Speedgroup 27 Posted January 31, 2022 Hmm... Johnny, I´m not sure but could your fathers cars have something to do with it...? If I should follow my late parensts car choices... hum, huh.. it should be a German Adam, Chinese shoe box, Russian freak, French bread and a bundle of Russian Italian copies... But I bought a Hitler´s revenge. But then I saw the light and the Ford Cortina. I think everyone had heard that Ford stands for Fix Or Repair Daily and if you have a Ford you have such a hell on earth that you have a free ticket to the heaven. So now me and my family have a lot of free tickets to heaven after 37 years that we have had Fords. In may 1990, just before my fiancee and I are going to Sweden for our first Cortina meetings i our lives, the MK1 was looking like this (and a 23-year-old lad..) Trip from Vasa in Finland to Turku (Åbo), 340 km, then with the ferry over to Stockholm (or Kapellskär) that took about 9-10 hours. It was a night boat that we slept on it. Early in the following day we arrived to Sweden and took a brake and our friend continued on to visit his mother in Uppsala and we stopped so I could put some tapes on the headlights as a real racing car. My fiancee and her friend had already fixed those numbers on the doors and bonnet. If I remember right we came early on friday morning and the Cortina meeting was on saturday so we went to visit some of my cousins and other relatives I have there. All of them had moved from Finland to Sweden in the -50, -60 and -70th and all swedish speakin Finns. But when we were driving arond there the weather was rainy for the most of the time and the windshield seal starting to leak allmost as a smaller waterfalls and of course right in front of the field of view. Saturday morning we picked up our friend from the railwaystation starting to drive to Skokloster, an old chateau, where the meeting were. But before that we had to wash our leaking Cortina from all travel dust and rain drops and found small service station just before skokloster. The sun was starting to shine a little bit, the Cortina was nice and clean, everything looked good, we (or I) were agog and drove the last few kilometers when the sky opened up again in a big way... Finally we arrived and I was allmost in ecstacy of all those Cortinas in same place at same time, despite the weather. But it took a long time before I finally got the camera picked up and a third, allmost half of the cars had left before that. More picture will come from those cars that I got pictures of, if interest still exists... 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
johnny boy 164 Posted January 31, 2022 Great story, and you still have the photos. Oh and nice hair too, if you're like me you don't have so much hair now Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Speedgroup 27 Posted January 31, 2022 Thanks Johnny! Yes, it grows on other places nowdays. But I had even longer hair later, little like a hippie! But cut it away in the summer 2001 because my forehead started to be so high or long... or how you are saying.. Nothing grows on gemstones Before the army I had long hair too but the they made it curly that looked like a blond Jimi Hendrix.... Musican of course, I´ve been playing guitar since -77, bass since -78, drums -79, little piano -76 but -83 organ and piano and harp since -87. Then messing around on contrabass, trumpet and mandolin. Playing in bands since 1980, starting in a punkband playing Sex Pistols and The Clash, then it became "The new wave of the Brittish Heavy Metall". I like Purple, Uriah Heep, Iron Maiden, Sabbath (not so much Ozzy and Blackmore) but even Beatles, blues, boogie rock and so on... But these old Fords is still a bigger hobby thought I continue bandplaying, at the moment in a Bluesrock band. Yep, I have still a lot of photos taken over the years. I´m still only of the beginning of the 90:th More to come later, see ya! 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
D-FENS 80 Posted February 1, 2022 20 hours ago, Speedgroup said: Thanks Johnny! Yes, it grows on other places nowdays. But I had even longer hair later, little like a hippie! But cut it away in the summer 2001 because my forehead started to be so high or long... or how you are saying.. Nothing grows on gemstones Before the army I had long hair too but the they made it curly that looked like a blond Jimi Hendrix.... Musican of course, I´ve been playing guitar since -77, bass since -78, drums -79, little piano -76 but -83 organ and piano and harp since -87. Then messing around on contrabass, trumpet and mandolin. Playing in bands since 1980, starting in a punkband playing Sex Pistols and The Clash, then it became "The new wave of the Brittish Heavy Metall". I like Purple, Uriah Heep, Iron Maiden, Sabbath (not so much Ozzy and Blackmore) but even Beatles, blues, boogie rock and so on... But these old Fords is still a bigger hobby thought I continue bandplaying, at the moment in a Bluesrock band. Yep, I have still a lot of photos taken over the years. I´m still only of the beginning