'65 Cortina 1500 "GT"
15-10-2017, 04:27 PM
#1
PassionFord Regular
Thread Starter
'65 Cortina 1500 "GT"
More or less for the last decade I have been dreaming about the ownership of a genuine classic-Ford.
PART1 Acquiring the car
About three months ago I bought the car, it was quite quick decision because the car was in very good condition, considering it's pricing. I haggled the price to 3 grand and we were on our way back home.
Drive back home was quite interesting, because the single barrel carb on it was in need of a rebuild. Only the idle circuit and chocke were working correctly. So I drove about two hours, keeping my right hand on the choke and my right leg on the throttle, adjusting the combination of both to get just the right amount of air and fuel in, to keep the engine pulling. GPS measured a top speed of 110 km/h in a downhill straight.
I found out that the brakes felt strong and the car drove straight, that was a positive surprise I would say.
This is how the car looked when I bought it:
Pretty as hell, but not quite my style yet.
I was quite happy with my purchase, because it's the first car I've owned, that brings a smile to my face just looking at it sitting on the driveway.
Bodywork is in good nick. It has seen some work before, but all underneath seems to be done to decent standard. It's not perfect tho, the rear valance has seen a dodgy repair by previous owner.
I would say it's perfect for me, very good, but not too good to make me think twice about modifying it.
Last edited by BigPeBe; 15-10-2017 at 04:29 PM.
15-10-2017, 04:50 PM
#2
PassionFord Regular
Thread Starter
PART2 moottori käymään kaikilla
Car has a 1500 GT head on it, so I didn't want to rebuild that wheezy single barrel car.
I bought a set of 40 DCOE's, intake manifold and an Ashley exhaust header.
These are actually FAJS carburetors, a cheaper alternative to genuine Webers.
I bought a set of 45's few years back, they were decent, but these ones actually seem better desinged than the earlier FAJS DCOE's. Maybe they have improved on the desing along the years, or the 45's are a copy of a different variation of DCOE than these 40's.
I started with a little bit of dismantling and adjusting the valve clearances.
A week after I was still waiting to get my hands on the exhaust header. A nice surpice was to found one on my door step after getting home from working evening shift friday. Just in time for the weekend.
First order of business was to make the header fit. It's an Ashley manifold and these are notorious for typically needing a little bit of work before they actually fit in place. This was no expection. The collector hit the steering box and the end of the header the floor of the car. No big problem tho, it wasn't a big job to make it fit.
I fabricated the rest of the exhaust from a 2" piping. After the rear axle I fitted a single straight thru muffler. I used the original exhaust hanging points.
Fabbed a place for a lambda sensor, so we can install an AFR meter to the car temporarily to tune the carbs.
Fitting the manifolds together wasn't easy. A lot of material had to be removed from the intake to make the nuts fit in place. Also needed to make a special extra thin tool for them. TBH it would have probably been less of a hassle to fabricate the intake manifold myself.
As you can see from the pic, I also painted the valve cover and fitted a breather cap that will allow me to put a hose in there, to divert the breating fumes, so they don't make a mess on my pretty valve cover.
Throttle pedal needed rewelding together after I accidentally used a little too much force on it.
I had to fabricate a mount for the throttle cable, because original system uses levers to pull the throttle on the carb. Also fitted a shorter throttle arm to the carbs, to make sure that the butterflys open properly.
Dizzy was converted to eletcronic ignition with Powerspark stuff.
Friend of mine also nicely installed an RPM gauge to the dash. It's now where the original fuel and temp gauges were.
Right now I'm doing without temp and fuel gauges, at a later point they're probably gonna get mounted in a similar way than they have them in GT Cortinas.
Original fan had to go and we installed an electric fan to the front of the radiator.
Some random coolant leaks kept us busy at first, ie. it wasn't easy to find a fitting o-ring to the original heater valve.
First starts went good. Now the engine felt a lot more effortless to drive...
Current spec as follows:
1500 pre-XF engine
GT head
40 dcoe carbs
electronic ignition
4-2-1 header and 2" exhaust
electric fan
Car has a 1500 GT head on it, so I didn't want to rebuild that wheezy single barrel car.
