1983 Ford Taunus GT

2_3 wrote:

What a cool car. I'm seeing a lot of Aston Martin in the roofline and rear of the car. I'm mad at Ford for not selling those here!

2_3 wrote: lots of fiats,

Once there were 2 FIATS

Remind me when to count chickens

I also like the look of the Taunus.

coexist wrote:

2_3 wrote: lots of fiats,

Once there were 2 FIATS Remind me when to count chickens I also like the look of the Taunus.

Here is an interesting mostly fiat race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZYHy0bjs4s

When I bought the car it had been running only on CNG for a while. The first thing I did was taking the gas tank out. It had around 15 liters of red and slightly sticky gas that smelled like wood varnish. Tried to clean the tank with some gas, bolts and shaking but the red slime was hard to get off the inside. There were 4 or 5 friends there and one lost all the hairs in his arm to fire. We decided to cut a square with an angle grinder, clean the inside with a wire brush and weld again. My father was afraid we were about to die in an explosion and decided to pitch some money for a new tank.

I was near the front for some reason and one of my friends smelled a CNG leak. There was a lose fitting in the CNG tubes and, while trying to fix it, i shorted two terminals with a wrench and produced a spark. After that, we closed the valve in the trunk and decided to make it run on gas ASAP. I will try to avoid using CNG until a professional shop sees it, I don't want the car to explode while I'm working on it.

In the meanwhile, two friends where trying to remove the driver's seat as it was broken and would recline too far. They got two bolts off but the exhaust was in the way for accessing the other two. We lost a lot of time trying to avoid taking the exhaust off but decided to do it because we knew there was a leak in it. Before the rear axle it was completely rusted out:

The two parts were held together by two zip ties, a piece of rubber and a metal sheet. I took this as an opportunity and decided to cut the pipe behind the only silencer (well, I think it's a silencer), about where the doors end.

Here you can see the two parts before cutting and the old tank:

Almost the end result, it's not properly fixed yet:

This car came with a 34-34 progressive solex. I had a similar one, but simultaneous, in a sand car that is disassembled, and wanted to use it. Eventually, it will be replaced by a megasquirt

Here is the 1300cc fiat 128 engine from the sand car:

Carpo seats and a broken and disassembled 128 5-speed gearbox. I think that thing in the bottom right is a mercedes-benz bus steering box:

I tried one of those seats in the taunus, but it was unconfortable and doesn't recline.

Here is the old carburator, the interior had lots of slime. It has some weird round thing which was connected to the water. Anyone knows what this is?

The simultaneous is in:

The carburator was connected directly to a gas can. We started the car and it ran way better than before.

That day we worked from 3pm to 3am. Then I went to sit inside the car for a while and decided to clean all the wood interior.

Nice looking car ... We (NZ) had the Cortina which was a 4 door sedan version of what you have but I've never seen or heard of a coupe / fastback version. The front pictures of yours look like our Mk 5, the red one is similar to a Mk 3. We had variants of the Pinto in all of ours although there was a 2.3l version of the Cologne V6. South Africa got the 3l Essex V6 and the Aussies shoehorned a 250ci Falcon into theirs for the world's heaviest arrow.

For go faster purposes any of the Pinto / Lima stuff or for something more interesting maybe one of the later Cologne V6 variants, the rest of the world topped out at a 150hp 2.9 but I believe there were US versions at 3.6? and 4l which were in Rangers and Exploders. ( I sourced many of the engine parts for my XR4x4 Sierra via Rock Auto )

Spinout007 wrote: HA... Looking at maps, there are major roads between FL and argentina. Passport, pile of cash, spare gas cans and MRE's. Just no unnecessary stops.

That would definitely be the epic fly-and-drive to end all fly-and-drives. I'd give it a 50% chance of making it and that has nothing to do with the car.

Ian F wrote:

Spinout007 wrote: HA... Looking at maps, there are major roads between FL and argentina. Passport, pile of cash, spare gas cans and MRE's. Just no unnecessary stops.

That would definitely be the epic fly-and-drive to end all fly-and-drives. I'd give it a 50% chance of making it and that has nothing to do with the car.

Behold! Our study guide

Yes, "our" because I want one too!

er... want "one" as in the car. I already own the book...

