Oscar of Markoz

"On todays episode on Australian Cortina ....."
Ok, work around home has been very busy since starting up Tough Garage. Been doing a heap of work on a MK2 Escort. It pays the bills (for the cortina) so no use complaining.
But I did manage to get some tedious work out of the way and that was to full weld and smooth the turbo merge collector. After Tig welding and MIG welding to fill in small area and then deburring it all, I have a finished product and it looks awesome.
I welded all the inside joins and smooth them off and all the outside also, then made some clearance for the bolts and nuts that go through the flange. Took alot of time, but I'm very happy with how it turned out.





Now, I can move onto full welding of the rest of the turbo manifold. I managed to get a mate who works at Plasmaman, to help out with a custom fuel rail as modding the one I had turned to **** and I wasn't 100% happy with it.

"On todays episode on Australian Cortina ....."
Ok, work around home has been very busy since starting up Tough Garage. Been doing a heap of work on a MK2 Escort. It pays the bills (for the cortina) so no use complaining.
But I did manage to get some tedious work out of the way and that was to full weld and smooth the turbo merge collector. After Tig welding and MIG welding to fill in small area and then deburring it all, I have a finished product and it looks awesome.
I welded all the inside joins and smooth them off and all the outside also, then made some clearance for the bolts and nuts that go through the flange. Took alot of time, but I'm very happy with how it turned out.





Now, I can move onto full welding of the rest of the turbo manifold. I managed to get a mate who works at Plasmaman, to help out with a custom fuel rail as modding the one I had turned to **** and I wasn't 100% happy with it.

That looks awesome! I can see alot of love has gone into that. It shows.

"On todays episode on Australian Cortina ....."
Ok, work around home has been very busy since starting up Tough Garage. Been doing a heap of work on a MK2 Escort. It pays the bills (for the cortina) so no use complaining.
But I did manage to get some tedious work out of the way and that was to full weld and smooth the turbo merge collector. After Tig welding and MIG welding to fill in small area and then deburring it all, I have a finished product and it looks awesome.
I welded all the inside joins and smooth them off and all the outside also, then made some clearance for the bolts and nuts that go through the flange. Took alot of time, but I'm very happy with how it turned out.





Now, I can move onto full welding of the rest of the turbo manifold. I managed to get a mate who works at Plasmaman, to help out with a custom fuel rail as modding the one I had turned to **** and I wasn't 100% happy with it.

"On todays episode on Australian Cortina ....."
Ok, work around home has been very busy since starting up Tough Garage. Been doing a heap of work on a MK2 Escort. It pays the bills (for the cortina) so no use complaining.
But I did manage to get some tedious work out of the way and that was to full weld and smooth the turbo merge collector. After Tig welding and MIG welding to fill in small area and then deburring it all, I have a finished product and it looks awesome.
I welded all the inside joins and smooth them off and all the outside also, then made some clearance for the bolts and nuts that go through the flange. Took alot of time, but I'm very happy with how it turned out.





Now, I can move onto full welding of the rest of the turbo manifold. I managed to get a mate who works at Plasmaman, to help out with a custom fuel rail as modding the one I had turned to **** and I wasn't 100% happy with it.

"On todays episode on Australian Cortina ....."
Ok, work around home has been very busy since starting up Tough Garage. Been doing a heap of work on a MK2 Escort. It pays the bills (for the cortina) so no use complaining.
But I did manage to get some tedious work out of the way and that was to full weld and smooth the turbo merge collector. After Tig welding and MIG welding to fill in small area and then deburring it all, I have a finished product and it looks awesome.
I welded all the inside joins and smooth them off and all the outside also, then made some clearance for the bolts and nuts that go through the flange. Took alot of time, but I'm very happy with how it turned out.





Now, I can move onto full welding of the rest of the turbo manifold. I managed to get a mate who works at Plasmaman, to help out with a custom fuel rail as modding the one I had turned to **** and I wasn't 100% happy with it.

"On todays episode on Australian Cortina ....."
Ok, work around home has been very busy since starting up Tough Garage. Been doing a heap of work on a MK2 Escort. It pays the bills (for the cortina) so no use complaining.
But I did manage to get some tedious work out of the way and that was to full weld and smooth the turbo merge collector. After Tig welding and MIG welding to fill in small area and then deburring it all, I have a finished product and it looks awesome.
I welded all the inside joins and smooth them off and all the outside also, then made some clearance for the bolts and nuts that go through the flange. Took alot of time, but I'm very happy with how it turned out.





