Joe's Cortina mk2

[MightyJoe 4,453]

Discussion Thread : 

New Thread as the old one might have been deleted as i had 2 cars in it? i'm not sure but i cant find it. so here's a recap of 6 yrs. 
bought in mid 2014 from chch, she has been  a nelson car for many yrs judging by the reciepts though.  WOF n REG mayte no worries!   err. Nah, she was ropey at best. 

 

they all leak a bit of oil dont they? 

i put whitewalls on it cos i was skint and couldn afford any wheels. 

the accelerator pump on the solex died and was pissing fuel all over the exhaust. i couldnt find a rebuild kit for this apparent orphan of a carb, and i also couldnt find a weber 32/36 but less than that i wasn't keen as the gt manifolds for these apparently go for moonbeams, so a dcoe it was. i rebuilt one good one from two. 


1 yr after purchase wof time came around and 'excessive smoke' was cited. i drove it gently, but the missus didn't get the memo. she got pulled a few times in a few weeks and packed a sook and refused to drive it anymore ( it was knackered) . so i parked it, outside at work for 9 months whilst i saved up for a rebuild. this time wasn't kind to it and the paint deteriorated quite a lot. 
Yum. 

it was packed off to hpe in chch for a shitload of work. 6 months or so later it came back and i set about a steep learning curve with the help of a good friend. 

Pose! i was allowed to snug the rocker cover. 

 

 

 

[MightyJoe 4,453]

Discussion:  

 

 

wheels, i still didnt have money but i asked about these and got a PM about a guy that knew a guy that had some. legit. 7jx13 cheviot quattro. Fuck yeah. 

i had the carbs rebuilt pro-fresh-a-nally and bought a brand new manifold. i legit stared at this on my coffee table for an entire evening. 

extractors wrapped. here you can see some combustion evidence, i had to pull the motor back out as is had no oil pressure on first start up. turns out i'd forgotten an oil gallery bung behind the timing cover. MOTHeR f***ER!   thankfully, no damage. 

a

the day it got its first wof in 4 yrs, dec 2019.

so thats the car up to date pretty much. i havent really used it, but thats why i've restarted a thread. i've signed up for the kaikoura hop this yr and i want to smarten it up before then, 6 weeks at time or writing. 

i bought a rev counter off Karl late last year and cleaned it up but never installed it as i didnt want to loose my combo gauge. i've bought all the correct senders for my gauges now so i'll be doing that. i had the eaxhaust tweaked a few weeks ago to make it bark a bit more. i want to tidy and de clutter the engine bay a bit and also fit a fusebox as they don't have them, shold be easy enough to make a few important circuit run through a fuse or 6. 

i've also had this stereo for yrs, positive earth and just screwed under the dash for looks, had a modern one in the glovebox but it was just a stupid amount of effort to do anything with it so i didnt use it. i bought a cheap 2 channel amp off aliexpress and tried to wire in the OG potentiometer for max barry points. i failed, but a friend who develops tech for a living took it home as a hobby project and had it working in a few hrs. So legit. 

the song is supposed to be ironic, incase you were wondering. 

i will update this a bit more over the coming weeks, as she's all legal now but obv needs all those  small jobs tidying and finishing. 

[MightyJoe 4,453]

Small update. I've been reading shit loads about brake and suspension upgrades this week. You can buy every component in 3 or 4 varieties for escorts, Capri's and mk3/4/5 cortinas. But mk1/2 and Anglia's are all left out. I phoned Burton power but didn't get much help. But I do have a set of Austin princess calipers to bolt on, which they do, and they clear my 13" wheels. Great. So hi-spec do an equivalent billet 4 pot caliper and rotor kit. I think I'm going to go that route rather than rebuild the princess ones. 

I replaced all the gear linkage bushes today. Much improvement but I'm still having intermittent problems with the clutch. I'm going to take it to work and reverse bleed it.  And after chatting with @gazguy yesterday my idea of a bracket to hold a radio and some gauges turned into a centre console build. I went to the wreckers today and bought a cup holder and pocket for my phone and wallet. Should make things much more comfortable in there. I do like the original look in classics and shape of the dash is nice but tbh having your wallet and phone slide off the seat around turns gets very boring. Here's my start at a template. I want to add more shape into it but am restricted by the under dash handbrake. 

[MightyJoe 4,453]

well that was a quick month. shit. kaikoura hop next week so i've been doing small jobs instead of the big ones i should be doing. anyway. 
i bought some rubber and trim from palmside. 
Before, 

After. so good. 

i bought some new brake flexi hoses as i was sure the old ones were giving me some of the spongey pedal feel, i havent tested them yet but the pedal does feel nice. 
 

 

the front screen rubber was shot so i took it out, and there was some surface rust there which i cleaned up and treated, i'll refit the screen tomorrow with the new rubber and trim. i topped up the diff level and gearbox also, and made an attempt at polishing the wheels... pics to follow

[MightyJoe 4,453]

I think i caught that just in time. and the wheel doesn't really show in the picture but thats a before / after. they look tidier in person though. 

[MightyJoe 4,453]

plenty of 'wiring' happening today. in my defence i fused everything. and it all works.

i'm really happy with the result though. finally got the tach in and working. it reads comically high but meh, thats a problem for another day. i love it, they're different cars with the tachs. 

rust converter doing the magic

got the missus tp help me string the screen in, its the 3rd one we've done, she's getting quite good at it lol. i hope i used enough sealant.

done, with the chrome. 

[MightyJoe 4,453]

Faaar out what a weekend. We travelled to Hanmer on Thursday and woke up friday morning to snow. lol. 

That was good fun though tbh, there werent any scary moments. Kaikoura bound, feeling very underprepared. 

The Clutch master died on the way over. got lucky with the roadworks and managed to bang gears/  revmatch enough to get all the way into town without stopping once since leaving hanmer. i pulled straight into the caltex and spoke to the mechanic there. he rang round for me and tried to locate a rebuild kit but there wasnt anything anywhere he could find. i decided to try a brake master from a trailer, only as i saw one on the shelf at safe r brakes yrs ago and thought, hmm, that looks similar. turns out theyre identical. fuck yeah. shop across the rd had 2 in stock. the snow hadnt reached KK but the rain had, so i had 40 mins of getting wet and lying on the floor on a sketchy as fuck jack reching in through the wheel well to bleed it. but it worked. 

the sun came out after i'd finished because of course it did so we cruised the strip a bit until we could check in. 

Night time at south bay. 

then the sat cruise. I got hit, fairlane couldnt stop, smacked into a mini which then shunted me. the mini was badly damaged unfortunately. i feel really bad for the guy. 

i was pretty pissed off but did some stuff still, but mostly waited until the afternoon and parked my arse on the espalande with a box and watched the cars cruise. 

on the way home...

The damage. FU! its been a pretty intense few days tbh. 

 

 

[MightyJoe 4,453]

 

Small update. I shut the garage door on this after the bump, i was a bit over it and expected insurance to take months. But It was quoted, accepted and cleared in a few weeks so I took it to Warrick at canterbury auto fabrication. Hes got the tools and know how to do it right. He also found some rust under the rubber seal and sent me pics to ask what to do next. I asked him to fix it as shapes and angles like that are beyond my skills to do nicely. Plus with it getting painted it would be stupid not to repair it now. He sent me some more pics of progress today. Shes looking good! Thanks to @RUNAMUCK bart for the recommendation and to @- i5oogt - karl for the replacement rear light.