Lagoonblue's MK2 1600 deluxe

[johnny boy 164]

Great, very interesting work, keep it up 

[LagoonBlue 145]

On 8/13/2023 at 3:04 PM, johnny boy said:

Great, very interesting work, keep it up 

Thank you! I will try my best.

 

That said I did not have the chance to do as much as I had hoped for this week but every little bit helps.

Still waiting on the new bearings but in the meantime I painted the hubs;

I think these were not originally painted but looks neater this way.

 

Grease caps were little dented;

 

I did not spend too much time on these as they will be hidden behind hubcaps. Base is round and the breather hole is open so will do the job just fine.

 

For installing bearings (when I have them) I prepared these bearing drivers.

I took the old outer races for a spin on the bench grinder to reduce their outer diameter. This is easy to do evenly by putting a shaft through the middle and spinning them against side of the wheel whilst braking and/or applying pressure as needed. After that I welded thick washers on top for pushing them on the press.

[LagoonBlue 145]

Bearing kits finally arrived;

Usually I have had good luck with QH parts but not this time...

 

Bearings went in nicely with my home made drivers but grease seals were way too loose.

Instead of an interference fit these were slip fit so I had to "glue" them in place with Locktite. Not ideal but acceptable, sealing surface against axle shaft was ok.

 

And the finished pair;

Boxed up for now (easier to store) but ready to install when it's time.

 

Here's a rare job, something that I did not do myself

Plain vinyl protector on the reproduction carpet was bugging me so I removed it, cleaned the original rubber part that I had saved and had it sewn in at local upholstery shop.

There was spray glue on the vinyl piece but luckily hardly any had stuck on the carpet.

This ought to level up my anorak points

 

Something little trickier.. I disassembled all my 5 steering boxes to see what I have to work with. Drop arms sure were on there tight, only broke one puller though..

Steering shafts were removed within a box to keep ball bearings somewhat contained.

 

Not looking too good

Pitting on the bearing races, and this was one of the better ones. These can be bought so not a show stopper..

 

However pitting on the bearing surfaces at both ends of the worm gear is a bigger issue;

These can be reground (just use less shims on reassembly) but finding a place that is willing to take on the job might be another story.

 

On cars fitted with steering lock (like mine is) there is a welded collar that needs to be removed to release the upper ball race, this would be simplest to do on a lathe.

Series 1 shaft pictured, series 2 is wee bit longer with different upper bearing, indicator canceller and steering wheel nut thread.

 

Drop arms are also in need of machining as the pins on mine are quite badly pitted, either sleeved or new pin made.

 

Might take a while to get these sorted but plenty of other to jobs to do in the meanwhile.

[68 Cortina 17]

Nice progress there,getting all them fiddly jobs sorted👏

[LagoonBlue 145]

On 8/28/2023 at 11:01 AM, 68 Cortina said:

Nice progress there,getting all them fiddly jobs sorted👏

Thank you! 

 

Not much to show for this weeks work, I'm afraid..

Local vocational school will make me a new pin, or rather stud for the drop arm but that will take a while.

 

I was browsing old pictures in my archives when I spotted a part that I had missed;

Fan spacer between water pump pulley and fan. For some reason this part is not mentioned in the literature.

 

After a fair bit of searching I found it misplaced in a wrong box.

 

Part number is 2730E 8A645-A.

 

Also from the archives, full page Finnish magazine advert for pre-crossflow MK2;

[cortinaterje 0]

On 8/27/2023 at 11:46 PM, LagoonBlue said:

Bearing kits finally arrived;

Usually I have had good luck with QH parts but not this time...

 

Bearings went in nicely with my home made drivers but grease seals were way too loose.

Instead of an interference fit these were slip fit so I had to "glue" them in place with Locktite. Not ideal but acceptable, sealing surface against axle shaft was ok.

 

Hi lagoonblue, I live in Norway and enjoy following your restoration. A tip for you: On my wheel  bearing kit from QH. QWB114C the inner diameter on the oil seal was wrong and I had to replace them to have the correct dimention on the inner dia. The correct oil seal is 41,27x60,32x9,52 (ASL..MIS110) I had mine from å local shop dealing with o-rings and stuff like that.
It seems to me that you have got (from QH) som metric rings (10x42x60), wich can explain the need for loctite.

☺keep up the good work.

 

 

 

Edited September 10, 2023 by cortinaterje

[LagoonBlue 145]

Steering shaft will most likely go to the same shop as my cylinder head but first I have to see what bits the head needs.

Cylinder head needs to be cleaned, inspected and converted for unleaded with hardened exhaust valve seats.

 

Removing the valves.

 

Someone has been here before.. Seems that they did not have the right tools for the job as half of the springs had ugly marks on them, luckily I have spares.

