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	News Archive About The family
	The inspiration for this project came from my family. I am the third son of a family with deep interest into classic cars, and since I was born there has always been an automotive project going on in the garage. The following sections are the stories of these past projects: Dad's 1965 Mk1 Cortina Lotus Big brother's 1966 Mk1 Cortina 2.0L Pinto Turbo drag car Other brother's 1969 Hillman Hunter Cosworth 1965 Mk1 Cortina Lotus When I bought my Cortina in the year 2000 it was in a poor condition as rust had started to eat away a good part of the body panels and it was fitted with a BMC diesel engine. However, when my sons and I started to have a closer look at the car in order to quantify what work was going to be involved in the restoration, we noticed the factory shell supports that extend to the boot floor, the A-frame link fixing points for the rear suspension, the hump over the differential, the 8,000 rpm rev counter, as well as the ratchet type boot lid stand. I had had another 2 door model in the past and none of these characteristics were present on my old car. This led us to make further investigations to trace the history of the car. We were in for a pleasant surprise because without realizing it, I had bought a genuine Lotus Cortina Mk1! The chassis number was checked with the Lotus Cortina Register and to our amazement our car was a genuine June 1965 model Lotus Cortina imported from the UK in 1970. Incidentally June 1965 was the month when Lotus had discontinued the A-frame rear suspension in favour of the leaf spring set up. After a lengthy search for a panel beater willing to take on the restoration project, I found someone ready to take up the challenge. The car was taken to Zabbar where it was to spend 3 years. Lots of de-rusting work took place. I managed to get hold of replacement parts locally, whilst other bits were sourced from the UK and Australia. The car was then supposedly ready for painting. But when I contacted a meticulous sprayer to paint the car in the original Lotus colors, he took a whole year to further prepare the bodywork prior to actually spraying the car. The results were spot on. In the meantime I was busy sourcing other parts which needed replacement. These mainly included the engine and gearbox, all rubber seals, gauges and upholstery. I was lucky to find an engine locally which was given an overhaul. I also uprated the water pump to improve the engine's cooling since it's a known fact that these engines suffered from overheating. Many of the engine components were polished to a shiny finish. A "four-into-one" exhaust system was fabricated from stainless steel too. The engine was now ready to be fitted and fired up. The twin weber carb set up on these engines emit a great sound. Once the car was back in my garage I started the re-assembly work together with my sons. This process took us the best part of 3 months. At this point the car was taken for rewiring to an electrician's workshop and was VRT tested soon afterwards. I cannot describe the feeling of finally driving my dream car. It's a hard-earned pleasure to be behind the wheel of this car and be able to drive it after all that hard work. I must thank all my family for their help and support throughout this project. It has proved to be a big challenge for me but the final result was definitely worth the sweat. (Click here to download a .zip file of the above images) 1966 Mk1 Cortina 2.0L Pinto Turbo (Return to top) After graduation from university as a mechanical engineer in 1996 I started working in a local firm as an injection mould designer. My 1st pay was dedicated to buy a donor car for my drag racing project. I wanted to build a Mk1 Cortina with 2.1L Pinto power + NOS. it was not long till I found a 1966 4 door deluxe model. The car was on its way to the scrap yard but ended up in my dad's garage instead. Disassembly started immediately along with several long hours at the garage together with my brother Omar who I cannot thank enough for his help throughout the project. The first part of the project involved disassembly and sand blasting of the underside, chassis and interior. There were a few rusty areas which required attention but nothing really bad. This job was entrusted to a local panel beater who along with removing the rust, changed the front panel of the floor to aluminium, cut off the interior frame of the doors, welded the rear doors shut and fitted a Safety Devices roll-cage. The dieting exercise was not limited to the inner floor panels and doors only. The bonnet and boot lid were replaced with lightweight fibreglass panels which were manufactured locally. The glass was changed to Perspex all round. The next task involved the fitting of the pinto engine and the upgrading of the suspension and running gear. The engine cross member and steering box were changed to Cortina Mk3 cross member & steering rack. The transplant also included the steering column and front suspension from the same Mk3. The middle section of the firewall was modified to create sufficient space for the Pinto engine. The prop-shaft was changed to a unit using solid drawn pipe and heavy duty transit universal joints. The differential unit was also upgraded with a tried and tested Maltese recipe. The internal planets cage was replaced with a spool manufactured at Allcut Engineering. The half shafts were replaced with Fiat 132 (2000cc) units. This drive-train was proved to be good for 60 feet times as low as 1.45 seconds. The engine was entrusted to Manty Bugeja, a local Pinto guru. The head assembly was fully ported with enormous valves being fitted. In went a Holbay 665 camshaft and a vernier cam pulley. The engine block was bored out to 93mm. A set of polished and lightened Cosworth YB connecting rods were added together with a set of JE forged pistons. The original crank shaft was retained but was balanced with a 5kg SS flywheel and AP twin-plate racing clutch. Fuel was taken care of by a blue Holbay fuel pump and a pair of 45mm Dellorto side draught carburettors. Ignition was powered by an MSD7AL-2 unit and pro power coil. The car was finally painted in the classic Lotus Ermine white and Sherwood green colours. 