yoeddynz

Oh for some reason I thought you were also using a bug shifter.

Oh that's neat. @dmulally could for one in his imp with its bugbox

Couple of questions that I need clearing up on. I have the lvvta manual and with regards to driveshafts I cant find any mention of halfshafts on IRS setups. I plan on joining 2/3rds Subaru leone shaft to 1/3 Hillman imp shaft (both same diameter) I'd like to do the job myself because I feel confident enough as an engineer. I am happy to have them crack tested if that's needed. I will be visiting my hotrod builder mate in motueka (who's well known with most certifiers) and running a couple of ideas past him. Does this all seem fine? Another thing I have spotted in the manual is this... 'Where a battery, and fuel system components, such as a fuel tank or fuel pump, are located within the same compartment in a low volume vehicle, the battery and the fuel system components must be separated from each other by the enclosure of one or both within a secured fuel-resistant non-conductive container' But at the start of the chapter on fuel systems it states this... 'Note that where a production vehicle is fitted with its original fuel tank or other fuel system components in their original locations, the requirements in this chapter do not apply' I have my battery mounted very securely within an alloy box above the tank, the box is bolted to the firewall. The leads are secured within flexible conduit that's attached to the firewall before running into the interior. I'll be using the original tank is but fitting the small nissan micra fuel injection pump within, through the top where I'll be making a sealed bolt down lid just large enough to get the pump in. (cant quite squeeze it through the hole the fuel level sender fits through) There's no room for a surge tank, nor do I want to go down the route of a noisy external pump again. Does this seem all ok ?

'Oh yay' half of oldschool proclaim as we roll our eyes. I didn't need to know that. Looks back to all those fun days wiring brushing off old dry underseal

Actually our K11 gearbox has a decent leak. Spent too much time hanging out with the naughty British kid and learnt bad traits I suspect.

This bit especially. The power of the British leak is a strong one and I guarantee this engine combo will leak.

Yeah I should have mentioned that in the thread. Might point it out next time. Yes- there is a standard rubber cover on the imp shifter base that will still fit. I think it was pictured in the pic of barrys shifter. I'll just need to add a shoulder under the base (as seen in the bits I cut out) Then along the underside of the tunnel Imps normally have a full length cover that bolts in place. I say normally because I do have one but its been sitting in the frunk of the spare imp shell waiting for me to clean it up, paint it and fit it to the blue imp. It's only been since 2019.. I've not yet damaged anything in the tunnel but this new setup is more exposed so I'll definitely be fitting the cover up!

Nice! ^ it's a fun job making stuff like that work eh! I'd love to have some sort of exposed shifter mech (think pagani ) along the top of the tunnel but for a semi daily road car, with a handbrake etc or would have been annoying. So double universals hid it all away.

