Ford Granada 1976, The beige one.

That is a wonderful slice of beige!

I had a Mk1 Granada many moons ago and it was a superb machine...

This one looks wonderful and I can't wait to see what lies ahead.

The car looks better in the pictures than in real life unfortunately. I guess that is common for many cars on this site. The car has had its roof exchanged for a roof with an original sliding sunroof, and that job was not very successful. There are a lot of rust damage around the edges of the sunroof. At some point, parts of the car was resprayed, and it was not a very good job. The clear coat has started to let go and there are parts with a lot of imperfections and dust in the paint.
The rear corners seems to be ok, but there are some rust on the wheel arches, and I am in the progress of exchanging the rear jacking point on the driver side.
It all takes a lot of time, and time is something I do not have a lot of.
The C-pillars on the Sedan is different from the coupe in several ways. The vents are open so rain will enter. The inner part of the C-pillar has a profile that is supposed to guide water out through the bottom vent. This profile has a rubber band attached that presses toward the inside of the outer part of the C-pillar. As time passes, the rubber will vibrate against the outer panel, water will protrude, and rust occurs from the inside out. One will not notice the rust before it is too late.

My 2.6 engine is low on power, with worn bearings and low oil pressure. I am uncertain what to do about this engine, I will not throw it away, but it might get some attention in the near future, bearings, gasket etc. I am also planning to completely rebuild a 2.8 engine with K-jetronic injection and install that. The problem is to get the car approved with the engine swap. It is difficult here in Norway.

Progress on the car is as it is on the pictures. It has been in the garage for several years neglected due to family commitments, but it seems that I will be able to work on it more now, fingers crossed.
This is my only project, the beige Granada. I had another one earlier but it was way too rusty, that was the green one. I will post some pictures of it. That was my best Granada and I really loved it, Signal green 76 model, 2.8i engine and Spax lowering kit.
It is tho one on the right in my profile picture.

These are indeed strange times. And where some benefit from free time as they can't do their job others only have more on their plate. I think I'm not far off from where you are at.

It's good to see the car is still in your possession and getting worked on, even if it is slowly.

You've always been a supporter of mine so if I can do something in return let me know!

Thank you for your support Alex. The best mojo support is reading about the projects on RR. There are so many increadibly rusty and worn down projects similar to mine in here, and so many hard working people grinding away getting their dream car back on the road. It is inspiring. Of course I have a sweetspot for you car, beeing a Granada, so I always read your posts.


As mentioned earlier, the enginge was a bit tired, in fact it was more than tired. It has been neglected by PO and probably run on cheap oil with refilling of oil when needed, rather than changing oil regularly. There was a lot of oil on the utside and inside.



The head gasket has obviously been leaking a bit and there was some coolant in the cylinders that had created a bit of pitting in the bores.
The Piston rings were worn and also some of the bearings had seen better times. I talked to a car mechanic about the state of the engine and his proffesional opinion was to chuck it all together and get to use the car again. It would not be a reliable engine butr the important thing is to use the car and not have it just standing in the garage. I went for this solution, new rings, gaskets and bearings, but I never got the engine back in the car.
I started to poke a b\it in the rust on the panel behind the front wing, in front of the door. There was a small hole the suddenly was a big hole, an then it escalated.

Now that last one is a very familiar hole. I guess I was lucky the extent of rot to the a pillar was not as bad as yours. I hope your upper parts of this spot near the bulkhead are better.

The engine in the car was not in a good shape but was put together some time ago with some new bearings, piston rings and gaskets. It was very hard to turn the engine over using a spanner even without the sparkplugs in. This killed the mojo a bit and progress stopped. I also noticed a pinging sound when I turned the engine over. A small metallic ping at a certain point in the revolution.
I was going to leave iet as the oilpan was on and tourqued up, and the engine only had so much life laft anyway.

But then I read goldnrusts engine saga which is a bit similar to my story, and I took notice of homersimpsons comment about following the user manual and checing the engine rotation for each step you take. I had followed the user manual, but i torqued up everyting befor I noticed how tight the engine was. I decided to remove the oilpan and chech the torque. After loosening the bolts I turned on the crank to investigate the pinging sound. I was afraid it something major, but in the end foud that it was a small washer on the six edged axle connecting the oil pump and distributor. The distributor is driving the oil pump and to avoid this hex-axle beeing lifted from the pump when removing the distributor, there is a small washer pressed onto the axle.


This washer was not positioned where it sholuld so the cranshaft was touching it each time it revolved.
I pushed the washer back to where it is supposed to be and the sound was gone.

I torqued up the main bearing, checking the rotaton as I went along, then I torqued up the conrod bearings also.
Last time I used the maximum torque, this time I went a bit lower and what du you know, the engine is easier to turn over.
Success!





I put the oil pan back on and the engine is a bit closer to working again, now I just need to get on with fixing the engin compartment and get it ready for the engine.

This engine will never be reliable, the work needed to ensure that is above what I am willing to pay. It would need an overbore and new pistons and I don't want to spend somewhere around 1200Euro on that. I have another engine, a 2.8 that I am planning to spend a bit more time and cash on, but it is difficult to justify spending so much money on an old engine. There are always some more important projects in the garden or house.
My vacation plans went down the drain so we will be on holiday in Norway instead of Denmark. It is a bummer, but the silver lining is that we probably will have lousy weather and I can spend some time in the garage instead of painting the house or making a larger decking :-)
My son thought I should find a cooler color for the car, I said I wanted it green and he approved.

Thank you for the offer but I have a bit to do before I can drop any engine in. The 2.8 is of unknown quality, but it is supposed to be rebuilt anyway. Currently it resides in several boxes in my garage taking up much more space then a complete engine...
The priority is to get rid of rust, weld the corroded areas and get some primer and paint under the hood.