of the 90:th More to come later, see ya! You have packed a lot into your life so far 👍 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Speedgroup 27 Posted February 6, 2022 (edited) Oh thanks D-FENS! The meeting when i finally got my camera (or was it my late parents one..?) I took some pictures of those cars that hadn´t left. This is a -68 Lotuscortina LHD and with twin brake servos because from 1968 all Cortinas in Finland and Sweden had dual brakesystems. The owner have a MK1 or two and with one he had won the FIA European Historic Touringcar Championship. Here is another MK2 Lotus -70 but the TC wasn´t ready yet so it had only a 1600 GT engine at this moment. In the background an untuched 1500 GT -67 and a 1600E 2D -70. And some Ford Taunus or 17M, 20M or 26M, P3, P5 and P7 in the background. The 2 door 1600E had still same owner for two-three years ago. I remeber when he did some uppgrades on the 1600E and widened the rims to 7", putted twin weber 40 DCOE:s, better exhaust manifold and a pointerless distributor and got 105 horses from the original 88 engine spec. Okey, the wheels didn´t affect on the power... But it became really cool with it. Another nice original 1600E 4D 1970... A few GT:s. They put my "Lotus style" -64 with the GT:s because the organizers didn´t really know what it was: A tuned 1600 Xflow with two DCOE-Webers, MK2 brakeservo, Lotus style dashboard etc. The last one was a GT but changed to a Lotus with TC engine, dashboard and all Lotus stuff. All GT:s, exept for GT-63, has crome list on the sides that are sold new outside of UK. Super have the too but they have little different shape or profile. This was the first ever GT-64 I have seen. In Finland Ford sold at first only 1200 DeLuxe 2 or 4 D and some -64 estates. A few -64 GT come here too but when the facelift came Ford took more GT:s, 1500 DeLuxe and 1200 Standard and from late -65 15 LotusCortinas mk1 and 3 MK2 -67. Rest of the Finnish LotusCortinas are privately imported about 10-15 overall over the years. Ford Finland had an own rallydivision here in Finland 1964 with 3 GT-64 that later was changed to facelift ones with different chassiesnumber but with same registration numbers. Some of them became even Lotus and competed with in rally and racing in the -60:th. Weather was really brittish, cold and rainy, and the guy in the foreground with the umbrella came all the way from Switerland. I thought we will win the prize for longest run but not this time, He and his girlfriend had twice as long trip that we had. He was little unhappy because somewhere just before he arrived the bonnet flew up and became bent. It was the dark green MK1 with lighter green "Lotus stripe" on the side, a really god looking car. This was my first Cortina meeting ever and the following day we went to a castle with some of these Cortina friends. More will come because the trip home didn´t go quite as on rails... Edited February 6, 2022 by Speedgroup 3 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Speedgroup 27 Posted February 8, 2022 (edited) When we drove home from Stockholm on the nightboat back to Finland we oversleeped and woken up in the last minute an rushed to the car deck on the boat and drove ashore little to fast that the exhaustpipe jammed in the driving ramp and got much noisier. And guess if the custom noticed us... They took us aside and the noisy Cortina in to a garage and we had to go to a locked room and wait for something. The Finnish customs wasn´t the nicest those days compared to today. There we sat, 3 longhaired, dizzy, young people and didn´t understand at all what was going on. Then after a while they let us out to the car but we found some dog hair in the Cortina... the drug dog has been there. Quite strange because were totaly sober when they tested us and two of us don´t drink at all. But we all three looked fuzzy and hippie-like and had woken up only 5-10 minutes earlier... This was the results of the of the final 340 km to home. We changed driver and my girlfriend slept in the back seat and was halfsleeping in the front when I heard some "klingklingkling"-noice from the engine and looked up what was going on: The speedo was on 160-170 km/h and my friend had just overtaken an old Toyota Corolla that didn´t let him pass.. I screemed to stop the engine and drive to the side and he did so. We started the enginge and it didn´t work properly on all cylinders anymore and "klinged". I pushed the trottle once an then the "kling" dissapeared. We had still 90 km to go. I jumped angry behind the wheel and drove home with 3½ cylinder, bluesmoking Cortina. The funniest was that I drove over 700 km before I had time to do something to the engine. And even did a 30 meter long left turning burnout with two spinning rear wheels before I spun around on 3½ cylinder. That engine was fast and powerful but held together in only 8800 km... So here I´m swap engine because one pistoring had broke and destroed the piston and the cylinder wall. The wallet was quite empty after the Swedish trip so I had to use stuff