Mk 4 cortina 2000

I have owned. a 2L MK3 (1973), a 2L MK3 GT (1973), a 2L MK4 (Aussie assembled) and a 4.1 MK3 (1976 Aussie Assembled). All damn good cars.

have wriiten off a 1600 and 2000 mk4 they both good cars before accident were starting to rust but used to wash every weekend

mk4 ? horrible things. fine for a family wagon in their day.
the mk1,2 are classics.

Common as, they got loose and stripped the threads on the plastic nut thing that goes into the gearbox.
Ford made a machined aluminium replacement for it.

You might be able to find one on a old gearbox.

I put a hidden compartment in my MK4, it worked. ; )>

I got two ashtrays, cut the front off one and welded it onto the end of the other one. So it was 1 + 1/2 ashtrays in length.
Lined it in velvet for sound deadining.
Normaly you only pull the ashtray out so far. But if you pulled it right out you got to the secret compartment.

^^^ I can guess what you were hiding in there , we all had secrete hiding places for them .

One of the smoothest gearbox's of the day - mk5 was my dream car
when young lad, time is a cruel mistress

Didn`t the fuel line fall off the carb. on the MK3 and 4 resulting in flames under the hood?

Yep. we figured out what was happening.
The fuel line is conected to the carby with a brass tube inserted into the carby body.
Now if you have been travelling or towing or such on a hot day, everything expands.
And as you get into town and decide to fill up with petrol.
You get to where you are going and stop the car for a short while.

The carbys body heats up, the fuel in the line does too.
But the fresh petrol in the tanks just came from underground and it's nice and cold.

So you go out to the car, start it up, it uses up the warm petrol and suddenly the cold petrol gets to the fuel line/carby.
That cold fuel shrinks the brass tube and the fuel pressure pushes the brass tube out and sprays fuel everywhere under the bonnet.

BOOM!

I was told this and we were beside a pile of Cortina parts.
So we got a ruler and checked all the carbys.
None of them were inserted properly, one was just about to fall out, but they all had shifted.
We bashed one back in and checked the length that it was sticking out by too.
The diffference ws easy to see, we could see the carby body mark/stain on the brass tube too.
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The fuse box needs the plastic cover or when you lift the bonnet when its raining, the water on the bonnet slides down directly onto the fuse box.
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Check under the dizzy cap to see if the capactors red wires in the right place, if it is not, the cap can sit up on the wire at a angle and ruin the contacts on the cap.
Best if you can is find a replacement capacator (different polarity) and connect it outside of the dizzy, it makes setting timing a lot easyer.
This happens when you take out the rotor when before you go into the pub and later on, in the dark, try and put the rotor back in.

Tighten the screws holding the end plate of the starter as they get loose.
Clean out the heater core.

The alternator plug gets oil and dust inside the plug and ruins the electrical contact, pull it out and give it good clean.

Make sure that the alternator bolts are holding . Make sure all the bolts are still there. One can loosen and fall out without it being noticed.

Dislodged fuel pipes on DGAV carbs was mainly caused by numpties yanking the fuel supply line off the carb without removing the crimped hose clamp first. The correct method was to replace the clip with a worm drive one and if the pipe was insecure to refit it using a particular fuel resistant loctite product, I forget what the code for what it was now. Ford issued a bulletin about it many years ago.