Renault Estafette Van, Mk2 Cortina GT

No progress on anything old as I’ve been rebuilding the front and rear suspension on the Avensis due to 4 rotten suspension arms, 3 snapped springs and 3 seized calipers. I got sent a lhs caliper 3 times before a rhs finally turned up - Ebay.

But I did see these pics on FB this week of the Fiat my brother converted to an Abarth replica and did the paint work also. The owner has been putting it back together himself. It’s looking the part.

That is cool^^^^^

Escort.... not really touched it. I did drive it out the garage last week and the brakes were jammed on. I jacked it up today to see if it was just the one caliper sticking and both rear wheels were free?? A job for another day.

Cortina..... I’ve got a week off work next week so I thought today I’d finally remove the gearbox to see why it’s constantly jumping out of 4th gear. So I put it up in the air on the 2 post lift and in no time at all the gearbox was on the floor. I did get Jones Junior (The Elder) to come and give me a hand just to slide the box off the engine and balance it on the transmission jack so that it didn’t hit the floor.










Next I removed the 2 top plates to check the selector mechanisms. This is called a 3 rail box. You can see why.


So when I move the gear stick there is about 4mm play in the selector fork before the hub that engages 3rd and 4th moves. When I select 4th on the stick, I can push the hub about 4mm further forward. You can see the difference in these 2 photos





My thinking is that 4th gear isn’t being fully engaged and is the reason it keeps jumping out.
I’ve sent a video of it to a gearbox guru from the Cortina fb page to see if it’s something missing, a worn selector fork that need replacing/building up, or can it be adjusted out. I await his reply.

So, never mind my fleet for a bit, remember the Austin Healey 3000 (I think JB7) that I did a load of aluminium welding on a few years ago? Well it’s total restoration is finally finished and my brother has returned ot to its owner. From what it first looked like, it’s now pretty Bl00dy stunning. It originally had the bottom half below the feature line in cream, but looks so much better all in one colour.

So I took the Cortina to the show and in total we did about 100 miles that week end. Was it trouble free motoring? Not quite. Whilst on the way to the show the gearbox stuck in 4 the gear for a couple of seconds. But came out with a bit of a shove. At the same time there was a short, quiet squeal (could have been coincidence or paranoia I’m not sure). But it behaved impeccably after that. I spoke to the gearbox rebuild man and he gave a few pointers. He has said before I refitted the box to change the spigot bearing from a needle roller to a oilite bush as there was a mark on the input shaft that could have been caused by a damaged bearing. I had not done this.

My mind was now convincing me that the spigot bearing may have collapsed so about an hour or so after returning from the show, the gearbox was back on the floor again. Gearstick is a NOS item and the ball had not split. It is also the right type as some have a larger hole in the steel dome so have a special washer that some times gets left out.





I took both gearbox lids off and nothing looks out of place. No bits flailing about as if something has grenaded in there.









Spigot shaft not chewed but there is some sort of wear marks on there now that weren’t there when I fitted it.


Spigot bearing was complete but there could be wear in it. So I opted to change it.



I bought an oilite bush to the dimensions the gearbox builder gave me, but I also bought a new needle bearing incase there was a fitment issue.

I tried the bush on the shaft and it slid on ‘nice’. I removed the old spigot using the grease an old input shaft and hammer method and this worked a treat. I hammered the new bush into the crank using the old input shaft and it worked good- no binding on the shaft. One thing I did notice on the clutch cover was that there were marks on it as if it wasn’t flat. There were some gouges on it too.

This wasn’t a new clutch when I rebuilt the car so I don’t know it’s history. I don’t think the marks were on there when I fitted it, but I did think I would need to replace it at some point. I don’t know if the disc or the cover is warped, it wasn’t slipping, but I chose to replace all the clutch components as the ‘box was still on the floor. I bought an AP kit from a guy selling classic car parts. They are old stock so probably filled with asbestos, but the one I pulled off was old too so same difference.

I put it all back together about a week ago but didn’t get a chance to try it until yesterday. When I started it and first put it in gear the clutch pedal needed very little effort to press. Great, it’s either lost fluid or something in the bellhousing is not right. But I tried putting it in reverse and it fell in. For some reason the clutch pedal is now a lot lighter! Anyway, I took it for a 10 mile trip and everything was fine. No noises, no slipping and no sticking in gear. Another thing the gearbox guy did say is that he normally fitted NOS synchros but he can no longer get them so he’s fitted an aftermarket item for the first time. Could it have been this bedding in?? Time will tell.

Another ‘incident’ on the way to the show was whilst driving along one of the lanes, one of the cars in front kicked out a large stone into the road and with my car being so low it hit the bottom of the car.😩. It put a dent in one of the chassis rails, scratched the floor, gouged my shiny stainless exhaust dented the fuel tank and dented the rear valance. That really pi55ed me off. Especially the dented chassis rail. I hate dented chassis rails😡.












I’ve mixed some paint straightened the valance and touched up the witness marks. While the car was on the ramp I also swapped the rear spring eye bushes as I just fitted old used soft rubber ones when I built it due to a change of springs. I’ve had new ones for months but never got round to fitting them. All poly bushed up now though.

I'm pretty sure that is the carb side on the Renault engine it came with.

So cold air to the carb, probably.

Last time I drove the Cortina it drove really well. This was after I changed 2 of the spark plugs. This morning I was going to take it to Pendine sands to watch the hot Rod racing on the beach. It started after a couple of tries but today it felt like it’s was running on 3.5 cylinders. I took it anyway. I really need to get it on a dyno to sort the carbs. I’m currently changing spark plugs more often than going to the petrol station.

