mk2marty

Also keen. Cleaned the Cortina this afternoon, so it's all shiny again. It's the same colour all over this year too, the number of barrys getting upset at the cream front guard last year was a bit comical/sad

I tried to drive the Cortina into the show. I got down the hill and some old Rotarian shouted at me about how I wasn't registered and made me park on the street. Would not trade again. /and yeah, it did seem quieter than previous years, guessing the clash with Leadfoot and other stuff happening at Hampton didn't help.

Swoon. Have wanted an XY Fairmont since I was a kid. Mainly 'cos a family friend had (and still has) one, a Copper Bronze, factory 302 T-bar auto, which he's owned since 1975. Unfortunately with prices the way they are, it's looking like less and less of a reality of me actually getting to own one... Yours looks like a really nice example though, keen to to see what happens with the engine

Well, in this update there is a Kent in pieces Many pieces... Pulled the free (and allegedly running) engine apart on Sunday. It wasn't good. But it was free, so i'm certainly not complaining. Almost worthy of Hemi's Mechanical Fails thread. It's picked up no.3 and there's some melted spaffage and reasonable sized lips on that bore. However it may be saveable.. I think that no.4 has got wet at some point when the engine was out of the car/in storage, it should clean up OK. The rest of the engine seems alright, aside from large amounts of oily gunge everywhere, I don't think an oil change was something it saw often. Ah well. Will consider where to go from here and update accordingly

I think we'll call this Phase II of the evolution of the Cortina The new camshaft and head came together nicely over the Christmas break, aside from a slight hiccup with the rocker ball studs supplied with the Kent kit. The threaded section is much longer than the standard ball studs, which would be fine except that some of the holes in the cylinder head have the thread tapped only halfway down (thanks Ford), meaning they fit the standard ones fine, but not the longer Kent ones. Thankfully my Grandad came to the rescue and lent me the necessary 14mm thread tap. So cheers, Grandad. Taylor Automotive reconditioned the head, and did an excellent job, and i fitted the new valve springs, stem seals, spray bar, ball studs and followers supplied with the kit. I decided against trying my hand at porting it. Might practice on a scrap head first, rather than running the risk of ruining this one. Can always pull it off the car again... Cam, pulley, and spraybar fitted, and valve clearances set. The swap commenced. While I was there I decided to replace the water pump, cambelt, thermostat, alternator belt, HT leads, thermostat housing etc. Mostly for my own peace of mind, most of those parts were allegedly done by the previous owner but I thought i'd do them again anyway. It runs! The valve clearances had tightened up a thou, but i'll put that down to the valves bedding in. . To be brutally honest I haven't noticed any difference with the new cam versus the old, aside from the idle is worse and the tappets are noisier... But I haven't really played with it yet. If all else fails I may invest in a vernier cam pulley, which was what Kent seemed to think was necessary. I'm pleased that the bores don't seem to be lipped, it doesn't look to have been bored oversize, and the hone marks are still visible from the freshen-up it had before I bought it. However the next step may be getting the radiator re-cored, I didn't realise how worn the core was until I pulled the radiator out. And I did promise some photos of the car looking all shiny with it's blingin' new wheels and paint, so here it is looking all photogenic:

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Way too many photos in this thread..

Not much happened in the last five months. It passed the WOF in August, so it's still on daily driver duties. Really quite surprised the clutch has lasted this long, it was basically on the rivets when we swapped the gearbox way back in May (or a couple of posts ago). Figured i'd drive it 'till it died, which would then force me to do the gearbox bearings (thinking it would be a few weeks at most), but hey, it's December and the raging 1100 hasn't killed it yet. So hence I haven't touched the gearbox. Figured out why it sounds a bit 3-cylinder-ish, a compression test revealed it's down on compression pretty badly on the no.3 cylinder. However a squirt of oil down the plughole brought it up, so me suspects a broken ring or two. Ah well. Found a way of fixing it though: Got given this by a mate, who works at a scrap dealer. This one seems to be of the 1300 persuasion, judging by the AA in the block and the J2 cast into the head. May as well freshen it up along with the gearbox and swap them in together... Most of the paint came up quite nice with a polish. Found a non-rusty drivers door, which needs painting orange and a crack welded up around the latch, then I can get rid of the awful looking, bog-ridden thing currently attached to the car. It got to try out the shiny Wildcats while the Cortina was in the panelshop. It looked proper Seventies. It also ended up with the other ratty Wildcats off the Cortina for a while because I couldn't bring myself to put the rusty 4.5" steels back on it, they looked hideous. But the ratty Wildcats don't fit properly, someone has machined their mounting faces down so they need spacers to get the wheelnuts to hold the wheels on properly. (or some shorter shank nuts, which i don't have) So today I painted the standard steels and it's back sitting on them for the time being. Hopefully in the next update there will be a Kent in pieces and a gearbox getting some bearings. Going by the past thread updates there probably won't be though

An expensive (and belated) 21st present to myself turned up yesterday In time for Christmas, though Will assemble the head and swap it over Christmas, all going well. And in other news, the car is all back together and on the road. Did the Waipu cruise, which was fun. Also got Drive Inn to put a new centre bearing on the driveshaft.

