Jump to content

Leaderboard

Popular Content

Showing content with the highest reputation on 06/08/19 in all areas

  1. Because I'm such a hardcore Friday night raver I'm here doing an update on an old car whilst my cat sleeps in front of the fire. Rock on. This little Imp...its great fun!!!! I have not really clocked up many miles yet, as you'll find out why soon, but those miles that have been driven have been fun. Its taken a little while to get used to the balance, steering feel, brakes and sheer grip that exists. Still not fully confident at flinging it about but getting there. Its a giggle. I'm just weary of the slippery wet corners that are about now we are into winter here. The little Datsun engine is a gem! Its still not quite perfect at idle and just off idle but once rolling its great. I can really see why the Datsun 1200 cars have such a following- they are about the same weight as an Imp with similar gearing and were well known for being peppy little performers. The engine sounds pretty cool when trashed. I have since found out that this is indeed a completely stock unit and it was a different engine that the previous owner, Rob, had fitted with a supercharger. Anyway- onto fettling. There are always a few things to sort on a fresh build. First off was to sort out the dodgy running carb. In my previous update I thought I had found the problem with the accelerator pump boot being split. Turns out that wasn't the problem... I managed to locate a couple of A12 carbs from a local fella for beer money. One was a complete standard 1200 carb with stock sized jets etc. I took my fitted carb apart and soon discovered that not only were all the jets completely wrong, way too big and pretty butchered as well they were also housed in the wrong carb for my engine! The carb I had fitted was off an A15 which has larger throats and venturis. Great for a slightly hotted up motor but not what I'm after right now. The leaning out issue was because someone had fitted a air bleed that was way too big for the primary jet, among the many wrong other jets. So I rummaged through both carbs, got the best bits from both and assembled a nice new carb that was stock and set to factory specs. I had a page covered in jet numbers and felt happy in the knowledge that I can now possibly join the elite group of carb Barries forever chasing the perfect tune (when the know full well that injection is just soooooooo much better in every way! ) A photo of some carbs in pieces.... So with the Imp now fitted with the right carb I took it for a spin. Because the work shop is now clogged up with the start of a tiny house build I had to drive it out from the back of the workshop and up the grass drive to the cabin. I thought it best to get some photos of it next to the other Imps... I did a few test drives and I had to remove the carb a few times to dial in the float height, getting pretty quick at that process I must say. The difference is huge. Much better all round except for a hesitancy just off throttle. I'll continue to tweak things and see if I can improve it but I am starting to wonder if the vacuum unit I got from another car for my electronic dizzy has too stiff a spring. I think it might not be advancing the ignition enough under light throttle loads as it should. Ill get back on that. Next issue was a funny one. Some of you will have seen it already. Not funny for the amount of pissing about I had to do to fix it but funny in what I found. A work of art really. Rob has to be proud of his handy work at creating such a masterful bit of Barry engineering! The story goes like this.. After getting back from a quick drive checking the carb was OK I noticed a horrible vibration in the engine. I popped the lid to discover a very out of balance main pulley. Bugger. I knew it was a hybrid pulley made up of what I think is Toyota pulley on the Datsun hub but I had never looked further into it because it just worked. But not any more. I removed the pulley to discover this on the back... Hmmmmm. Lovely welding. Purposeful. I'll have to grind that lot off and make a new hub. I'll start by removing those two screws.... Eh?!!! its not weld. Its magic fake weld thats been machined into a flange(like)thing. Its wonderful! Just look at this art ... The Datsun hub had a crack running through down the keyway too. I had no choice but make a new hub to suit. First off I cleaned up the pulley and had its running perfectly true... Then I popped to my local steel supplier and get a big lump of steel bar from which I machined a new hub, with a centre locator to tightly locate pulley central. In photos.. Then the internal keyway. When I was working as a (young) fitter turner back in the 90s I would use either a broaching machine or a shaper, depending on the size of the key way. I have