2_3 said: Here is the old carburator, the interior had lots of slime. It has some weird round thing which was connected to the water. Anyone knows what this is?

I could be wrong, but I believe that's an aqua-choke. It operates the under the same principals as any other thermally actuated choke, but uses the coolant temperature instead of electricity, etc.

RichardNZ wrote: Nice looking car ... We (NZ) had the Cortina which was a 4 door sedan version of what you have but I've never seen or heard of a coupe / fastback version. The front pictures of yours look like our Mk 5, the red one is similar to a Mk 3. We had variants of the Pinto in all of ours although there was a 2.3l version of the Cologne V6. South Africa got the 3l Essex V6 and the Aussies shoehorned a 250ci Falcon into theirs for the world's heaviest arrow. For go faster purposes any of the Pinto / Lima stuff or for something more interesting maybe one of the later Cologne V6 variants, the rest of the world topped out at a 150hp 2.9 but I believe there were US versions at 3.6? and 4l which were in Rangers and Exploders. ( I sourced many of the engine parts for my XR4x4 Sierra via Rock Auto )

I'm keeping the lima. Parts for v6 and v8 engines are costly and hard to find. There was even a cheaper belgian v6 sedan available, for but it would be really hard to go fast with it here.

I may import parts from esslinger or some other place, maybe.

Hungary Bill wrote:

2_3 said: Here is the old carburator, the interior had lots of slime. It has some weird round thing which was connected to the water. Anyone knows what this is?

I could be wrong, but I believe that's an aqua-choke. It operates the under the same principals as any other thermally actuated choke, but uses the coolant temperature instead of electricity, etc.

Well, that's weird, the choke axle is missing from the carburator because the cng hose is plugged between the air filter and the carb.

If anyone is crazy enough to come here and get a taunus, you can start here: http://autos.mercadolibre.com.ar/ford/taunus/_OrderId_PRICE*DESC https://www.arcar.org/autosantiguos.aspx https://www.olx.com.ar/nf/autos-cat-378/taunus/-sort_pricedesc

Exchange rate is around 15,50-1

Ian F wrote:

Spinout007 wrote: HA... Looking at maps, there are major roads between FL and argentina. Passport, pile of cash, spare gas cans and MRE's. Just no unnecessary stops.

That would definitely be the epic fly-and-drive to end all fly-and-drives. I'd give it a 50% chance of making it and that has nothing to do with the car.

I've got a few Columbian friends I would ask to co-pilot that run. My Spanish is so-so at best.

Edit... I'm not rich enough to devote that kind of cash to a vehicle that has absolutely no support network stateside. Engine is easy. But every other part is going to have be overnighted from Argentina if something breaks

If you want to stay with the Lima, and it's by no means a bad choice, "serious" horsepower is most easily obtained with a turbo... Since you already have a CNG installation why not build off that - CNG is around 145 octane although calorific value is lower than petrol but it will tolerate monstrous levels of boost!

I helped a friend build an Escort 1600 when CNG was the rage here and we had a stock motor with the turbo set up to blow through the carb. With a carefully constructed Venturi mixer under the carb for CNG and utilising two wastegates he was getting 100 flywheel bhp on petrol at 1lb of boost and 200 odd on gas at 20lb. The wastegates were controlled by the CNG switching and by limiting petrol boost so low there were none of the usual "blow through carb" issues.

I did a bit of checking on CNG carburetors, from memories of my younger days confirmed by Internet searching, and the housing on side allows coolant to heat the CNG. The engine is started on petrol and when the coolant is warm enough a solenoid switches the fuel source from petrol to CNG.

In Canada we also got the Cortina similar to the Taunus two and four door sedan. Mine was a 71 or 72 with 2.0 ohc Pinto/nelson.

That thing looks awesome. I think some old enkei mesh 13s or 14s would look perfect on it.

Cool ride! I more or less grew up in Taunuses, I think my parents went through 4-5 of them and I have had a couple as well. Mostly station wagons, I really like their look:

I convinced a friend of the family to get an early Coupe GXL once, it had the 2.0 V6 and the coolest interior of any euro Ford:

As for the drive train/suspension, think of it as a Mustang II front suspension and Fox body Mustang rear suspension. Only worse. It has silly amounts of scrub radius and axle bind. So bad, it was partly redesigned in Austraila.