This was awesome, still a bit gutted that i had to bail after the pizza barn but Speedway was calling.. Some average photos Cheers people, especially Karl for organising it

Wow, that was nearly a year ago. Procrastination level x10 In fairness, I bought an Escort which kinda slowed things down a bit, but its back on track now.. I think the car got sick of waiting for me to do something, and took matters into it's own hands. This appeared under the radiator cap. It's most likely the head gasket. I don't know what the previous owner did to the head (if anything) with the supposedly 'reconditioned' engine, so i'm happy it's lasted this long. And anyway, I can do it properly myself this time (and if it goes wrong, I can only blame myself). I procured another cylinder head from the last Cortina they had at Zebra (a 2.0 S), and it is at the reconditioners as we speak. They seem to think it's usable, so with any luck at the moment a Kent FR30 is on it's way here from England, and hopefully it makes an appreciable difference to the engine. It doesn't need anything too lairy, it still needs to be usable as semi-daily transport. Might try some basic Vizard-spec porting once the head comes back, although what good it will achieve and whether it will be at all noticeable is totally debatable... I was going to get a Burton rocker cover to go with it, but it won't fit with the DGAV carburettor (it's missing the cutout for the autochoke water housing). Oh well. My new rear axle bearings leak, which is annoying. They don't have the rubber seal around the outside like the OEM-spec ones did, but it also looks a little like the oil is coming through the bearing, rather than around it.. Will go and have another talk to the bearing people at some stage. Bought some more wheels (apparently called Wildcat Cheetahs) which unlike the current ones are properly shiny, properly 4x108, and properly not covered in kerb rash. They are also currently on the Escort, but that's another thread update completely.. I kept noticing more and more rust appearing over the winter, and it was getting depressing. Mostly along the bottom of the windscreen - found out the sedan one doesn't fit, sadly - some more around the tailgate handle, the rear quarters, and the 'feature panel' was starting to irk me. So the time came to bite the bullet and get some paint done For the first time in a year it's all the same colour. And this is what it looks like at the moment. Still need to finish putting it back together, it's a good opportunity to spray rust inhibitor around and tidy up some of the things that didn't get done the first time around. The interior needs a massive clean too, it's covered in panelshop dust. That intermittent wiper relay, the switchgear to match, and the glovebox light are all still waiting. One day... Hoping it's all back together and the camshaft has arrived in time for the Waipu cruise. Failing that, there's always drag day Will try and take some better photos once it's all together I was well supervised throughout discuss here: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/41622-mk2martys-83-cortina-estate/

This sounds rad. I'm keen

Progress with this has been slow, mostly due to laziness and apathy on my part.. But I did find where (most of) the water was coming in, which was through the large rust holes in the firewall seam behind the heater unit. They have been patched temporarily, and I put the carpet back in. It still leaks a little through the windscreen rubber though. Otherwise it's really only had boring maintenance stuff done, I changed the wheel cylinders because they were leaking, I put some new HT leads, a set of points and a condenser in it in an attempt to rid it of misfires and make the most of it's meagre allowance of horsepower. Still haven't bothered to strip the gearbox, but it'll happen soon. More annoyingly, last week it decided that it didn't like to idle, and would die at every set of traffic lights it came across. This became a little irksome, particularly when commuting home from work in peak hour traffic, so armed with the Ford manual I decided (working more on the basis of hope than anything else) to take the top off the carburettor and blast some of the accumulated crud out of it. This I did, and it seems a little happier. I also emptied about four litres of tomato soup out of the cooling system and changed the thermostat for one that worked, so with any luck it might be more inclined to behave itself. It may even make the monthly meet this week The aforementioned, all knowing Ford manual Better than a Holley, mayte. I cleared the passages with compressed air, and cleaned what looked like bits of casting swarf from the float bowl. Whether this has made any tangible improvement to it remains to be seen, though. It looks like a normal car again from the inside though, with the carpet and stuff back in. The previous owner's piece of religious iconography refuses to part company with the dashboard, it seems to be stuck on with an intense faith-based fervour. I gave up after a while and left it there. And the most unnerving thing is that it seems to like rusting in the most unexpected places.. I really wasn't expecting to find a hole that size in the front valance. Kids, make sure you clean behind your number plates every so often.. Still looking for front doors that aren't as rusty, and the WOF runs out at the end of August, so we'll see what happens. Discuss it here: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/48306-mk2martys-1976-escort-moredoor-discussion/

Always wondered what happened to the silver Ghia featured in that article. It looked like a pretty tidy example

Keen to tour sheds. Might be option A though, unfortunately i don't have a shed to show off, my cars live on my parent's driveway... Have met some of you at monthly meets, hope i'm not too much of a weirdo.

H4 conversion in, barring any major mishaps the Escort should make it's first monthly meet appearance .

