yoeddynz

1989 (ish) Nissan caravan 2.7 Diesel . I replaced the fuel filter on one. It had been dropped at customers by AA who insisted it was a clogged filter. Customer got a filter and I replaced it. It started straight away idled perfectly and drove fine to start with but a couple of minutes into the test drive it started to falter a few times before eventually clearing its throatand it ran sweet as. I double checked and just thought it must have been an airlock. Ran great after that but I told the owner about it and warned that there may well be some other issues rearing their heads. Customer has just rang and its still playing up. Same thing - fuel staving. Ran sweet for a few ks and then start running out of power. Still always on all four but like its just not getting any diesel to the main pump. He managed to get it back home after a good rev up. Its not here right now. Do they have a separate lift pump from the tank to the filter assembly (located behind the drivers seat on this, cunt of a place) or does the main injector pump draw the fuel through? I cant think of anything else to look at other than look for possible holes in the feed line that might be drawing air.

Snap

Yeah exactly my plans and this is pretty much what most 911s are like. The cross over pipe either built into the muffler or there is no pipe but it evens out the banks outputs within in the silencer. Here's some pics I've found of 911 exhausts and the inside of various silencers. Some side exit, some middle exit. The 3rd pic shows how there's a crossover tube right before the exit, probably more for sound than performance. None I have seen use any form of packing. Its all about expansion chambers and perforated pipes to pull the sound energy out.

Ideally I would buy a spare set of heads in the future and I can fuck about with those. Make a flow bench and have some fun. But right now, but for a few simple commonsense and obvious things I can do my most important objective is to get this car on the road for nats!

