On the first day of christmas...

yup, i did get the car as a christmas gift of sorts. the catch is i'd have to restore it. oh well, should be fun.

throughout most of the blog, i shall let the pictures do the talking. unless you don't understand what's going on, pls post a comment and i shall get back to you as soon as i can.

for those of you who frequent Zerotohundred forums, you may also keep up to date over there. Link: ZTH: Ford Cortina Rebuild

on christmas day itself i had already started to strip the car as much as i could, considering all the good food that was consumed earlier during the day. some problems that i came across was the bolts/nuts that were rusted shut, thus making my life miserable. i had to apply a gallon of wd-40 and if that didn't work, the good ol' hammer and screwdriver did the trick.

some stupid repairs made by the panel beaters before i got my hands on the car are:

1. instead of properly butt welding the new pieces of sheet metal to the body panels, they opted to overlap weld the damn thing. thus causing years of rust to bubble beneath the gaps of the new sheet metal.

2. the hole that was caused by one of my cousin's foot was tack welded with random pieces of sheet metal, which now looks like this __/ (side view) because the tack welds at the front portion of the sheet metal have rusted of...anyway, it's a bloody tack weld...what did you expect?

3. there are 4 fucking layers of paint! primer,white paint, primer, black paint. need i say more?

4. random screws have been replaced with inferior ones...some which do not make sense. either too long or too short.

5. the japanese make seats that my grandad changed were mounted in a very unsafe way. the welded thick washers on the japanese seat subframe to match the mounting paints on the cortina...and there was one point where they welded the washer on the the floor pan of the car...thus causing me to rip out bits of the floor pan...incompetent i tell you.

here's a collection of pics since the day i got the car. for now, it'll be about stripping the car to it's bare metal (as much as possible).

enjoy!