Simple motoring

joderest

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When i was 18 or 19, i had a Capri 3000 GTXLR, Maize yellow, rostyle wheels. I wish i still had it now !!!!
Classic daily driver, MK4 Cortina 1600 ?
 

Paul Garrett

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When i was 18 or 19, i had a Capri 3000 GTXLR, Maize yellow, rostyle wheels. I wish i still had it now !!!!
Classic daily driver, MK4 Cortina 1600 ?
Great car! Remember working on one of them, loved it , sad to see it go off with owner after i repainted it.....:-(
The capri i meant. Nothing wrong with the Cortina either
 

kotecki

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2021 213 E300e estate 216Cdi Sprinter (stretched limo)
Never got to drive one, but would LOVE to own one... The Mk1 Lotus Cortina, what a car.

I had the MkII 1600GT Cortina which was really a cheap version of the 1600E. My vehicle was a two door and anything over 80mph would see a huge gap opening between the top of the drivers door and the roof. A really nice car with a brilliant gearbox. A really clever friend of mine fitted a 3ltr Granada engine into a Mk II Escort. What a beast of a car, from memory I think he fitted a Jaguar gearbox, he was a really clever guy, but frightened the bee gee bees out of me when he was driving!!
 

Paul Garrett

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Never got to drive one, but would LOVE to own one... The Mk1 Lotus Cortina, what a car.

I had the MkII 1600GT Cortina which was really a cheap version of the 1600E. My vehicle was a two door and anything over 80mph would see a huge gap opening between the top of the drivers door and the roof. A really nice car with a brilliant gearbox. A really clever friend of mine fitted a 3ltr Granada engine into a Mk II Escort. What a beast of a car, from memory I think he fitted a Jaguar gearbox, he was a really clever guy, but frightened the bee gee bees out of me when he was driving!!
One of my mates at dealership had a MK1 lotus Cortina, also had the proper Savage Cortina too, always had people after him wanting to sell them, but he never would!
 

joderest

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sorry to sound a bit uperty, i did have a 1600E, and again it was a car i loved and wish i still had. I also had a MK2 1600 estate, that was another car i wish i had now
 

joderest

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I think my mis spent youth with cars, used to change to something else every six months or so, is the reason i do most of the work on my present cars. Old cars were so simple to fix and service. Who remembers spending an afternoon de coking there old car, head off, valve grind, clean pistons and all back together in time for tea. Doing a clutch was easy, prop shaft out, gear box out, change clutch and again all back together in time for the pub opening.
Those were the days.
Takes a garage two or three days now to remove heads and do anything with a car, I think i would chicken out taking the head off our ML, its just to involved.
 

LostKiwi

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There's a lot to be said for simple cars like them. I had a cylinder head change on a 1275 mini down to 30 minutes at one point. Clutch in 45. All easy once you know how.

We used to do Toyota Starlet gearboxes in under 20 minutes from the moment the car stopped till it left again. One event we did it three times before running out of spare gearboxes. It used to strip the teeth off second gear....
It was a bit of a screamer for a pushrod engine. Used to go to north of 9000 rpm...
 

Paul Garrett

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sorry to sound a bit uperty, i did have a 1600E, and again it was a car i loved and wish i still had. I also had a MK2 1600 estate, that was another car i wish i had now
Ahh the 1600E, my foreman had one, i resprayed it in Rosso Red and we totally restored it, looked amazing when done, he loved that car :)
 

Paul Garrett

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There's a lot to be said for simple cars like them. I had a cylinder head change on a 1275 mini down to 30 minutes at one point. Clutch in 45. All easy once you know how.

We used to do Toyota Starlet gearboxes in under 20 minutes from the moment the car stopped till it left again. One event we did it three times before running out of spare gearboxes. It used to strip the teeth off second gear....
It was a bit of a screamer for a pushrod engine. Used to go to north of 9000 rpm...
A elderly lady over the road from me has a Toyota Starlet, in amazing condition im sure she just uses it to go shopping in, must be low milage? Probably had it from new?
 