Neat idea. Some sort of badge declaring some absurdly named tuning outfit so I can put the barries off from long sharns about 'why didnt you do it this way...' The headers will end up going backwards into a silencer that will be mounted across the underside of the rear valance, which Intend to chop out the bottom of to give me even more room to play with. I have a very particular look in mind with regards the back of the Imp when finished. The exhaust will be twin outlets but in the centre. So I'll be making the silencer across the back from scratch and have complete free reign on how it works on the inside. I'll look into autobend. I have used them before (expensive for my sort of budgets..I'm time rich, cash poor) but I suspect they don't do 28mm tube. Its pretty small. I have a had a fantastic wall of information about tuning from a good fella on retrorides forum. I will post it up here because its a good read with a cup of coffee. @Roman will enjoy it. Put the kettle on.. "I've found Don Terril's Speed Talk to be a good forum for getting a higher quality of pub talk when it comes to engine tuning. There's an advanced engine tech subforum which you need to be signed up to access, but signing up is free. They tend to point people towards Pipemax for header dimensions, but there's still a lot of quality information on there. It's a little tricky to calculate the cross-sectional area of ellipses as it involves regressive estimation, but having transcribed a rather long formula into excel I've got your exhaust ports coming out at 505 sq mm (although yours will be slightly bigger as it's a more rounded end ellipse than this formula expects). The 23mm headers are 415 sq mm. You're right that it's tricky to find a direct match, but I've seen 28mm and 30mm mandrel bends available in 1.5mm wall, which give 491 and 572 sq mm respectively. Options I suppose would be keep the original headers, use 28mm round for a little step up, use 30mm for a bigger step up, or use 30mm and squash the end in a vice to better match the profile of the port. Inlet and exhaust lengths I might be able to help a little with, although I'm still missing some key calculations and measurements which are quite difficult to get my head around! Would be interesting to use you as a guinea pig though Inlet and exhaust dimension tuning The goal of inlet and exhaust dimension (length and diameter) tuning is to try as best as you can to ensure that air pressure in the inlet is as high as it can be compared to the cylinder as possible and across the broadest rev range, and vice versa for the exhaust (with another point that you want it to be higher in the inlet than the exhaust during valve overlap). You do this by tuning pressure waves that occur in the inlet and exhaust to rpm ranges that complement each other. Usually you'll end up with two (or sometimes 3) inlet tuning peaks, with troughs in the middle. The general idea is to tune one of those peaks for around or a little before peak power, and then use your exhaust tuning to fill the gap inbetween them. Inlet tuning For a long time, I bought into the idea that inlet pressure waves were caused by air piling up against the back of the inlet valve as it closes and bouncing backwards and forwards along the inlet at the speed of sound until it reaches an open valve again. Apparently that's not how it works at all! (or, rather, that does happen but it's nowhere near being the dominant effect). What actually happens is the piston creates a strong negative pressure wave as it reaches its point of fastest acceleration (usually somewhere around 74-78 degrees of crankshaft rotation). This propagates up the inlet until it reflects off the atmospheric pressure at the end of the inlet and returns as a positive pressure wave back towards the inlet. What you want to do is size the inlet tract so that positive pressure wave arrives back at the tail end of the same stroke that created it, when the piston has slowed right down at BDC, or has even started coming back up the bore. So far, so easy to calculate. The issue is that the atmospheric pressure the wave bounces off at the open end migrates down the runner a distance that's dependent on the strength of the negative pressure generated by the downward movement of the piston and the diameter of the runner. As this is the complicated stuff that Pipemax does and I haven't worked out yet, the best I can offer is to get into the rough ballpark for trial and error, withe the possible suggestion that if it's not possible to fabricate a short enough runner, you can step up the runner diameter to make it appear shorter to the pressure wave. How to work out inlet lengths I've made a little calculator so people can plug in their engine's specs and get a rough idea of what inlet lengths to aim for, and which ones to avoid. You'll need to know your target rpm, your stroke, your rod length, and your cam timings (actual measured cam timings, not advertised as they're often quoted in deliberately obfuscated or incorrect ways). Ideally your inlet temp would be useful too, but that's not too tricky to estimate. It's a little crude at the moment as I've no idea how far the atmospheric pressure travels down the inlet, but it should give you a rough range to aim your inlet tract length to. Exhaust tuning Exhaust tuning I know less about unfortunately. I know that there's two main effects you're tuning for, which is a similar wave tuning process as I've described in the inlet, and another process that works like blowing over the top of a beer bottle as one runner passes another in a collector. What I do know is that it's not easy to get a runner setup that takes advantage of this on flat 6s (requires pairing cylinders across the banks), so the aim of the game for you is probably to limit the effects of the uneven pulse tuning. The oval exhaust port is probably an attempt at this as steps between the port and the exhaust runner help prevent waves propagating up the port (although this works by having the port smaller than the runner). I expect you'll want to have a bigger exhaust runner and have the step in the port intrude into its diameter, if that makes sense. Saying that, in your setup you might have an opportunity to avoid the effects of merging unpaired cylinders and just go for the regular pulse tuning effect. 