That's a good idea, i hadn't thought of that. I assumed they were from the factory as they were covered by the same type of tape that was used to cover the other holes in the interior. However this makes more sense, particularly looking at where the seat mounting cross-brace attaches to the sill. Strange that they would punch holes, and not drill them, but judging by the amount of bog in the door it probably wasn't the nicest repair to begin with...

Some interesting things happened this week The ownership papers turned up, it looks as though it's had one owner from 1977 to 2008ish, judging by the registration history. Turns out it was sold new by Brian Cotter Motors in Albany in September 1976, so it's been an Auckland car for most of it's life. Unfortunately, it's spent the last few years leaking water profusely through holes around the heater bubble (among other places), so it was this weekend's mission to strip the interior and dry it out. While it was on the floor, it seemed like a good opportunity to clean it and remove the forty years' worth of encrusted grime that had built up. Most of the trim scrubbed up okay, although it might be time for a visit to Autodec to get some new carpet and underlay. While the interior was bare it was a good opportunity to break out the Fishoilene sprayer and douse the door cavities/sills/inner guards/chassis rails/bootlid/bonnet etc. So now it smells a bit, and it seems to attract cats, but i'm hoping it might have curbed the rust issue in the meantime. Weirdly, the rustiest part of the car looks like it doesn't belong to it: ...the drivers door, which is a lot more Daytona Yellow than the rest of the car was, or will ever be. I now have no qualms about replacing it, as soon as I can find a better one. Also, while busy fishoiling anything that didn't move, i noticed a random row of holes in the driver's side inner sill panel. Weird. So that was all well and good, but the main problem with it was still the gearbox, and the concrete-mixer noises it was making. So we set about changing that today: It now has Dad's spare gearbox in it, which will keep it mobile until I get around to rebuilding the original one. I'll strip the gearbox another weekend and see what nasties lurk beneath. At the very least i'm guessing it needs bearings.. edit: Discuss it here: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/48306-mk2martys-1976-escort-moredoor-discussion/

So I saw this on the interweb a little while ago. $2500 later it was mine. It's an August 1976 build Mk2 Escort 1100. I drove home from the North Shore with a bad ignition miss, but another set of points have solved it for now. The only main problem with it seems to be the well-worn gearbox bearings, so it's quite growly in the indirect gears. Other than that, the driver's door is pretty sad, the frame is fine, it's just the outer skin that's full of bog and it's rotten all the way along the bottom. Aside from that though, it seems like a well-used but reasonably solid example of an early Mk2 Escort. The idea was that I could daily this while the Cortina gets some paintwork and other things done. But this might need work first... Apologies for the grainy photos, the light was fading by the time I got it home Found the louvre that Dad had on his Escort Sport, which had been sitting around since he sold the car in 1985. Might have to keep it on there... Never had a radio fitted, so the doorcards are thankfully intact, as is the rear parcel shelf. 1098cc of raging Kent. It produced a whole 35kW when new, apparently

+1 for starting threads for all the others.. Was neat seeing this in the flesh today too

Can't match the big events of the previous few updates, but i've been making small improvements to it Got another L/F guard and windscreen from a Mk5 at Pickapart. Some moran that owned the car prior to me has attacked the screen with really harsh grit sandpaper in an attempt to remove the bit of black paint where the interior mirror mounts, so the new one will find it's way into the car in due course. Not long after this, the GCs at Zebra Manukau got a Mk5 2.3 Ghia in at their yard, so I had to visit and grab some high-spec goodies from it. Ended up with a glovebox light, clock, interior light and spotlight grill, and an intermittent wiper relay and switchgear, since Ford neglected to fit mine with one. The clock in it got really loud and then it died, so I bought another one. It didn't go either, but since I now had two of them I figured i could fuck with one, so I pulled it apart, filled it full of CRC (because I couldn't see anything else wrong with it), and now it works. Guess all it wanted was lubrication..? Did the same to the other one, and I now have two working clocks. Go figure. I put the one from Zebra in, since it was nicer. Installed another (working, at least for now) electric aerial Fitted the spare guard, or what has turned out to be dangerously close to a 'feature panel' as Honda fanboys call them. To avoid the associated stigma of having such a panel i'll probably get it painted to match the rest of the car once the panelshops reopen after new years. It looks like this now: I'll probably put the left mirror on the new guard at some point. Shame the lower valance still looks like a cheesegrater though... It's a bit hard to see in the photo, but note the crappy (even by Cortina standards) panel fitment around the door line, rust/bog/dents, crap paint, and wonky wheelarch profile, legacy of the frontal this car probably had in the past It looked worse in person, believe me. Got some mudflaps with blingin' chrome bits on them, so they went on too. Big thanks to Ben (Zebra Dude) as well for donating me some taillight lenses. Also, found some ancient Trademe photos of when it was all standard and mint and old folks spec. Awww.. Might try find it another monsoon shield now... Tell me to keep the rat-look panel here: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/41622-mk2martys-83-cortina-estate/

If all else fails talk to Murray at Weber Specialties. He's a GC and knows what he's talking about. In fact he could probably sell you a carb to go with Rookie's manifold.

Type 9 5 speed? Loving the colour scheme on this by the way