Pete Ferg

Brilliant Jayne 👍 Great article too! Let's try to get a cortina in every issue now 😉 Glad you sorted the vacuum issue. Sooo looking forward to seeing the car now. Are you doing the midlands run this weekend? Pete.

Well that one passed me by 😂! Nice one 👍

ive put up with terrible make do vinyl covered one now, is there any decent ones about? or is perhaps a GRP available? pete

It has has a few upgrades since that too!!

Mine failed, and I couldnt find the right replacement. so I fitted an in-line one in to the vacuum pipe. I think it was from a polo?

Glad you got it back ok. I think we tend to panic a bit when we travel a long distance in an unknown car. I drove from North Wales down to Somerset to collect mine from Markymark3 about 2 yrs back . got me all the way home in the blistering summer sun on a bank holiday!! treat it with care, and look after it and it will be good to you. keep us updated on the work....and some pics?? Pete

Cheers Pete

Your engineering skills are very impressive Jayne. !! You will be building cars from raw materials soon! That's how mr Lamborghini started 😂

cheers guys, Im very happy with it! ive had one niggle for a while though. always a cow to start from cold? I thought it may be the jetting wrong , and that the rolling rd might sort it..... nope still the same this morning but after a bit of fiddling, i have discovered that if i send a 12v+ straight to the coil, it fires up straight away, im getting about 10v + at the standard ballast coil feed anyway, which when its warm seems fine and i have no running issues. The starter motor fitted doesn't have the extra terminal for the 12v+ boost at cranking. so either: I have a weak battery that's struggling to supply the coil at cold cranking my starter is a bit tired and is sucking all it can at cold cranking or I need to swap it out with the starter with the additional spade for 12v+ cranking boost Ive rigged a simple plug in cold start mod for now, but I think ill get the battery tested tomorrow. its the type with the viewing window for battery condition. its only 3 yrs old but its not showing either green or red, just black.

is it time to get working on that spare pinto Jayne?

So today was the day! took a 2 hr drive to Congleton in Cheshire to get the GT set up on the rolling road. the guy is very thorough, and it was in there for 4 hrs while he adjusted and tested everything. the cam timing has been reset, the distributor advance adjusted to suit and the carbs set up. i wasn't far off on the main jetting, but the progression was to rich and has been adjusted. 4 hrs later and lots of coffee, the car was read for a test drive And what a difference! its pulling like a train now! dyno results: 147.9 BHP @ 5692 RPM at the wheels 151 lb/ft @ 4576 RPM well happy with that!! with an average calulated transmission loss of 15%, that is somewhere around 173 BHP at the flywheel. result !!!!!!

cheers guys, quick edit, the stroke is 76.9mm not 96.9mm!!!

Lots more done in the past month!! must be a pre season thing.......... so after a post in the technical section regarding the best was to waste some money on my pinto, ive made a few changes! heres the update! is started with a gamble on a cylinder head on ebay, it came reasonable cheap, nicely ported and with burton 40/41 camshaft. got it home stripped and cleaned it. then set about lapping the valves in and getting it pressuse tested. it had already had replacement valve guides, and the sharp turns taken out by the valve seats, as well as 3 angle cut valves, it was built by janspeed some time ago, as the stamp shows. it also shows that its been skimmed by .047", and that the combustion chambers are 45.9 cc So once the head was read to fit I started to take the old head of the pinto, and a little bit of tarting up...... this is where the panic started!! my bottom end is far from standard and has been decked too. have I just created a monster by either throwing my compression ratio through the roof, or am I going to get valve contact at full chat. after using various online calculators, and getting different results each time, i think Im in the region of about 11.7:1 compression ratio? but if anybody wishes to clarify that for me, here are the specs: bore diameter = 94.1mm stroke from block surface to BDC = 96.9mm piston protrusion from block at TDC =0.3mm head gasket diameter = 94.5mm crushed head gasket thickness =1.0mm combustion chamber size = 45.9cc So now its all back together after lots of checking and measuring! the cam shaft has been set to full no1 lift at 106 degrees after TDC as per burtons spec. for fuelling I have fitted a set of 40 DCOE 27's. these again were an ebay purchase, but turned out to be in good condition and came with lots of spare jets, chokes and other bits. Ive given them a service and a clean and reassembled them. Obviously swapping to sidedraught requires, a few other mods! so the vacuum advance dizzy has been swapped for an Aldon version, the PCV as been removed and a catch tank fitted with a breather. I did have to remove a shade of the heater box to as the fuel inlet for the rear carb was just fouling it. After a very tense start up, and setting up its running fantastic!! its off to the rolling road n Thursday to get a proper tune and set up, but considering ive just really bolted the carbs on, its has no hesitation or flat spots to speak of,......and that sound!!!! I was also a bit cautious as the burton 40/41 camshaft is in effect a rally cam, and should kick in from 2700rpm to 7900rpm. but it really does pull well from low revs too. perhaps something to do with the volumetric efficiency of the 2.1, and the high compression? we will see what Thursday brings. it certainly seems a lot faster, and a lot more grunt... watch this space!!

Haha! I should of spell checked that first. yes its working well, that was about a year ago and no issues since. my only advice is tin the wire ends first, and the copper tracks. then when you are joining them solder through the wire, as the tracks are thin and take very little time to heat up.

Ive fitted my low pressure fuel pump underneath Jayne with no issues whatsoever. id take some pictures but im sofa bound with a bad back!