none of those tools. I did contemplate milling it from each side with a end mill and filing it out square but that would take ages on this fairly hard 1040 steel. So I made my own internal shaper bar to use in the lathe and just scraped out the keyway using the carrige. I bought a lump of 20mm bar at the same time as I got the round and cobbled together a tool holder from it. This will now be handy for future jobs I'm sure... and in action (well about as actioney as a photo of a non moving lathe tool can be...) Resulting in a nice neat keyway.. Which fits nicely right here. Beefier then the original Datsun offering too Hub drilled and next to pulley.. And altogether now, in a uniform coat of black paint... Much better. In order to tighten the main bolt, of which I had to buy a new slightly longer one to allow for the beefier hub, I had to make a tool to hold the pulley. I had tried tightening it up with the car in gear, on the ground, with the handbrake on but I didnt like the feel of trying to put the 110 lbft through the transmission like that. so yeah- tool time. Now I have another random tool to got in my wooden box of other random tools specific to only one thing... Doing its random tool thing... So I had a working Imp again that was not going to rattle apart. Best thing I do is to take it for a drive. I took it to town where we met Sam and is son Chris, who jumped at the chance to go for a ride with his Dad in the little blue car. Here they are returning... While in the shop buying stuff a Honda city turned up and parked (badly) next to the Imp. What I always think of as tiny cars looked huge next to the Imp... We went to the steel merchant for some more steel bits for another project. The rear opening window is handy for shopping. Note the lovely old land cruiser... While in town I rang Rob, the previous owner of the original race car shell that donated all the running gear for this restoration. He popped down and met us and had a good look over it. I reminded him of how I'd love the Weber sidedraft manifolds he had left over from his ownership. Well good old Rob actually popped home afterwards, found them in his piles of stuff, tracked us down later on in town and handed over these to me ! ... Wow! awesome. Top bloke. I'll now be able to fabricate a decent inlet setup for injection in the future. Yes!!!! Later on that afternoon we parked next to another small car... This evening Hannah and I took the Imp out for a hoon on our local roads which are just perfectly made for little nippy cars. It was such fun! I love it when the (tiny) little secondary opens up. Its got a lovely induction sound (right behind our ears, even with two thick blankets covering the engine cover..) We went for a nice evening walk and I took a photo of it parked up on the near the beach... Closer... Tune in next time to hear about the stupid mistake I made when buiding a cold airbox setup....
    20 points
  2. So I got the block into the boring bar. It's pretty straight forward boring a block. Doing a cylinder liner is a bit more involved as far as the boring bar is concerned. This block is at 30thou over or .75mm in metric. I have bought 40thou over or 1.mm pistons. It has a bit of wear. But hopefully it's should clean up once it's honed. This picture is of a test cut. So you dial the boring bar head into the bore. If you have a decent amount of wear it pays to slightly offset the bar towards the wear so you clean all going well at the next oversize. So in this picture you can see the boring bar hasn't totally cleaned with this size cut. I have only set the bar at 81.90mm. So I have .1mm or 4thou to hone out to get to our finished size of 82mm. We generally like to leave this amount to hone to achieve good rk rvk this is the depth of hone pattern. I'll go into that a bit more once we get to honing it. Once we've finished honing we normally go to the surface grinder. The top of the block is a little corroded so I'll probably take a few cuts to clean it up. So I've done a light cut to see how it looks You can see it still needs more off it. In this case it's not a issue to take more off the deck. When you are dealing with a late model diesel or performance engines that have been set up with good tight clearances it pays to watch how much your removing as you may have to detop your pistons as they may start getting to close to the head once assembled. Also valve reliefs can also need deepening. But this is more so a issue in extreme cases. This good old xflow should be fine. But i will be checking all this later once i can dumby the engine up
    12 points
  3. 9 points