I glooped the two halves together, bolted them up, bolted the tailhousing on and let it set. Following morning it was bolted onto the engine, unsurprisingly a bit heftier with all the gubbins placed back within the box. Its about 9kg heavier than the standard imp box. I then started to fit the first part of the gearshift linkage. The first of those snazzy universal joints, handily available in a diameter to suit the shifter shaft on the Subaru box. I just needed to add a small locating hole for the grub screw... Universal in place.. Engine and box were then bolted back into the car. This bit is so quick and easy when using the 'engine stand 2000'. It takes about 10 mins and I'm getting quicker. It'll be slower when there's shift linkage to undo and driveshafts to slip out of the way. But at least the main heavy awkward part is actually easy. That lot in place I took some pics. Its neat to be able to look out from the one of the lounge room windows down onto the workshop floor and see this... With that lot in place I was able to suss out the angles I could get away with, as shallow as possible and allowing for the handbrake mechanism. I had this old imp gearstick assembly that @dmulally kindly posted over to me. Some previous owner of the car he got it from liked painting things. Everything. Multiple times... I scraped all the layers off, took it apart and cleaned off the dirty old grease. Discovered it had been cobbled together from two old shifter bases. It was originally a very early Imp unit when the very first cars had an automatic choke, which often proved problematic. Hillman then changed the cars over to a manual choke with a nifty little lever in front of the shifter. This mount had been added to the early base. Which means they must have chopped up a later baseplate to get the choke mount. Why they didn't just fit the entire newer base plate I don't know. But what I had in front of me was a frankenstein of base plates with barry spec welding and fixes, but also including a not too badly made bronze bush on the lever where there is normally a (wornout) plastic bush. I had a couple of shift rods to choose from. I chose the least worn. Moving back to the gearbox end I machined up some shaft ends from stainless bar to suit the universal joints. I had some stainless tube and welded the ends in place on the first shaft that runs from the gearbox universal down to the tunnel. Now I needed a sturdy, slippery support to mount in place of the second universal joint. This will not only take back and forth movement on the shaft but also a bit of thrust loading created by the angle on the connecting shaft. I had already bought a lump of slippery hard engineering plastic with this application in mind when I had ordered the plastic for the flywheel thrust bearing a while back. It was bright yellow. Luckily not seen under the car as it would clash with the blue paint. I put a hole in it and machined the outside down. Which also created a pile of pretty swarf.. Then reamed it out to 1" Still a bit tight so out with the adjustable reamers.. until it was just right... Then made a stainless cradle .. The cradle got some wings welded in place and I dug the rivnut tool out.. Mount now bolted in place in the tunnel I had to chop the last tube to the right length, weld on the end and bolt the universal in place.. The front end below the shifter was was standard imp stuff and this is where problems popped up to throw a medium sized spanner in my workings. The side to side gearstick movement across the gate was minimal. Ridiculously so. Like about 1". Or 25mm in new money. Yet the fore and aft movement was about right. But quite stiff. I was contemplating why this was so and what I could do to remedy this when I also noted that 1st gear was where 3rd was and 3rd was where 1st was. Poos. Four years ago when I had compared the Subaru gearshift pattern at the box to the imp unit I thought they were exactly the same. But I had not accounted for the reverse rotation taking place under the imp gearstick. Also I never really thought much about how little of rotation the Subaru box needed on its shifter shaft to shift the internal selector across the 3 rods. Its a tiny amount, like 3 degrees say. Whereas the Imp box has a shorter internal selector and requires more rotation at the shaft. Hence the Imps gearstick knob only moves a teeny bit when coupled to the Subaru box. But the Subaru box has a standard/similar amount of rod movement within (ie 1-2 and 3-4th) which was going to make things trickier to fix. Simple linkage/leverage multiplications that is easier to see than explain. Sorry if your brain hurts. I had to hurt my brain a little bit to suss out a solution but there was only a little bit of smoke. The reason the scooby box is different becomes obvious when you see the scooby shifter setup. Which luckily I can show you because last week thanks to @Leone I was put onto a local fella to me who happens to have many old Leones and Brats kicking about his property and he had a spare leone front wheel drive box that I wanted (always handy just in case...) His property is amazing!!! Long 4wd only driveway up to a ridgetop house with stunning views out over Tasman Bay. Old leones just kicking about... Luckily we have our trusty old 4wd Hiace and that became the days gearbox transporter... Box on bench. Look at that shifter mechanism... The shifter rod attached to the gearstick only rotates a tiny amount when the stick is moved sideways across the gate. But the rod moves 10mm in each direction when shifting for and aft. Simple. Robust. Very Subaru. I can't copy it though because I have turned my box 180 degrees. No matter where I put my pivot point (below or above) I'll have one of the planes working backwards. So I decided to build a new shifter base setup. The most important thing was to reverse the rotation so the gearstick pattern is correct. The imp pivot point needed raising to allow the offset shaft end to be rotated to above rather than below the centre line, so reversing the across gate movement. I would add the ability to adjust both rotation and lineal movement. Started with a new pivot cup because I was not happy with the worn and Barried pressed steel item.. I dug out a large lump of steel bar... Chopped out a square and cleaned it up in the mill.. Big drill = big hole.. Rough machined out a cup shape. Cut a form in cardboard to suit the brass ball and used a die grinder bit to finish the shape... Grinding paste time... Slots for pivot pin.. Lightened the lump down.. Built the shaft up with weld and machined it down so I could add a lower pivot point. Milled some steel like so.. Welded a boss on.. New socket for shift lever ball end... Cut out Barrys previous workmanship... Machined up some spacers and a base plate.. Welded up a little tower (my stainless and steel tig welding is definitely improving, helped muchly by realising that not being able to see what I'm doing does not help much and finally admitting to my age and buying some reading glasses....) Welded tower to base.. Now all together please... Bolted together. You can spot the adjustable rotation, which the spacers allow for, along with adjustable pivot point. In place... Yay- it works! The shift pattern is correct and the action is much smoother. The spring loaded indents on the internal gearbox shift rods are quite stiff, which I noted was the same on the other box with its stock shifter. Its a bit baulky to push past the synchro baulk rings into gear but I think will feel better when the gears are actually rotating. There's certainly no slop in the system and it feels very mechanical - not rubbery. I now note how much flex there is around the shifter base in the imps tunnel (granted a very rusty shell..) Its something I might just try to stiffen up on my blue Imp when fitting this lot in. Phew. That was a little mini engineering mission I was not expecting but that's this project in general

It's OK. It'll settle down. Mine has.

