Unclejake

PHLEX, you've given a great description of the symptoms and what you've tried. That always makes it easier to diagnose. Nice work. These are simple light cars that drive well. I have had my old 1500cc Mk1 Cortina at ~ 200kmph on several occasions with no vibrations. You've largely eliminated the rotating mass of the fan through to the clutch pressure plate as the cause... but if you didn't put the correct I/D pilot bearing in for the gearbox input shaft (there is more than one diameter and and at least two input shaft nose lengths) then 'perhaps' that could be the fault??? Normally that would be a problem at revs rather than speed though Otherwise; it sounds like your driveline isn't in straight. Perhaps run a tape measure between the front and rear wheels on both sides of the car, and then check that the gearbox and engine are located in the centreline of the chassis rails. Worn gearbox bearings (including the white metal bearing the driveshaft locates in) can cause your symptoms, as can a dodgy diff-head (which I believe you've replaced) or an out of balance (or out of phase) driveshaft. It couldn't hurt to rotate the driveshaft one bolt hole to see what happens (although most likely nothing will) One other thing that can catch folks out is wheels with a larger center bore than the hub location flange. That one is hard to detect Good luck!

Good stuff. I'm not free that weekend, but may have had a cheapish accommodation option for you, but it turns out that it's not available anyway. Sorry

There's you, the wife and just one child needing Wellington accommodation?

As idle is off perhaps check all the heater controls are working, and if not check for a vacuum leak There's various hoses that can fail, including one between the back of the head and the firewall.

I don't recall using a ballast resistor with an electronic distributor (and it doesn't make sense to use one to me) but if it ran wired up like that before then you wouldn't want to change it. Electronic distributors (with a spinning soft iron star shaped thing inside them (a reluctor?)) will only spark if you have the polarity around the right way. IIRC the Subaru ones we used on Cortina motors spun anticlockwise like the Honda units, and the black wire didn't go to earth. The black wire from the dizzy went to somewhere else .... I think the + ve post on the coil, but it was 2007 when I last touched one so I can't remember sorry The only other thing I can think of is that you have the distributor out of phase (so when the spark triggers the rotor is between two distributor cap posts)

90 is good. I ran my pre-crossflow race motors at 90 and they usually looked great when stripped down at the end of each season

The Surgery did thousands of dollars of sill work (all documented with nice colour photos of the rust and finished painted area attached to the invoices) on the Mercedes I bought, but strangely no photos during the repair process. When I pulled it apart one of the sills was riveted together (using several strips of roughly cut metal about as wide as my thumb) under bog. Utter. Crooks.

I may have just messed up these calculations, but right now in theory you have an available 1,385 mm2 of air pass through area in your single twin throat carb, but you are heading to 3,216 mm2 (assuming you're going to 4x32mm carbs).

For the avoidance of doubt: Had your wonderful Area Rep taken up my offer of an evening on my luscious and well appointed deck at home... I can guarantee that you would all be utterly fucking miserable as it's 432 shades of grot here on the south coast tonight.... so respect to the volunteers that make the hard calls. Sometimes they get it wrong, most times they get it right, and all times they do it with the absolute best of intentions. Kisses

If in doubt with carbs ALWAYS go smaller. Unless you spend 99% of your time at 100% throttle and at near to top speed - air speed is your friend. Small = Better.

I LOLed

LOL. If'n I was up on my new hill I'd be able to spy on youse all But SRSly, should you wish to alter arrangements I'm happy for you all to use my existing deck, BBQs (one even operates on burning solid fuels) and outdoor kitchen. There's plenty of parking, outdoor lighting, toilets (if I leave you a key) and an outdoor table that seats 20. I'm likely to show up myself at some point, but don't let that put you off. A couple of spare rooms exist too should those already known to me make prior arrangements to get inebriated EDIT: But no matter the weather it wont be sunny at that time of day on my deck - which can be frustrating if it's epic sun across the road on the beach.... but of course one can walk across the road to the beach in that case

Ha. Thanks for that but the issue was not timber runners. It was the prospect of chiselling out another cubic metre of rock to form the main entrance way. I decided on an indirect nature walk instead. It'll be delightful. I have a couple of other sets of stairs to build once the pavers are down, but they will use native runners and treads as I have some demo timber to use up

I decided against the stairs, mainly because CBF. Next there's some paving to do, and after that I better actually build the cabin I guess.

Keeen

^ don't forget that absolutely everything (except for water, but including electricity) needs to travel on my back for 4 minutes of steep, muddy and slippery climb. Concrete is one of the least pleasant things to carry (even in nice dry bags), but I get what you mean. I'll chisel at the rock a bit later. I've got enough to do to keep me busy until December without starting on the stairs

It's fractured grey wacke so probably hard enough to be a PITA but too crumbly to be of any use

It's been a month where I felt like I tried really hard, but got almost nothing done. Things got done for certain, but they're hard to see. What you probably can see now is the rocky face that I'm going to chisel into stairs. I have no idea how that particular endeavour is going to work out.... but I'd wager badly. Very badly. Oh well. At least it'll be really hard and a waste of time.

A weekend kneeling and screwing isn't as much fun as one may think, but it's still August and the underground deck is pretty much finished! I'm happy.

The deck was an afterthought TBH, and had I put it on the other side of the cabin I'd need to cut down a bunch of trees... which would have mean't that the cabin was visible from the road below... which I'm not keen on. I want it to stay hidden. The 'underground' deck is very sheltered from the wind!

It's taken a while... but the deck frame is almost finished. One more weekend and it'll be ready to accept the decking timber, which will give me enough room to start on the cabin wall frames It's all good fun but bloody hard work! I have 2.8 tons of pavers that need to be carried up to the cabin if anyone is bored...

Hmmmm. This sounds really rather divine.

My phone camera seems to be a bit dodgy, but even blurry photos are probably better than none: Pile holes for deck = dug. Look at my bitch. Ain't he fine? He's 6'4" BTW. I'ma keep him Retaining/deck pile posts = in With luck I can start framing out the deck next weekend. It'll probably take about 6 weeks until the deck is laid, but then there will be enough room to start on the framing for the actual cabin. I also need about a million pavers, and to build two sets of stairs... but that can wait a few weeks/months too

There's not much to show lately gentle readers. The last couple of weekends have been spent digging between raindrops, but I've had a great deal of help with the digging, and also the portage of building materials up to the site. Rightly or wrongly I figured it was a good idea to place some drainage on the uphill side of the cabin floor. That took all day yesterday, but it's pretty much done now. Digging into rock sucks TBH, but there's enough clay to cause a likely problem so the sleeved drain got installed. Sorry about the bad photo. Night time and damp cellphone But the REALLY good news is that the dig out for the deck is done as of tonight. I still need to do lots of digging for the deck plies, retaining wall and roof posts, but the back of this bitch are broke. Two million kisses to the dear friend who did the bulk of the work. It was a good symbiotic relationship

^Just come. I'll bring the crushed salt and vinegar chips. /It's always better when the mechanic weeps