 

Really not that bad, no obvious cracks between valve seats. Only slight pitting on the exhaust valve seats. Most likely this has been apart for decarbonising and valve/seat grinding. As far as I can tell there are no new valve guides fitted.

 

Dirty but otherwise seems fine.

 

There was no need to measure exhaust valves as I could feel a step in the stems. I have a set of NOS exhaust valves (681F-6505-DA) ordered and on their way. No need for stainless valves for my use.

Inlet valves are also worn way below spec (7.861-7.887mm). Available new (2737E-6507-G) but not cheap. Keepers and cotters will be checked when I have the new valves in hand.

 

Spec for valve spring free length is 37.6mm with no limits specified. Mine were between 36.9 and 37.4mm so probably ok for road use. I can also select a better matched set with my spares.

To check the fitted length and load I threw together this monstrosity;

Since measuring the length with a ruler was difficult I set a stopper at the correct length (+0.1mm for insulation tape) and connected base and pusher shaft to a multimeter. As the correct length has been achieved the meter will beep and scale can be read (or heard as this is a talking scale from Lidl, fancy). Requires a delicate touch but with enough repeats will do the job.

Not the most accurate contraption but will show if there are any outliers.

 

Checking for squareness.

 

Since nobody likes smoking Kents.. 

 

er.. ok, since almost nobody likes smoking Kents I still need to measure valve guides after I receive my set of small bore bore gauges from the far east but as I also have a order going out to Burtons soon I will include a set of cast iron guides just in case. Bronze guides are also available but those can get sticky in normal use with unleaded and are harder to install.

 

Edited September 10, 2023 by LagoonBlue

[68 Cortina 17]

😂😂❤️🤩

[LagoonBlue 145]

On 9/11/2023 at 12:42 AM, cortinaterje said:

 

 

On 9/11/2023 at 9:57 AM, 68 Cortina said:

😂😂❤️🤩

 

I did couple small paint jobs before it gets too cold.

 

Shame that nobody reproduces sun visors, I could recover mine but the seam just would not look right. That said my visors, although little puffy were still in serviceable order so I started refurbishing with a thorough steam clean. It would have made more sense to paint the metal bits first but as I had no experience with vinyl paint I wanted to see how that works out.

Vinyl painting took couple tries (cleans good with acetone) since the rattle can tended to spit and spatter. Thorough shaking and starting spraying off the part did the trick. Next I left the paint dry for about year and a half.. after I rediscovering the visors I masked the paddles;

 

At this point I disassembled these further by removing cotter pins. After sand blasting I realized that rod on one of the visors had seized but that came loose by lubricating and wiggling it with a jack handle. Next I reassembled the parts with little bit of fresh grease on the mounting brackets and new washers and cotter pins.

 

After many, many thin coats of rattle can white and clear coat on the metal bits. Could be better but certainly usable.

 

Some more loose parts, this time painted with proper paint.

 

New tool! Maybe not strictly speaking Cortina related but might come handy with moving larger parts;

Found this high lift pallet truck at the junk yard for 50€. Did not pump up and judging by the forks had been overloaded a time or two. All the seals were fine but by accident I found that behind relief valve there was a plastic washer with small holes that was not properly seated. After pushing that back in it's place and filling up with new hydraulic fluid the jack came back to life. Will also serve as a nice adjustable working table.

Edited September 17, 2023 by LagoonBlue

[Deano66 242]

Visors look great. Nice find with the pallet truck 

[LagoonBlue 145]

On 9/17/2023 at 9:14 PM, Deano66 said:

Visors look great. Nice find with the pallet truck 

Thank you!

 

Got my exhaust valves;

One had light lapping marks but that won't hurt anything.

 

Still waiting on my bore gauges so I did the old "wiggle" test;

Lot's of play, definitely needs guide inserts.

 

Same seller had NOS Motorcraft rotors in stock so i bought one of those as well;

 

It has been rather rainy lately so I moved on to stuff I can do indoors.

One of them is a replacement for the license plate lamp holder. Original design is not very good, I have a stack of these and all of them are broken in various ways. Since this will not be a visible part I can modify it to my liking. Also will be a nice excuse for me to practice 3D printing.

 

Not a simple part, this would of been a nightmare to draw in CAD and I am not terribly good at that to begin with.

To get around this I used a free photogrammetry app called Kiri engine. First I stuck the part on a plate and dusted it with corn starch (shiny surfaces are difficult for the software to handle). Using lots of light also helped.

 

 

After taking many pics from multiple angles while rotating the part I had this 3D model to work with;

 

This was then exported as .STL file and opened in Microsoft 3D builder;

Luckily this part is symmetric so I only needed half of it to be ok.

