Oh dear! With the best of intensions and with the welding work done and nothing pending from the previous MOT failure, from a few weeks ago, the MOT inspector discovers another problem... Now if only I'd known about this on the first attempt at an MOT I'd have sorted it beforehand rather than whizzing around like a blue arsed fly trying to get it sorted in the 10 days grace... such is life. The culprit was void bushes on the rear axle, admittedly they were shagged but to be fair they were not noticeable when driving, the usual sideways wobble was not present and I reckon the current engine lacks the performance to really show up these things in a forward / backwards motion.
Never mind and cheer up Cortina I'll have you ship shape soon, luckily I have some lovely powerflex poly bushes and a spare couple of upper radius arms with new bushes already pressed in which I have salvaged from a spare axle I was hoping to fit when the engine is (eventually) replaced with something bigger. As per usual the owners club has been a vital source of information, the MTOC (mark three owners club) http://markthreeownersclub.com it is well worth joining and the membership fee is recovered by the various deals you get. As the Mk3 is pretty similar to the Mk4 and 5 in many ways Buy Sell Cortina http://www.buysellcortina.co.uk which features owners from Mk1 to Mk5 is also a vital source of info and between the two there is an abundance of really great people who are generous with their time helping you with info you are looking for. Quite often I'd just be stumped when trying to find a solution to a problem so if you have a Cortina I recommend you join up to both.
Believe it or not those purple powerflex bushes are about £60-70 for a set of 4! The original rubber ones (like the ones fitted in the radius arm above) are about £4 but depending on the mileage are a yearly job apparently. Anyway, I'm starting to gather a nice file of fail sheets now, before long it'll be thicker than than the fecking service history.
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