yoeddynz

As said by others above- fuck this is a cool thread to read! Keep the updates coming. Sorry to hear about ya losing your job. I really do hope something better comes along.... mainly so you can continue to throw money into your latest hole in the ground for our entertainment I remember there being one of these parked between some cabins at the campground in the middle of Queenstown, back in 2001. It was sitting there with a tarp over the screen. Cool car.

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.

Once again old man Datsun has stepped in with handy bits of knowledge I'll rule that torn boot out. The history and origin of this carb is a bit murky. I was given it by a Viva loving friend in Nelson who had got it with a box load of Viva bits. This was well before I had even contemplated buying an Imp, let alone a Datto powered one. So it sat in my big box of junk under the bench next to old dizzys, starters, alts etc with the idea I might retro fit it to the Viva 1159cc engine (apparently they work real well on Vivas) Hannah was the one who looked up the serial/model numbers and deduced its from a 1200. However- I have not confirmed that the jets are correct. So at some point today I'll strip it down and check the jet numbers, give it a proper good look over and see if I can spot anything. I dont want to wait for an ebay carb kit, nor wait for a potentially substandard carb from Ali. @Slacker_Sam. can sort me a carb kit for $50 which seems ok but we are yet to confirm whether it has new jets or not. No point me buying a kit without jets and then discover the jets are incorrect in this carb. I do like SUs but they never have the same snap in acceleration. They are great for economy but apparently, well from all the road tests I have read, these Hitachis are aweome for economy on a 1200 as well as having the extra acelleration pump feeling. Apparently. Its gonna be something stupid and small this issue. Anyway- we have a tiny house build to take on now and earn monies!

What if the piston is buggered too? But yeah OK. I'll check it all out and see if I can spot something else. Meanwhile.. You be a good boy and look through your carb collection for me

Why hey- thank you! You are most welcome here- should I put the kettle on love?

Well I fixed one leak and then discovered the mother of all leaks.. Mr Bart- tell me more about your box of bits. I think its just the bore on base that is worn- hoping the shaft is OK. Although I do think my cunning use of a rubber washer and a blob of silicone has truely fixed that, now minor, leak and in a good Barry fashion I'm just sooooo stoked its road legal now.

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.....

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

yeah for sure those pipes were only just touching..but it was easy enough to squash them so every little helps I'm over carbs already... looking forward to injecting it. But for now I shall persevere...

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.

Hey thanks - glad you enjoyed the read Yeah it was more to do with making sure the cooling system works well. And it seems to so far but yet to take it up a good hill....