  4. Where do i start. A while ago my brother started building an mx5 for his girlfriend and ended up with a fairly straight, but de registered rolling body, offered it to me for free and i was keen for a future track car project. I also happen to have a job which involved crashing cars, and thanks to a certain american standard roadside barriers must meet, we crash a lot of Dodge Rams. with plenty of v8 engines kicking around i hatched a plan and proceeded to talk about it for at least a year without actually doing anything about it. then the engine blew up on the corona, so while i wait to save up money to build that engine properly, i thought id make a start on this one, which by all accounts should be nearly free, with the only big ticket items needed being a roll cage, a diff swap and a driveshaft. So last weekend i dragged the mx5 into work, where i have all the tools i need to build a race car. and over the week started the efforts to remove the engine. Now that sounds easy, but boy was this truck fucked up. while the engine faired very well with the only damage being an engine mount ripped out (block still fine) and the starter motor wanged in (i have alot of spares). the chassis was bent at near 90 degrees around the engine, i also didn't really want to remove the trans. i started with a 9" angle grinder and removed as much fucked body and frame as possible. i then undid the remaining mounts and then promptly discovered this engine doesn't have lifting points? strapped it around some dubious strong points and tried to lift it out with the forklift. it rapidly became clear that the turbo fucked chassis was going to make it impossible to get out. so packed up, went back to work and had a think over the next few days. that brings us to today, what i had decided to do was cut the chassis in half just behind the trans and lift the truck off. so out came the 9" grinder again and i began by cutting access to the rails around the fucked body, and then trying to cut the rails with the grinder. sketchy at best. so thought fuck it, step it up a notch eh? though this was actually much safer. Gas axed the rails and out she came!
    6 points
  5. The engine is a nothing flash 4.7l V8. making a reasonably flash for an mx5 310hp and 400 something nm filthy, but not an ugly motor which is nice. i plan to keep the automatic and manualise it. the trans computer should be able to to be programmed to behave like a sequential manual trans and ill make a big gear chopping stick. and the goal for this car is to be as fun as possible for as cheap as possible. it wont be a competitive race car. but it will be a stupid amount of fun
    6 points
  6. Temperature has dropped and work has slowed. Have been deliberating over engine choices for aaaaages, was pretty set on running a M104 (basically a Merc RB/JZ), other alternatives included an M271 (supercharged 4 cylinder thing) or an OG M180. I flip flopped for about 18 months until this popped up on trademe for $1 reserve, it's mine now. So I brought a 54 year old engine that 'ran when parked' 20 years ago sight unseen. It's not an L series Datsun donk but rather a Mercedes M180 which is what these cars originally came with. It doesn't look half bad under the rocker cover but even with the plugs out and a bar on the front pulley it has no enthusiasm to turn over so could be seized, more investigating required..
    6 points
  7. drove it the 15 odd Ks to the compliance center this morning. went perfectly. heater on and the AM radio playing Indian pop music. changes smoothly and drives very nicely. needs a wheel alignment but apart from that its mint. compliance next week. might throw up some issues, i know the brake light switch needs adjusting because its not turning off properly every time and i forgot to connect the hand brake warning light. lets see what happens.
    5 points
  8. Buzzed the engine mounts on.
    3 points
  9. Ore progress on trial fit up, installed glass but not happy with the new rear quarter window rubbers so looking at another supplier. Quarter bumper brackets need so work as well as bumpers don’t sit quite right.
    3 points
  10. I had an error between chassis number in the system and actual chassis number, something like a 1 and 7 mix up, man at the testing station was being a dick about it, but his boss took the papers, walked into the office and came back job done. I have no idea what the actual process is other than it is possible.
    2 points
  11. yea cool so 1 month later and ive managed to get the fuel tank acid dipped and cleaned, put a liner in it and paint it. such progress, much wow. still not complied. 2019-05-28_03-45-30 by sheepers, on Flickr 2019-05-31_08-22-55 by sheepers, on Flickr 2019-05-31_08-23-03 by sheepers, on Flickr
    2 points
  12. 1 point
  13. Yeah. I told him that I had discovered his 'art work'. He was completely unfussed. Had a smile. He's a pretty cool chilled old Barry... and he is actually on this forum and has been following the thread!
