I've been lurking on here for a while and thought its about time to share the beast with the world!
You always hear of people buying a cortina because their dad had one or it was their first car, before I started looking at them I had never heard of one! I always loved the idea of a muscle car, the look always appealed as wella s the power! I couldnt afford to buy myself a old mustang or a charger but during my searches I came a cross a Mk3 cortina and loved the styling...so then I just needed to find one!
The story starts in sheffield where I found this...
2.0L DOHC sierra engine in the bay
The guy had done a fair bit of work tidying the sills and applying a healthy dose od waxoil, the car was actually in really good shape underneath, but needed the engine and interior sorting to get her going. She was boutght and towed down to loughborough where I was at uni and the work started!
A set of Compomotive alloys, some new brakes and hours of fiddling in the freezing cold on my mates driveway gave me a roadworthy car to run around in!
So I was running the 2.0 which was reasonable but a muscle car needs a V engine........
Ebay came up trumps with a 2.9 V6 cologne engine from a granada, however it had a little fettling since then. Bored out to 3.1, lumpy cam, big valves and ported, complete with gearbox £300 was a bargain I couldnt refuse! A long trip to the lake district in a lowered VW polo scraping cats eyes on the way home gave me this:
Now things get more interesting....taking a sandwhich year from uni to spend a year working in industry (testing cars....) gave me the oppertunity to really get the cortina going how I wanted!
Out with the old
Checking the new engine over
Some minor modifications to the engine bay
Some paint
Mating the engine and box:
And the new engine is in!
Still a few more bits...
Air flow meter brackets welded up
Then one snowy winter day (most of the conversion was done in these conditions under halogen lights....)
SHE LIVES!
and yes that is a power steering pump....which is connected to a cortina PAS rack....the scrapyards of norfolk have some hidden gems!
However...great speed means greater stopping power.....
From this
to this
Going off to get shiney newstainless steel twin pipe exhaust custom made!
I ran it as a daily for the rest of my placement, but with petrol prices rising and 20mpg I couldnt afford to take her back to uni again so she was laid up at my parents for the year. After about 3 months in the garage dad asked me to move it out so he could put his car there over the winter...it went outside for all of 2 hours before he decided the landrover could cope with the winter weather, so she went back in the garage!
I had one small whoopsie over the summer which may or may not have involved doing burnouts on the hard standing on the farm which resulted in this...
However every cloud and all....this had several silver linings! I was due in sheffield for a week for a competition and with the cortina out of action that left dads morris minor...totally original 20000 miles from new its amazing. 500 miles later, alot of hand crank starts (the girls loved it..!) and I was home. the second silver lining was the replacement axel was in the form of an HD axel so more possibility for POWER!
And a parting shot...
More to come including muscle cars, biplanes and Megasquirt!
You always hear of people buying a cortina because their dad had one or it was their first car, before I started looking at them I had never heard of one! I always loved the idea of a muscle car, the look always appealed as wella s the power! I couldnt afford to buy myself a old mustang or a charger but during my searches I came a cross a Mk3 cortina and loved the styling...so then I just needed to find one!
The story starts in sheffield where I found this...
2.0L DOHC sierra engine in the bay
The guy had done a fair bit of work tidying the sills and applying a healthy dose od waxoil, the car was actually in really good shape underneath, but needed the engine and interior sorting to get her going. She was boutght and towed down to loughborough where I was at uni and the work started!
A set of Compomotive alloys, some new brakes and hours of fiddling in the freezing cold on my mates driveway gave me a roadworthy car to run around in!
So I was running the 2.0 which was reasonable but a muscle car needs a V engine........
Ebay came up trumps with a 2.9 V6 cologne engine from a granada, however it had a little fettling since then. Bored out to 3.1, lumpy cam, big valves and ported, complete with gearbox £300 was a bargain I couldnt refuse! A long trip to the lake district in a lowered VW polo scraping cats eyes on the way home gave me this:
Now things get more interesting....taking a sandwhich year from uni to spend a year working in industry (testing cars....) gave me the oppertunity to really get the cortina going how I wanted!
Out with the old
Checking the new engine over
Some minor modifications to the engine bay
Some paint
Mating the engine and box:
And the new engine is in!
Still a few more bits...
Air flow meter brackets welded up
Then one snowy winter day (most of the conversion was done in these conditions under halogen lights....)
SHE LIVES!
and yes that is a power steering pump....which is connected to a cortina PAS rack....the scrapyards of norfolk have some hidden gems!
However...great speed means greater stopping power.....
From this
to this
Going off to get shiney newstainless steel twin pipe exhaust custom made!
I ran it as a daily for the rest of my placement, but with petrol prices rising and 20mpg I couldnt afford to take her back to uni again so she was laid up at my parents for the year. After about 3 months in the garage dad asked me to move it out so he could put his car there over the winter...it went outside for all of 2 hours before he decided the landrover could cope with the winter weather, so she went back in the garage!
I had one small whoopsie over the summer which may or may not have involved doing burnouts on the hard standing on the farm which resulted in this...
However every cloud and all....this had several silver linings! I was due in sheffield for a week for a competition and with the cortina out of action that left dads morris minor...totally original 20000 miles from new its amazing. 500 miles later, alot of hand crank starts (the girls loved it..!) and I was home. the second silver lining was the replacement axel was in the form of an HD axel so more possibility for POWER!
And a parting shot...
More to come including muscle cars, biplanes and Megasquirt!