6 individual runners all the way to the rear of the car! If the lengths work out, you could have 6 exhausts, 3 on each side, tuned to a length that hits the torque dip in inlet tuning. You can probably use the same approach as I've used in the inlet tuning calculator, but adjusted for exhaust valve opening and the speed of sound being much faster. Will see what I can come up with! I've found Don Terril's Speed Talk to be a good forum for getting a higher quality of pub talk when it comes to engine tuning. There's an advanced engine tech subforum which you need to be signed up to access, but signing up is free. They tend to point people towards Pipemax for header dimensions, but there's still a lot of quality information on there. It's a little tricky to calculate the cross-sectional area of ellipses as it involves regressive estimation, but having transcribed a rather long formula into excel I've got your exhaust ports coming out at 505 sq mm (although yours will be slightly bigger as it's a more rounded end ellipse than this formula expects). The 23mm headers are 415 sq mm. You're right that it's tricky to find a direct match, but I've seen 28mm and 30mm mandrel bends available in 1.5mm wall, which give 491 and 572 sq mm respectively. Options I suppose would be keep the original headers, use 28mm round for a little step up, use 30mm for a bigger step up, or use 30mm and squash the end in a vice to better match the profile of the port. Inlet and exhaust lengths I might be able to help a little with, although I'm still missing some key calculations and measurements which are quite difficult to get my head around! Would be interesting to use you as a guinea pig though Inlet and exhaust dimension tuning The goal of inlet and exhaust dimension (length and diameter) tuning is to try as best as you can to ensure that air pressure in the inlet is as high as it can be compared to the cylinder as possible and across the broadest rev range, and vice versa for the exhaust (with another point that you want it to be higher in the inlet than the exhaust during valve overlap). You do this by tuning pressure waves that occur in the inlet and exhaust to rpm ranges that complement each other. Usually you'll end up with two (or sometimes 3) inlet tuning peaks, with troughs in the middle. The general idea is to tune one of those peaks for around or a little before peak power, and then use your exhaust tuning to fill the gap inbetween them. Inlet tuning For a long time, I bought into the idea that inlet pressure waves were caused by air piling up against the back of the inlet valve as it closes and bouncing backwards and forwards along the inlet at the speed of sound until it reaches an open valve again. Apparently that's not how it works at all! (or, rather, that does happen but it's nowhere near being the dominant effect). What actually happens is the piston creates a strong negative pressure wave as it reaches its point of fastest acceleration (usually somewhere around 74-78 degrees of crankshaft rotation). This propagates up the inlet until it reflects off the atmospheric pressure at the end of the inlet and returns as a positive pressure wave back towards the inlet. What you want to do is size the inlet tract so that positive pressure wave arrives back at the tail end of the same stroke that created it, when the piston has slowed right down at BDC, or has even started coming back up the bore. So far, so easy to calculate. The issue is that the atmospheric pressure the wave bounces off at the open end migrates down the runner a distance that's dependent on the strength of the negative pressure generated by the downward movement of the piston and the diameter of the runner. As this is the complicated stuff that Pipemax does and I haven't worked out yet, the best I can offer is to get into the rough ballpark for trial and error, withe the possible suggestion that if it's not possible to fabricate a short enough runner, you can step up the runner diameter to make it appear shorter to the pressure wave. How to work out inlet lengths I've made a little calculator so people can plug in their engine's specs and get a rough idea of what inlet lengths to aim for, and which ones to avoid. You'll need to know your target rpm, your stroke, your rod length, and your cam timings (actual measured cam timings, not advertised as they're often quoted in deliberately obfuscated or incorrect ways). Ideally your inlet temp would be useful too, but that's not too tricky to estimate. It's a little crude at the moment as I've no idea how far the atmospheric pressure travels down the inlet, but it should give you a rough range to aim your inlet tract length to. Exhaust tuning Exhaust tuning I know less about unfortunately. I know that there's two main effects you're tuning for, which is a similar wave tuning process as I've described in the inlet, and another process that works like blowing over the top of a beer bottle as one runner passes another in a collector. What I do know is that it's not easy to get a runner setup that takes advantage of this on flat 6s (requires pairing cylinders across the banks), so the aim of the game for you is probably to limit the effects of the uneven pulse tuning. The oval exhaust port is probably an attempt at this as steps between the port and the exhaust runner help prevent waves propagating up the port (although this works by having the port smaller than the runner). I expect you'll want to have a bigger exhaust runner and have the step in the port intrude into its diameter, if that makes sense. Saying that, in your setup you might have an opportunity to avoid the effects of merging unpaired cylinders and just go for the regular pulse tuning effect. 