I bought a set of 40 DCOE's, intake manifold and an Ashley exhaust header.
These are actually FAJS carburetors, a cheaper alternative to genuine Webers.
I bought a set of 45's few years back, they were decent, but these ones actually seem better desinged than the earlier FAJS DCOE's. Maybe they have improved on the desing along the years, or the 45's are a copy of a different variation of DCOE than these 40's.
I started with a little bit of dismantling and adjusting the valve clearances.
A week after I was still waiting to get my hands on the exhaust header. A nice surpice was to found one on my door step after getting home from working evening shift friday. Just in time for the weekend.
First order of business was to make the header fit. It's an Ashley manifold and these are notorious for typically needing a little bit of work before they actually fit in place. This was no expection. The collector hit the steering box and the end of the header the floor of the car. No big problem tho, it wasn't a big job to make it fit.
I fabricated the rest of the exhaust from a 2" piping. After the rear axle I fitted a single straight thru muffler. I used the original exhaust hanging points.
Fabbed a place for a lambda sensor, so we can install an AFR meter to the car temporarily to tune the carbs.
Fitting the manifolds together wasn't easy. A lot of material had to be removed from the intake to make the nuts fit in place. Also needed to make a special extra thin tool for them. TBH it would have probably been less of a hassle to fabricate the intake manifold myself.
As you can see from the pic, I also painted the valve cover and fitted a breather cap that will allow me to put a hose in there, to divert the breating fumes, so they don't make a mess on my pretty valve cover.
Throttle pedal needed rewelding together after I accidentally used a little too much force on it.
I had to fabricate a mount for the throttle cable, because original system uses levers to pull the throttle on the carb. Also fitted a shorter throttle arm to the carbs, to make sure that the butterflys open properly.
Dizzy was converted to eletcronic ignition with Powerspark stuff.
Friend of mine also nicely installed an RPM gauge to the dash. It's now where the original fuel and temp gauges were.
Right now I'm doing without temp and fuel gauges, at a later point they're probably gonna get mounted in a similar way than they have them in GT Cortinas.
Original fan had to go and we installed an electric fan to the front of the radiator.
Some random coolant leaks kept us busy at first, ie. it wasn't easy to find a fitting o-ring to the original heater valve.
First starts went good. Now the engine felt a lot more effortless to drive...
Current spec as follows:
1500 pre-XF engine
GT head
40 dcoe carbs
electronic ignition
4-2-1 header and 2" exhaust
electric fan
15-10-2017, 05:04 PM
#3
PassionFord Regular
Thread Starter
PART3 dem looks doe
I fell in love with the looks of Cortina while watching historic race Cortinas. Most of them don't have bumpers and they are low etc.
So this one needed some fixin to fit the image in my head.
Installed 2" lowering blocks to rear axle.
Some random image:
We installed shortened, lowering springs from a Sierra at the front. I happened to have an extra set lying on the garage floor so why not.
In retrospect we should have removed just a tad more lenght out of them, but there's no point in doing it again at this point of the driving season.
Especially because the suspension will see a big rework at a later point.
Anyways now I have stiffer and lower springs in front.
Removed the bumpers.
Wing mirrors had to be let go. Installed one bullet mirror to the driver side door.
Some random image:
As you can see removing the bumpers showed an ugly looking front valance. It has been painted with bunch of random stuff in the past. Gladly there was no rot, so it wasn't too much of a job to repaint.
Also did a little bit of tidying up the paint on the rear valance, but a proper fix removing the badly welded fixes will get done at a later date.
It was more important to get the car to a driving condition before the winter comes, so I can at least have few weeks of enjoyment out of this car.
Interior had a distasteful looking miniature sized rally steering wheel. I swapped it to Momo Prototipo with a spacer to bring it closer.
Some fancy pancy picture:
I'm probably forgetting to write a lot of details, but here is a picture taken when we were doing the first test drives:
And then some better pics, after getting the front valance painted:
Then I got some different wheels.
I bought a set of nice Escort RS steelies.
I painted the centres a little darker color than the lips. I ended up choosing a tire size of 175/70r13 which I think fit the car perfectly.
