yoeddynz

Hmmmmmmmm? .... One could link up several in a row and have all of the pulses for so many toys. Or could that get messy?

Light surrounds look amazing! Ditto the plenum. Please tell me more about that gearbox speedo cable adaptor/sensor. What size thread is it, where did you get it ?

Ditto that man. What a cool result with it only being the vac hose as the main issue. That tuning/diagnostic program looks pretty damn snazy. Is that only for Rovers or it is made to suit other cars with a similar ecu/engine management?

sweet. Good score. I think they are choice cars but yeah I know what Clint means- they seem to attract a certain type of driver. Time will change that though and prices surely can only go up. Here's a nice one I spotted locally. I don't really know much about them though - so this is an earlier car eh? But looks kind of the same and I just love this shape...

Ahhh yeah- I think K11s can leak through the tail lights as well... The plot thickens....

Cool!!! I think this is the same type of Rover I had spotted in blenheim a few months ago and popped up on oldschool spotted? They look really neat- I like the pumped out front arches. Those seats are lush- quite similar in style to the Momo branded recaros I had taken from a Alfa GTV for my Viva. Super comfy! Going by all those leaks I am presuming Rover got the Nissan k11 team to design the seals etc .... Going to watch this with interest- I like your threads.

Today class we shall be discussing 'project creep'...

Sitting outside cafe this morning nomming down a cake and coffee, watching some barrie in the carpark looking all over my imp, hands on hips, shaking his head and tut tutting. He heads over to the cafe and orders a coffee. Works out that it's me who owns the imp and asks, in a very strong Yorkshire accent, "how long have you had the imp?" "oh maybe 3 years? I rescued it from a rusty shell in a field" I tell him, thinking to myself this could be a nice interesting conversation but having a feeling its going to be painful.. "has it still got the original engine?".. he spits out, no interest shown at all in the fact I've taken the effort to rescue a nice little classic car and done a not too bad a job at it. "nah.. Ive fitted a Datsun engine in there" I replied. Here we go, this will go one way or the other I thought. Fuck me did he roll his eyes and gave me the dirtiest look. He might as well have walked over and thumped me one with the fists i could picture him building in his fit of barry rage. The conversation stopped there and we left, hannah laughing her arse off at how I've gone and upset another barry with my choice of engine

Keep moving man. You'll be here soon...

Other things that have happened here in our little micra climate recently.. Hannah pinched the comfy sporty seats from Molly the G#/autostrada and bolted them into Minky... She found a few treats under the seats and carpet.. with all the seats out of both cars there had to be a rail swaps take place. In fact it was a bit more involved than that. Because the sporty seats were in a 4 door they didn't have the neat auto tilting function set in that the 2 door model seats have. So we took all the mechanisms apart and swapped bit around... The sporty seats then bolted into Minky... Then Molly was put up on the hoist and Hannah started removing her engine. We have no proof that Mollys engine is worse than Millys engine other than the feeling that Millys is possibly a bit peppier. Also when we looked inside the cam covers on both engines Millys is really clean and looks like its had more frequent oil changes whereas Mollys has a build up of older burnt looking deposits. Mollys engine still seems to pull hard and goes well, revving freely. But we went with what looks clean and feels right. Hannah then took her time and carefully took apart the front end and removed the engine and box complete with some help from me. It took longer than it probably should have but its sort of a new layout for both of us along with a fair few bolts being a bit stuck in place/awkward to get to. We rested the engine/box onto the large roll around steel bench and with the last engine mounts free lifted the car up on the hoist. Seemed the easiest way. Discovered a bit of rust on Mollys front cross member and also one of the guard bottoms... Hannah removed the guards, Autrostrada/G# spoiler, grill to suit and stashed them upstairs above the bedroom. They will, along with the bonnet and rear spoiler, be painted up later and we'll do the pre facelift swap on Minky. After the engine was out we pushed Molly out the back and rolled Milly in place and up on the hoist. This time things were much quicker. Hannah was now becoming well familiar with the layout and best order in which to disassemble things. Cool weather meant the hoists oil was thick and it seemed to take ages for the lightweight little car to drop each time she needed it to so planning this order of disassembly helped. All the bolts on Milly seemed a bit less corroded as well. One of the first things removed from Milly was her crystal. Hannah has had her eyes on that for ages. Millys magic crystal is going to be handed over to Minky. It mounts on a separate factory fitted bracket along with a little bit of extra loom that plugs in series between the lights and the loom. All very neatly done. The bulb inside is blown and its a funny little screw in jobbie we will need to source from somewhere. Millys engine came out fine- nothing different really except Milly doesn't have ABS so there's a bit more room about that side above the engine to get hands in. A mighty fine 1.3 big block... Hannah swapped the non LSD gearbox onto the engine from Molly, to be fitted into Milly... Actually having fun, becoming the valleys K11 expert.. There's a very visible difference to the diff casings on the LSD box- loads of extra ribs cast in to keep things stiff. The yucky corrosion look on the case is just aluminium oxide flashing from Molly having sat out the back of the shed over wet ground (where cars go to die...) Hannah has since cleaned it all off and with a bit more work its going to look very neat indeed. The LSD driveshafts (top) are quite a bit different too... Mollys engine with Millys gearbox were then plonked into Milly. We lubed her clutch cable while it was easy too and that made a big difference to the clutch feel. She started up with her new heart straight away and sounded fine. Took her for a test drive- all good. She's now been put back into regular service and will remain that way while Molly continues to get stripped of her interior dash and wiring loom. Later on Minky, who is now out of warrant, will come in for a transplant. There's a few question marks over how easy some of the wiring and certain components will swap across between a 1.3 PFL and a 1.0 FL. Both have mechanical speedos which is handy. Both have ABS and although they have slightly different pumps the wires are all the same - but in a different order in some places on the plugs. The dizzys are different - Minky has a later apparently improved dizzy. So that will remain and be swapped into the 1.3. The bulkhead area has the same pressings so but for popping a hole in place for the clutch cable I think the manual swap should be ok. We are fully prepared to have to swap out the entire front loom if need be but hopefully wont need to. There's also the disc brake rear end to swap across - having a look at it while Molly was on the hoist it all looks fine but will need a good wire brush and paint in order to be shiny enough to deserve being placed into Minkys immaculate underside. Lots to do but no urgent rush- just another fun project (that was never meant to be a project.......)