6 individual runners all the way to the rear of the car! If the lengths work out, you could have 6 exhausts, 3 on each side, tuned to a length that hits the torque dip in inlet tuning. You can probably use the same approach as I've used in the inlet tuning calculator, but adjusted for exhaust valve opening and the speed of sound being much faster. Will see what I can come up with! I've found Don Terril's Speed Talk to be a good forum for getting a higher quality of pub talk when it comes to engine tuning. There's an advanced engine tech subforum which you need to be signed up to access, but signing up is free. They tend to point people towards Pipemax for header dimensions, but there's still a lot of quality information on there. It's a little tricky to calculate the cross-sectional area of ellipses as it involves regressive estimation, but having transcribed a rather long formula into excel I've got your exhaust ports coming out at 505 sq mm (although yours will be slightly bigger as it's a more rounded end ellipse than this formula expects). The 23mm headers are 415 sq mm. You're right that it's tricky to find a direct match, but I've seen 28mm and 30mm mandrel bends available in 1.5mm wall, which give 491 and 572 sq mm respectively. Options I suppose would be keep the original headers, use 28mm round for a little step up, use 30mm for a bigger step up, or use 30mm and squash the end in a vice to better match the profile of the port. Inlet and exhaust lengths I might be able to help a little with, although I'm still missing some key calculations and measurements which are quite difficult to get my head around! Would be interesting to use you as a guinea pig though Inlet and exhaust dimension tuning The goal of inlet and exhaust dimension (length and diameter) tuning is to try as best as you can to ensure that air pressure in the inlet is as high as it can be compared to the cylinder as possible and across the broadest rev range, and vice versa for the exhaust (with another point that you want it to be higher in the inlet than the exhaust during valve overlap). You do this by tuning pressure waves that occur in the inlet and exhaust to rpm ranges that complement each other. Usually you'll end up with two (or sometimes 3) inlet tuning peaks, with troughs in the middle. The general idea is to tune one of those peaks for around or a little before peak power, and then use your exhaust tuning to fill the gap inbetween them. Inlet tuning For a long time, I bought into the idea that inlet pressure waves were caused by air piling up against the back of the inlet valve as it closes and bouncing backwards and forwards along the inlet at the speed of sound until it reaches an open valve again. Apparently that's not how it works at all! (or, rather, that does happen but it's nowhere near being the dominant effect). What actually happens is the piston creates a strong negative pressure wave as it reaches its point of fastest acceleration (usually somewhere around 74-78 degrees of crankshaft rotation). This propagates up the inlet until it reflects off the atmospheric pressure at the end of the inlet and returns as a positive pressure wave back towards the inlet. What you want to do is size the inlet tract so that positive pressure wave arrives back at the tail end of the same stroke that created it, when the piston has slowed right down at BDC, or has even started coming back up the bore. So far, so easy to calculate. The issue is that the atmospheric pressure the wave bounces off at the open end migrates down the runner a distance that's dependent on the strength of the negative pressure generated by the downward movement of the piston and the diameter of the runner. As this is the complicated stuff that Pipemax does and I haven't worked out yet, the best I can offer is to get into the rough ballpark for trial and error, withe the possible suggestion that if it's not possible to fabricate a short enough runner, you can step up the runner diameter to make it appear shorter to the pressure wave. How to work out inlet lengths I've made a little calculator so people can plug in their engine's specs and get a rough idea of what inlet lengths to aim for, and which ones to avoid. You'll need to know your target rpm, your stroke, your rod length, and your cam timings (actual measured cam timings, not advertised as they're often quoted in deliberately obfuscated or incorrect ways). Ideally your inlet temp would be useful too, but that's not too tricky to estimate. It's a little crude at the moment as I've no idea how far the atmospheric pressure travels down the inlet, but it should give you a rough range to aim your inlet tract length to. Exhaust tuning Exhaust tuning I know less about unfortunately. I know that there's two main effects you're tuning for, which is a similar wave tuning process as I've described in the inlet, and another process that works like blowing over the top of a beer bottle as one runner passes another in a collector. What I do know is that it's not easy to get a runner setup that takes advantage of this on flat 6s (requires pairing cylinders across the banks), so the aim of the game for you is probably to limit the effects of the uneven pulse tuning. The oval exhaust port is probably an attempt at this as steps between the port and the exhaust runner help prevent waves propagating up the port (although this works by having the port smaller than the runner). I expect you'll want to have a bigger exhaust runner and have the step in the port intrude into its diameter, if that makes sense. Saying that, in your setup you might have an opportunity to avoid the effects of merging unpaired cylinders and just go for the regular pulse tuning effect. 6 individual runners all the way to the rear of the car! If the lengths work out, you could have 6 exhausts, 3 on each side, tuned to a length that hits the torque dip in inlet tuning. You can probably use the same approach as I've used in the inlet tuning calculator, but adjusted for exhaust valve opening and the speed of sound being much faster. Will see what I can come up with! Can you measure your cam for me? I think I can probably work out the rest. Lift vs camshaft degrees with a dial gauge, a degree wheel and a set of v-blocks/lathe to hold it. Edit: service manual doesn't have conrod length either so that too!"

