# 1965 Ford Cortina Mk1 *build thread*



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

Hola!
I am moving my motor/controller/batteries to this beauty! (from previous BW build) The suspension is already much more capable than the VW was, and the car is much simpler in general, so less retrofitting.



















The car has previously modified motor setup and drivetrain. A V8 302 roller cam engine with T5 Borg-Warner transmission and shortened drivetrain/rear end from '85 Mustang GT. Someone did a rough conversion and as cool as it sounds, the current V8 setup has many serious issues and I'm happy to pull it out.











*Your skill level with auto mechanics and fabrication:*
I can MIG weld at a novice level, solder, crimp, take measurements. Buy steel and aluminum to make brackets, mounts. I keep myself from getting electrocuted! I've done one previous build and put 500 miles on it. 

*The range you are hoping to get (how many miles/charge)*
65 miles / charge (55 easily, 65 max)

*What level of performance you are hoping to get*
4 cyl ICE

*How much money you are willing to put into your project*
12k total considering previous parts as new and extra batteries purchased
7k after tax benefits

*What parts you've already considered, if any.*
72 count of 60ah LiFeYPO4 cells (winston) 2p 36s = 115v 120ah
9" Netgain Warp9 DC motor
Soliton Jr controller
Orion BMS (48 cell model)
Elcon 3kw with CAN attachment
2/0 ultra flex orange cable
-Aluminum Flywheel with existing clutch to existing Borg-Warner T5 transmission

most parts coming from previous build thread: http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93083

There has progress already, more posts to come.
-josh


----------



## evmetro (Apr 9, 2012)

This looks like a pretty cool chassis, and it looks like a fun project. Best of luck to you with your build!


----------



## steelneck (Apr 19, 2013)

Yes! Another 40 year old European Ford becoming an EV, now i am not alone anymore. I bet you are the first in the world to convert an old Cortina, just like i am the first to convert a Granada Mk1.


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

thanks, guys, I'm exicted about it!
evmetro: I posted on your thread about trying to learn how you did the OBD-CAN-USB thing for Torque. and also about your flywheel, as you can see mine "might" have the same bolt pattern...

steelneck: I was just looking at your Granada the other day, thinking, wow, that is DOPE! Really cool car. good job.

I'll take this moment to post and update:

Gas tank removal (was a race tank someone had stuffed in the rear)









and it's gone!










And some flywheel brainstorming. The steel hub I currently have (but not shown here) fits my Warp9 motor shaft and outlets to some 2.75" diameter 1/4" holes. This flywheel has 3" diameter 3/8" holes. I'm going to drill some steel here and get it hooked up as a prototype for sizing and building motor mounts. I own 2 steel flywheels and 1 aluminum one so this steel one is just for sizing things up.










-josh


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

Motor out! (V8 302 roller)









ICE...










The pressure plate and flywheel can be seen on the left side of the motor picture, what is also useful is the thin cover plate that in-between the flywheel and the motor which acts as a great template for the holes needing to be drilled to match the transmission.

I've drilled out my previous aluminum adapter plate with new holes to match this tranny, and I will use some steel spacers to get it fit with room for the flywheel/pressure plate, but I should eventually get a new plate instead of a plate with spacers. The two motor mounts that were used to hold the very powerful 302 ICE should be good to keep the Warp9 motor steady. -josh


----------



## Karter2 (Nov 17, 2011)

FYI...technically I think you will find that you have a Mk ll ,...
..unless someone has changed a lot of the trim and details.
Shame to deconstruct the old girl, even as a hot rodded "'Tina" ..... She is still a classic .
Take care of the old girl.!


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

Karter2 said:


> FYI...technically I think you will find that you have a Mk ll ,...!


Hi Karter, thanks for the info, I don't know too much about Cortina's but it is titled as a 1965 (mk1) and when comparing to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Cortina it appears to be a mk1. The hood, body style, grill are all entirely different on the mk2 right?
Which markings are telling you it is a mk2?

I also agree about not wanting to tear up a "nice" Cortina (although I don't really plan to tear it up), but I don't tend to do shiny work so, I shopped for one that was not restored. This car has been beat to sh**, crashed, raced, welded, etc. The V8 conversion was needing lots of love to get back to good shape, it was basically a track day car. But I am happy with the suspension, steering, and the brakes are "okay" for now. The transmission and rear-end seem decent, and the body "looks" good despite how much bondo is probably on it.
-josh


----------



## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

Hi Bwjunkie
Definitely a Mk1 Cortina
The M2 was squarer and a bit bigger with completely different rear lights


----------



## Karter2 (Nov 17, 2011)

OK to clarify..
In current speak yours is a Mk1 " post facelift" (or Series 2) model
At the time these were commonly known to us owners as Mk 2 models.
The "original Mk1, "pre facelift" (or series 1), version differed externally in trim details like the grill..









