1973 Cortina van

[grizz]

Great progress again Mark.

Looking at your welding, I really should come learn from you some time.

I can glue metal with my welder, but I cannot "weld" like that yet.
Same with filler and prepping, did it years ago, but need refreshing on technique.
Painting goes without saying.

[Deleted]

Nov 23, 2009 19:08:22 GMT grizz said:

Great progress again Mark.

Looking at your welding, I really should come learn from you some time.

I can glue metal with my welder, but I cannot "weld" like that yet.
Same with filler and prepping, did it years ago, but need refreshing on technique.
Painting goes without saying.

your welcome to pop over to the workshop anytime mate still got a few bits of welding to do to do on the car but even if i have finished the welding on the estate you can always pop over and i'll go through it with you same goes for body and paint i'm pretty much always in the workshop at the weekends

[grizz]

Sounds great, thanks Mark.
I would probably hop on the bike, and then get into an overall there.
Maybe even get Nicola to join me, then her and Karen can go play or something, or else solo me.

[Deleted]

Day 11
today was mainly about sorting the rust on the drivers side . the A pillar was quite bad and badly bodged as i soon found out when removing the paint to reveal its was mostly made from filler i'm thinking the old boy had no access to welding gear ;D. there was also a small hole at the base of the kick panel same as the other side and the top of the kick panel on the wing mounting rail was gone in the usual cortina fashion but not overly badly .









i was going to move on to doing the passenger side rusty bits today but unfortunately ran out of sheet metal due to a delay from the supplier . so instead i decided to start on some of the little detail jobs on of which was more down to it bugging me , the door sills have a little recess for a tiny little ford badge but due to the car being meant for 4 doors the recess was to far forward so i cut out that recess plus the square recess next to it and swapped them over moving the badge recess to the center of the door . now probably nobody will ever see it but it stops it bugging me ;D

[tickman]

Brilliant job moving the badge.
Glad it is not just me that gets hung up on 'stupid things'

John.

[Deleted]

i forgot about the fact we were going out tonight so didn't get much time down the workshop today so just spent the time i did have to adjust the front wings on the estate . the front wheels are 8" wide so the stock front wings are a little tight and needed a little stretching around the arches to be able to get the correct stance ;D

[grizz]

You continue to make me smile Mark.

Impressed with you continued progress.

[tonybmw]

Thats one heck of a stance, a huge thumbs up from me

[Deleted]

as i'm off on a course next week and wouldn't get a chance to get stuck into doing any of the bodywork this weekend i decided now would be as good a time as any to get the old engine stripped and some of the new parts dry assembled for a test fit to see what work was needed and where .
the old crank rods pistons and heads are going to their new homes next week so with those out of the way i trial fitted the new heads and ARP stud conversion . the new heads are fully flowed and ported edelbrock victor series heads bought to match the pro flow efi's victor inlet manifold . the previous heads though very good are not a patch on these new heads the inlet ports are much larger than the previous heads and flow is generally much better all round



with heads trial fitted and measurements taken for the new pushrods the heads were put back in their boxes and i moved on to the new crank . the crank is an eagle forged 4330 steel stroker 347ci crank which although very nice presents a few problems when it comes to fitting one the throw of the crank is that big that rods collide with the base of the barrels so each one has to have a small amount of material removed to clear the rod .



one of the mhale forged dome top skirtless pistons was dummie'd up on one of the eagle H beam rods to check the clearance


small part of the base of the barrels removed to clear the rod

[Deleted]

didn't get much more done over the weekend other than clearance the rest of the bores for the new rods normal progress will resume when i get back from my course at the weekend .
hope to have the new engine built before the xmas week so i can get back on to doing the body and paint

[Deleted]

spent most of this weekend building up the new long motor for the car started off with fitting the new 347ci stroker pistons rods and crank .
the pistons are very different from the previous ones the new ones are much shorter forged skirtless domed pistons upping the compression ratio considerably also the rods are an H beam forged type rod so much stronger than the i beam one that were fitted and the crank is an eagle 4340 forged steel crank coupled together with a full ARP stud and bolt pack for the engine and bottom end stud girdle should see some nice reliable performance with some very good power figures from its new 5.7 ltr capacity


the pics: new rods crank and pistons fitted along with the bottom end stud girdle


engine looking a little like a porcupine with the new ARP head stud kit fitted

still running steel timing gears but the quieter variety this time question is how much quieter are they

the new bumpy pistons for that bigger squish ;D

crane cams roller lifters refitted

and a fresh pair of felpro gaskets

the old trickflow heads were sold to help pay for the new victor series heads topped off with some nice new valve covers

[Oldbus]

Nice one mate.

You must build me one of those one day! ;D

[Deleted]

Dec 21, 2009 7:17:03 GMT Oldbus said:

Nice one mate.

You must build me one of those one day! ;D

any time mate . one of my favourite bits of building a car is puting the motor together

[Deleted]

back down the workshop today . with the engine now pretty much built up i could finally get back onto the body again . todays job was to do the joins in between where the old rear door frames meet the 2 door rear quarters
how they looked before:

and how they look now :

[Deleted]

more welding today and probably more tomorrow as well but the rust repairs are almost done now hopefully be on to the body mods by Wednesday.
speaking of body mods I did get the other door shut done today


bottom of the B pillar or lack of



top of the B pillar on the quarter panel also needed a small repair



and the usual cortina rot problem with the bottom corner of the screen frame needed a small repair

[tonybmw]

Great progress, it will soon be done at this rate

[Pid363!]

great work as always

[Deleted]

pretty much sorted the rust repairs now last of the big bits done today .
main bit was the A post bottom of it was rotten normal problem with cortinas .



the rear of the wing rail although not rotten looked pretty rough so I made a new one to replace that as well so it matches the other side




at the back end of the car a new lower rear quarter panel needed to be made as that was a bit on the tatty side and new panels are not available for estates


tomorrow I'll make a start on some of the mods to the engine bay

[grizz]

Awesome Mark, great progress as expected.

Must be nice to get on with a job.

[Deleted]

Dec 29, 2009 22:46:36 GMT grizz said:

Awesome Mark, great progress as expected.

Must be nice to get on with a job.

it is nice i have been looking forward to this week of for a while just so i can get the bulk of the car done as there is a lot to do and only a short time to get it done before the show/race season is on top of us . if all goes to plan though it should be done and ready for wheels day