Now, I can move onto full welding of the rest of the turbo manifold. I managed to get a mate who works at Plasmaman, to help out with a custom fuel rail as modding the one I had turned to **** and I wasn't 100% happy with it.

"On todays episode on Australian Cortina ....."
Ok, work around home has been very busy since starting up Tough Garage. Been doing a heap of work on a MK2 Escort. It pays the bills (for the cortina) so no use complaining.
But I did manage to get some tedious work out of the way and that was to full weld and smooth the turbo merge collector. After Tig welding and MIG welding to fill in small area and then deburring it all, I have a finished product and it looks awesome.
I welded all the inside joins and smooth them off and all the outside also, then made some clearance for the bolts and nuts that go through the flange. Took alot of time, but I'm very happy with how it turned out.





Now, I can move onto full welding of the rest of the turbo manifold. I managed to get a mate who works at Plasmaman, to help out with a custom fuel rail as modding the one I had turned to **** and I wasn't 100% happy with it.

"On todays episode on Australian Cortina ....."
Ok, work around home has been very busy since starting up Tough Garage. Been doing a heap of work on a MK2 Escort. It pays the bills (for the cortina) so no use complaining.
But I did manage to get some tedious work out of the way and that was to full weld and smooth the turbo merge collector. After Tig welding and MIG welding to fill in small area and then deburring it all, I have a finished product and it looks awesome.
I welded all the inside joins and smooth them off and all the outside also, then made some clearance for the bolts and nuts that go through the flange. Took alot of time, but I'm very happy with how it turned out.





Now, I can move onto full welding of the rest of the turbo manifold. I managed to get a mate who works at Plasmaman, to help out with a custom fuel rail as modding the one I had turned to **** and I wasn't 100% happy with it.

Started on the tubs today

Also picked up a shifter. Plan is to fit it in the original console.

And in the hole. Very happy to see the MSC finally in it's home. Craig gave the wiring a bit of a tidy and from that perspective she is ready to fire. Not going to happen for awhile yet as I decided to move the cab rear wall back while I'm going. The extra room will come in handy. Once that's done and welded in I can reinstall the fuel tank and dash and we will see what happens.
 
Getting closer by the day.

battery tray area came up reasonable enough. None of this actually gets seen once the battery tray and plastic surrounds are in.
 

 
I have started re-assembling the engine bay, cleaning and painting as I go. I will take some photos tomorrow and upload them. Soon enough the MSC and T5 will be sitting in here. Getting there slowly - like most of my projects.

Brought myself a Cortina last Sunday,
It's a 76 TD, Cortina, L, manual but has no box, has a 84DA XF 250 xflow, with C2 head & 350 Holley on a "Torque Tuned" inlet??,
tryed to get running on Thursday night but had no fuel and only little bit of aerostart, but got it to fire few times.
Next week I'll get some fuel and have another go, as well as going over it to work out what parts I'll need, like rear bumper, head light switch,
Plans are to strip it down & Sand blast, as paint is F*##&ED, I'd say it was painted in enamel in the late 80's/early 90's.
repair rust, Respray in 2 Pak, Tuff Hi HP xflow, C4 hi stall auto, built BW diff,

 

Awesome fab work!
Need some more updates on the Corty too!

Cheers I'm in sa.
I had though maybe I could fold it.
Will probably go a head and tub it. Thinking as long as u do it neat it won't ever get noticed.

Awesome work bro

Hey mate, have a look over these that I did for a TE. I folded the chassis lip up so you don't need to cut the lip, stronger and less cutting of standard metal. If your in Sydney and are interested in getting them done, let me know and I'll give you some details. They take about 4 days to get done and so far everyone has been happy with the price.
 
https://www.facebook.com/ToughGarage

"On todays episode of Australian Cortina ......"
Did some more work on the intake manifold. Firstly I wanted to remove the brackets and bungs that were cut or molded into it. I'll put some bungs for vacuum lines etc later into the back of it, so its much neater for plumbing. So what I did, I cut the peices off with the grinder and then shaped and used those peices as plugs to plug up the holes. It worked a treat. Yes it was tedious work, but its the same material so I though it would work best. I just welded the top of it close to the surface and then filed them smooth.