 

After some cleaning, scaling and modifying I had a printable part. No need to worry on getting all the bumps smoothed as the poor resolution on my 15€ second hand 3D printer will average those out. 

 

Some scraps;

 

And the first working prototype;

Still needs little work but getting there. Biggest modifications thus far are separate spring loaded release clips and a rubber light bulb holder. Also pictured here is the often missing original 3mm thick foam rubber piece.

 

Proto was printed in PLA but the finished piece will need to be ABS for it to survive outdoors. I am not sure if my printer can handle that but I will get a spool of it and try, if not I will have a friend print one with his more capable machine.

[LagoonBlue 145]

Made some small changes to the 3D printed parts, let's see how it fits on a spare bumper;

 

 

 

 

Not too bad, I might have to make minor tweaks after printing the part in ABS. Still waiting for a spool of that to arrive but I think I can release the current version 1 design.

Here is a link for the files; https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GZ7fk-CK2c6ePq_LC59n-ivrBR1K4RTp/view?usp=sharing

.ZIP file, 3.93Mb (4 124 045 bytes).

 

Meanwhile some other odds and sods.. Testing the flasher relay;

Not OEM relay but works so will do. Center connection of the relay is not used in this application.

 

Here is the socket for the flasher relay. Attached to harness in various locations are these cardboard tags, presumably these had (long since faded away) worker ID;s penciled into them for QC purposes.

 

Another tag in the engine bay. Barely legible and we can't have that now can we..

 

So I made my own;

I'd say 90% perfect reproduction. In reality this was much needed practice for me to work with layers in the image editor.

 

Anyways here are files should you want to have a go;

.PDF with instructions.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aWJ5U74U8CGQWjpRVA1HYZsxckvZK2O5/view?usp=sharing

 

.PSP file (raster/vector hybrid). Good luck opening this file in most editors, just get the .PDF if you do not wish to edit anything , it's the same.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JjyuPe8H8h25igM3wD46hGCiFRU_1y1c/view?usp=sharing

[LagoonBlue 145]

Good news, bad news

 

I started at a new full time job so the updates might get sporadic for a bit while I get up to speed. However this will help lubricate the rusty hinges on my wallet as it will be easier to justify spending some of that hard earned on parts and services. Just refurbishing the head alone will cost a kings ransom and should I ever find a painter that is actually willing to take on the job it surely won't be cheap either.

Considering today's economy and as I was starting to pack things up for the winter anyway this was the perfect timing.

 

Talking of parts here's one;

New coil (Lucas DLB102). I did not want to risk using my original as it was not in the best shape.

 

I received the ABS filament so I printed new license plate light holder with it;

Had to crank temperature settings all the way up on my printer. More brittle than PLA but should last better.

 

Some environmental testing;

I baked the holder in my hotbox at about 40°C with voltage set to 14.2V for couple hours and apart from the raised section surrounding the bulb the plastic did not get soft. I might remove that raised bit it or make it little shallower as it is not that important. I will give the holder a passing grade of: Usable.

[LagoonBlue 145]

Still getting used to waking up early so have not had too much pep to do any bigger jobs. Temperatures have also started to dip into negatives so that will limit what I can do outdoors.

 

One of those back burner projects I can however do indoors is my rear view mirror. My best mirror was in the process of crumbling to pieces but with much filler and paint applied during the summer whenever I had time to do so resulted in a passable piece to make a mold of;

I had to sacrifice all the text on the back (Wingard patent numbers etc.) and there are small defects that need be corrected on the cast part.

 

First try yesterday did not go too well (it never does) as the mold sprung a leak;

Almost but not quite, upper left hand corner did not fill properly. Polyurethane I am using is very thin and will find any possible route to escape. Next time I will try taping outside edges of the mold and maybe wrapping it up with shrink wrap. I used 1g of pigment to 40g of polyurethane which was not enough as the part is almost translucent, 3 grams might be better.

[LagoonBlue 145]

Third time was the charm;

The issue was that when the mold was stood on it's end resin created enough pressure to leak out the bottom due to poor registration of the halves. Admittedly the mold could of been thicker and less floppy but this was all the silicone I had in stock. I plugged the previous fill ports and made two vent holes to the upmost part of the mold cavity after the mold was laid flat on it's back. For making the vent holes i used cut down piece of an old extendable radio aerial (used as a coring drill).

Then I poured resin between the halves, closed them shut and cured the lot in my pressure pot. This method is called "squish casting", not my favourite as it can get quite messy, also casting in this orientation meant that I had to turn the pressure pot sideways.

 

However this netted me a piece that can be cleaned and polished.  I might cast couple more as spares (each take a day or so to cast and cure). New mirror glass needs to be cut too.