But they are nice cars. In Europe, the coupé was discontinued at the 1976 facelift (that actually was almost an entirely new body) so the Argentinian late model coupés have always been very cool to me, even though I do think the early ones have more flow in their lines.

Another friend of mine has built a rather cool one too:

The platform was actually built in Turkey until the early 1990's, the Taunus GTS;

Enough spamming for now, let's see more of your nice car :-)

Gustaf

RichardNZ wrote: If you want to stay with the Lima, and it's by no means a bad choice, "serious" horsepower is most easily obtained with a turbo... Since you already have a CNG installation why not build off that - CNG is around 145 octane although calorific value is lower than petrol but it will tolerate monstrous levels of boost! I helped a friend build an Escort 1600 when CNG was the rage here and we had a stock motor with the turbo set up to blow through the carb. With a carefully constructed Venturi mixer under the carb for CNG and utilising two wastegates he was getting 100 flywheel bhp on petrol at 1lb of boost and 200 odd on gas at 20lb. The wastegates were controlled by the CNG switching and by limiting petrol boost so low there were none of the usual "blow through carb" issues.

My friend who will be doing the efi part told me the same about the CNG octane rating, but i'm not a good mechanic and afraid of exploding

Rons wrote: I did a bit of checking on CNG carburetors, from memories of my younger days confirmed by Internet searching, and the housing on side allows coolant to heat the CNG. The engine is started on petrol and when the coolant is warm enough a solenoid switches the fuel source from petrol to CNG.

Thanks. I may have to put it back later

So, this past weekend I was able to use the car a bit. It's so rich that a guy asked me if it has an aftermarket cam. I can't even use the full range of rpm, as it starts to lose power near the top end

The distributor cap is too big and the timing is retarded. Starting the car is really fast though.

Yesterday I got into some water and the car stopped. I waited over an hour until a friend helped me fix the issue. The capacitor inside the distributor broke but the previous owner had left another one in the glove box.

There is a huge water leak, looks like I forgot to connect a hose or maybe there is a broken gasket. I will remove the intake to have a better view, get the radiator cleaned and checked for leaks, replace the water hoses, install a thermostat and try to fix the heater. I will probably do some work on the intake manifold too.

I'm amazed by how much attention the car draws. The first time I was getting it out of the garage a passing guy revved his engine. The second time, a guy who was waiting for her daughter started talking to me and she got kinda angry because he ignored her

This thread is 4 days of work behind real life, I will try to catch up this week. There are a few videos too.

RichardNZ wrote: Nice looking car ... We (NZ) had the Cortina which was a 4 door sedan version of what you have but I've never seen or heard of a coupe / fastback version. The front pictures of yours look like our Mk 5, the red one is similar to a Mk 3.

I googled some pictures. We never got the station wagon, the convertible or the 2 door sedan, which looks really good:

The day after starting the car with fuel from a can I took the exhaust out again and then removed the driver seat, which had lots of cracks and a some rust. I also took the fuel pump out and cleaned the insides. It needed a replacement of valves and the rubber part which separates the fuel from the oil.

I didn't work on the car until the next weekend but bought a gas tank, a fuel level sensor, spark plugs, spark plug wires and a fuel pump rebuild kit

Found out the fuel tank cap is too small, I need a new one.

Next saturday I disassembled the bottom part of the seat, cleaned it with an angle grinder wire brush, welded and painted. I ran out of argon while welding and continued with a stick electrode. I noticed I should have used the stick electrodes for filling gaps and tig for cracks. For painting, I thought I didn't have a brush and used a piece of sponge. It doesn't matter because nobody will be looking down there.

Took 4 hex screws from each side to separate the seat in two:

"IND ARG"

This crack went all the way around the piece, I was able to make a gap of a few cm just with my hands. Also, somebody did an horrible job at fixing this before me.

After:

Neither the paint nor the welds are as good as I expected, but at least now I rest my back on the seat. I'm surprised with how easy was to assemble and disassemble the seat, I expected a lot more work.

I got one old valve out of the fuel pump, but failed to extract the other one and broke the pump body (do you call it like that? maybe case?). Also, I couldn't insert the replacement valve, I think I got the wrong one.