Little more pictures can be found in the album: https://imgur.com/a/JxALB
I fell in love with the looks of Cortina while watching historic race Cortinas. Most of them don't have bumpers and they are low etc.
So this one needed some fixin to fit the image in my head.
Installed 2" lowering blocks to rear axle.
Some random image:
We installed shortened, lowering springs from a Sierra at the front. I happened to have an extra set lying on the garage floor so why not.
In retrospect we should have removed just a tad more lenght out of them, but there's no point in doing it again at this point of the driving season.
Especially because the suspension will see a big rework at a later point.
Anyways now I have stiffer and lower springs in front.
Removed the bumpers.
Wing mirrors had to be let go. Installed one bullet mirror to the driver side door.
Some random image:
As you can see removing the bumpers showed an ugly looking front valance. It has been painted with bunch of random stuff in the past. Gladly there was no rot, so it wasn't too much of a job to repaint.
Also did a little bit of tidying up the paint on the rear valance, but a proper fix removing the badly welded fixes will get done at a later date.
It was more important to get the car to a driving condition before the winter comes, so I can at least have few weeks of enjoyment out of this car.
Interior had a distasteful looking miniature sized rally steering wheel. I swapped it to Momo Prototipo with a spacer to bring it closer.
Some fancy pancy picture:
I'm probably forgetting to write a lot of details, but here is a picture taken when we were doing the first test drives:
And then some better pics, after getting the front valance painted:
Then I got some different wheels.
I bought a set of nice Escort RS steelies.
I painted the centres a little darker color than the lips. I ended up choosing a tire size of 175/70r13 which I think fit the car perfectly.
Little more pictures can be found in the album: https://imgur.com/a/JxALB
15-10-2017, 05:18 PM
#4
PassionFord Regular
Thread Starter
PART4 some plans
At first I have to say that I would've never imagined how much fun it could be to drive a tiny, slow car.
The short gearing and the bark out of the twin 40's make you feel like you're going a lot faster than you actually are. Loadsa fun in roundabouts.
Also would have not imagined that an engine making considerable amount under 100 bhp, will be able to put car sideways on third gear.
Still, this project has only started.
I'm hoping to end up with a car that goes and drives similarly than appendix-K Lotus Cortinas.
We will have to go one step at a time. My income doesn't allow me to do this quickly.
A crude plan:
Cammed Zetec, twin carbs, header, exhaust. About 150-180 bhp sounds just about perfect. Even less wouldn't disappoint as long as I don't get too grippy tires.
Type 9 gearbox.
This engine swap will probably be the next step, that will start next year.
Then maybe after that, I will start the job with some suspension mods.
LSD to the English axle.
Anti-tramp kit.
Lower, stiff leaf springs.
Adjustable shocks.
Maybe some better rear drums?
Adjustable front struts and bigger brakes.
Lot of people will disagree with me on this one, but I don't want a rack and pinion setup.
Almost everything on my list can be aqcuired from Retro-Ford. Even the prices aren't insanely high, so it shouldn't brake the bank on the long run.
Maybe getting it caged and improving on the safety on other aspects would be a good idea too.
For instance the original seat mounts are at best laughable.
We'll see what the future holds up. I'm now thinking that next summer I can finish up with the turbo'd Sierra and then start the engine swap on this one. Sierra is almost ready, but it was put to a hold when I bought this Cortina. Changed my priorities for this year a bit.
At first I have to say that I would've never imagined how much fun it could be to drive a tiny, slow car.
The short gearing and the bark out of the twin 40's make you feel like you're going a lot faster than you actually are. Loadsa fun in roundabouts.
Also would have not imagined that an engine making considerable amount under 100 bhp, will be able to put car sideways on third gear.
Still, this project has only started.
I'm hoping to end up with a car that goes and drives similarly than appendix-K Lotus Cortinas.
We will have to go one step at a time. My income doesn't allow me to do this quickly.
A crude plan:
Cammed Zetec, twin carbs, header, exhaust. About 150-180 bhp sounds just about perfect. Even less wouldn't disappoint as long as I don't get too grippy tires.
Type 9 gearbox.
