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Cortina in the evening sunshine.

After nearly 7 years since I sold my last mk5, I recently bought this at auction, 1.6 carousel, one owner from new, full history, fully Ziebart treatment from new and original bill of sale from Ford.

This also can be a solution for making them yourself...

Always just tightened them up no threadLock.

Nothing... I'm preparing another... just because its there....

And just because we'll there my first love Not the nicest but I'm just going to tidy it up like the Mk5 and use it Going maze yellow with 15"" steels of a van lowered probably engine from blue one as I have a duratec waiting it's turn to go in her

Got this all mocked up before paint as cars Ready for some colour zetec tunned rx8 gearbox

All leveled out last coat of epoxy before final prep for paint quarters rear panel all ready to weld on

As I am sure many of you know despite appearing the same there are many differences that can be very frustrating (and possibly expensive) if you are not aware of them - this is one I was not aware of.... Today I undertook to replace the propshaft centre bearing support on my 1985 Bakkie – I had previously purchased a Cortina unit which on the face of it looked the same – after splitting the shaft and replacing the complete unit (carrier/rubber/bearing) when I came to bolt it up it didn’t fit! – the Bakkie carrier mounting holes are approximately 1” wider apart than the Cortina carrier – it was overcome by transferring everything into the original Bakkie carrier. Hopefully this info may be of use to anybody undertaking a similar task and saving them doing it twice! Keep up the good work on this site - it has been invaluable to me on my return to the 1980’s :-)

Great car, can't be many around like that

That looks extremely tidy, liking the dealer sticker and plates

Very nice & different being a carousel. Used to see an estate one back in the day pretty regularly.

Very nice Crusader , a neighbour of my parents had one year's ago and I always thought this colour was one of the best .

First post of the year Ugh what an uphill battle this was. Bought a new rocker shaft from Small Ford Spares (105E-6563-B) but that turned out to be the "motor sport" version and came with no E-clips for the ends. Also a smidge undersized and with light surface rust at places. Probably same as sold by Burtons. Next I remembered that I had a stack of old shafts squared away but those were also a bit too worn, though one was almost good enough but had been incorrectly removed so was a bit bananed. So off to Ebay.. Got a NOS one (2733E-6363-A, 1433716) that also came with some light surface rust at places, nothing that really matters but still.. Polished and thoroughly cleaned that and finally got around to assemble all the bits I had cleaned in preparation in the ultrasonic bath. Clearance spec for the rockers are (as far as I can tell) .003" to 0.055" but luckily these seem to be harder than the shaft so I managed to put together a decent set. I really did not want to scratch my shiny new rocker shaft so I warmed up the aluminium post in a toaster oven before assembly; This really did help. Only twice I managed to get the rockers on in the wrong orientation.. New cotter pins were fitted at the ends. And the finished product; Usable No excessive play in the rockers, everything moves as a machined part should. Bolts fit through the posts easily but these will need to be tapped to their right places when assembled to the cylinder head. Not be a big deal. Assembly was well oiled, shrinkwrapped & squirreled away for safekeeping. All this happened in small ~1hr sessions throughout the winter, maybe as the weather warms up I can spend a bit more time at the garage. What's next? No idea but loads more left to do.