On sunday I went to san andres de giles, where there is a dirt oval, to watch a midget race. This doesn't attract huge crowds and most people doesn't even know it exists, but I love it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx2NzpMEKe4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_BfbJIgbbY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDQbaVE3XNI

For those who want to see crashes, here is one of the worsts I've seen.

When I got home I reassembled the seat.

Monday was a holiday. I bought a new fuel pump, which is not compatible with al the parts I have but is the only one I could get. Also got more rubber hose for the fuel and a flexible plastic hose which I'm not too confortable using but works. I'm thinking about using copper tubing used in brake lines for the fuel, what do you think?

I blocked the return line both in the carburator and in the tank, at least for now. Got both the fuel pump and the tank into the car and secured the hose with lots of zip ties.

I also changed the spark plugs and cables, because the last time I tried to touch the distributor, I got an electric shock. Where may this oil in the thread come from? a friend said the previous owner could have used it to lubricate when installing the plug, but I want to be sure.

Old vs new:

I'm super excited about your project my dear friend. After a lot of time of looking for a car, messing around, wasting time chatting around with people, finally you got it! (-:

Found two Megasquirts, IIRC both are PCB 3.0/MS1 processor. I'll take a look at them this week to get them ready for the 2.3

PS: get rid of the mechanical fuel pump. Just buy a Mercedes/Peugeot EFI fuel pump and a carb fuel pressure regulator. Set it to ~10-12 psi and you'll be fine.

Cool project!

The metal brake line that looks like copper is a nickel /copper alloy. Should be OK for fuel line. I wouldn't use plain copper for fuel (or brake) line, as it can work harden with movement and fracture.

AFIP wrote: PS: get rid of the mechanical fuel pump. Just buy a Mercedes/Peugeot EFI fuel pump and a carb fuel pressure regulator. Set it to ~10-12 psi and you'll be fine.

The current pump is new, so I will wait until it breaks or until the electric one is needed for the efi

The part of the carburetor connected to the water circuit is an automatic choke thing. I'ts not going back into the car

I bought more parts today, including the correct distributor cap. Also got gaskets for both sides of the intake manifold, now I can remove the manifold to get a better view of the water leak. I may do some work to the inside of the manifold and the carb while everything is out from the car.

I asked for a fuel tank cap, but they had one which requiered the key to close.

I'm asking around for custom shocks and springs.

2_3 wrote: So, this past weekend I was able to use the car a bit. It's so rich that a guy asked me if it has an aftermarket cam. I can't even use the full range of rpm, as it starts to lose power near the top end The distributor cap is too big and the timing is retarded. Starting the car is really fast though. Yesterday I got into some water and the car stopped. I waited over an hour until a friend helped me fix the issue. The capacitor inside the distributor broke but the previous owner had left another one in the glove box. There is a huge water leak, looks like I forgot to connect a hose or maybe there is a broken gasket. I will remove the intake to have a better view, get the radiator cleaned and checked for leaks, replace the water hoses, install a thermostat and try to fix the heater. I will probably do some work on the intake manifold too. I'm amazed by how much attention the car draws. The first time I was getting it out of the garage a passing guy revved his engine. The second time, a guy who was waiting for her daughter started talking to me and she got kinda angry because he ignored her This thread is 4 days of work behind real life, I will try to catch up this week. There are a few videos too.

That day started with the driver's seat siting outside the car and the exhaust hanging loose from the manifold

The nuts and bolts from the seat were rusted and I may have lost a few. Before starting, I bought 4 new bolts, lock nuts and washers. The seat had a bolt welded to the base which I cut with an angle grinder before making a new hole.

Currently the seat only has 3 bolts, as the other one is longer and the thread doesn't match with the nuts I bought.

The exhaust was hanging from the manifold, as the other supports were near the back and got cut off. I made an ugly and oversized bracket with a piece of metal I had laying around. Made a hole to attach the part to one of the seat bolts and then bent the piece with a vise and a hammer. I welded one side to the exhaust under the car and then finished in the vise. I was having a hard time starting the arc and my dad told me to invert the cables, thinking I had connected them in the wrong way. When I tried to put the exhaust back in the car, the hole in the bracket was like 3mm off from the bolt. I tried to fix it with the hammer and broke all the welds I made after inverting the cables. In the end I got tired and just got a bolt through the exhaust

I will try to rotate the exhaust because it currently grinds against the speed bumps. Anyway, I think this exhaust is too loud to pass the mandatory annual inspection, so this is all temporary.