    1 point
  14. Wandering pick a part and measuring discs and calipers I decided that Subaru calipers would probably work. Also I had already decided on 26mm X 280mm discs from a peugeot and the Subaru discs were the same diameter and thickness. It was a turbo Impreza of some kind. The chassis number started with "GGA....", but the rego and chassis plate where missing. I think it would be 2001+. I still need to redrill the disc and make a sandwich plate to bolt it to the hub. Unfortunately this hub is scrap because I turned the location diameter for the disc ~0.5mm undersize. My lathe is small and I didn't want to risk misalignment by removing the hub from the chuck to test fit the disc so I just used the vernier caliper to check the size. Thinking about this now, next time I will leave the hub in the chuck, and remove the whole chuck from the lathe to test fit it to the disc. I have three more hubs, so I can only fuck up one more. It looks like it will be straightforward to make the caliper adapter bracket.
    1 point
  15. GN was due a birthday and with me moving house next weekend my shed is pretty much packed up so I hijacked my mates workshop/knowledge today Plan of attack/parts list for the day include - New cam chain - New guides - New drive chain - New sprockets - Oil and filter - Headlight mesh install - New bars - New mirrors (I didn't like them so went back to bar end, as they looked like a bloody praying mantis) - New spark plug It was actually pretty clean inside Yeah so this is what the new bars look like It's much more of an upright riding position, it's cool but I personally prefer the down low vibes Mrs is unsure, so she can ride it for awhile and see if it's just a case of getting used to No more ticking engine, it sounds like a GN should Che
    1 point
  16. Gave this thing a bit of a birthday today. Oil and filter change, new fuel filter, new plugs and also adjusted the timing as it was way out Fitted a 330mm Woodgrain Nardi Steering wheel that I had sitting around too I also had to try and unjam the drivers door lock, as it wouldn’t unlock! Have had to do this twice already since I’ve had it, and I’ve only had it a week lol. It happened the day I got it. I just took the doorcard off, sprayed some wd40 on and she was good to go. That only lasted a few days though, so have had to do it again Anyone else had issues with the door locks?
    1 point
  17. I do the same, I have bought 5 more engines for my car, like I am going to be driving it for another 200 years
    1 point
  18. Or do a quick heli on sand. You'll see how many rippems were given
    1 point
  19. Fuck yeah Indeed. Fuck. Yes. Feels like its been 10 days already, its really only been 2 days. Where is plate? WANT. DRIVE. NOW.
    1 point
  20. Life. She's a busy one. Anyway onto smoothing the mold. Once the initial foam shape has been rough sanded with a 180 grit sand paper it then gets hit with body filler to create a smooth surface. This take a wee while to get it perfectly smooth and find the right shape that suits the curves of the body. The Mold must be 5mm smaller than the hole to accommodate for the polycarbonate. Next stage will be the molding process. The wooden template will be used to press over the polycarbonate.