But before we hit the beach we made a detour to Llandeilo. Since replacing the rear brakes on the Escort I now need to replace the front discs and pads as the pads only have a few mm left on them. The racing pads chew through the discs so they’ll need replacing too. This is going to cost me well over £100 as I planned to upgrade the pads too.

While I was spending this much money my man maths was suggesting that I may as well upgrade the calipers and discs too.😁 A popular upgrade on Escorts is to fit Austin Princess calipers. These get a spacer fitted between the 2 halves so you can fit vented discs. The discs on an escort are 247mm diameter but when fitting the Princess calipers they need to be 260mm. The way to get these is to buy BMW e30 front discs and redrill the pcd to fit the Ford hub, but some motorsport outlets do sell them ready done for some more ££££’s.

You can know buy new Princess calipers on ebay. You can even buy them as a kit with discs and pads for the best part of £200 but for some reason the discs are only 240mm diameter this means the edge of the pad isn’t used so they’re no good to me. Then last night my mate messaged me to say there was a pair of calipers, correct pads, bolts/washers, a new dad of fast road pads and a set of part used race pads also, available for £100 and only about 12 miles from my house.








The guy selling them had removed them from his Toyota Starlet rally car with 4age engine as he’d upgraded to alloy calipers.

I may have to fit a bigger master cylinder but I’ll try with the one on there first. So after collecting the bits we drove down to Pendine (where it was raining), had an icecream and looked at some old cars. No racing happened though. Not really sure why but a guy I spoke to said that track was to wet at the far end 😩.

Thanks Nick. I run Revolution Minators which have huge inner hoops so i shouldn’t need to grind the caliper (hopefully), but I’ll keep an eye on them. You never know what quality kit your getting these days.

Today I was up early again and fitted the 260mm disc to the hub and fitted the caliper to the other side (no photo). I went over my brothers to make up the 2 new brake pipes. They could do with being about an inch shorter because the caliper is bigger. I did this then went home to fit them.


I started to fit them and then realised that in fact they were about 2” shorter and were now too short. In fact one was about 1/2” shorter than the other. What a numpty. This is one of those times that “that will do”, won’t do at all. I’ve cut some new pipe - hopefully the right length, and will get some more made up in the week. 😩

Escort-

So I took it for a longer drive so everything was warm, unlike the short drive last time. As the rear pads are standard they are good from cold. The front pads being full race take a while to warm up. To warm them up quicker I drive with the brakes on for a little bit. With everything nice and warm I’ve now backed off the rear brakes on the bias valve. It’s a lot more confidence inspiring now, but in the long term I think I’ll fit a bias pedal box, and keep the bias valve. When they run big brakes on the back of Escorts they tend to put a 0.65 master cylinder to the front and a 0.7 to the rear so they have less effect, but you still have the good hydraulic hand brake.

Cortina-

I can’t remember if I’ve already mentioned it, but on Tuesday I’m taking the Cortina to the rolling road to get the carbs set up correctly. So this morning I put it on the trailer ready so there’s no faffing on the day.




I’ve changed the engine oil as it’s been in there 2 years and replaced the inlet manifold gasket as it was leaking coolant. The gasket I had originally fitted was a new one I had in stock but it had stuck to the cardboard packaging. I’d scraped it off with a razor blade but it obviously wasn’t right. It was only a small weep but I thought if it’s leaking coolant then it could also be letting in air to muck up the mixture. All sorted now.

The rolling road guy asked if I had the vacuum advance connected to the inlet manifold. I’ve never run one on the race cars but as this is a road car I thought it might drive better with it. I needed to fit a take off for the manifold and happened to have one! But when I connected it up to try the engine was making a clacking noise. It sounded like a cam follower had broken up. I disconnected it and the noise stopped. I don’t know if it’s just the timing is not right for vac advance, or if it’s the distributor pulsing as the vac pipe is only connected to one cylinder? Anyway, I’ve disconnected it for now and blanked off the manifold. If the dyno guy wants to use it the facility is there.

I also tried adjusting the tappets as they are quite tappety. After doing it, it sounded exactly the same. The rockers have worn so even though it’s right on the feeler gauge the gap is a lot more. I looked it a few spare sets I have knocking about and they are curse word too. As luck would have it there was a set of refaced rockers with steel shaft and steel rocker posts on ebay finishing the next day and I got them for £87. Bargain. They won’t be here before the rolling road session though so it will have to go sounding like a load of bolts being shaken in a baked bean tin.




I have a spare set of Holby carbs that have the jets in them that were in the Cortina carbs when they were on the Astra I rebuilt (thread on here somewhere). I’m taking those with me as the dyno guy says all the Holby jets I’ve got in the Cortina now are pish. The emulsion tubes need to be F11 or F16 and that’s what the spares are, so using those will save me the best part of £80.


I’ve also written down the Astra jets as that was set up on the same rolling road so I have them for reference. I’ll stick them on here if anyone needs to put a set of Weber 40s on a Vauxhall red top engine. A standard engine made 179bhp flywheel 137bhp wheels with this set up.



I also had to do the yearly “pull all the lights apart on the trailer” exercise as everything corrodes. I keep meaning to swap them to an LED setup but the lights fit the recess on the trailer and have built in triangles. The rectangle LEDs look a bit clunky, but at least they would work.



They all worked on the wife’s Rav4 but not on my Avensis so I put a new lighting hitch on that and all’s good.