After that, I took the car to the park and my friend took a few pictures:

The next week I bought some parts: distributor cap, capacitor, points, thermostat, cut off key and intake gasket. I also got the carburetor gasket and spacer for the fiat.

Edit: here is a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgs7nv9zLgo

That's such a good looking, sharp little car.

Oh, a 2.3? Find a wrecked Focus RS and transplant the 350hp Ecoboost?

I kid, that's actually a very cool car you have there.

I think the only ecoboosts here are 1.0 and 2.0. Also, they probably cost more than my whole car

I've found two nice taunus on facebook. The v8 is a 292 Y block from an f100 or fairlane.

Also, some ads from the 80's:

Cool project; thanks for sharing! Should be interesting to follow along! As with many others, I like the style of this car.

For future reference, I've had good luck using denatured alcohol to clean up gasoline varnish and gasoline jelly. We can get it here in the hardware store, or at a camping/outdoor store as stove fuel. Drain any liquid gas, add the alcohol (plus some screws if needed) and shake it up. It dissolves the old gummed-up gas, and if a little is left in the tank, it will burn OK with fresh gas...kind of like ethanolated gas.

This saturday I started fixing the water leak. I wanted to take out the radiator, the heater core, the water pump, the intake manifold and all the hoses.

First I took out the radiator and the shroud. As I was not going to do that again in a few months, I also removed the AC radiator. To get to it, I had to remove the grill.

If I remove the AC, I have space for an intercooler or a front mounted electric fan. I still have space for the fan where the current one is and space for a smaller intercooler under the AC condenser and I want to have AC for the summer, meaning it will stay there for a long time.

Some bolts were attached only to the radiator and nothing else. Also, all the bolts had around 3 nuts and a few washers.

Taking the condenser out was kind of hard because there were two U shaped brackets holding it from the bottom which didn't allow to incline the condenser, which is needed to remove the hoses.

After taking out the grill I found lots of disconnected cables. See the green one in the last picture? it was connected to the positive battery terminal and it was there without tape or anything, just like in the picture

Next weekend my father will help me tracing all the wires and fixing anything wrong we may find.

The fog lights were disconnected. We connected them directly to the battery and one worked but the other didn't. I will take it out soon.

I removed the alternator and power steering belts to take them out of the middle and also to buy replacements. I cut the AC belt the first day working on the car and I'm not replacing it until summer.

Then, I thought the timing belt cover was hiding a water pump bolt, but I was wrong. Doesn't matter, as I will replace the belt and the tensioner. I've only had two water pumps in my hands: this one and another from the fiat. The fiat pump was bigger and way lighter, maybe an external water pump or an internal one with an aluminum case could be options for extreme weight reduction. The thermostat housing also weights a lot.

I took out the fan and it looks ok. The same for the heather core as water ran through it was clean, water left inside was still there the next day and I wasn't able to blow into one connection while blocking the other.

I tried the new distributor cap but it also moves. I will try bending the clips to make them apply more pressure.

Today I was buying belts when the guy selling them asked if I wanted oil seals. I asked around and some guys told me it's a good idea to change them now, just to avoid taking everything out again. I will google how to change them and probably do it. I need to buy the timing belt, the tensioner and the oil seals. I was told these will be here this week, but I can go to another store if needed. I also need to buy new hoses, but I will be taking the old ones with me to avoid getting the wrong ones.

I asked my dad to take the radiators to get checked for leaks and cleaned.

I decided that the car isn't gonna run on CNG again. I'm afraid of a bad installation after what I saw with the cables, I'm also afraid of doing something wrong myself and exploding, I know there is a leak, all the parts in the engine compartment make working on the car more difficult and the tank weights a lot.

Finally, this post is now up to date with current events and I will be able to share stuff right when it happens.

Edit:

Two videos from this sunday for those wanting to see argentinian races: turismo internacional in la plata and turismo carretera in la pedrera

Edit 2: the best race I ever saw with my own eyes. It was a TC bonaerense, A class, from 2014 and with guest drivers.