Cortina No3

[xle_freak]

Picked up this little beauty a few weeks ago, 2v and I drove across to Maroya N.S.W to pick it up on the Australia day weekend. 1380k's each way had a really good trip though and was good to see alot of the country we hadn't seen before. The car was advertised on ebay a couple of times but for some reason I couldn't get it out of my head, so the deal was done and we made the trip across.

Pics that were used on ebay

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She is a early 74 TC, 2 litre auto, plans are just to clean it up fix what I have to and get it on the road. Lots and lots of work to do... **read rust to cut out!** lol and I plan to use this car to learn some rust repair skills.

I picked it up for $350 and despite the rust problems it does start / drive, drove it on to the trailer in fact. In the glovebox we found quite a bit of paperwork for it like a reciept for sale in 2005 for $1800 and some rego transfer slips. As well as this there was a reciept at a mechanic for some work done to it to get rego'd and one very special piece of paper which was a for sale ad which had the name and number which matched up to the reciept. Ad describes the car as fantastic condition and has a price tag of $3000. It has a picture of it on it and it looks immaculate. I plan to give these people a ring at some time and tell them where the car is. The ad also mentions that it has got 55,000 orginal miles on it, the car now has 65,000 on it which is a mere 104,000 k's

Photo of the rest stop we took in Canberra
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This is what she looked like after some luurve

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At the moment the front guards are off and I need to give both the body area of the car and behind the guard a good clean and paint to stop it rusting any more, at the moment it's just very light surface rust. It had a couple of holes at the bottom of both guards which have been cut out and plated up, they just need a very light skim of bog over them to make them perfect again. It's all fun.

[corty80]

Nice pickup, good to see it going to a good home. Keep us updated with the progress.

[xle_freak]

Thanks mate!

Here some pics of the repaires were doing to the front guards

[xtc]

awsome another corty saved!!!!!
keep the picks comming man

[fntim]

nice little pick up mate. very soild starting point. and more plans for it?? other than cutting rust and get it rego'd

[xle_freak]

Xtc, yeah it is good to see another one saved, this car was due to go to the crusher. The kid I bought it off and his Dad do take cars and scrap them and the owner of this car had left it with them to do just that! they thought it was a bit too good for that so he kept it for "about 2 years" but did nothing with it and just let it rot where it sat in the first couple of photos. Another 12 months or so and I honestly feel the rust would have well and truely taken hold of the old girl.

Tim, yeah I do have quite alot of plans for it but I feel they won't be for a while so arn't really worth mentioning just yet. I do plan to change it to a twin headlight grille and definitley 5 speed manual, was thinking of using the pintara box as I have a friend who has a Ford prefect with a stinking hot 2L with one and it holds up fine, he even took a pretty big old caravan around Australia with it. I will be keeping the 2L and the rest of it pretty stock.

So that's the plan. Fix it up, get it rego'd, enjoy it for a while untill funds become available and then it will be getting it's change. Sorry but I don't want to wreck the suprise, you'll just have to be patient

[2v250Cortina]

Woo, Its gunna be a dodgy Mad Max MFP replica!!

[xle_freak]

[2v250Cortina]

Awww, Spoil sport.

[xle_freak]

Ah Allen, you do have a good imagination, I'll give you that!

O.k, I havn't shown you guys the worst of the rust yet, but trust me it's pretty bad . The worst section is on the passenger side at the top of the rear wheel arch where not only has it completely eaten away the arch (which was full of bog with someone elses dodgy attemt to fix it) but it has started eating into the panel around it! there is some around the back window and also some on the drivers side top rear wheel arch but it's no where near as bad as the pass side. From there it has some in the passenger front sill and the guards which I have shown, besides that though she's all sweet! lol. I will take pics of all this but at the moment she is at the exhaust shop getting a couple of new mufflers as the back one was missing and the front one had rust holes all through it.

The only real solution was to get hold of another shell to cut sections out of but where do you find a good shell these days? Hmmmmm as luck would have it just around the corner! Threre was a guy selling parts for one on ebay and I asked him a question about his doors and asked him if he had a shell as well or just parts as I needed one. Turns out he did have a shell and it was pegged to go to sims! it has 2 dents in it but from what I've seen it has no rust! and the best bit? it was mine for $50 .

It's a td and the owner bought it for $400 about 2 years ago when his car broke down and he needed a cheapie to get around in. It was originally a 200ci auto and I suspect it may have been a XLE as some of the bits he had for sale were XLE bits, but I havn't really checked. After he was finished with it he dicided he wanted to put in a 1JZ turbo motor (bloody kids!) lol and hacked up the firewall pretty bad to do so. Apparently he did get the the motor and trans in there and sitting where he wanted but after adding up the cost of finishing it he pulled the pin and bought a Cressida which his motor will bolt straight into. It's a shame to see this thing go like this as it's such a good shell, at least it can give up some of it's bits though! would have been such a waste to see it go to the scrappy's.

[corty80]

Damn that front is a disaster. Why oh why did he cut the radiator support etc off.