Cheers- I had already found them. But they are shorties and would mean lots of joins. I don't think I lay down the sexiest of welds on tube (but nothing a flapdisc cant hide) so would like to avoid masses of joins. The other thing I'd forgotten to mention was how tricky it would be to adapt the current flanges to take larger tube with a bottle neck, potential warpage or cataclysmic failure of the whole lot.

Its quite amazing the differences in sound between the various after market exhausts available for Goldwings. I quite like this one for sound. Go to 1min in for less exhausting talk and more exhausting sounds....

Look at this lot I have to play with. Here's a head. Lovely little things. Nicely made. Very clean and simple. Brilliant hemi design. Not sure on the valve angles but I could picture it flowing nicely (based on the knowledge of my mildly edumacated mind about such technical enginy things, stuff gained from reading old cars and car conversion books etc) I measured the valves. The inlet is a fairly decent 33mm thereabouts. Exhaust 28mm Not bad. Not bad at all really. I dunno if they have anything mildly flash like a 3 angle seat. I suspect not. Goldwings are a pay grade above such frilvolous race engine nonsense. But I think I do happen to have a valve grinding setup and some seat cutters amongst the engine reconditioning stuff I was given a year or so ago. Anyway.. I won't get too excited because as far as maximum flow at stratospheric revs go it heads downhill from the valve sizes. Just look at the size of this inlet port... 25mm Extravagance ! Not really much room to open it out either, nor risk mucking about with the port innards. Too risky. Now the other end of the equation. Exhaust port is 28mm one way and 23 the other. I think its cast like that on purpose to aid the low engine speed air flow (these engines are all about torque... and I'll probably mention that several times as I go on, just as I take a sip of my finest scotch. Lets not mention those dirty words like bhp and redlines) The exhaust headers are comical. But I shouldn't really laugh because I know full well that the technical boffins at Honda know a heck of a lot more than me about cylinder head flow and tuning engines to suit bikes that are made to cruise all day long for a lifespan in the vicinity of 1,000,000 miles. But still. They are funny.. At first glance one might be fooled into thinking they are maybe 26- 28mm like the ports. But they step down to an internal diameter of 23mm. Outside measures ap at around 26mm. The valkyrie items are not bigger from what I can gather. They just have a poncy bit of shiny chrome tube over them so they look bigger..and shiny. So there we have it. Plans thus far. My intention is to start the induction side with some bmw k75 itbs, injectors mounted into custom flanges to suit. They are about 34mm thereabouts so hugely more than big enough. They are not perfect though and will involve a bit of tinkering because the K series of engines have port spacing at 75mm and the Goldwing ports are spaced at 90mm. But they are separate and things could be adapted I'm sure. These .. I'm probably going down this route mainly for the induction sound, the response and the looks. Topped with K&N filters (breathing in that super hot engine bay air....) with machined alloy covers. Hmmmmmmmm yummy. However if I don't do itbs for some reason then my next choice will be to fabricate some neat looking runners that are fed from a single centre mounted plenum, in a sort of slight race car like finish. A single throttle body and a nice machined top to the plenum chamber. This would be the easiest and quickest route, with the stock inlet runners lending themselves to being modified to suit. ECU I already have (Megasquirt 3 since you ask) can do fully sequential on six. This will give me the ability to tune for a really sweet idle, better off the mark acceleration at low revs and hopefully better economy. The exhaust. Here's a pic of the stock headers attached in place. They need a tiny bit of chopping and moving about to clear the back of the engine mount area, plus they sit too low, below the sump. I'm undecided about mucking about with the headers themselves for what would probably be small gains. I wouldn't want to go any larger than 28mm od on the tubes and from my googling so far it's not a common size for stainless or mildsteel bends. I would love to have a person who is super well qualified and really experienced (which is more important really) about such things as exhaust airspeed and the effects the primaries have. Someone who does this for a living. But otherwise I'll keeping trawling through all the various opinions that google offers from men in pubs and their dogs, stack all the offers and snippets of info up an a big pile and select the mean average. With a hint of gut instinct weighed heavily on by how much I can be arsed. So far it seems that great exhaust sounds can and are to be had from these engines by mucking about with everything past the primaries. I suspect the gas leaves these little pipes with sod all resistance and Honda was happy with the airspeeds they got because if not it would have been very easy for them to have increased the size of them with no real other issues. But they didn't. So I'm probably going to concentrate more on the length of them, keeping the pipes as equal as I can an look more deeply into what happens afterwards. I'm super keen to hear lots of sage exhaust advice from other men in pubs though - if only to give more my mean average pile more height.