LostKiwi

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A elderly lady over the road from me has a Toyota Starlet, in amazing condition im sure she just uses it to go shopping in, must be low milage? Probably had it from new?
This was ours in its Toyota WRC livery.
PaulAdams_Motogard_CopyrightGeoffRidder_0049_Web.jpg
 

Rockron

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Poor build quality? Huh, if you bought a Ford car in the Land of the Long White Cloud in the 70's
80's then you really knew what the phrase 'poor build quality' meant. I bought a new Escort1600
Sport, (I was young and feeble minded) NZ 'assembled'. Week or two after purchase and a cloudburst
later, I wondered why the footwells were 50mm deep in water.
Put the heap into my lights out garage and shone a torch, which showed up long gaps of
non spot welded joints everybloodywhere, not only the footwells. This was after the first
few days were spent trying to balance the front wheels, which proved impossible because, yep
body shell out of alignment etc. Luckily the car went permanently missing, courtesy of
of some scrote who at least had the good sense to nick it for the British assembled engine
and not the NZ unassembled body which the cops found in oxyacetylene cut lumps the
size of shoeboxes.
That Toyota Starlet has a registration very close (if memory serves) to a tan coloured Hatchback
Starlet the missus owned, could it possibly be serendipity? Hard to distinguish from the
pic if that's a hatch or saloon though.
 

LostKiwi

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'93 500SL-32, '01 W210 Estate E240 (RIP), 02 R230 SL500, 04 Smart Roadster Coupe, 11 R350CDi
Poor build quality? Huh, if you bought a Ford car in the Land of the Long White Cloud in the 70's
80's then you really knew what the phrase 'poor build quality' meant. I bought a new Escort1600
Sport, (I was young and feeble minded) NZ 'assembled'. Week or two after purchase and a cloudburst
later, I wondered why the footwells were 50mm deep in water.
Put the heap into my lights out garage and shone a torch, which showed up long gaps of
non spot welded joints everybloodywhere, not only the footwells. This was after the first
few days were spent trying to balance the front wheels, which proved impossible because, yep
body shell out of alignment etc. Luckily the car went permanently missing, courtesy of
of some scrote who at least had the good sense to nick it for the British assembled engine
and not the NZ unassembled body which the cops found in oxyacetylene cut lumps the
size of shoeboxes.
That Toyota Starlet has a registration very close (if memory serves) to a tan coloured Hatchback
Starlet the missus owned, could it possibly be serendipity? Hard to distinguish from the
pic if that's a hatch or saloon though.
It was a three door hatch and in that photo was being driven by Paul Adams. It was later sold to Dave Strong who used it to win the National Rally Championship a couple of years. That would have been around 1981/82?
 

Rockron

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Wifeys car was just a standard hatch runaround 1984ish, close reg., but otherwise 100mph apart
if you see what I mean.
It was a good job most roads in NZ are unsalted, as you doubtless know rust isnt
usually such a major problem as it is here, but those many gravel tracks would
strip the paint off a vehicle underside in a few hundred miles. My favourite used to be
through the Te Urerewa National Park, preferably in one of the many Hertz rentals
I hired, rather than one of my pampered pets. In those days I thought I was a bit
of a rally champ until someone in the test drive process of buying my Jap built beautifully
assembled 260Z, showed me how it was really done, and so ended what had proved
to be my delusion. !
 

LostKiwi

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The Waikaremoana road was an awesome drive. Hours of twisting winding gravel roads with banked curves it was a true delight!
 

davidsl500

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I'd be happy driving my old Series1 XJ6 4.2 as a daily even now. I Was 20 when I bought it and had 3 years NCB by then so it cost me £171 per year fully comp. Brilliant car and a big change from my 1430 mini's and my 1340 Frogeye.
 

joderest

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Nostalgia, where would we all be without it.
Were things better back then ?, certainly cars were far easier to work on because they were simple, but did they have the protection cars have now ?
I have always suspected that manufactures make cars now that cannot be worked on by their owners other than simple servicing, as most require special tools to do this or that. Even changing pads or disc's is getting complicated requiring tools to wind this in, or reset that. Most owners will not fork out for tools or scanners to do a job only possible once, so off the car goes to the dealers, this in turn keeps the Technicians in work ( i would not call them engineers or mechanics now, as most jobs are replace the whole unit, not fix it)

Opps, sorry, bit of a rant, did not mean to !!!!
 