I rough cut down a mirror and then ground the corners with the grinder. It was messy and the edge wasn't perfect but the black sealant I used to hold it in place within the stainless casing hid the edges. It was totally functional and looked suitably ropey enough for a shitty old viva wagon.

Thanks for the kind words fellas. Glad you're enjoying the ride Nathan- how many cups of tea did you have while catching up? Its quite a wordfest..

Phew- been busy. Lots done = update time. But to save my sanity I might do it in two lots. So as per @GregT bit of information above I looked into motorbike oil pump chains and yeah- bugger all have tensioners and they actually run quite loose. I then decided to scrap the idea of spring loaded tensioners because even with the ones I had they were still a bit awkward to fit and didn't quite work in the angle I would have wanted. So enter stage left my new adjustable tensioner device... which fits like this... The bolts that clamp it down are actually accessible from below with the sump plate removed so once the chains wear to a point that I'm not happy with I can tension them independently. The will be nyloc nuts replacing those normal nuts on the tensioner bolts when the final assembly takes place. So with that finally finished I moved on down. The sump cover. It has to be fairly beefy because it could see some hits plus the engine will rest on it when on the bench. It has to be alloy so It can be used as a useful heat sink to pull heat from the oil. It has to look cool for when the Barries look under the car. So some fins were in order. I bought a big lump of alloy from Ulrich aluminium. That hurt. I put it through the old table saw and did some rough cuts just to save on time milling... Into the mill and did milly things. It was going to take bloody ages thought so I made a new tool which I shall call the DDC. 'Dewalt drill control' ... It could always be an MDC. Makita drill control. My cunning design is adaptable. In action... Groovy man... Then the sides taken down... I stopped there. The bit that is left unslotted will be machined to suit a recessed sump plug. I wont do any more until I finish the front cover below the cambelts where I'll also be adding some engine mount points. Next up was to finish the adaptor plate that connects the engine to the gearbox bellhousing. I had machined a bunch of pedestals to an exact length I had worked out to suit the positioning of the spigot shaft on the end of the first motion shaft into the spigot bearing. These pedestals have been machined on the gearbox end to locate within the dowel like spot faced bolt holes on the bellhousing. This way there was no chance of any float in any direction - the box would always be perfectly concentric to the engines crank and the bolts are really just clamping it. I bolted it all up together... Then cut some strips of 4mm alloy plate and started bending them to suit. Connecting the pedestals... Once I was happy with the fit up of those filler strips I ran a marker pen around them and took it all apart. Then cut the plate back to the lines in the bandsaw. Well I did so for a while but due to several things including the bandsaw having a totally rooted bearing collapse in the saws gearbox so making blade run off the driving wheel. plus the only course pitch blade having some missing teeth I ended up using the jigsaw. Anyway- got there in the end. Pieced it back together and it looked like this... Now time to weld it all together. I knew this was going to be tricky because the whole lot is like one huge heatsink and our current power cable to the workshop and the subsequent circuit breakers I have installed as a safety net wont allow me to run the welder at enough amps for such a mass of alloy - sit on 150 amps for any longer then 20 secs and it would trip. If I had a big enough oven I'd heat the whole lot up together nice and slowly. But I don't. So I just had to be strategic about it and work fast because once I stopped welding the heat soon dispersed. Luckily the welds just have to be strong and functional because it would all be smoothed down with a flap disc for a more factory casting look I wanted. It turned out good and best of all it hadn't warped so the box still fitted correctly and neatly. I was happy with that and it was now time to move on to the next stage which was the starter motor fitment. That will be in the next exciting instalment

