Renault Estafette Van, Mk2 Cortina GT

Hub caps. I'm on call in work today but as things were quiet I thought I'd take a look at them. If you've been paying attention you'll remember I bought a set of Baby Moons. But having no way of keeping them on the wheel I was going to drill a hole in the centre of the cap and weld a nut to the centre of the wheel and bolt them on. This is how the early Estafette's secured them..

You may also remember that in order to do this I had to find the centre of the hubcap and the wheel. In the end I decided against this method as it was just a pain. When I first so an Estafette wheel with Baby Moons fitted they had used 3 x m8 nuts welded to the wheel so that the hub cap could just clip over them. This was my chosen method.

The van came with 2 sets of wheels so I grabbed a spare to make a prototype.

I tried the hub cap on and it looked like so.


So I took the wheels off the van and repeated 4 times. The end result was this.

I bloody love this van!
My dad had an orange one when I was like 4-5 years old!

Thanks vulgalour. No my idea, but a good one.

Cheers glen. I'm pretty pleased with how they look.

top work, looks awesome

I've got the week off work and my wife has to work Monday to Wednesday so thought I'd do some work on the van. As I'm sick of it stalling every time I take my foot off the throttle I thought I would try and fit the Volvo twin choke Weber and inlet. The inlet won't fit without the Volvo exhaust (things starting to spiral out of control already) so I removed the Estafette manifold an trial fitted everything.




Instead of the exhaust now going straight down into the top of the exhaust box, the Volvo down pipe exits down and backwards. When I bought the Volvo I engine I got the front pipe with it which is about 2' of 2 twisty bendy pipes. Now as you can see in the photo above the exhaust is exiting over the chassis rail into the front wheel tub. I took a grinder to the front pipe, and then took a welder to it also and ended up with this.




I can now just use a couple of exhaust bends and a single exhaust box that also came with the Volvo engine to make a new system. The old system was really noisy as that box you can see from the wheel tub now leaks like a sieve.



There is an interference issue with the twin choke.




The brass pipe coming from the manifold is redundant so that can be tapped and plugged. To cure the carb contact I'm hoping I can put a couple of washers under the engine mount on that side to give it some clearance. If that doesn't work I'll massage the contact point, but that will mean also having to modify the GRP engine cover, but this may need doing to clear the carb body higher up anyway.

This is the modified down pipe fitted.


I'll continue tomorrow

My nephew used to race one and that went alright too. I'll fit the engine when the gearbox is out over the winter, but the carb will do for now. Gearing is the vans major issue as the final dive is 5.8:1.

There's is already 3 spacers on there as standard. I could take 2 out and lower the carb but I'll have to shorten the studs. I'll take a look tomorrow. Thinking about it now I could just cut 15mm out of the inlet runners and weld it back together.

That rail is just the edge of the floor, and your right it's where the engine cover sits. After weighing up all my options on how to gain some clearance, lift carb, drop carb, tilt engine, shorten inlet manifold etc I ended up just bending said metal out of the way with a pliers. Sometimes the simplest solution is the best.



The engine cover still fits too, but may also need massaging once I try to fit the air filter and if the engine bangs it when driving.


I bolted up the manifolds and continued with the down pipe. It's not performance oriented so Tony Law shouldn't loose any sleep, but it will do the job.


I've not connected it any further as I need to weld a silencer in line.

I connected the old choke cable up with no issues, but I had to sort a throttle linkage and cable. I cut about the Volvo bracket and adjusted the linkage so that it now gets what. I called in a the local motorfactors to pick up a universal throttle cable but they had none in stock. So I called into the local bike shop to pick up a rear brake cable. It's one of those bike shops where the Lycra clad gents that block the road whilst cycling 3 abreast spend their hard earned on overpriced bike gear and coffee. After I explained to the gentleman that it wasn't for a road or mountain bike so just give me the one with the biggest nipple I went to pay. The gentleman tapped about 47 keys on his computer and then came up with a price of £7. £7! I nearly fainted. But needs must. I got home and fitted it.




The moment of truth came. I started the engine but it would only run with the throttle pressed. On the carb is what looks like a jet with an electrical connection. I thought this was a fuel cut off. I did not connect it as I wanted to see if it would run without it. It will run, but not idle. I put a temporary 12v feed to it and restarted and it now idles. I have no idea what the point of that is.

More tomorrow.