Ha. So pretty much the day after I had cleaned up that old alternator up and got it running on the engine the second hand replacement for my original unit turned up in the post. It came with a 3 month warranty so I'd better check it works before stripping the engine of its ecu etc. Started to fit it and oh.. Poos. It wont fit. So I took it apart, along with the original.. Discovered its just the front housing that's different and I can swap them across.. So while its apart it would be rude not to clean all the parts up and polish it all (tempting fate just a bit...) Fitted to the engine and started it up. Yay - it works and it looks great, which is really quite important given its right there, in the middle on display. I'll keep the other one in storage just in case I need it one day. Now I could strip the engine back down, removing all the cooling, wiring and fuel lines that I had installed just for bench testing. Then I removed the transmission and put the engine back onto the engine stand 2000, stashing it away because its gearbox tinkering time. This Leone transmission has a few little issues that need sorting out in order for it to run in reverse rotation and not potentially turn itself into an expensive insinkerator or coffee grinder. I could probably get away without doing these modifications because the box is overbuilt for the application but I wanted peace of mind. Remember I had acquired the two gearboxes, 1600 and 1800 items, before getting the engine. Ages ago, in fact 4 years ago I think!!! I had wanted to know if it was feasible to run these boxes in reverse. This pic I posted up way back then gives a good idea on what's going on inside... I had already worked out some of the issues back then and knew what I was up for. With more study I found a couple of other areas that need addressing. Here's another bit of wonderful scribbling I did this evening.. The pink arrows show the new axial forces that are being imparted onto the main (driver) shaft and pinion (driven) shaft. The circles are areas that I think needed attention to make sure it doesn't throw it toys from the cot. 1 : the blue circle. Under high torque loads this area could possibly create the sound of nashing teeth but with much messier consequences. The top left one being the third gear driver wants to move to the right and clip the teeth on the bottom right second gear. In normal rotation they would move apart. There's 1mm of clearance there which is probably enough tbh. But I wanted a bit more and had already worked out how I could get it with no other issues and just a bit of tool making. Which is fun. 2 : The yellow circle. This ring was no going to take thrust loading. It is a strong ring and has a deep groove but I wanted to make sure there was no way it could ever shift. 3 : the green circle. In this area there is a thrust bearing that also acts as a neat little oil pump and squeezes oil through the gear hubs/bushes. Under the new loading the thrust aspect is removed but I still wanted to it pump oil and it was going to be the wrong shape to do so in reverse rotation. So I set to work and checked off each job. I made a bolt holder for ease of reassembly - several different sizes and lengths. Once apart I started with the gear side clearance. First off I needed to split the mainshaft assembly down. 4 years ago I had out of interest tried using a puller on the spare 1600 box, which shares the same layout and design but with smaller parts in many cases. The puller didn't work. But this time round I have the rather handy workshop press I made. I just needed some extra tooling to do this job. Starting with some press plates... Allowing me to carefully press the shaft out... Because I'm not posh (or rich) enough to own a surface grinder I needed to make one. Yes its a bit basic but it will work. I made this... Which allowed me to do this.... I ended up with this gear having the 0.5mm more clearance I wanted. Super happy with the result. Now onto number 3 - the little oil pumpy thingee. I went to my friendly engineering workshop in town and got a big lump of 4140 steel. I drilled it out... Machined out a ring which had to be an exact width. Just in case it needed finishing after the hardening process I made an abor to take it.. I carefully machined it to the right profile, cut the sides down and filed the shapes in, just like the original but in reverse. Happy it was going to work I heat treated it. I have not done any heat treating for over 25 years since I spent a fair bit of time in the blacksmith department while doing my apprenticeship. But it wasn't a super loaded critical component and just had to have a durable hard surface. I didn't take any photos. Hannah was there helping as I carefully heated it up with the oxycet to the austenitic stage and agitated it in some lovely rice bran oil (because I can be posh sometimes) then slapped it in the oven to temper it... Following morning I polished it. It came up sweet and the old file test showed it to be as hard as the oem item. You can see the reversed design here... Here's a little vid I took showing it in action... While stripping the mainshaft down I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that this 1800 box has needle bearings in all of the gear hubs unlike the 1600 box which uses bushes on the mainshaft. So oil starvation would not have been as much of an issue but I'm still really happy I did this modification. Last issue to sort was number two - that ring on the bearing. It would hold fine I'm sure but if could make it bulletproof then why not - it's just a bit of extra machining. I started with another lump of high tensile steel and machined out a ring to suit... This fits over the other ring and then the main thrust plate that sits over the bearing was machined out to suit my reinforcement ring. Its all held in place by the end housing which I have yet to fit. All the potential issues covered I set to cleaning out the casing and then started reassembly. In doing so I discovered that the original axle seals are sided on these boxes. They have those helical lines on the lip surfaces which aid in pulling/pumping oil back into the oil side of the lip ( the lip does not actually touch the steel when the axle is moving and in fact runs on a tiny bed of oil) which I had not realised before I'd bought plain lip seals from an engineering supplies. This pumping capacity is shown to be twice as high in helixed seals. Subaru fit left and right handed items. But I'm running mine in reverse. Luckily the originals were in excellent condition anyway so I machined up a stepped tool, popped them out and swapped them to the other side. The diff axle seal surfaces came up good after a clean. Cute little diff.. I'm now about ready to put some 3 bond gloop on the case half and drop the other side in place. Its looking all very nice, clean and shiny in there...

