mk2marty

What: 1983 Ford Cortina Estate

 

Why: Childhood nostalgia for gold Mk5 Cortinas, general Old Ford obsession, fate etc

 

When: September 2013

 

How: I remembered seeing this nice looking gold Mk5 Estate on Trademe, totally standard and old man-spec (complete with sweet monsoon shields), and then seeing it again a few years later hooning around my neighbourhood, lowered on black painted steelies. 

For a while I was doing 'work experience' at a european car dealership during high school. The apprentice there mentioned he used to have the very same gold Cortina wagon on black steelies, that he ended up selling to a mate who had pulled it apart for a grand rebuild, got bored and probably wasn't going to do anything with it, so I asked him to see if it was for sale.

It was.

Offered to buy it, but the guy ended up putting it on Trademe. Undeterred, I went to look at it (he lived just around the corner, strangely enough), and although it was in a million pieces and looking decidedly worse for wear I was smitten. I had a go at bidding on it, but being a poor high school student I lost the auction and it ended up being sold to some guy in Hamilton. That was it, I thought.

Fast-forward a couple of years, and it was up on Trademe again, looking pretty much as it did in the last guy's garage (still covered in the same dust, even). I had assumed that it would have been abused and crashed and i'd never have seen it again, but there it was. Turned out that the guy bought it as a father-son project, building it for the son to learn to drive in. The son, it seemed, lost interest in it or didn't want to be seen in a scruffy old Cortina, and his dad got pissed off and put it back on the Tard.

I went down to Hamilton to look at it, and it turned out that he'd freshened up the engine (read: bottlebrush honed the bores and put some new rings in it) and that was basically it. Nothing else had changed, aside from the fact that he wanted a lot more than he paid for it, mostly for 'rebuilding' the engine. After some haggling, we settled on a price and I had it shipped up here. It arrived at home on a damp Thursday morning in September, and I set about putting it back together. 

I can't envisage ever selling it, it suits me perfectly.

 

What's Next: Some small improvements. Get some paint tidied up, the front guard matched to the rest of the car, repair the curbed wheels, get some centrecaps, some proper springs of the same height (the cut springs it's on are a little bouncy), possibly some raised-white-lettering tyres, and continue to enjoy driving it. 

 

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/ 

 

So much want

Talking of sweet old Toyotas, this was down the shops the other day.. 

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

Might have been Guywithaviators

Yeah I thought that too at first, but I don't think it was his one. This one had no bumpers..

 

Thought the Aviatorsmobile was still without an engine?

Whenever i'm at the gas station in the Cortina i tend to get the usual 'how long have you had it', 'i used to have one of these',

or the obligatory 'put a rotary in it', 'is it a 2 litre? Yeah they go hard as', 'cool Escort' etc. 

One guy said he supervised the production line at Seaview in the '80s and was marveling that there were still Cortinas around. 

Drove the Escort to the bakery the other weekend and a large guy in an Intercivil truck asked me how long i'd had it, because he said he used to go to school in it.

My dad didn't believe me about old guys coming up to me and yarning about the Cortina, until one day at Piha as soon as we parked some dude came up and started waxing on about how he used to have one, and then he bought a Sierra and how the DOHC engines were sooo much better than a Pinto...

 

A guy in a white Austin 1300 waved at me on the way to work the other week.

 

So yeah, same as the above, pretty much.

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.

There used to be an XR2 Fiesta that looked a lot like that parked opposite the Blockhouse Bay Community Centre most days.

Will take a photo if i see it again.

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

Those holes actually line up nicely with the drivers door being replaced, It's had a hit in the side and they punched the holes to push the outer sill out, Check for filler in the sill and you will see what i mean, spmeone did the same with my 850 Coupe but on the back upper corner.

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/

Spotted this classic today. 

 

Liking the Cheviot Turbos as well

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 

 

 

Hmm, rarer than your average Escort too, given that it's an Aussie assembled version. These had the reinforced 'export' bodyshell, the most notable feature being the double skinned front strut towers. 

Personally i'd put a 32/36 DGAV on the Kent, throw some chrome bumpers back on it and leave it at that. But that's just me.

 

 

Some recent spottings:

 

Nice Mk1 two-door in Ponsonby

Some form of 2CV van-thing. 

Neat Valiant in Grey Lynn

Mitsi Galant Colt in Dargaville

And an Isuzu Bellett. Just cos.

An auto was most definitely an option on Mk2 Ghias. They (along with all other auto Mk2 Escorts and OHC Mk3/4/5 Cortinas) used a Ford C3 auto, however, whereas Mk1 Escorts used a Borg Warner 35.

There shouldn't be any differences in torque converter size 1300 to 1600 with the C3.

Possibly a silly question, but was the car the engine came from a manual or automatic? Is the bolt spacing the same between the flexplate and the crank boss? Only there are some theories that the crank bolt spacings are different between manual and automatic vehicles.

Mine was 410mm, if that helps

 

measured like this:

 

Chur.

Definitely try Zebra. Both Mk5s were fairly complete last time I was there. They were V6s too... There was a beige Mk5 at Pickapart a month or two ago, but it's probably scaffolding in China by now.

Start a build thread for the Cortina, always keen to see more Mk5s around the place.

Spotted this tidy-looking HR sedan in a carpark on Albert St in the city. So awesome.

 

 I need a MK5 Cortina wagon with a hot Pinto 

 

 

This.

 

Looks like a really neat place to stay as well, and that teardrop trailer is so cool. 

Top work man

+1 for starting threads for all the others.. 

Was neat seeing this in the flesh today too

 

 

This is awesome. Looks like a decent conversion too

I'm running this setup at the moment:

 

Twin compressor/twin trumpet system. Has a pretty deep tone, so I added a high tone trumpet as well later on. Loud as fuck, and barely any delay in getting air pressure

Failing that, a decent lo/hi tone clamshell setup seems to work well