1997 was the first session in which I competed. After a few teething problems and practice runs we started dialling in a sequence of good E.Ts. our best time in this configuration and running with over 100BHP of NOS was 11:02 seconds. We have won a good number of events against cars which were running in the high tens. At this stage in went a Quaife dog box kit for improved reliability and we competed with this setup till 1999. After a couple of broken engines out went the NOS kit and was replaced with a D1 Procharger from ATI technologies. This was the beginning of a great engine which ended abruptly with a massive loss of money and time. I designed the kit and parts necessary to fit the Procharger to the pinto engine. The carbs were replaced with a fuel injection system by Lumenition and an intercooler from a Sierra Cosworth. Manty programmed the fuel injection system to perfection and the Pinto was now delivering 9500rpm and emitting ear splitting screams. Testing sessions were lengthy and expensive since this was the first supercharged Pinto on the island and the first drag car to use a fully customisable Lumenition fuel injection system. We decided to start with low boost levels but this meant that new pulleys and tensioners needed to be manufactured every time we wanted to increase boost pressure. After 3 months of testing and private tpractice sessions at Hal-Far Raceway we were ready for the start of the new session. This is where lady luck moved away and disaster struck. We got ready to do our first timed run with the supercharger running 5000rpm below its redline. We did the burnout with no problems. There was a lot of anticipation for that run since it was a great engine and sounded fantastic. Launch was good and all went well till 3rd gear when suddenly the engine lost power. At the pits I got the news I never wanted to hear. The oil in the supercharger overheated and the thrust bearings holding the impeller let go. The impeller crushed into the outer housing and destroyed the whole unit. This meant that 4 months of hard work and over 8000€ were blown away before even making a complete run. At this point funds were running low and I decided to compete the rest off the session with the same engine belt in N/A mode using the same plenum and fuel injection system. This was re-programmed by Manty and I ran 13:50 E.Ts for the rest of the season. The new millennium saw the birth of the 3rd engine setup of the Cortina. The engine was stripped and a new 205 block with standard bore was used. A set of Cosworth YB pistons with modified valve pockets were installed. A new camshaft was bought from Esslinger US and this was all due to a new huge Turbonetics hybrid turbo (courtesy of my brother Omar) which promised lots of boost and power. Increasing boost pressure this time was much simpler since this involved simply tightening of a small nut on the turbo alternator. To reduce the effect of the turbo lag on the start line, a second rev limiter was added. The aim was that with the push of a button I could floor the accelerator pedal on the line and the rev-limiter would stop the engine revs at 6500rpm. The back fire produced at this point increased boost on the start line thus improving launching and 60 feet times. The new turbo was good for up to 45psi of boost but we wanted to start the season safely and used only 18psi. This was good enough to produce 11.5 second runs with 1.49 60 feet times. Half way through the season we decided to increase boost pressure to 22psi but 3rd gear let go and dropped a few teeth in the process. At this point it was clear that if we wanted to increase engine power we needed a better heavy duty gearbox. Unfortunately funds at the time were very low since I was preparing to get married and a Jerico gearbox from the US was not an option. We therefore decided to go back to the safety of 18psi pressure and run the rest of the season reliably. This proved to be a wise decision since the car ran reliably in all events and I ended up winning 6 events out of a total of 8. This saved me a lot of high hopes for the upcoming 2002 season so I decided that since I could not afford a proper gearbox, the car had to shed off some weight. We therefore contacted a local chassis builder and panel beater and he removed all extra metal from inside the car. I also designed a set of alloy hubs and used Honda CBR rear brake discs and Piaggio scooter brake callipers. These were bolted to Leda 90/10 front struts and custom Alloy top mounting plates. The result was a total of 75kg less weight to carry to the finish line. All this coupled with brand new, wider Avon slicks promised a good start of the season. Unfortunately 2002 did not start as well as we were hoping. During the practice runs for the first event of the season one of the crank bearing shells let go and the bottom half of the engine needed replacement. This is where I thought that my racing days were over because I had just bought a new house and the budget for racing was non existent. Nevertheless I managed to sell a lot of parts which were sitting in the garage and this was enough to gather enough funds to re-assemble the engine. Everything was ready for the third event held in June. Again all high hopes of ever doing a timed run with the much lightened car were destroyed when a series of unfortunate events happened: The handbrake handle broke which meant I could not stage properly. The front lock unit started to leak which I could not do a proper standing burnout. The brake pedal broke under the extreme force I was using to try to stage using the tiny scooter brake callipers. All these problems were sorted out so we could be back the following day for the official timed dial-in runs. We were at the track early that day to try and make up for the lost time of the day before. I started the engine and let it reach an ideal temperature. I went on the track for a slow warm up run, but unknowingly, this was going to be the last run in my Cortina. In the middle of the track the fuel pump decided to stop working and the engine shut off. Luckily the engine sustained no damage, but the pump needed to be replaced. It was at that point that I decided I had enough of the mishaps, so I packed everything and went back to the garage. Since then I have sold the car's body to the UK and most of its performance parts to local people. The Pinto engine is still in the garage waiting for its new owner. All my energy is now directed towards my 16month old baby but the desire to start a new project is again lurking at the back of my mind. (Click here to download a .zip file of the above images) 1969 Hillman Hunter Cosworth (Return to top) Content coming soon... (Click here to download a .zip file of the above images)
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