yeah that's fucking cool Dan. Thanks for sharing!

I was worried about ending up with a similar issue with my old innovate on megasquirt so I added a switch to turn off the wideband if I had to have the ecu/ignition on for any length of time without starting the engine. I'll be doing the same for my current setup when installed (I've just been pulling the fuse while bench testing for now) Sorry for thread hijack. As you were...

There's a nicely patina'd one of these dailying about motueka but it's a 4wd with a V6. It looks and sounds cool as fuck. I lived in a mk2 (jumbo spec with dual rears) for 2 years. Pinto powered. Drove it some long distances on UK motorways. Can't remember it being overly low geared though. Guessing the mk2s has higher ratio options you could look out for?

Couldn't stop there. Need a place for coffee mugs.. It's a nice little spot now. We are owed a whole load of macrocarpa from a customer so will soon build bench seating along the back.

Approved by Kevin..

Had this old picnic table for 10 years, was given to us by friends at a campground so it's proper old, bowed, rustic and full of engravings from lots of campers over the decades. But heavy, in the way and not used by us so we chopped it up this arvo. (using our other younger table as today's bench)..

Here's more info that might help if @RUNAMUCK link is no good https://www.minimania.com/CAM_TIMING___Basic_Notes

Because posh cat

I drained all the coolant out, took the radiator and pipework off and flushed the whole lot through until only clean water flowed. Let it sit in the sun while I did other jobs and gave the engine a couple of short 30 second runs to help dry it right out. I left it at that and decided to sort out the idle control valve that wont shut completely. I started by removing it and putting it somewhere it'll probably just collect dust for a few months and then maybe get sold/thrown in a bin. I then took Hannah on another exciting date to the local wreckers where we looked under many bonnets to find a suitable replacement. 'Automotive foraging' I like to call it. Here I am in the wilds of the wreckers... I took home a couple of throttle bodies with valves attached. One from a Mazda 3 and the other from a Mazda 626. They had almost identical iacvs but one had an adjustment. I cut a section of alloy out of a big block.. Milled it flat and square.. Throttle bodies.. tested them with some pipe and the earlier 626 item has a similar fail safe to my now removed Bosch item, whereby it still lets air through when 'off'. So that just wont do and I have decided the keeper... Mazda 3 unit wins this competition and gets to stay in the workshop while the 626 item went in the bin. I did some more machining of the block so turning it into a ported hub the iacv bolts to, with an in and out pipe pressed in place. I made a bracket to suit the starter motor through bolts to which the aicv block bolts onto. In pictures.. Bolts onto starter like so... Ended up being not only more compact and better mounted than the old Bosch unit but with better pipe routing too. I ran the valve through some tests on tuner studio and it works really well, shuts properly and is also much much quieter , partly due to it running at a much higher frequency than the Bosch unit. The next thing I thought I'd check was the headbolts out of curiosity to see if they were still torqued up fine. I first laid out some neat material that was absorbent, but waterproof. My sister, a surgery nurse at Wellington hospital, gave it to me and said its handy stuff to have about. Certainly is!... Bolts were all fine and I saw no point in giving them anything extra beyond what Mr Honda specifies, so possibly risking deformation of the heads etc. Next thing was to sort out the electric water pump placement. Where I had mounted it turned out to make it a pig to bleed of air due to the outlet pointing downhill and I knew it could be better. See here... I removed the mounting bracket I'd made for it... Unplugged the ecu etc etc and slid the whole engine/transmission onto the the 'engine stand 2000'. This process is super easy as it can be adjusted to the same height as the big table or workshop bench and the engine slides really nicely on the ribbed sump. Then I slung it into the spare imp and tried out the water pump for size in the new location I had in mind... Cooling pipework serving the Datsun engine exit the bodyshell roughly about here... Much better position. Not only will the pump almost self bleed, being at about the lowest point in the cooling system, but I will also clear up the area of uglyness where it used