I'll be totally happy with 100 bhp and 110lb/ft of talks. However I think I should end up with a bit more. Wont be much but it's not really my goal. I want it to sound great, run sweetly and look cool to boot. I'm probably going to click go on some bmw k75 itbs. I have an ECU, along with all the sensors I need to run it fully sequential - mainly for super smooth idle, off idle response and economy but also the geek in me wants to be a little bit more like @Roman (but I know now that will never even get close to his superior levels of geekdom) @RUNAMUCK there are no aggressive cams available for these engines, nor would I want them. Even with the maybe 60bhp it has now its a giggle on the right roads. There are debates about the valkyrie cams being a bit hotter but no one has confirmed it. A few have had the cams reground but at cost and then fucking about with shims within the complex, albeit quite cool, follower setup. I cant be arsed with that. I really just want to get the thing on the road. Fuck - I still wont know if the bushes in the box will like it running backwards and not seize up. But if that happens I'll bolt it to a honda box and make the worlds first flat six powered city Update soon with pics of the tiny little headers....

Yeah. I hear about that fact quite often when the barries start swarming. "it's a fire pump engine don't you know" Usually stated alongside the fact that they handle much better with a sack of concrete in the front

Time to mount up. First thing was to remove the air from the nearside chassis rail. It was a bit frilly right where I want to bolt a crossmember.. I bought some bobbin style rubber mounts, 60 in hardness, from the local engineering shop. They are British made mounts so somehow they will probably leak. I cut some plates that then bolted to the stock Subaru gearbox mount points. Then shuffled the engine/box into the position I wanted it to sit. I had measured the level at which Imp one sat on the ground, finding that the bottom of the rear side windows were pretty much level. I set Imp two up on the hoist at the same level and made sure it was level across the car. Marked things, measured things, checked clearances. Once happy with all that I got some cardboard and started making little shapes with folds out of it. Added a bobbin and the other end went through the original Imp gearbox chassis mount, hole enlarged a mm to take a 10mm stud. Kept trying them until things looked good and transferred the shape to steel. Bent the shape in the... bender. Tacked in place.. Removed to be reinforced and fully welded.. Finished and fitted... Now for the front of the engine. Or is that the back of the engine? The other end. I plonked a bit of steel in place. I didn't want to go much lower than the sump. I went for some low profile bobbins that were ideal. Cut some more plate to suit and drilled, tapped, bolted them in place on the engine end plate. Played with more cardboard and then steel, folded and tacked till I had things that held bobbins. welded them up.. Next job was to make a crossmember. Now there was going to be lots of moving this engine/box in and out of position. Not just now while building the crossmember but in the future of the build as I do exhausts/piping/induction etc. The huge steel bench we have in the workshop that I had been moving the engine in and out on was just that - huge, heavy and often in the way. Plus its set in height so when I wanted to move the engine position up and down it was via the car hoist which is not exactly finely controlled. I needed a bespoke engine table that was easily height adjustable. Enter stage left the 'Engine cart 2000'.. I whipped that lot above in one evening using an old height adjustable Bedford truck seat base, some spare steel offcuts from the steel rack and some budget castor wheels from Mitre 10. I added some plywood for the top and then I sat on it whilst twiddling the knob - which made things go up. And down. It was designed to match up with the main workbench in height so I could slide the engine and box straight on. Engine and box are quite light as they are and I can shift them about easily but that wont last when the flywheel/clutch/pistons/heads/gearbox internals are all back in their rightful homes. I painted it grey because I don't like blue