    1 point
  21. An exciting update this time! My wagon was featured in this months NZ Performance Car Magazine (Issue 271). Definitely one ticked off the bucket list, I never thought I would have one of my cars featured in a magazine, so this is super exciting. It's a really great 7 page article, it's out in stores now so pick up a copy if you get a chance, well worth the read Back to upgrades on the wagon. Finally got my custom carpets installed. I brought a standard set of Avenger carpets from Autodec, then got them modified and installed by Supertrim. It makes it look so much more finished now The rear carpets didn't need to be modified, I only needed to customise the front for the bigger transmission tunnel Also got carpets for the boot, and brought a bit extra to do the back of the rear seat Got some New Old Stock tail lights from Ebay UK. The shipping was more than the lenses themselves! Ouch! Also got some NOS clusters also New tail lights installed. Looks really nice Now that winter is coming™ I wanted to figure out a way to still be able to show my engine bay at car shows but also keep rain out of the trumpets. I took one of my trumpets off and went down to the local hardware store to find a sink plug that fits the trumpets. They are 50mm trumpets which is a common size so I had a good selection of plugs, so I could find one that I liked. I brought a little "Remove before flight" tag so I can just pull the chain and take them all off in one go, and also it will remind me to take them off before I start the engine, not that the engine would start with them in place. What do you guys think of the plugs? I might tighten up the chain, and also change the hoops on top of the plugs for something a bit smaller, like a little keyring. Discuss
    1 point
  22. Bit more rust work done... never exciting really. But, I decided to sort my mirrors out whilst the rust work was being done. The mirrors were from @WLDRX2 and with a bit of cutting and welding. Originally from a 80s L200 I believe. Matt
    1 point
  23. So the first task after the bathroom extension was to have a kitchen area along the back wall. Kitchens are expensive, even for the kitset things. So after a bit of Facebook market searching (never expected to find good stuff on there) I came across a yuck cabinet thing that can only be described as the wooden entrance piece to school camp where 1J5's were stored in the top, and school bags below, and maybe one of those weird clear grey/brown mugs on the top too that a relief teacher sipped from occasionally. Well this thing was also bloody heavy but only $50 so we hoisted it up into the van and to the shop, and I spent 3 days regretting my purchase. Had various ideas for it, tested different woods to see how food-grade polyurethane held up, then eventually stumbled upon a sale of ply at Bunnings and was sold. We sanded up the cupboards and drawers and took the top piece off. Spent another few days testing between paints and stains, with the matte black paint turning out chalky and holding fingerprints, so I settled for an outdoor satin black deck stain. Don't tell the Bunnings paint lady though or she has a meltdown. Ended up sacrificing the left had drawer and cupboard for a Bunnings showroom special oven and hob, and the shelf found it's final place but not by choice, because the chemicals in the floor coating has stuck the feet to that position. So it stays. And the legs are off a commercial cooker that were the cheap price of free. After that we went to work on the dirty/laundry area, but didn't want the machine visible because it's not cool and industrial, and wanted an area to clean car parts etc. Went with the cupboard theme of black with ply top and genuinely impressed with how it all came together, especially with Leonard. And other than those jobs, we had to get some of the bathroom done after months of procrastinating over different ideas. I got Ryan to leave some of the concrete bare, because I wanted to still have some of the tiltslab in the room, so I put what I thought was polyurethane on it, just turns out it was some wood varnish (definitely don't tell Bunnz lady) and it worked a treat, stopped the concrete dust and allows the water to run off. I waterproofed the shower over 2 days, the second day took 3hours straight of coating but old mate Missy and Ice Cube got me through. Then I found a tiler and it all went well until we were one tile short to finish. A few days later it was all tickety boo. Note to self though: if you've never had a dual shower head scenario going on before, do ensure the dump head is turned on first and not the shooty one. Stephen wanted me to have a photo of the shower on and a beer in the soap box, so turned it on full steam with old shooty head pointed at me and the camera. So the camera is thoroughly clean now. Next we are finishing off the final wall, and deciding an idea to make a bathroom vanity. Any ideas are hugely welcome - we got some galv feet off AliExpress which are lush so that's idea one.
    1 point
  24. Stripped the Ute down for round 2 or rust work last weekend. Had to drop the steering column and pedal box to clear everything so that the rust in the rain gutter could be sorted properly. A couple before and after...rain gutter and also the drivers side wheel well frame (unsure of correct name) Whilst a mate was doing the welding I started to play around with the new Vitex timber for the decking. Quite happy with this. Will be oiling it and securing it this coming weekend. Need to cut down two lengths by 8mm each and we will be away.
    1 point
  25. I think if I spend any real money and effort at improving the fueling it'll be via a megasquirt/speeduino ecu and my own custom injection After having pissed about trying to tune an SU on my turbo rotary, the cost of needles and it never being right compared to tapping on a keyboard (or even my phone!) injection just makes so much sense. But for now I'm happy to just get a the stock hitachi system working. Certainly going to make a cold air feed though. Bart was right- its thermonuclear hot up in the top of the engine bay.