to be. It also gives me full easy access to the transmission filler/dipstick. I removed the engine, put it back on the table and set to work marking out for a mounting bracket... Then fabricated this bracket.. Which mounts the pump here... New improved temporary cooling setup which filled up sweet and bleed of air easily.. Quality touches.. With the cooling system now filled with just water I ran the engine up to temp. The new iacv was working well and I was more confident in running the engine for as long as my lunchbox fuel can would allow. I kept checking for any leaks and found nothing. The cooling system was working well, the fan kicking on and off, the temp staying around the 95- 97 degrees range I had set on the water pump controller (which also controls the fan relay) and I was finally able to set the idle properly with the idle bleed screw on the throttle body - something I was not able to do with the Bosch iacv which was letting in too much air. Still no leaks. I ran it several times, let it cool down, checked it the following morning and the level was spot on. Touch wood but I think the extra heat and lack of slippery coolant has allowed the head gaskets to 'set'. Either that or maybe there wasn't a leak at all and it was just residue coolant from spillage when I had removed the top pipes to pressure test them. Anyway.. I was a farking happy bloke! (Hannah was super happy for me too) Now with the coolant system working and it idling nicely etc I had the confidence to finally give the engine a decent rev up and see what it sounds like at 6000 rpm. Hannah took a vid... I just love that sound. The overrun rasp that flat sixes make. It revs up so quick and clean (and there's no acceleration enrichment setup on the tune yet until I sort the main fuel table later on so it can bog if you snap the throttle open too quickly) Another vid I took showing the hand throttle... So far the little Mandalorians have managed to keep all their limbs in place. In fact the plenum chamber stays quite cool with the constant stream of cool air flowing into it. Their spaceship has aircon? Anyway. I was happy. The only issue was that the whole time I have been running it without any alternator so meaning the ecu is having to use the voltage compensation tables and its not really an ideal situation having everything running at 2-3 volts less than it should. I took my alternator apart again and ran through as many checks I could, following a very handy NZ auto electrical school tutor video about alternator testing online. I suspect the rectifier is kaput and I couldn't locate a cheap replacement. I managed to locate a second hand alternator, pretty much the same unit and have bought it - now just waiting on the seller to sort their sh1t out. In the meantime I got another similar alternator, this time a nippon denso unit from a Honda prelude that actually has a bit more clearance out back, but with an ugly grey painted steel cover. I ran some pigtail connections and bolted it up, started the engine and now have charging! Yay. With things running at full voltage I tweaked the engines idle tune and cold start settings and am much happier with where I'm at there. In case the other alternator turns out to not arrive/be a dud etc I decided to give this working unit I do have a bit of a polish and paint. In pics, finishing it off with wrinkle finish paint on the tin end cover. Much better looking. I bolted it back in place and did one final run up to temp with a bit more tuning of the fuel table idle zone. I now have the engine able to idle at 650 and I could almost get a 50cent coin to balance on the plenum lid. The engine is still only sitting on the table, not bolted in place so I cant really expect it to be perfectly smooth. I think it idles a bit nicer at around 750- 800, a zone where its also running leaner at close to 14.7. Lots of time in the future to play with settings. Confident its all a good starter and idler, plus realising I'm stalling on the next stage, I have now started to take the pump controller, cooling system and temporary wiring apart. The next time it will be started will hopefully be in the Imp. Next job is to reassemble the transmission, bolt the lot into the spare shell and sort out the gear shift linkage.

Congratulations @j.e.d. ! When I open my youtube apparel store you will be receiving a pair of Yellowhammer logo embroided socks

Evil green stuff

Another benefit of plain water is cleaning up after finding all the leaks

Bought some sealwel today so hpefully its as good as they say. Will report back. Plenty of other stuff to crack on with anyway.