steel and Mitre 10 had loads of plasticoat spray paint on clearance. I couldn't help but mask the old sticker on the seat base.. Hannah varnished the plywood so it looked pretty. But then I realised that sliding the engine off and on was going to ruin the ply, nor was plywood a very slidey surface. So a bit of old stainless kitchen bench got cut up for the top layer. Now in action.. Aint that just so cute. Way easier to move the lot about the workshop and into position under the car- which now handily sits a bit higher in the air which was nice for the next stage. Crossmember time. I wanted this to be more organic/factory looking then the simple box section one holding the Datsun up. It had to be strong and allow plenty of space for exhaust pipes heading backwards to a silencer assembly that will be slung under the rear valence. It also had remove easily from the car, ideally still attached to the engine if need be. I started by making some mount points that would bolt in and out easily onto the chassis rails. Captive nuts welded on some angle iron that sits on the inside of the rails. 4 bolts per side. These bolted in place with 3mm alloy spacers on each side to allow for differences between this car and Imp one, which I know has rails a few mm closer. Plasma cut a strip 50mm wide from 3mm mild steel plate. Welded some mounts on it to suit the bobbins hanging from the engine. Bent a curve in the plate till it sat where I wanted and had the shape I desired. Then started cutting cardboard again... and transferring it to steel... Tacked it altogether.. Added tubes to it for easy access to the engine mount nuts which made for a cleaner look. I could close off the angles on top and make it all pretty like. I welded what I could on the inside of the crossmember. I really didn't want exposed welds on the outside or any lumps. Then welded the outside. I had to be strategic because even though it was all 3mm steel it would still move a heap as the welds cooled- shrink on the welded edge and shorten or lengthen the whole length either way. My final welds had to pull it back out in length as they cooled and shrunk so it matched the rails. To much relief I got it pretty much bang on and it all still lined up sweet. The whole time I was building this bugger I was thinking 'ooh this is going to be hefty..' and stressing. Trying to find a happy medium between strength and weight but strength really was the most important thing. I didn't want my engine to fall on the road. As it was it turned out ok. Not a bad weight at all. I hung it on some scales.. Not bad at all. Just a smidge heavier than the alternator for example. Certainly brute enough. I was happy. I bolted the whole lot in place, lowered the wheely cart 2000 out of the way and there it sat, engine and box finally suspended on their own mounts. Beautiful I thought. So beautiful that I had to take the car off the hoist and snap some pics... Would ya look at that. Damn that looks cool. I was fucking stoked. This was a big occasion. I patted myself on the back and then took some more pics and measured some things.. Clearance under the car was great. The crossmember was only about 10mm lower than the exhaust on IMP one however this was also far further forward. It'll be gravy. The room between the inlet faces on the heads and what would be the underside of the parcel shelf was almost bang on what I had very originally measure it to be when I first mocked the untouched engine up under Imp one. About 170mm.. Neat. I'd better start ordering some induction goodies eh. So that's that. Engine is now a bolt in thing. When the time comes I'll be transferring this crossmember along with the suspension crossmember over to Impy one. But I'm a long way from that point. I put Imp two back on the hoist, gracefully rolled the engine cart 2000 back in place, 'UNBOLTED' the engine and box and rolled it away. Engine was slid back onto the bench and I am now going to look at making a custom alternator drive pulley and mounting the alternator (probably the old prelude/civic item I scored from the wreckers) I have also been looking into the exhaust. I'm doing some research and trying suss out what to do about headers. Either modifying what I have or making bespoke ones. But that's another story and will be my next instalment.

