Paul Garton Cleveland Powered
Zephyr Mk3
Hi , My
name is Paul Garton & I live right in the centre of the UK. My relationship
with my mk 3 started when my wife, Paula, became pregnant with our first son -
which would have been towards the end of 1992.I was driving a 105E Anglia
estate at the time (the last in a long line of 105Es to have graced my
driveway) , & she said "you will have to get a 4 door now".
I don’t think the Zephyr was quite what she had in mind !
The chap I bought it from told me that it had
half a million miles on the clock & that the original owner had taken it
all over Europe in the late `60s , eventually straying up as far as Moscow
& spending 10 days in a Russian jail with the car impounded. This would
have been during the cold war of course. There is no documented evidence of any
of this of course but another previous owner, which turned up on the doorstep
one day, told me a similar tale - so you never know.
He also told me that the original owner had been an
engineer. I do have some proof of this- after having a lot of trouble fitting a
rear wheel bearing I discovered that it had been modified to take a metric
bearing!
I ran the old girl as a daily for quite a while ,
doing between 50 & 100 miles a day depending on where I was working. Took
it to Holland for a family holiday to visit friends, those Dutch roads are very
narrow Eventually the head gasket went, so I fixed it. Then the clutch started
to slip, and then the head gasket went again. Fixed the gasket & it went
again just as the clutch finally expired. Time for a serious rethink.
It just happened that a guy that lives about a mile
from me was selling a `76 Aussie Fairmont with Cleveland & C4 for the
princely sum of £300.The body was shot but the motor & box where fine so it
seemed silly not to.
We pulled the engine & trans from
the Fairmont over a weekend, along with the electric windows, lights &
anything else that might come in handy on future projects. We also pulled the
engine & box from the Zeph, sold the o/d box to a guy from Cambridge &
the motor to a hotrodder from Ipswich. The engine ended up in a track nosed
model T hot rod that was featured on the front cover of Custom Car magazine.
I was in a hurry to get the car back on the
road so I didn’t touch the engine & trans. I removed the blower motor from
the engine bay of the Zephyr & cut away some of the steelwork behind the
grille to get more airflow through the rad. This proved to be a mistake as I
have had trouble getting it up to temperature, in fact I once drove it 150
miles with all the family & a trailer full of camping gear & forgot to
turn the electric fan on. It only boiled as I was cruising the campsite trying
to find my friends.
I basically dangled the engine in the engine bay so
that it cleared everything then made mounts to suit. This meant that it sat at
an angle to clear the servo & steering box. To mount the trans I cut a
piece out of the front of the Zephyr cross member, redrilled it to take the C4
then moved it forward about 3" by redrilling the chassis. Cutting the
Zephyr & Fairmont units in 2 & welding the appropriate bits back
together made the prop shaft. The exhaust was made from 2" pipe &
flexi & a couple of straight through silencers & the air filter was binned,
as I couldn’t shut the bonnet with it on.
That was the first
installation. Not pretty but practical & functional & quick. Unfortunately this was before
digital cameras so I have no photos I can post here. I drove it like that for
about 3 years until I decided to do it properly, or at least better.
Thats it for now (my fingers hurt) I will do the
current installation next time.
Cheers for now
Paul (G)
Cleveland Powered Zephyr Mk3
Part 2 Straightening the engine
up
I
drove the car as I had originally built it for about 3 years. That was with the
engine in at an angle to clear the servo & steering box & all the
factory stock "workhorse" parts still in place. Partly due to the
fact that I wasn’t entirely happy with the set up & partly because my mates
where taking the Mickey, I decided to take the car off the road over the winter
& straighten the engine up. These "over the winter" jobs have a
habit of turning into lengthy sagas.
First
job, obviously, was to alter the steering set up & move the servo to allow
me to pull the engine into line .As I wanted to build a sleeper, I wanted to
keep the original steering column & wheel .So I cut the steering box off
the end with an angle grinder. No going back now then .As it happens one of the
mounting lugs had snapped off the box so it was scrap anyway.
I
had been told that the Capri front end would be a bolt in swap, giving me a
rack & pinion steering & newer components, solving my steering
clearance problems & making parts easier to come by .So I set off for the
local scrappy & selected a likely looking victim. Having undone all but one
bolt (not an easy task as the scrap yard has a policy of removing the road
wheels before dumping them in the yard, making it difficult to get a jack
under), I realised that the rack was in front of the cross member. Right where
my sump was. With hind sight it would have been better to cut the sump around,
but having had trouble stopping re welded sumps from leaking, I decided to do
it the hard way.
