yoeddynz

It could make for the iradiant looking cabbages...

Ha ha cool. Marshlands is the site that just keeps on giving. I'm amazed that there are still cars there. I thought they were all destined to be crushed?

Damn I'd love to rebuild a truck /4wd in similar style using all new or repassivated fastners. So clean. So neat. Such big boys tamiya model building fun.

Photos of the fine looking hitchhiker please. Did he have a nice body? Please tell me you have also swapped over those wing mirrors. Kevin says 'meow'..

Crikey its hot here! Perfect time to spend hours in a workshop filling and sanding then, with the occasional bike ride and swim to keep my sanity. I don't really get too excited about paintwork. In fact- really posh paint jobs, all shiny and bling just dont suit old cars imo. But I realise that if I want to sell this car down the line (to fund the Viva project etc) then its going to need to look nice. But going back a week from now I finished a few tiny welding jobs and added some much needed seatbelt mounting points. This car being a really early one only had diagonal belts and the positioning was horrible along with mounting points that were only holes through thin panel steel. I welded long sections of 20x10 fms inside the A pillars for the top mounts and then some plates to the floor and inner sill in all the appropriate size steel and nuts. I also cut and shut the rear seat base frame so it would clear the radiator pipe tunnel.. I then had to sort out the removable rear valance/cross member. I have three to use. The race car one was hacked about and rusty. A spare one I'd collected from the Christchurch Imp graveyard was rusty and dented. The original one from this shell was just rusty. I chose that one. I started by cutting out the unneeded and quite heavy original engine mount part. Then rebuilt it all, removing the rot, adding in a length folded steel along the width to support a small bit of box section. Why? Well because I like bicycles and I like to travel to places for nice bike rides and why would I choose to do such a thing in a boring modern car! Much more fun to go on road trips to biking places in a interesting old car... So, just like on my Rx3 and my previous Viva I added a mounting point for custom made bike racks to suit each car. For this Imp though I wanted something that will be hidden by the number plate when not in use. I'll make a basic rack to suit. Then together Hannah and I painted this and any other remaining bare steel with industrial 440 epoxy primer. It already started looking better... Now back to that filling and sanding. Its been a week of many 30 degree days here, often hotter at mid day. According to our thermometer yesterday was 34 ! Our place is like suntrap and we don't get the wind that even our neighbours over the road get. Great for winter but can get very hot in summer. Luckily the workshop faces directly north to the sun and with both doors open we get good light and a gentle enough breeze through to keep it from turning into too much of an intense oven. Plus it takes the filler dust out! Inside the 'not so hot' oven... Still a yucky job and to stop giving up I have to keep reminding myself that 'a good paint job is 95% preparation' etc etc. Yawn. pffff. I'll report back in a week or two, broken and covered in dust.

#win at rear engined goodness.

Yeah the old boy aint that keen on randoms just dropping in and I can understand why. There's a fair bit of stuff there (although the best bits, the Imps, the Datsuns and the Saab 99s are all gone....)

Only if the seats are slid forwards though. But that won't be often (no kids/just cat life) But yeah.. Its quite spacious inside for a little car.

With the pipework tunnel pretty much finished I moved onto the seat rails. I had bought some MX5 seats a fair while back with the intention of fitting into the Imp. However, rather than have them sit around doing nothing I ended up fitting them into my Viva wagon. They were great but didn't quite suit it. I then bought a lovely pair of Recaros, fitted them to the wagon and have the Mx5 seats once again for this car. I had sort of roughed out how I wanted to fit them a while back but not sure exactly where to mount the supports. I needed a Datum. So I scored this beauty... Strangely it came fitted in a freshly imported Hiace van from Japan that I did a load of rust repairs to. The owner didn't like it and agreed to give it to me if I got a decent standard Toyota replacement. This was harder than I thought as most of the old Toyota steering wheels from that era of Hiace have become loose on the top of wheel and so twist in ones hands feeling horrible. But eventually I found a decent replacement, got my prized wheel and promptly fitted it to a boss kit I ordered from overseas. With it taking pride of place I sat the seats in the car and made some carefully measured brrmmm brrmmm sounds and worked out the seat placement... Before work could continue on fitting the seats I needed to machine some locating spacers. But in order to do that I needed to fit the brand new 16mm centre height tools to our replacement lathe of which the stock tool post was set to an absurdly high 12mm, meaning it could only use the little baby 12mm tools available (odd for what is a fairly medium sized lathe). So I needed to machine the tool post down with our old drill mill ... Then I machined these... Which allowed me to sit the seats neatly onto fabricated supports that I welded across the floor, the rear passenger one strengthening the floor where the new pipe tunnel is... I bolted the seats in and was very happy. The seats can go right back giving heaps of leg room for my lanky body but slide forwards more then enough to get into the back. I have mounted them quite far inboard to line them up as best I can with the pedals... I had finished off the pipe tunnel too, leaving it exposed at the back for fitment of pipes. I'll cover those bits with removable lids and will have to modify a section of the rear seat base for clearance. I'll sort out the finishing details once I have welded up the stainless pipe I have bought. Oh also- ages back when I was stripping out the green Imp (number 3 Imp) I found the build sheet. A neat thing to find... I like this bit...

Hi Dave- yeah the show was really good. We met Gary there and he said you'd gone back to Ireland for a catch up. Ideas please Nelson oldschool folk- shall we do a bbq/beach meet somewhere? I'm now figuring that our next meet would have to be after the new years fiasco anyway so a bit of time to think up some ideas. Perhaps you know a good circuit and cafe stop we could do. Or a visit to some museum or other place of interest. Or will there be enough interest to have a simple meet somewhere just for a bbq and catchup.

I'll just duct tape a camera onto Kevins back. He follows us about all day. Rough edit it in the evening and throw some loud euro house music on in background then post. Sorted.

Hey thanks for the lovely comments. Nah i have never considered it. I don't consider myself very confident behind a video camera and start getting a bit paranoid/self conscious about my voice. So I've always just been happy behind the keyboard. However I do love writing build threads in the hope that not only will they entertain but that they'll also inform others enough and help- just as so many threads out there have taught me back. We are right in the middle of tidying up our housetruck for sale and once its sold will be starting a new house on wheels of which I am really bloody excited about! Being able to build your own cheap house is something that is ever more important these days and with the whole new trendy 'tiny house' thing having really kicked off there is certainly a lot of interest out there. I could perhaps do a vblog for that build and just see how it goes and how I fair.

Oh. That sux.

Snifter Green (are snifters still available???) is similar to the original wagon colour. Not keen on matching green cars.

Yeah I quite like gulf blue. But wouldn't do the whole scheme because its a bit over done I feel. I do like this imp in martini colours though even though I'm not normally a fan of red...