But then Ford completely revised the style in '67 and released the updated version now called the Mk2.









Sorry for the confusion


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

so In 1966 you called it a Mk2 but then in 1967 you stopped?
I see what you mean, that there does exist a post-facelift and a pre-facelift version of the mk1, which I certainly did not know previously. I never even heard of a Cortina till this year, I just went looking for a compact domestic classic, which ended up with a British made Ford, which I still find amusing!


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

I sold the V8, yeah!

motor mounts consist of 2 steel angle irons mounted to the Lift-eye bolts. Turns out one lift-eye bolts is a 5/8" (massive) bolt. And the others are 1/2". Drilling 5/8" with a cheap drill press sucks!

One of the angle iron, I had to cut a wedge out with the jigsaw so it could be bent to a 30 deg angle to get a nice matchup from the motor mounts. The wedge will need welding once this is all working in place for a week.

I still think it is pathetic that I didn't clean the engine compartment better, but my excuse is, that this is all just "fitting" pieces for prototyping, because I have to remove everything to install the aluminum flywheel and get a better spacer system between the motor and the transmission.


----------



## glyndwr1998 (Apr 27, 2013)

Wow,

What a cool car.

In the uk most of those just rusted to bits due to our awful weather,

We do see here some mk1 and mk2 escort chassis selling for stupid money, I mean thousands just for a bare chassis, no running gear suspension or anything just a bare shell.

I'd love one myself

I hope it goes really well for you with the conversion it will be a super cool motor fair play


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

glyndwr1998 said:


> Wow,
> What a cool car.
> In the uk most of those just rusted to bits due to our awful weather,...


thanks glyvdwr, I'm pretty excited about it too, worked on it all day today and really enjoyed it.

Once AGAIN playing around with battery box fabrication, was using standard angle iron and got tired of drilling holes in it as I went through itterations. So I've moved on or back to _punched angle iron_.

More supports can be added in the upper/middle also an entire bottom plate made or wood or metal could be workable, also a 70% height lid that slids off the top

All parts from Home Dep, maybe $15 per 16x batteries after some scrap. This is a clamped bottom frame for the batteries. The natural space in the middle with battery notches can later house 1/2" square iron with threaded rod down the inside. 




















I removed the exhaust. I also removed the back seats and did some cleaning/sanding etc to the area, so I could see the entire car chassis.


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

There is a ton of room in the trunk, enough to hold 6 of these example packs, but I want to see how the car drives with these here and some up front before I try to move them behind the rear axle.


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

Has been a busy few days!

Mounted accelerator cable / pot. 
Built the front side battery box seen here, in 16 gauge steel.
Mounted the Soliton Controller at a double angle facing sortof up and toward the front of the car. And finally hooked up the motor HV wires and one battery cable coming from the rear pack.

I'm not putting anything else of size in front of this stuff because I want air flow, so maybe just a tunnel system of some kind if I ever think of what, any ideas?

The battery box will have a deep lid.


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

well something went right today, hooked up the existing 12v system and yummy all running lighting systems working!

among the things that went wrong, was the pressure plate making a slight rub (metal grinding) noise on the release bearing (throw out bearing). A bit of a classic problem that could be from alignment of the pressure plate or axial issues with the adapter plate flexing, or finally the most common which is a bad tob. But it seems to be a little of both. I got the pressure plate aligned better and tomorrow morning I'll get a new bearing ($15). So we shall see!

Oh yea, and that little yellow pack on the right is the new 12v battery made from 4 winstons! (also some more good news, I finally noticed my new shipment of batteries from Balpon came with complimentary copper connectors (3 layers of 20mil) the same exact connectors I had to purchase seperately for $3 a piece previously. A nice surprise after free shipping.
50x 60ah Winston LiFeYPO4 + free shipping + free connectors for 3.3k not bad. There is 26x batteries + 4 for the 12v system in the front, and there is currently 32 batteries in the rear passenger area but that will go up to 46 or so, since I have a total of 95 batteries currently. 95 - 72 + 4 = 19 batteries left over as spare, so if someone needs a single or two I can help out.