that I found in my garage. The "new" engine or bottom end was from my MK2 GT that had "broken" earlier. It was only a valve that was damaged but I found some 1300 pistons with usable pistonrings and putted new bearings. The cylinderhead from the tuned engine was ok so I used that one. The camshaft was original GT so it worked quite well and was nice to drive. It wasn´t as fast as the first one but much easier to drive with better fuel consumption. The other needed over 3500 rpm before something started to happen and was tricky to drive in city traffic and wanted up to 20 litres on 100 km. My Focus need only 5 l on 100 km today... Evolution..? Our new Swiss friend sent us some pictures of his and some of his friends Cortinas from over there to me after the Cortina meeting. Here is his GT -65, taken in june -86... ...and a MK2 Transit in the background.. ... STW 1965 -66 in july -87 ...the DL that he drove to Sweden with, and two LotusCortinas, -65 and -64 in october -86... ...and finally two 1962-63 DeLuxe waiting for the future, poor cars in that high grass.. That all for this time Cheers! Edited February 8, 2022 by Speedgroup 2 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Speedgroup 27 Posted February 13, 2022 The following spring (1991) my MK1-64 looked like this after some uppgrades: New 7" Supelite wheels with 205/60R13 rubbers and to get them fit I had to change the rear axle back to the original one but wiht level arms welded to the original axle and of course 9" rear brakes. And to cut away some metal from the rear wheel edge.. At front I had to take away those MK2 struts and level arms and I putted MK1 ones with diskbrakes, fitted with GT MK2 brakes and doubble front coilsprings (!). That extra smaller spring I took sooner away because it didn´t do no good, on the contrary it only disturbed the upper springplates. So now the axles was more original and the car became different to drive.... ...but it wasn´t really as I wanted, it was a bit tricky with those rims and minus offset... I hade to figure out what to do, but.. Before that an other Cortina got in the way and became my, later my wife´s, everyday car for some years, this one: A 1500 DeLuxe 1965, white with red interior. It was our engagement gift to ourselves. We bougt it 28.12 1989 and we engaged us 1.1 1990 at 00:01 in front of a big Hammond organ in a Metodist Church. It was the only restful place we found that night... I drove this one as my everyday car that spring, after that smash I hade with my vine red -64 on the Ice track earier only a few mounth after it was fixed and painted, so this picture was just before I stopped use that -64 MK1 in the wintertime. Then it beacame that facelift ones turn to get some facelift, but later about that.. More to come of the summer 1991 and the MK1 -64 with it´s uppgrades. See ya 2 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
johnny boy 164 Posted February 14, 2022 Keep the story going. Can't wait for the next instalment. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
consul315 180 Posted February 14, 2022 the wheels of the white one would be a fortune now, i guess you still have them?? and as said before, keep the pics coming please! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Speedgroup 27 Posted February 14, 2022 6 hours ago, consul315 said: the wheels of the white one would be a fortune now, i guess you still have them?? and as said before, keep the pics coming please! They are 5" Escort MK2 but I don´t know if I have that serie left but I have a similar serie with winter tyres on. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
consul315 180 Posted February 15, 2022 11 hours ago, Speedgroup said: They are 5" Escort MK2 but I don´t know if I have that serie left but I have a similar serie with winter tyres on. ah ok thx, maybe my eyes fooled me. i thought they were MK1 Escort ones with the 3 dimples for the hubcaps, like these: Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Speedgroup 27 Posted February 28, 2022 Hi Consul315. Your eyes are not fooled you: when I checking closer they have those 3 dimples. But that serie I have today don´t have it if I remember right. But have I sold that serie or do I have 8 of those..? I have a lot of different Ford wheels Miniltes 8", 7", 6,5" magnesium, Supelite 6", Barezza 6", Compomotive 5,5", Mistral 7" and 5,5" , Lotus 5,5" RS 5,5" 5" 4,5" 1600E, 1600E reblicas 5,5" and 5" and originals 4,5" 4" 3,75"... rims everywhere. Ithink I have to take a general cleaning of my barn and clear up the whole building, but there is so much stuff... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
consul315 180 Posted March 1, 2022 ok thanks, so you are a bit like me. i also collected loads of period wheels for my cars, like various Cosmics,Dunlops, Exactons, Astralis, MiniLites etc. i even had some 9inch Ford works magnesium wheels (looked like the common Capri,Escort RS ones). i got them with a scrap MK3 GT, but sold them as they were too wide for my taste. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
