Ginettic Modification

[I.K.Brunel]

Lovely.

Those wheels are clearly for WINNERS though.

[lowtina]

Hi,

well, I'm new here so I'm hoping I'm not thread hijacking!!

I'm thinking not, as I'm the new owner of the "SPC". She now resides "Daaan saaarf" (very).

She was bought on Saturday and driven 310 trouble-free (for a car built from several old fords and a wheelie bin) miles back home. She got hot over 63mph but we devised a game where we'd tail a lorry at 52 for 5 miles, then barrel on. It worked beautifully! By beautifully I mean dropping from nuclear fission to just white hot. Duct tape was used to great affect in the end and the engine ran at a mere "gosh that's hot" from then on. My tuna sandwich was turned see through by the internal cabin temperature, many, many drivers reported the exact ground clearance of the exhaust while matching my speed on a motorway and the seat belt was like a well practiced boa constrictor. But I vowed she wouldn't beat me and she didn't. We now have an understanding I feel. She's like an old lady; she complains alot but you simply need to pretend you're doing the best for her while you carry on regardless!

I'm still in love. I'm a lover of the Cortina and have owned and still own quite a few. This is the next level for me and I'm really going to enjoy this!

Anyway, I'll try to check back here as and when I break bits as I think the ol' SPC deserves that.

[I.K.Brunel]

310 miles! That's pretty keen.
Welcome to the forum

[garycox]

Excellent! Whereabouts "Daaan saaarf"?

[lowtina]

Yes, 310 miles was a bit keen in an unknown quantity such as this. I was really thinking that after about 40 miles to be fair! But sometimes, the want outweighs the worry. And I wanted this. I'm still not sure why though!

Interestingly, the SPC is now broken. It (not she when broken) ran out of fuel at the petrol station last night. I chortled at my good fortune as I coasted up to the pumps. But, even after 20 litres of fresh fuel, starting was not on it's list of jobs. I immediately went into "pinto coax" mode but the usual suspects were innocent. Eventually she fired but this morning. Deeed. I think it's drawn rubbish from the tank into the carb. Fuel filter and carb cleaner next then!

I'm based in Lymington, right in the middle of the south coast pretty much. The SPC has genrated alot of interest locally so far. My neighbour told me his brother also once had a Rover SD1 many years ago. I let him believe that this is also a Rover. Why not eh? There's probably a few bits of one in there somewhere.....

[Seth]

Welcome lowtina. The school-bike SPC is exactly like a Cortina with bonus bits of Fiesta so that's all good. Now I'm left wondering if there's some connection between you joining this forum and your car failing to work properly.

[garethj]

I think any non-working connectors, bad earth points etc are directly copied from a Rover, your neighbour is correct.

Gareth
(ex Ginetta G26 owner)

[lowtina]

Seth, perhaps so. Could it be that the SPC has had so many owners and donor parts that it's become sentient and self aware? If that is the case, then it is, indeed, an old woman, so I should probably prepare myself for an awful lot of complaining......

Anyway, the SPC will run again one day, when I have a spare 5 minutes. In the mean time..... jobs on the list:

Wheels - Something of an appropriate offset. Mondeo ET40 wheels look fine from the side but the front profile looks comical. Peugeot offset is the cheap way forward. ET15 will fill up those big, daft arches nicely I feel.
Bodywork - Time has taken its toll on the exterior. No amount of polish or even a greased elbow will make this look like a super car. Satin black is my answer. Yes, done to death but I want tidy and cheap. A mate of mine has a vinyl cutter so perhaps some tasteful graphics would make it less stealth bomber like?
Rust - THe SPC is plastic, she has not rustificated. The chassis is made from ocean liner so it crusty but solid. Time to clean and hammerite. Susupension also needs this treatment. Every fixing on the car looks like it's been stored in a river. They shall be replaced.... eventually.
Engine - A throttle bodied 2.0 Zetec sits in my workshop, albeit in a mk3 Cortina currently. The cortina is crusty though, the SPC mostly isn't. I feel a swap coming on....
Interior. I'm going to leave it alone, except to clean and repair.

[lowtina]

I think any non-working connectors, bad earth points etc are directly copied from a Rover, your neighbour is correct.

Gareth
(ex Ginetta G26 owner)

Ha ha! Yes, perhaps it was Christmas tree rear light clusters that brought on his Rover-based conclusion!

Speaking of wiring, I'm going to redo that too. It works, mostly, but there's wires and joints every where. We all know how depressing it is to see several jointed cables at 2am on a deserted back road while trying to diagnose the lack of linear piston movement in an engine.

More pressing jobs include. Replace the exhaust. The current one doesn't perform any of the tasks an exhaust normally excels at.....

Replace the clocks with ghia ones. Then I'll have a rev counter! And gauges that work. Possibly. And no loud ticking clock!

Add an expansion bottle and fully seal around the rad in an attempt to cause a reasonable engine temperature.

Oh, manually move the heater box flap so my eyelashes don't melt again.....

[garethj]

I replaced the dash with a Ghia one on mine to get a revcounter, there’s some tiny difference between a late Mk3 Cortina dash and a Mk4 one so the panel didn’t quite fit. I think I used some black tape inside to cover up the gap, but you won’t know until you try and fit it.

I can only half remember the issue with the header tank, I think my car had a normal radiator cap which let the pressure out instead of sending it to the header tank on the inner wing. I fitted a sealed cap on the radiator and had a pressure cap on the header tank and I think that worked better. For the overheating, there’s a huge chassis beam that cuts in front of the radiator core which isn’t ideal but the biggest problem is the sides, top and bottom of the rad aren’t sealed to the nose of the car.

Air will always take the path of least resistance so when it comes into the hole under the bumper it dodges around the radiator and pisses past the sides, ending up in the engine bay. The other critical thing to cooling is the fan should be close to the radiator with an effective cowl behind it, I think the Ginetta installation is different to the Cortina one so the fan doesn’t do much of a job, in fact it just helps to draw air around the sides of the radiator.

If I’d kept my car longer I was toying with some fibreglass sheet, hacked from a caravan or something, and cut to shroud the radiator on its sides. As for the gap between the rad and the fan, perhaps an electric fan is the simplest way to avoid traffic jam overheating. It’s a common issue with these, I joined the Ginetta owners club when I had my car and had access to their message board and newsletters from when these cars were new. Overheating was one of the most common complaints even back then.

Despite all that, I loved mine. Space for 3 kids in the back, quite interesting to look at and cheap to buy means it’s a winner in my book.