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

I finally got around to ordering an adapter/coupling from canev. Up till now I was using a home-made setup scrapped together from the hub and plate of my previous non-clutch conversion. I had welded studs to my hub and screwed it onto the flywheel and used screws/spacers for the adapter. This actually did work, and my fabrication job only had .005 axial tilt, but that was still too much. When I spin up (low rpm test) the motor I can hear the inaccuracy and my throw-out bearing complains a little to the pressure plate splines. I might try to get it exact but the good stuff will be here in 7 days so whatever.

The bad news is I really didn't buy the right flywheel. I got a good deal on an aluminum one and had the ring gear removed. But it turns out Ford used an 8-bolt pattern for a short while around the year 2000 for the GT and the Cobra. This is what my aluminum flywheel was made for and why it was cheaper (because they are not as in demand and harder to resell). blah blah, looks like I'll end up using one of my steel flywheels with the new coupler when it arrives since they both have the 6-bolt pattern.

josh


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

I completely scrapped the location of batteries in the rear passenger seating area. This poses two problems, first batteries favorite position is not laying sideways but standing upright. Second the limited space made me forget about padding and the batteries were fixes very tightly. I've since learned that someday somewhere in some car, a battery will bloat, and if there is no side to side room whatsoever, cracking may ensue. Finally having 4 cable runs to facilitate 4 locations for blocks of batteries is hard to deal with from a BMS standpoint, and also could cause minor issues with charging. In short complication rarely pays off. So keeping 26 cells in the front for now, everything else will go in back.

Just starting new rear boxes:









Bending metal with break thingy...









Rubber mounting, I got some flat rubber , kinda looks like tire rubber but has thread instead of steel inside it.









Unexpected Feline Supervisor:









comparision of welded boxes to bend metal with no sides yet:




























I cut a massive hole in the rear trunk area sheet metal of my Cortina, where the old gas tank hole was. The new much larger hole runs in-between the leaf springs and just behind the rear differential. 

Cut, bent and welded a bunch of 16 gauge steel sheet (wore a respirator for the galvanized pieces). Thus creating 5 horizontal boxes which hang down 5 inches from the original trunk floor. The boxes hold horizontal parallel rows of batteries, which finally appear like one square pack, except for a small gap for the final row making room for the leaf spring shackles.

The leaf does not pass under the boxes, the edges of both are 1 inch apart.

I also removed the leaf springs and delivered them to Denver Spring company to have one leaf added. I had previously lengthened my spring shackles which made my car driveable but the leafs were flat, not good.

I have not painted the boxes, some are galvinized which helps but some are raw steel and need primer. Plus all the cracks etc need foam padding and/or some method of sealant.

Then finally a magic wand is needed to create "the perfect lid", for starters that will end up being some plywood lined with foam from the battery shipping boxes.

josh


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

I never did post the newer adapter plate I received from Canadian Electric Vehicles, but that was an important step to getting this car seriously road worth.


Great news, I finally got a real range test in with 80 batteries (2P 40S).

56 miles easily with resting voltage still above 3.05. And I still have 2 pairs of batteries to add into the mix, so this is going to be a real nice daily driver for me. All the batteries stayed even voltage on the way down towards 3 and back up to 3.4, so the new shipment of Winston's would appear to have very close to the same capacity as the previous year.

I also received my collector plates and title, I did not register it as E type since I will make my tax claim using my VW reg, not that it really matters either way.

josh


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

Fans of Orange and White should look away! 

I sanded and primed my car black prep for a Bahama Blue coat. I still need to sand the primer with some 1k grit. And finally some warmer weather should be good to spray some blue.


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

My homemade paint job. The pictures look better than the real thing mainly because it needs more coats.

White bumpers need to go to chrome SOON. I changed to blue because it is a daily driver and the Orange and White was too loud for my tastes. The chassis is too high in the front because I don't have many batteries up there, and it's too high in back because I had extended the shackles before I got better leaf springs, so I need to remove the shackle extensions. 


















The hood shows a little of the ghetto style paint job which is currently too thin, but acrylic laquer blends nicely so I can add more coats to get that looking better. It's garaged while this coat drys (and shrinks?) My paint knowledge is VERY amateur.


----------



## Karter2 (Nov 17, 2011)

Looking good !
Colours are a personal thing, so don't take this as anything other than a comment...
Some cars have very specific colours associated with them ( Ferrari..Red, Jaguar...Green, Mercedes..Silver, Etc), and the Cortina also had a "Classic" colour scheme..white with a pale green hip stripe (the Lotus colour scheme)


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

Thanks! see that car is at least 2 inches lower with stock suspension.

