossing bridge going there and even worse, the Dartford Tunnel coming home. 

My booking time was 3pm, but because you never know if the Dartford crossing is going to be running smooth or not, we left at around 1pm. Luckily, we had a clear run and arrived there at 2pm. 
Even more luckily he had just finished his previous job and so pulled the car into the workshop straight away. 
Karen and I took our place in the waiting room and patiently waited while the man did his thing. One of the first things he discovered was how much air was being drawn into the engine via the inlet manifold. I must admit, I'd noticed that the engine seemed to be sucking really hard because removing the oil filler cap normally resulted in a 'tug of war' just to get the bloody thing off! 
He cured this by fitting a smaller fitting onto the inlet manifold so that not so much air could be drawn in. He then fitted slightly bigger main jets in the carburettor and made a few other minor adjustments. 

He had the engine up to just over 5000 rpm on the dyno run and it produced 86.5 bhp and 93.2 lb-ft. (Torque) Not bad for a standard 1600cc crossflow engine. He did also say that it was a lovely strong engine and that it sounded fantastic. It's always nice to get a compliment from an expert. 

We left there around 4.30pm which meant we'd be at the dreaded Dartford Tunnel at 5pm, right in the middle of 'rush hour'. However, it wasn't too bad and we made pretty good time. 
The traffic was actually worse on the A127 back towards Southend and it was pretty much stop, start all the way from the M25 right up to Leigh On Sea. It took a total of 2 hours, 5 minutes to get home!

I have to say though, even though we sat in all that traffic, the car behaved impeccably and never faltered once. It drives beautifully as well now, so the rolling road session was well worth the money. 
I will definitely be using him again as he knows how to tune twin 40 webers as well which will come in handy when I'm ready to have the Lotus done. Looking forward to it. 😉