I
am a draughtsman by trade so the obvious thing to do (at least to my way of
thinking) was to measure up the Capri Geometry & replicate it on the
Zephyr. My original Idea was to use Capri bottom arms & the original struts
then find a rack of the right width the goes behind the axle (thus preventing
comedy steering). Plan fell at the first hurdle as The tapers on the Capri ball
joints are smaller than the Zephyr ones, although I made some tapered sleeves
from 1mm steel plate I wasn’t happy with it & resorted to the obvious
alternative .I had the Zephyr arms shortened to the same length as the Capri
Items. This also meant I could retain the Zephyr anti roll bar & use all
Zephyr poly bushes from Superflex.
In
order to use the Capri geometry, & to give me something to sit the engine
on, I designed a new cross member that bolted onto the existing holes in the
chassis & picked up the bottom arms.
Another
trip to the scrappy, armed with a tape measure, netted me an XR3i rack which I
had to fitted to the rear of the new cross member (you can just make out the
brackets in the photo).I had to rotate the rack backwards & shorten the
spline to get it to mate up with the column via an Escort knuckle joint welded
to the end of the Zephyr steering column inner. I also had to realign the
column to get it all to work so it now sits further from the dash but with the
wheel closer to the screen. Go figure.
Of
course this now meant that the horn ring was useless as the wiring for the horn
used to pass through the steering column & box. This gave me something to
think about for a while, as a horn is a legal requirement in the UK. This
problem sort of resolved itself as I wanted to keep the (now redundant) clutch
pedal to keep the origional look .So a foot horn was rigged up, using the
clutch pedal & a motorbike brake light switch. We have some fun with that
:O).
Next
job was to couple the column change to the transmission, works fine you just
need to count the clicks to know what gear you are in as there is no indicator.
With
the steering sorted out I could now turn my attention to the brakes. The
callipers where overhauled & new hoses & linings fitted all round. That
just left me with the problem of what to do about the servo. Some time during
the build of the Zephyr I had fitted a Fiat twin cam motor into a 105E Anglia
estate, as is my policy I had kept any bits of the donor car that might come in
useful at a later date. These bits included a servo unit that was designed to
fit back to front , i.e. with the master cylinder facing backwards. Baskets
were made up to fit the servo under the dashboard and the whole thing plumbed
up (dual servo) with facility to fit a line lock at a later date.
During
the fitting I noticed a 2" hole in the footwell & decided to weld it
up. After cleaning back the rust this "hole" turned out to
incorporate most of the drivers side sill, all the footwell, a great deal of
the bulkhead under the wing & the area where the bonnet hinge sat.
The
passenger side turned out to be not quite so bad but much time was spent
welding & patching. I took the opportunity to put some extra strength in
under the hinges as I had had one come adrift under hard acceleration before.
Not nice.
Now
it steered & stopped I could turn my attention to the "go" .I had
collected a single plane manifold & 600 Holley so they where bolted on.
Having never been happy with the exhaust system I junked the cast headers,
2" steel tube & yards of flexi that kept falling out in favour of
tubular headers .The headers had been designed for a larger, left hand drive ,
car so the right hand side had to be cut about to clear the steering. A job
which involved cutting out 1 tube at a time & welding the bends back
together in a different order to clear everything. This where routed through
the 5" diver mufflers that I already had & out the back, under the
axle, through some 2" polished, stainless, tube that had originally been
part of the hand railing at a London underground station.
A
problem that I had had from the start was the fact that the dizzy had welded
itself into the block, it wasn’t a major problem as the timing was fine &
the engine ran well but it didn’t look very good.3 hours with a lump hammer
& cold chisel saw me with a little pile of ex distributor & a handy (if
a little bent) oil pump primer. A new Mallory dual point was fitted in it’s place
& things where looking much better.
Having
had oil pressure problems under hard acceleration in the past I opted to fit a
high volume oil pump, with hindsight I think it may have been the dented sump
that was the problem but never mind. Whilst I was in there I fitted a windage
tray. It was at this point that I confirmed what I had been suspecting for some
time – namely that the engine was a 302C & not the 351C I had originally
thought it was.
A
friend had bought me an MSD 6AL electronic ignition back from a trip to the
states along with a Lokar flexible trans dipstick so they where fitted so the
where fitted along with some other shiney bits I had collected over the years.
Things where starting to look good under the bonnet.
