Peter Bell

Have you tried Pipercross?

Could be anything really but probably Cortina Ujs, if they are staked then it need to go to a specialist if they are the old style with circlips you can do it yourself. I don't know if you can take the prop off easily on a Cortina based one, perhaps you can just drop the axle on those, it's engine and gearbox out on the later monococqes.

Vibra technics make their own version of these, they are not cheap but at least you know they are not 40+ years old. Look up escort or Sierra cosworth.

These were also used on the cosworth sierras so they were always expensive.

I did have a farmer uncle who many years ago bought a Renault Dauphine when they first came out (that dates it!) he loved it and used it all over the farm, when it died, rusted? he dug a big hole and buried it! I always wondered if anyone found it later.

I have done similar bashing on cam covers, they distort if they are overtightened. But I think you will need a bit more than a piece of wood and a rubber mallet to encourage it to move, a steel chaser and a biggish hammer against a steel plate

Do you mean to use two seperate reservoirs instead of the standard one? If so I guess you will just have to bleed each one seperately, ie. rear brakes, then the fronts asuuming that is the split. You will need a switch in each reservoir to know what is going on.

Yes its all very simple, you may find it's helpful to slacken the pinch bolt on the sierra upright and remove the dummy strut when you lift out the wishbone. It is a lot easier than trying to remove the top ball joint. The through pin should come out easily it just runs through the 2 bits of angle iron.

There is a long spindle threaded both ends as you can see in your photo, the tube on the wishbone has a bush pressed in either end as bearings, there will be an assortment of washers at each end too these are to set the castor angle. So you will need to replace the bushes as they dont get lubricated after installation, some people have added a grease nipple in the tube and fill it up with grease. I had a similar problem with play but when I took it apart one bush had worked its way along the tube towards its mate. When I reassembled it i made a spacer tube to stop it happening again.

Mr Whippy is selling a set of 2B wet weather gear on Locost builders site. Be quick though if you are interested, the site keeps going down at the moment. Wet weather

Same sump as mine, I have about 80mm clearance at the lowest point. If you have some clearance under the bonnet above the carb, (if its a standard set up) you could try spacers/washers on top of the engine mounts, to raise the engine.

Normally you want the lower suspension arm to be about horizontal, have you got a shortened sump or standard?

Assuming you have inboard front shocks you need 9" x 1.9" 120 lbs/in The standard ones were 170 lbs/in but were much too hard.

Seals follow this link for an alternative way to replace the seals, unless you need to take the head off to do other jobs.

Here's the now ancient socks fitted. It depends on the manifold you have, this is a Boggs, and I think the 2B is a bit roomier than a monocoque.

I measured mine a long time ago and these were the results, this is a 2l with a piper 285 cam and flowed head, no vacuum advance. Distributor advance, Bosch Hall effect. RPM Advance ° 1000 14 1500 18 2000 21 2500 24 3000 27 3500 30 4000 33

The only photo I can find is this naked one of mine, they are fitted with pipercross socks normally, there is not a lot of space I hoped to fit a sausage type filter but there wasn't enough room. I have an R1 airbox too but no chance of fitting that even with a lot of butchery. I could try to take a picture of it with the socks on in the next few days.

Wonderful work.

Looks lovely, I keep thinking of these recently.

You could try annealing the aluminium tube, but be careful it melts quite easily. If you rub soap on the tube and gently heat until the soap turns brown you should be ok.

There was one locally that came with oval tubing wishbones, initially there was a problem though where the top ball joint locked up stopping any droop on the suspension.

Are you sure the gauge is correct? Can you see water flowing in the rad?

Might well be a Cortina based one, assuming you have a Ford rear axle, some were made with wishbones instead of using the Cortina Subframe. If it’s a triumph axle it’s a Dolomite with a different front end. They liked to mix them up in the early days.

I think originally when lotus and others offered cars in kit form to by pass paying purchase tax they were not allowed to give a build manual, so they supplied information on how to take it apart. So you started on the last page and worked backwards

Could you have an airlock in the top hose where the thermostatic switch is? Would explain why the fan didn’t switch in.