Body work

Posted on June 4, 2017 by gregscortinagt

I have so far stripped back the boot, bonnet and all doors. There was no major rust in any of them but there was evidence of some older repairs. All doors have been repaired at various times, with one having a re-skin. The bonnet was pretty straight and the boot had some small damage repaired. Interestingly the boot and bonnet had surface rust under the factory red oxide so at some stage the bare panels must have gotten wet before they were painted. Overall I’m pretty happy with how straight the car is so far.

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The Engine

Posted on May 11, 2017 by gregscortinagt

After looking around for an engine builder, I couldn’t find anyone locally in Sydney who impressed me with their knowledge of the little Kent engine. So, after speaking with Jamie Larner I decided to pack up my engine for a trip to Melbourne. The plan with the engine is to build a solid street motor that performs better than original but looks standard to the naked eye. The block is being stripped cleaned and bored 60 thou with higher compression pistons fitted. A set of Lotus rods are being installed along with a fast road cam and a high pressure oil pump. The head will be standard GT with heavier valve springs. The standard GT carb will be replaced with a new 32/36 webber and the plan is to modify the standard GT air cleaner to fit. A new electronic distributer will be fitted and the generator ditched for an alternator. I am thinking of installing one of the alternators in a dynamo body to maintain an original look. Apparently the engine was knackered and pretty much fell apart.

My gearbox and diff have been handed over to Shaun at Classic Automobilia for a once over. Unlike the engine these are in excellent condition and Shaun is just changing bearings and seals. Engine and gearbox will be painted in original ford colours.

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Rotisserie

Posted on April 25, 2017 by gregscortinagt

I still haven’t found a shop to do the paint, but I have found a restoration specialist to help me with the initial bodywork. He convinced me that in order to get a good 2 pack paint job I would need to go back to bare metal. He recommended that I paint strip the car and then he will tidy it up with a light sandblast so as not to warp any of the panels. I decided that the best way to do this would be to mount the car on a rotisserie. In order to get a rotisserie that would fit in my garage I order one from the UK. My father welded it up and we fit it to the car. It works well despite a small hiccup with a couple of welds not being strong enough.

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All in

Posted on March 5, 2017 by gregscortinagt

The more I thought about all the things I wanted to do to the car, the more I decided that the best plan of attack would be to go all in on a full ground up nut and bolt restoration. The goal being to end up with basically a brand new Mk1 Cortina GT, just like it rolled off the showroom 50 years ago. I want to keep it mostly original with just some period correct upgrades plus a few changes to make it more reliable. With that in mind I set about pulling the car down.

 

 

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First steps

Posted on December 31, 2016 by gregscortinagt

Initially I was just going to get the car running and driving so I put a new generator, starter, plugs and gave it an oil change. It ran…badly. It had a lot of surface rust underneath from sitting for so long so I decided to paint underneath and paint the engine bay. All the old underlay smelt pretty bad so I decided to clean the floorpan and paint it too.

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As you can see I’m building this car in my small 2 car garage so space is limited.

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The Car

Posted on December 18, 2016 by gregscortinagt

The first car I owned was a 1970 Mk2 Cortina. It was a low mileage one owner car, white with a blue interior and automatic. It had a few bumps on the outside but no rust and the interior was immaculate. I don’t think anyone had ever sat in the back. When we picked it up it still had the original crossply tyres. I decided that this car wasn’t for me and I set my sights on trying to find a Mk1 GT Cortina. I eventually found one in Summer Hill, Sydney (they were still rare back in 1990) and the car was soon mine. It had been neglected but with a bit of TLC it was soon looking good. I absolutely loved it but unfortunately being totally original it wasn’t that reliable so I moved it on for a Mk2 Escort. I made a pact with myself that one day I would get my Cortina back. As things happen life gets in the way and it would take me 25 years until I finally got a Corty back in the garage.

When my wife finally agreed I started looking in earnest. I really wanted a complete running and driving car but I quickly found that anyone with an immaculate Mk1 Cortina GT tend to hold onto them so I also started looking for something that might need work. I narrowed my search down to cars that were mostly original and with an original colour that I liked. Red or Green being my preference. I ruled out most other colours as I didn’t like the interior colours.

When I finally found my car it ended up being a colour combination that I never even knew existed. It is a Silver Grey Metallic car with a Black interior. Apparently only the 66 and 67 cars had the black interior so I think this is quite a rare colour combo and I absolutely love it. The car had been painted Silver Blue Metallic somewhere in its life but that didn’t matter too much as I knew it would be getting a respray in its future.

The car was all there but had not been driven in 13 years.

The car when it arrivedIMG_1511

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