We had fitted the spare wheels from Molly but one was worn so a good tyre was sourced and fitted. Then we took her for a wof and she flew through with flying colours. There was a chip in the screen that was noted and we already knew about however it was not in a zone that mattered. Still, just to be sure, we had our friendly glass man squirt some of his magic goo into the crack while Hannah watched with keen interest... While he was there he also tended to a tiny chip on Minkys screen. The wof pass was about a month ago. We've been driving her about and watching for any issues and the only one that I noted was how slow she was to heat up. I suspected a removed thermostat and had mild alarm bells ring however she never used water nor heated up beyond normal. I pulled the thermostat cover off (noting that there was still factory grey sealant present) and happily discovered that there was still one in there, stuck open and looked to be the original Nissan item..albeit very stuffed.. I swapped in a spare we had kept from Molly and it heats up properly now. She drives really well. Very peppy, seems to be as thrifty on fuel as they should be too. Handles well but very stiff on what seem to be even stiffer springs then whats fitted to Minky. Really fun on the right roads but a little tiring if you're just wanting to cruise A to B. We've taken the squeal free wheels that we'd swapped on, fitted them to Minky and Martha now wears Supercats on the front for maximum squealing delight So that is that. Took some nice photos of her the other week. We will now list Martha up for sale tonight on Trademe (because its free car listings tonight) and see what sort of interest there is. I'll pop an advert up on here too. With luck the next rather special K11 that we have been told might be heading our way will actually come to be. Quite excited about it but I wont say anything more in case it doesn't happen. If it doesn't then at least I might get more done on the Imp..

Martha is now in fine fettle and about to go up for sale. But before I do a listing I thought i'd do an update here. She went up on the hoist and I removed all the front bumper/lights/guards etc. The rust that she had failed her last wof on was all along the bottom of the radiator support - probably the most typical place for NZ k11s to rot. Cut it all out and let in new steel. Pics explain it easier.. Phew. Done. Gave it a good coating of paint. Then while the guards were off I cut out the rotten corner on one and let in new steel.. While up on the hoist I gave the underside a clean, check over and quick tart up with some of the ever magical CRC Black Zinc 'new car in a can'... Then the surface rust around the windscreen. It looks like it had been flagged for rust, the previous owner then started cutting away the sealing trim around the screen and gave up. I cleaned it right out, wire brushed it back, painted a POR 15 type inhibiting paint around the full perimeter. More pics.. Then masked the car up and gave it some sparkle with a can of colour paint. It came up fine. Nothing flash but far better than what it was like when we got it plus now solid. There was a dent on the drivers guard, 'fixed' with poorly applied filler. I did my best to tidy it up, feather it in and paint it with the small amount of patience I could muster up and its improved but certainly something that needs more love. Then this stupid bloody sticker... Heating it up, very carefully, allowed me to peel the 'JDM scene' off without leaving a trace. Hannah spent some time tending to the usual little surface rust spots k11s get under the rear boot seal and add some aluminium tape over the holes that we've learned through experience can allow water in.. Se also replaced the brake pads for some almost new items we scored from the wreckers...

I told my brothers about this Facebook expert and my brother said this..

Barry's back...

And then this...

My response was..

I recently popped up some recent photos of the flat six on the Hillman Imp Facebook group. Lots of enthusiasm for it but I was waiting for a Barry to quip in...

No probs at all. If I do spot or hear of any cheap Cg13s popping up for sale I'll let you know.

More! More! This is great fun.

Yeah you can have it for that. It's a long block - no dizzy, alternator or inlet manifold etc (the dizzy/alt went straight onto our Cg13 and we've kept the inlet/tb for spares. It was bolted to an auto so no flywheel. But it is a genuine low mileage, unopened engine. Edit: pics of it in this thread when I was trying to convince @dmulally to see the light for his imp...

@Adoom we still have the low mileage cg10de sitting ere that came out of Minky. I think it's done 140,000. It was a fine runner and well serived before we pulled it out. I was just going to throw it up on TM or marketplace and didn't think you might be interested in it as its a 1.0. But maybe it could be useful? I have no idea what they are worth either. Problem being its here..quite far away.

That NATS system is not present on any of the Japanese market marches that we have here. ..Luckily!

That head is huge. There can't be much room between it and the bonnet? I'm figuring it's a fairly hefty engine in weight?

Ive been using dust masks for the last 10 years now, after I started working on that Bedford cf project. I was noticing how much dust etc I had in my nose at the end of the day. If I ever even grind something for a few seconds without a mask I quickly note how much stuff I'm breathing in. Or you see the stuff floating about in the air when grinding in the sunshine. I figure all the metal drops to the floor so what we are breathing is the fine dust from the epoxy that holds the disc together? @sr2 Vauxhall Viva hbs have a really nice gearstick gaitor you might like.