Project Cars Update: Simon’s Corsair V4

Parts-hunting aside, not much happened to the Corsair in the first seven months of 2009. All too soon it was August, and I realised if I didn’t get busy, the show season would be over for another year.

So, with the Mk1 Cortina, Mk2 Cortina, Corsair and Anglia clubs’ Four Shows In One weekender looming fast, I booked a day off work, got my mate Jon down to lend a hand, and proceeded to get the Corsair into some sort of show-ready state.

First job of the day was to get that front end down — I’m all for rake but not the wrong way round!

Paul Watts from the Corsair Owners’ Club raided his spares stash and found me a pair of uprated Escort springs, which were duly swapped for the standard originals.

The car was now sitting a lot better, but we weren’t done yet!

I also wanted to fit a peep mirror (bought from Pop Brown’s), as I had one of these on all of my classic Fords so far. They’re designed to clamp onto either the drip rail or door frame, but the Corsair’s is too thick.

So in the end we drilled through the frame and screwed it in place instead.

Time for a snack – I find crisps always go down a lot easier with a dab of grease…

I also wanted to get rid of the standard 4-inch steels. Some hard-to-find 4.5 inch GT/2000E steels were scrounged from Jon and Paul Watts. They’re rarer than Lotus steels and a lot cheaper too, as no-one wants them (apart from me).

They were pretty rusty, so Jon took them up to Power Park Autos to be shotblasted — here you can see the before and after in classic Blue Peter-stylee!

PPA then expertly powdercoated them in silver. Once fitted up, I added these period Dunlop decals — just to confuse people!

A quick wash and polish (probably the first one it’s had for a few years) courtesy of my brother, Damien and we were good to go.

We made it to the show – the Corsair’s first public outing since the Classic Ford Tour in May 2008. I thought it looked pretty cool parked up on the Corsair Owners’ Club stand, and clearly a few others did too, as it won a trophy. Thanks to everyone who voted for it!

For regular updates on Simon’s Corsair, check out Classic Ford magazine every month!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Project cars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.