    1 point
  26. The little IMP is now all road legal !!!! I refitted the carb this morning, hoping for the best but it was still terrible. I just couldnt get it to idle below about 1500 rpm and it had a big flat spot on light acceleration. So I gave up and we drove it to town, the long way through Kaiteriteri so I could have some fun on the windy road there. Wow its fun! Soooo much fun. Even with an engine that wouldnt pull properly, horrible flat spots, tyres that are definitely too high in pressure, a few clanks from the yet to be fully secured pipework, noise from the un-insulated engine bay shelf, noise from no carpets, fumes being drawn in through the old heater hose routing holes etc etc... it was still fun. It really is like a big go cart. The steering is lovely. Gear shift is great. Brakes getting better as they bed in. The temp gauge sat pretty much bang on an indicated 80 degrees C whch I reckon is more about 90. Fan only came on when we stopped, as expected so I was really happy about that. We got to town and straight into the booked WOF slot. Our local friendly wof man just loved it. Kept saying how cute it was, how neat the install was etc. Really impressed. Did all the check things as usual, test drive and it was all good. We looked about all the neat stuff in his workshop.... WOF attained and we went to the local council and got a years license. $47 - yay for old cars. Did a shop at supermarket, did the proper look back over my shoulder at my little Imp, sitting there in a sea of bland grey modern cars, looking sooooo tiny. On the way home we popped in to show it to another couple of fellas who run a nice country workshop and had sorted out the tyres for me. They too loved it and the older fella reckoned it was running way too lean and certainly had a big air leak somewhere. Then off home, this time driving over the much steeper longer climb. No worries even with terrible carb. No increase in temp. Yay for that. I got home and removed the carb. Discovered two things. Firstly. Spot the schoolboy error here... Yep- That accelerator pump can go downwards for sure, but not if the lever pushing it down cant go up at the other end! My air filter base was stopping it. This also meant that along with only a tiny bit of travel I was also not getting the secondaries to open properly. Easily sorted with a hole, some alloy and some epoxy. Second thing- this... There goes my air leak. Air getting pulled in through that huge split, past the accelerator pump piston and into the venturi. Well at least I am pretty damn sure that this is the culprit! Reporting back with findings soon.....
    1 point
  27. Hannah got to drive it yesteryear evening. She loves it I knew she would. Hannah's first classic was a little imp super she bought in the UK and she joined the imp club back then. Did a few local meets in Oxford. This was her first drive of one since then. We popped down to the beach last night... The little car is going well but for a stumbling idle. I cant quite tune it out because the throttle spindle was so worn. So last night I took the carb off and stripped off the linkages... The gap is quite large! .... I'll keep a look out for a better carb body but for now I have to improve this one. So I went through my collection of rubber washers and found one to suit, which I did. Its a good snug fit over the shaft and sandwiches in neatly between the body and the first bit of linkage... Then the other end. Nothing to sit a washer on. So I dabbed a bit of automotive silicone on top and let it set. It flexes enough to let the shaft turn so its now well sealed... I have yet to try it out. The car is booked in for a WOF today so wish me luck
    1 point
  28. Cheers. Yeah it sounds meaner then 68bhp (gross...) should do. That little carb is certainly holding it back. At about 4500 it starts tailing off. I think also that the E15 electronic dizzy might not have the right advance, nor does the vacuum unit I've retrofitted from some ford. Basically I'm going to get a replacement main chip that's missing from the MS1 that I was given ages ago and at the very least run full lecky ignition. Injection won't be far away.. But for now.. Drive it.
    1 point
  29. House is rented and I dont live there anymore sorry guys life got busy
    0 points
  30. hey just a cautionary tail for those of you out there with a bad lower back. DO NOT undo head bolts with a long power bar. the twisting action required to break the bolts has fucked me back to the stone age. its like ive undone 5 months or recovery in the space of an hour. FUCK im in pain now. don't do what Donny don't does......
    0 points
This leaderboard is set to Auckland/GMT+13:00
×
×
  • Create New...