Paul Garrett

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Nostalgia, where would we all be without it.
Were things better back then ?, certainly cars were far easier to work on because they were simple, but did they have the protection cars have now ?
I have always suspected that manufactures make cars now that cannot be worked on by their owners other than simple servicing, as most require special tools to do this or that. Even changing pads or disc's is getting complicated requiring tools to wind this in, or reset that. Most owners will not fork out for tools or scanners to do a job only possible once, so off the car goes to the dealers, this in turn keeps the Technicians in work ( i would not call them engineers or mechanics now, as most jobs are replace the whole unit, not fix it)

Opps, sorry, bit of a rant, did not mean to !!!!
Yep Nostalgia is not what it used to be! Ha! ...sorry about bad pun....yes cars back then were simpler to work on and were less safe too regarding driver aids and less expensive to fix? But with rising costs and technology gains so have the bills!
 

joderest

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One of the less exciting cars i had was an Austin 1300 GT, had a full webesto sun roof, alloy wheels, and it used to go like stink, it was blaze orange with a black interior. Great fun little car.
Try finding one now, they are like rocking horse poo. I think most just rotted out.

I also had a Ford Granada 3000 Ghia Coupe, light metallic blue, used to tow my ski boat with it, it had bags of power for that. Again, they are very rare now.
 

Rockron

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Yep Nostalgia is not what it used to be! Ha! ...sorry about bad pun....yes cars back then were simpler to work on and were less safe too regarding driver aids and less expensive to fix? But with rising costs and technology gains so have the bills!
I couldn't imagine anyone would disagree with what you state. Certainly cars of the era in question were less safe, per se,
incorporating usually only one concession purely to safety, the seat belt. Bbbbbut in the main they were driven near their
maximum 'performance', and yet could remain legal within reasonable bounds, eg 75mph on the motorway was thought
of as being a good max. for the likes of a modest average family car.
Would a modern average family car do much better safetywise at it's max speed of say 120mph, probably.
But not an absolutely clear advantage there are some related downsides, typically drivers that get a sense of
immortality when they're surrounded by 6 airbags for example. It's sometimes stated that the best safety feature in a car
would be a spike on the steering wheel. :shock:
But todays family cars are driven at speeds hardly any higher than yesteryear (but accelerate & into trouble quicker), yet designed safetywise for speeds of 120mph, little wonder the chances of getting deaded or avoiding serious injury are better than yesteryears whole body zone crumble crates.
Which begs the question why don't we demand cars that have a top speed of 90 mph but with safety design
parameters fit for say 150mph. That's a question for another thread, or maybe not !

Not to forget that those old lachrymose inducing, nostalgic rust buckets needed a fair bit of nursing to keep going,
just as well they were simple to fix........most of the time.
 

Paul Garrett

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I couldn't imagine anyone would disagree with what you state. Certainly cars of the era in question were less safe, per se,
incorporating usually only one concession purely to safety, the seat belt. Bbbbbut in the main they were driven near their
maximum 'performance', and yet could remain legal within reasonable bounds, eg 75mph on the motorway was thought
of as being a good max. for the likes of a modest average family car.
Would a modern average family car do much better safetywise at it's max speed of say 120mph, probably.
But not an absolutely clear advantage there are some related downsides, typically drivers that get a sense of
immortality when they're surrounded by 6 airbags for example. It's sometimes stated that the best safety feature in a car
would be a spike on the steering wheel. :shock:
But todays family cars are driven at speeds hardly any higher than yesteryear (but accelerate & into trouble quicker), yet designed safetywise for speeds of 120mph, little wonder the chances of getting deaded or avoiding serious injury are better than yesteryears whole body zone crumble crates.
Which begs the question why don't we demand cars that have a top speed of 90 mph but with safety design
parameters fit for say 150mph. That's a question for another thread, or maybe not !

Not to forget that those old lachrymose inducing, nostalgic rust buckets needed a fair bit of nursing to keep going,
just as well they were simple to fix........most of the time.
I think the comment which comes to mind with modern cars and esp high powered ones is...." high performance car....low performance driver" back 40/50 yrs ago most everyday cars had enough power to get along a motorway at a sensible speed and nowhere near the performance of most modern day bread& butter cars as we called them in the trade,yes there were supercars and high performance cars but out of reach money wise for most of everyday working men and women? Now with small cars with high performance and terrible driving i see out there it seems these people think they can drive like a loony and the safety features add to the immortal attutude! As for me im a proffessional driver and trained to drive very high powered cars and have upmost respect for them.....if not then trouble will follow and could result in injury or death!
If you went back in time with a modern car, say to the 70's with a hot hatch when the GTI was launched im sure people back then would be gobsmacked how faster even a humble hothatch would be compared to a hothatch of that era!
 

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