The Lotus famous white/green is an excellent and clean look. Mine was never a Lotus, and had the stainless trim (GT500) which I don't think was offerend in that paint scheme, but I still considered it! In the end, I wanted the car to get the least attention possible since it is a daily driver and could be parked anywhere and everywhere late at night. With that in mind, my choice to convert a Mk1 appears to be an dubious mix of priorities haha! it gets worse because the non-folding non-stock, but awesome electric seats in this car make it impossible to get my drum set into the back seat, still it's super dope and I'm happy.
-josh


----------



## evmetro (Apr 9, 2012)

This looks like a really fun car!


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

thanks evmetro, it's super fun so far! Getting it Colorado winter worthy is my current stage. But lets just "say" spring is here!


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

I've surpassed 1500 miles on the Cortina, and I'm starting to get fuzzy on what I'm driving. I feel like an alien sometimes. 

I still don't have a parking brake, DOH. I still need to lighten up my clutch system, build tops for my battery boxes, and install the heater.

I drove a friends Nissan Leaf recently and was very impressed, but also read that it is 3300 lbs! (My Cortina is 2400) The Leaf has a 24kwh pack giving only 80 miles range, odd. My car should probably get more range than that with such a large pack, I get 60 easy miles on 17kwh. 

Turns out both cultures (Voltronix and Balqon) of Winston style 60ah lifeypo4 are giving me 75 AH , very happy with that!

nothing else to report, just getting some thoughts down.

josh


----------



## Moltenmetal (Mar 20, 2014)

Congrats- it's a gorgeous classic- you should be very proud of what you've accomplished!


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

Thanks Moltenmetal, it's the departure from the typical car world that I didn't realize would feel so oddly pleasing. 

here is one update I never posted, new classic style steel wheels with original hub caps, replacing the too wide 8" JRwheels that were on their previously

the ride height is a bit higher than stock, which I plan to lower down, but that is pretty far down the priority list.


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

I've been putting a ton of miles on my EV. looks like the range is 70.
Even driving it in these conditions, because I've run out of sympathy energy.


----------



## BWA (Mar 14, 2015)

Nice. I'm just starting a 68 Vauxhall, so, you won't be the only 60s British econobox around.

Can you give us a quick rundown of your setup, motor, controller etc, overall weight...

BTW, something happens to your posts that makes your sentences go on forever. Have to scroll sideways forever to read your comments. Almost like word wrap is disabled 

Maybe a mod could fix it???????


----------



## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

Hi, I think the lines run on because of the wide picture on screen, it sets the browser to think it has that much room, it's 2016 and feels like 1996, hehe.

My setup is:

144v 120ah battery traction pack. LiFeYPO4 (winston TS)
Netgain Warp9 DC motor
Soliton Jr controller
miniBMS
Manzanita micro pfc20 charger 
T-5 Transmission and Mustang Rear end were swapped by someone who previously had a V8 roller setup, so I only kept the Trans/rear
total weight 2450lbs
total miles so far approx 3k. I'm not really keeping track.
70 miles max range in warmer weather.

Still have stock clutch, but I am going to a lightweight 6" circle track clutch when weather warms to work. I built the battery boxes myself.
40% front 60% rear. 
no heater, no AC, no vacuum assist, no dc/dc, no PS, no door locks!
I have a dc/dc that i just haven't hooked up yet, because I'm using lifepo4 for 12v as well and only needs a charge twice a week, but i do want to get it setup.

-josh


----------



## DubThing (Nov 3, 2017)

Where have all the photos gone?

anyone else got info on a cortina conversion?


----------



## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

DubThing said:


> Where have all the photos gone?


The photos posted by bwjunkie are links to Dropbox, and they are now no longer found in Dropbox so they don't display.


----------



## DubThing (Nov 3, 2017)

brian_ said:


> The photos posted by bwjunkie are links to Dropbox, and they are now no longer found in Dropbox so they don't display.


Thats a shame as I have a liking for a Cortina conversion, turning my back on my air cooled days. Any recommended threads or blogs would be much appreciated.


----------



## Navin R Johnson (11 mo ago)

DubThing said:


> Thats a shame as I have a liking for a Cortina conversion, turning my back on my air cooled days. Any recommended threads or blogs would be much appreciated.


I've got a clean 66 Mk1 Cortina I'm going to use for an EV conversion after I get a couple projects finished. So I'm starting the research process now, which looks like it will be a big task all by itself. So I am also very interested in a Cortina conversion. I'm "lucky" as right now it's really just a shell. The PO was going to make it into a race car with a Fiat 124 drivetrain, but never finished. So it's a straight rust free shell that seems like a perfect candidate.


----------