Around
about this time 2 things happened – firstly I decided that no one noticed a
sleeper & more custom approach was required, & secondly I remembered
that there wasn’t enough room between the carb & the bonnet for an air
filter. The first realisation solved the second problem. I cut a hole in the
bonnet.
I
also had a little accident; I reversed the car out of the garage & caught
the front bumper on the doorpost, bending it through 90 degrees. So I binned it
& fitted a fibreglass valance to tidy up the front end. Sorted.
Wheels
are always a difficult choice & can make or ruin the look of a car. This
hadn’t been a problem when I was going to use steel rims but now came into
sharp focus. I eventually went for Cragar S/S 5 spokes for that 60`s look. I
think it works well. Front are 6x15 s & fitted a treat .The back end was a
little more difficult, the 8x15s fitted fairly well but clearance where the
inner arch meets the outer was tight. To give more clearance I cut the inner
arches in the boot along the outer edge of the horizontal portion & welded
in rolled flat plate to fill in the gap between the cut & the outer wing
(or fender if you prefer). I ran a bead of silicon sealer along the edge as I
didn’t want to burn the paint off the outside, the respray was intended for the
following winter & I wanted it to be presentable for the show season.
Fibreglass
front wings where fitted as it was quicker & easier than repairing the
steel ones & the paintwork cut back to give it a bit of a shine. Then I
turned my attention to the interior. I wasn’t going to spend too much as I knew
the screen leaked because the rubber was perished & I plan to sort that out
when I do the respray. A roll end from a local carpet warehouse sorted out the
flooring & a new set of seats where fitted (cos I set fire to the old ones
with the welder). The door card had suffered from the damp & looked very
sad, so I used them as templates & cut new ones from hard board. These
where covered in sticky backed plastic & screwed to the doors with
self-tappers.
Metalflake
wheel was from Moon, as where the dice shifter knob & door lock buttons.
Anybody
familiar with the handbrake set up on a mk3 will know that it doesn’t lend itself
to the insertion of large amounts of cast iron into the engine bay. Something
needed to be done. My original solution involved shortening the original hockey
stick lever & remounting the pulley on the inside of the bulkhead, still
trying to keep the original look, I soon abandoned that idea as impractical.
So I went back to my spares shed & found the
handbrake lever that was liberated from the aforementioned Fiat. A hole was cut
into the floor & the lever mounted at the side of the trans tunnel. The old
cable was seized solid so I took a trip to the local car spares shop, who I
knew quite well (!).They had a box full of unidentified handbrake cables that
they couldn’t sell & let me have a rummage. I selected half a dozen useful
looking cables & was pleasantly surprised to find they didn’t want anything
for them. Result.
Having found one that would fit it was a case of
coupling it to the lever with a fencing wire strainer (giving me adjustability)
& a couple of small D links from a local boat yard. As the car is an auto I
only use the handbrake once a year when it is tested but it seems to work,
it is just in the way a little but I tend to drive with my left foot on the
trans tunnel so it’s not a real problem.
Last
step was to go for an MOT (roadworthiness test in the UK) which it only failed
because the brackets holding the rack in place where moving when you turned the
wheel. Once I had welded some more plate in we where all legal & ready to
hit the shows.
Had
a few teething problems, the master cylinder sprung a leak within a week so
that was replaced with a new one. The forward band in the trans went whilst
drag racing so the trans was swapped & the old one will be rebuilt with
some race hardware inside. Had a wheel-bearing break up whilst cruising the
motorway (which was…interesting) due to over tightening, all sorted now.
Had
a full season with it now & , apart from the above , it has been pretty
good. Returning around 23MPG on a run & running a best of 16.83/80 MPH at
the drags (room for improvement there I think).I now have a list of things to
sort out over the winter – the steering is not very good . The XR3 rack is too
narrow & too low, causing bump steer. So I need to move the starter motor
to the left hand side & fit a wider rack, although fitting a left hand
drive Capri steering rack upside down might solve the problem. All the
suspension needs overhauling; I plan to fit new springs & adjustable shocks
on the rear. Also looking for a 351 crank & rods to liven the motor up.
That’s
all for now, I will update in the spring when I have done all the
modifications.
Ps Paul Gartons Cleveland Powered
MK3 Part3
Here
is the latest up date on Paul’s car. At the moment he has reset the rear
pinion angle at the leaf spring pads as well as having the leafs
themselves renewed.
Spax
adjustable shocks have been installed with a short Panhard bar to help
locate the diff. Paul has also added a 3/8 fuel pick up with an extra
connection for Nitrous if used in the future. Plans are under way for the front
of the car next.