Righto. Exciting news. However I shall start where I left off. So last time I moved the car under its own steam resulted in quite literally its own steam, all over the floor when the heater matrix decided to give up. I swapped that out with a spare unit I had, replaced that seal in the clutch slave cylinder, fixed another couple of wee things and prepared it for the big drive. I also lowered the platforms on the front dampers and got the car down to a much better height. I may well raise the front by around 5mm later on so to get the camber a little less negative. I'm not a huge fan of excessive negative camber nor does it aid in handling unless corning at 9/10ths all the time. The car looks so much better low all round. I took some photos.. Now lets take it for a drive! This time I made it about 1 metre further then last time. Then I stopped to look for the cause of a terrible rattle coming from the flywheel/clutch area upon engaging the clutch only. I suspected the spigot bearing (which foolishly ...when will I learn... I thought was a bit worn but it would be OK..) Upon Hannah sitting in the car depressing the clutch for me to investigate the sound, the drive to the box stopped. Bug-ger! I thought it might be a broken friction disc hub etc. Same scenario as last time... push the car back in feeling quite a bit pissed off and this time we both went for a decent run. Get away from that car I thought! Proper exercise is my go to thing for instantly feeling happier So that night whilst in the middle of engine and box removal I discovered that the clutch slave had pumped out, again, and was holding the clutch in I released the bleed nipple and the clutch fork returned home So I now suspected two things here: Either the flexi hose had broken down inside and was restricting fluid returning quick enough so instead the master refills from the reservoir. So I had a new hose made to rule that out. Or was it the little one way valve within the master, of which I had made a new spring for to replace the missing item, opening too easily. Possibly it was easier for the master to draw fluid in quicker via that valve then refill from the returning fluid from the slave. Hence the slave was getting pumped out with each push of the pedal. It stayed out in increasing amounts by about 4mm each stroke! So I bought a new 'proper' spring whilst I was at the brake shop too. So there it sat- engine not exactly where it should be. But I do like this shot though... So out with the engine and trans. I made a wooden cradle this time which I lowered the engine into. It made it much easier and meant I was able to have the engine and box sitting on the large mobile steel bench and I could then work on it at a decent height. I removed the transaxle, then the clutch, adaptor plate and finally the flywheel. Gave all those bits a clean. The flywheel has been lightened quite extensively and weighs up at 6kgs. A standard item is about 9kg... Here is a good shot of the alloy adaptor plate that joins the box to the engine. Its quite nicely made... The spigot bearing was indeed pretty worn once I had a good look at it... It was indeed allowing the first motion shaft to just tap inside the release bearing guide tube. I bought some Phosphor bronze and made a new spigot bearing. No photo of resulting new bearing- but rest assured it looks pretty much like the old one but this time without enough room between its bore and the shaft to house several Badgers. I reassembled that lot and had a looksie at the transaxle reverse gear plunger... I was not happy with how much effort there was involved in moving the gearstick into the reverse plane. I knew what was 'grabbing' and had an idea on how to improve it... There is this lockout plate that rotates in an arc as you move the lever across the gate in neutral. There is a spring loaded plunger that has to be pushed in to select reverse. However the edge on the plate is very sharp and rather then sliding over the plunger as it pushes it in it digs in a bit. I could feel it through the lever. You can see it here... You can see scrape marks on the cone of the plunger... So I gave the edge of the plate a gentle tickle with the grinder.. I also took the corners off on the plate here... where they slide through the slots as you move across through neutral here ... Resulting in a much nicer shift. It will be improved further when I get a proper ball for my shifter and I suspect my flexible coupling at the end of the shifter tube onto the transaxle is a bit too flexy. The trans was reunited with the engine and slung back into the Imp. It all went back in nicely. This morning we re-bled the clutch system and YAY !!! It works better with the slave returning instantly. Filled the cooling system back up, having added a bled nipple on the thermostat housing which improved the bleeding of air from the system hugely. I'd also forgotten to mention that a fair while ago a fella on the Imp forum mentioned that my stainless tubes tat run under the floor should not really be touching each other all the way down. The hot one will heat up the cool one. Not good. I didnt think too much of it but it bugged me so quite some time back I ended up ovalising them which gave them clearance all the way down... I also made a throttle stop so not to break the cable... With that it was about time to go for a drive.. Success! This time no rattles from the clutch area, clutch worked fine, battery was good. Ran it up to temp and bled all the air out. Temp went up to about 80 degrees C indicated and sat there. It was a fantastic sunny and pretty hot Autumn day for a drive. All the smoke from oil spills, coolant spills etc burnt off. I checked the timing which was about spot on at factory setting. Gave the carb a tweak so the car idled nicer but it'll need more attention. It has quite a worn primary throttle spindle and I think that combined with that light flywheel makes it hard to get a super smooth idle. Enough is enough though. I finally took the plunge and did this....... I came back beaming. It drives pretty well. Wanted to stall when stopping, because of that lumpy idle. Has a slight flat spot down low but once on the secondaries it fair flies along (well.. for a Datsun powered Imp) It sounds much better then I was expecting. I parked it up and checked all the usual things. No obvious leaks and the fan came on after I adjusted the knob on the thermoswitch. Fan is loud but works really well- very efficient. Happy, relieved, excited. We both sat down on the sofa, had lunch and a cold beer and admired the little blue car in the sun. Yay

I can swap for a weber 28/36 carb that someone gave me. Oh hang on.. That was you.

No holes are getting put in the side, or anywhere visible. Its a sleeper. I don't want to give the game away that it has 68 ponies (gross..) waiting to be unleashed.

I know... But baby steps first. It did have these on it when I first went to view....