[EBXR82BEE]

Quote: Originally Posted by corty80

Damn that front is a disaster. Why oh why did he cut the radiator support etc off.

probley the same reason tyou cut the back off yours

good save on the corty

[xle_freak]

Corty 80, I understand where your coming from! Seriously looking at it I honestly don't think he could have put it back together with the way he has hacked things up.

Thanks Dave, it's good to have your blessing.

So this week I have had off and teed it up with my mate Lenny who has been helping me with the fb Holden and bits and pieces on the Corties. This guy knows his stuff, and you cannot fault his work. While he kept working on the fb I started on this one and would ask questions when I needed it.

So the rust...... well here it is

Drivers side rear wheel arch
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Passenger side sill panel
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Passenger side boot seal
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Drivers side boot seal
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D/ side boot seal after being attacked with a wire wheel
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Passenger side wheel arch
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P/side wheel arch after wire wheel
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Stay tuned.

[corty80]

Good to see it has been rescued and hopefully thats all the rust, as what you have already is a bit of work.

[xle_freak]

Nope, there's more

Passenger side quarter panel. There was no suprises here as there bubbles all the way along and I knew it wouldn't pretty under there
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Fuel filler
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Drivers side quarter panel. This one got me down a bit , there was a small bubble and the panel didn't quite feel right when you rubbed your hand over it. I was tempted to leave it and maybe tackle it later once we had done some of the other repaires. 2V didn't agree with this and said I needed to grind it back and see what was lurking beneath.........
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Because of this we are looking at unpicking the whole quarter panel off the wreck and replacing it. It's either that or it's going to look like a patchwork quilt when were done. So that's where the car is up to now, I really hope I don't find too much more rust lol.

[2v250Cortina]

I love how just about every TC has the lower quater area rust out.
Thats for putting in the foam FORD!!
Probs seemed like a good idea in theory.

[Oscar of Markoz]

Good to see your getting into the resurrecting spirit. It might seem like a never ending job at 1st, but stick with it mate.

[xtc]

step by step mate,it seems like a long way to go and it will be grab yourself a beer or ten sit down pen and paper and start writing your list of repairs down one by one it won't seem so bad chin up and plough forward keep the picks comming!

[xle_freak]

Thanks guys! I am keeping my chin up it's just I really thought we didn't have to replace that panel but when I ground it back it was absolutely shagged. It was just one panel that I thought Yes! I don't have to touch that one.

Made a bit more progress today. I now have a bonnet that opens and shuts as it should, as the little plastic handle had broken off the release mechanism, luckily for me there was one on the wreck I picked up so 2v swapped it over while I did a bit more work grinding the paint off the spot welds to remove the quarter on the wreck. From there we decided to flush out the sill panels. We unclogged the drain holes (yes there are drain holes under there lol, learn something new everyday ) popped out the rubber plug at the end and put in the hose in there. We got a crap load out of the passenger side and probably about half as much on the drivers side.

Also did a bit under the bonnet as well, the radiator was beyond shot and luckily I had a spare in the shed so I grabbed it down and gave it a flush but want to give it a coat of paint before fitting. Also went to Sprints and got upper and lower hoses as they were almost like Jelly, also got new clamps and a new rad cap. 2v popped off the air cleaner and said "bloody hell! whoever hooked up these heater hoses got them all arse about face" Hmmm, looked o.k to me lol. While he was sorting it we found 2 hoses that were stuffed so we replaced them while we were there.

It's all progress.

[Oscar of Markoz]

Check the sill panel ends from the rear wheel wells. Mine had a small gap where it left a hole that lead to the sill cavity. It caused that sill to rust. Obviously due to driving it in the rain. So just check there a no factory faults that leave holes or gaps in that area.

Best cure for rust is prevention!

[xle_freak]

Bit more of an update.

Havn't done much lately to the poor old girl, we moved house in June and the car had to go to my Mums house to stay undercover, having no back window and lots of freshly welded panels it just had to be. Plus I can remember saying to the missus "No way! the days of this thing sitting outside are over" lol. I've had everything against me with this one being flat out with the new house, crap weather and my mate Lenny deciding to pack up and move to sunny Queensland. That has R E A L L Y slowed things up as he did all the work during the day while I was working. Here's some pics of the work he did before he left, more work has been done but the pics I either don't have or are blurry, so I'll wait till I get some better pics.

First step was to remove attack the donor shell, hows this for a rust repair section!!! also if you have a look you will notice the section on the passenger side that has been removed as well.

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Spewing this pic came out blurry! it's the only one I have of the car in this state, but you get the idea.

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Really keen to get this on the road soon, it keeps me up at night and feels like theres so much yet so little to do to it. I want to have it really good at the finish as it will have to go over the pits, it's only for a identity check but you never know. Would rather have it perfect than rushed and them have to do a full inspection on it. I actually had planned to drop it off at a mates place the other day to get some painting done but something else has come up... i'll keep you posted on that one lol.

[2v250Cortina]

Hey, whats the ratio of the diff in the donor wreck?