I then decked the ends of the runners that meet up to the injector manifold. I got some 80g emerycloth and nail it to the bench, then spray it with WD40 and then pushed the manifold back and forth along it. 4 hours later, I finally had a decked set of runners. Dead flat now and butt up perfectly. I decked the injector manifold while I was at it.

Did some porting of the runners as due to being cut into so many peices, they had overlaps and all sorts of stuff. Using a combination of the allow burrs and the metal burrs, along with an extension for the die grinder, I finally got some decent results, I think! 6 hours in this one. OOFT!





And this is what it looks like now. I did some work on the fuel rail also, but I'll go into more detail later after I get the bungs for the ends put on etc.

Next I'm going to pressure test the manifold, just in case, and then see if I can get it flow tested at RPM Motorsport with Steve. I might need to make the throttle body elbow first, but I'll see what he says. Also finish off the fuel rail.

"On todays episode of Australian Cortina ..."
I had an old XF Falcon EFI manifold sitting around and always wanted to use it, but didn't like how the TB faced the exhaust area and that the plenum basically sat on top of the rocker cover.
So I decided to face the TB towards the opposite side, the only problem is the runners curl up and over towards the original side. So after finding a nice place for the plenum to sit, I started cutting down the runners and joining them back up again.
I cut them at the flange ends and then would check to see which sections of the runners would suit which bends. There were 3 different bends which all needed to be made twice for all the runners. The ones furthest apart had to bend more, whereas the ones closer to the centre needed less bending.



It was really tricky work, but I got there in the end.
I just need to TIG it all up now.
I'll place a 90 degree elbow on the TB plate area, so that the TB then faces forward. I'll port all the runners to get the joins all flowing nice and maybe even place a air divider in the plenum just after the elbow incase it doesn't distribute air efficiently.
Next up, I think I might put the Intercooler in and start mocking up the cooler piping.

"On todays episode of Australian Cortina ..."
Many moons ago I bought all the gear I needed to make up my own exhaust manifold for the turbo. It came with a quickly made and tacked together merge collector, a turbo flange, multiple 45's and multiple 90's in 2 different sizes and a long peice of pipe to suit, which was maybe a metre long. I got it all through Turbo Exhaust out at Smithfield.
I recently bought a header flange from Liverpool Exhaust/Hurricane which is all laser cut and a really nice peice. The one that Turbo exhaust supplied was a 2 peice job which was better suited to extractors.
So I first fixed up the merge collector as I wasn't overly happy with it and the gaps weren't tight enough. Then it was a matter of starting the jigsaw puzzle which is the turbo manifold. Alittle cut here, a little cut there, grind here, grind there, weld this on, weld that on. And after 2 and a half days, it was all tacked together, ready for full welding.




Just a word of advise, your better off starting from the furthest point and wokring your way back in, the last one was a real tricky bugger.
The turbo I bought many moons ago also, its a GT35/40 by Garret which I bought from GCG Turbos. Its rated at 700hp. NICE!




Next up, I'll probably start either routing cooler piping or work out engine pulleys and alternator options etc.

Fookin work of art.....

"On todays episode of Australian Cortina ......"
Did some more work on the intake manifold. Firstly I wanted to remove the brackets and bungs that were cut or molded into it. I'll put some bungs for vacuum lines etc later into the back of it, so its much neater for plumbing. So what I did, I cut the peices off with the grinder and then shaped and used those peices as plugs to plug up the holes. It worked a treat. Yes it was tedious work, but its the same material so I though it would work best. I just welded the top of it close to the surface and then filed them smooth.


I then decked the ends of the runners that meet up to the injector manifold. I got some 80g emerycloth and nail it to the bench, then spray it with WD40 and then pushed the manifold back and forth along it. 4 hours later, I finally had a decked set of runners. Dead flat now and butt up perfectly. I decked the injector manifold while I was at it.

Did some porting of the runners as due to being cut into so many peices, they had overlaps and all sorts of stuff. Using a combination of the allow burrs and the metal burrs, along with an extension for the die grinder, I finally got some decent results, I think! 6 hours in this one. OOFT!





