The Cortina Epic - Episode "Two Door"

The search began for a 2 door sometime early in 2004 and after being stuffed around on another 2dr this came up for sale in Ipswich Queensland. It was in pretty bad condition due to one of the previous owners having no idea. It was owned by a few people who either had other projects on the go or couldn't afford to do this one. I wanted one bad enough that I handed over the ready pennies with the car unseen apart from a few photos which were emailed to me and several phone calls. These are a couple of the photos I bought it from. It was loaded onto a truck back to Perth and then the waiting game started for it to arrive.....

And then it did. I was like a kid with two dicks(couldn't be this happy only pulling one) when it was unloaded off the truck into my driveway. I bought the car from Greg Hull(TFV8CORTY) who made no secrets as to the condition of the car. One of the previous owners had really fucked things up. For several reasons I now crown him "The Pop Rivet King". Even at this stage I was too happy and blind to notice just how bad it was - this sunk in afterwards. It was fairly well rust ridden(nothing structural) and the TPRK did his own panel repairs with his trusty gun and a few sheets of tin. It'd even been converted from manual to auto which is no big deal except that rather than take the clutch pedal off he pop riveted it to the floor.....and it only got worse from there.

Intermission; Just a brief bit on the car. With expert opinion I think it originally came out of South Africa with a factory GT 3.0L V6. The English versions never had a V6 as an option and doesn't have a chassis number which also indicates that it's South African. Now it has a C4 trans and a 4cyl 3.8:1 diff. It's got all the extra GT goodies such as extra gauges, tougher suspension etc.

After that it sat in my backyard for several months for a few reasons, while I was still scared to tackle the task of the body etc I spent a whole heap of time and money on my 4 door. Now that the TD has come to a stage where there is no point in spending any more time or money on it I figured it's time to get onto the coupe.

03 January 2004 - After switching places in my backyard from in the warmth of the shed to outside under a tarp it finally went it for some surgery. As they say "a thousand mile walk begins with one step" so I took the first step. Talking to Steve McLaren(if you haven't seen it already, go and have a look at his car. It is definitely something else) he gave me a few tips and ideas on how to tackle a few of the bigger missions/issues so the fear factor isn't as great as it was. It's full steam ahead now. Lately has been spent basically stripping back to a rolling shell and take little steps from here on until I've walked my thousand miles. It was just a basic pull engine/trans out, strip engine bay, gut the interior and then clean. I think half the car that wasn't fitted had the parts sitting in the backseat - so much for my nice clean shed. These are just some progress shots.

Next step is to sort the firewall out so it will take a 6cylinder engine and then it's up onto the rotisserie to sort the rest of the body out. That is about all that I am sure of at this stage. I still haven't a clue which engine I'm going to use whether I use a 4.0L like my 4dr or tackle the BA XR6T engine.

There were a couple of brand spankin new sill panels sitting in the back seat - I'm just glad TPRK never got near them.

15th February - It's been a while so I thought I'd better update on what's going on. Well with the good advice and help from Steve McLaren the 4 cylinder is gone and a 6 cylinder firewall in it's place. It now also has the later model TD dash in it. I got a bit bored one weekend and tackled a couple of other body mods. In the past a few people had a go with different sample colours to see what would look best. I already had a spraygun full of primer after exposing a fair bit of metal so I decided to paint the whole thing so at least it's all one colour now - even if the colour does suck. That was most of January. The last couple of weeks I've been finishing off making my rotisserie and today came the proof of the pudding. It went up on the rotisserie, it spins around, no grinding or ear shattering weld snaps. so it all works WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP. It's amazing the perspective u got from the bottom of the car when u can look at it vertically. It suddenly makes everything a lot clearer. Well that's about it for now. Time to clean off the rust coating and sound deadening shit and cart the shell down to be sandblasted. I got a few fun weeks ahead of me.

Well that's it for now. I'll keep this page updated fairly often or as soon as there is news - which occurs first. I'll be taking a lot pf pictures with this car as now I have a decent camera and a lot of people have asked me for pics of things I never photographed before so I will do my best to keep everyone happy.

Cheers, Norm :)