This engine swap will probably be the next step, that will start next year.
Then maybe after that, I will start the job with some suspension mods.
LSD to the English axle.
Anti-tramp kit.
Lower, stiff leaf springs.
Adjustable shocks.
Maybe some better rear drums?
Adjustable front struts and bigger brakes.
Lot of people will disagree with me on this one, but I don't want a rack and pinion setup.
Almost everything on my list can be aqcuired from Retro-Ford. Even the prices aren't insanely high, so it shouldn't brake the bank on the long run.
Maybe getting it caged and improving on the safety on other aspects would be a good idea too.
For instance the original seat mounts are at best laughable.
We'll see what the future holds up. I'm now thinking that next summer I can finish up with the turbo'd Sierra and then start the engine swap on this one. Sierra is almost ready, but it was put to a hold when I bought this Cortina. Changed my priorities for this year a bit.
Last edited by BigPeBe; 15-10-2017 at 05:32 PM.
15-10-2017, 06:32 PM
#5
Advanced PassionFord User
Cracking write up. Even better car. Why bother cramming the zetec. Leave it as standard or delete the vvt on an ST170 lump.
Whatever you choose it's a great looking car you have there.
Whatever you choose it's a great looking car you have there.
15-10-2017, 07:14 PM
#6
PassionFord Regular
Thread Starter
Thanks. Brakers are full of good cheap Zetec engines, ST170 will be much harder to find and afford. Also if it ever goes kaboom, ordinary Zetec will be cheap to replace.
Trending Topics
16-10-2017, 09:21 AM
#8
First of all... this is one a brilliant looking project!
And about that Zetec conversion I´d prefer the Blacktop for RWD installation, it´s some times easier to find than older Silvertop, and I quess it´s better for your plans for naturally aspirated use, mechanic valve lifters etc.
You propably know the main issues are oil sump and new position for thermostat, and of course engine mounts. You`ll find these all for bolt-on stuff from Retroford for example, but they are quite easy to fabricate by yourself too! Or that´s how I did...
I made my oil sump out of 2mm sheet of metal, another way is to use Silvertop sump, but it needs TIG cause it´s aluminium.
Side mounts for Sierra installation I welded out of 6mm plate of steel, think even 3mm is fine.
I made my Zetec-RWD-conversion in last summer, and there is lots of pics in my project topic about water rail, sump and those side mounts, for inspiring at least..
And about that Zetec conversion I´d prefer the Blacktop for RWD installation, it´s some times easier to find than older Silvertop, and I quess it´s better for your plans for naturally aspirated use, mechanic valve lifters etc.
You propably know the main issues are oil sump and new position for thermostat, and of course engine mounts. You`ll find these all for bolt-on stuff from Retroford for example, but they are quite easy to fabricate by yourself too! Or that´s how I did...
I made my oil sump out of 2mm sheet of metal, another way is to use Silvertop sump, but it needs TIG cause it´s aluminium.
Side mounts for Sierra installation I welded out of 6mm plate of steel, think even 3mm is fine.
I made my Zetec-RWD-conversion in last summer, and there is lots of pics in my project topic about water rail, sump and those side mounts, for inspiring at least..
Last edited by RalliArttu; 16-10-2017 at 09:23 AM.
16-10-2017, 07:22 PM
#9
PassionFord Regular
Thread Starter
Thanks guys.
Yeah I've been keeping my eyes on your Sierra Zetec topic, interesting stuff. I'm still not 100% sure how much stuff I'll end up fabricating myself, retro-ford catalogue of course is a very tempting one.
I agree about the blacktop versus silver top too. Black top will have solid lifters out of the factory, so it's probably my preferred option. OFC it's possible to fit solid lifters on silver top too, but I'm probably gonna start hunting black tops.
Yeah I've been keeping my eyes on your Sierra Zetec topic, interesting stuff. I'm still not 100% sure how much stuff I'll end up fabricating myself, retro-ford catalogue of course is a very tempting one.
I agree about the blacktop versus silver top too. Black top will have solid lifters out of the factory, so it's probably my preferred option. OFC it's possible to fit solid lifters on silver top too, but I'm probably gonna start hunting black tops.