And this is what it looks like now. I did some work on the fuel rail also, but I'll go into more detail later after I get the bungs for the ends put on etc.

Next I'm going to pressure test the manifold, just in case, and then see if I can get it flow tested at RPM Motorsport with Steve. I might need to make the throttle body elbow first, but I'll see what he says. Also finish off the fuel rail.

"On todays episode of Australian Cortina ......"
Did some more work on the intake manifold. Firstly I wanted to remove the brackets and bungs that were cut or molded into it. I'll put some bungs for vacuum lines etc later into the back of it, so its much neater for plumbing. So what I did, I cut the peices off with the grinder and then shaped and used those peices as plugs to plug up the holes. It worked a treat. Yes it was tedious work, but its the same material so I though it would work best. I just welded the top of it close to the surface and then filed them smooth.


I then decked the ends of the runners that meet up to the injector manifold. I got some 80g emerycloth and nail it to the bench, then spray it with WD40 and then pushed the manifold back and forth along it. 4 hours later, I finally had a decked set of runners. Dead flat now and butt up perfectly. I decked the injector manifold while I was at it.

Did some porting of the runners as due to being cut into so many peices, they had overlaps and all sorts of stuff. Using a combination of the allow burrs and the metal burrs, along with an extension for the die grinder, I finally got some decent results, I think! 6 hours in this one. OOFT!





And this is what it looks like now. I did some work on the fuel rail also, but I'll go into more detail later after I get the bungs for the ends put on etc.

Next I'm going to pressure test the manifold, just in case, and then see if I can get it flow tested at RPM Motorsport with Steve. I might need to make the throttle body elbow first, but I'll see what he says. Also finish off the fuel rail.

I made up some supports for the rear upper diff links as they tend to tear them out once power starts being increased.

 
I just stitch welded the chassis rail under it 1st, then added the support and stitched that on also. It now uses the same size bolts as the lower links and is of same design as the lower links.
I also modified the rear half of the trans tunnel. The tail-shaft scraps on there once you go fairly low on the rear suspension. I had it scrap before years ago when the car was fully loaded on the old 13's. So thats been done now and will allow good clearance.
I made up a peice and welded it onto the existing trans tunnel, then cut out the old one and welded it up.


 
Since I'll "one day" be using the turbo, I made a trench for the dump pipe to clear the starter motor and trans bellhousing. I made up a peice for the trans-tunnel/firewall and then scribed it and cut out the section. Then welded it on also. The link which holds the castor rod and is connected to the front crossmember had a section cut away from it also to help with clearance.
It should allow clearance for a 3 1/2" Dump pipe.


 
I've now been busy stitch welding the braces in the cabin that run from sill to sill. Theres 2 of them. I've stitched the floor to the sills and the floor to firewall sections also.
I've also started removing all the paint from the cabin floor ready for the POR15 coating.

"On todays episode of Australian Cortina ......"
Did some more work on the intake manifold. Firstly I wanted to remove the brackets and bungs that were cut or molded into it. I'll put some bungs for vacuum lines etc later into the back of it, so its much neater for plumbing. So what I did, I cut the peices off with the grinder and then shaped and used those peices as plugs to plug up the holes. It worked a treat. Yes it was tedious work, but its the same material so I though it would work best. I just welded the top of it close to the surface and then filed them smooth.


I then decked the ends of the runners that meet up to the injector manifold. I got some 80g emerycloth and nail it to the bench, then spray it with WD40 and then pushed the manifold back and forth along it. 4 hours later, I finally had a decked set of runners. Dead flat now and butt up perfectly. I decked the injector manifold while I was at it.

Did some porting of the runners as due to being cut into so many peices, they had overlaps and all sorts of stuff. Using a combination of the allow burrs and the metal burrs, along with an extension for the die grinder, I finally got some decent results, I think! 6 hours in this one. OOFT!





And this is what it looks like now. I did some work on the fuel rail also, but I'll go into more detail later after I get the bungs for the ends put on etc.

Next I'm going to pressure test the manifold, just in case, and then see if I can get it flow tested at RPM Motorsport with Steve. I might need to make the throttle body elbow first, but I'll see what he says. Also finish off the fuel rail.