Fucking done it now haven't I..

The pic doesn't show it but it has quite a dimple going on. Not that it's seeing any action anyway because the taped up hole and modified seal seem to be stopping any water getting in!

Is 11fc a bit like gorilla glue? Sticky sticky stuff that ya dont want on your fingers eh.

Yeah oldschool threads pop up everywhere. Probably the main way new members find this forum. My personal preference for wiring is to not use those (ugly) crimp fittings. I buy the bulk bags of uninsulated 6.3mm spade terminals. I then crimp and solder them and use black heatshrink over them. I just like the uniformity of the black and know that the wire will never come out. Takes a little longer but I never have any desire to rush wiring jobs because I get so much satisfaction from it. I collect looms from any car I happen to be splitting and if i get components from the wreckers I'll take as much loom as I can. I've built up a good collection of various cable this way, in all the colours so I can often match the actual factory colour codes. I'm keen to get some of those bulkhead din/military style fittings for the Imps next engine install - aliexpress have loads and I'm sure many are fine in use. Must order something soon actually.

I think oldschools very own @ProZac might have been involved with the hpacademy wiring course?

We had one of those ISO tab facing tools in the last shop I worked in. Neat little tool. Worked well on alloy frames but was hard work on some steel frames.

Yeah all steel and heavy as. Very basic and quite grunty. Once you have one you start cleaning up every single bit of wood. It's an ocd sufferers best toy. I can't bare to stack wood up in my shed stack inside without giving it a skim. Then I can select through the nicest looking bits for the next job.

I'm still using an old Ryobi thicknesser, bought second hand for $250. Fuck its been punished, done a shit load of work and still goes strong. The newer ones seem to have more plastic, as is often the case.

you have the same table saw that we have. Shit they are a nice saw. It was a fair chunk of money when we got ours about 8 months ago but well worth it. Some really nice features and well made.

Well then. Its about time for an update on K11dom. Leaks. Fucking leaks... Nup - not them. The more annoying ones that happen in a car that shouldn't leak because its not British. The ones that you cant locate the source easily. You think its fine, you've fixed the obvious hole or sealed up a gap and all is good. Then a week later you notice that the car has that stale wet whiff. Bugger. Back to square one. Well Milly and Molly already had this annoying little habit from the beginning and Minky remained bone dry. So we presumed it would be the standard k11 scuttle leak we had read about in plenty of threads on various Micra forums... OK. The Micra forum. Well actually there's two but one, an Australian forum, has fizzled out and has that look of a windows 98 created chat room where aftermarket ECUs were only just becoming a thing and wheels over 14" were considered large. I digress. So Milly and Molly leaked. Minky watched from the sideline all smug face and happy because she was the planned keeper. But she too wanted some leaky fun and started to go whiffy in the passenger footwell. FFS ! So after a few rounds of pulling the mats out on a sunny day, undoing some trims and lifting the carpets to dry out, propped up with wooden blocks, letting it dry out and thinking 'well that's nice now, dry and whiffy gone, maybe it was just our wet shoes or a door not shut properly' and then only to have it come back after another decent bout of rain, we couldn't put up with it anymore. So this happened... Hannah stripped both scuttle panel covers from Milly and Minky. Its actually a really quick job. One of those 'bloody wish I had done that ages ago' jobs. Sure enough they both had the failed clip seal that eventually craps out on all K11s... This little green clip sits right below the windscreen. Its a nothing more than a lower location guide for windscreen fitment. Its pushed into the panel and seals with a shaped rubber washer of about 1mm thick behind it. The rubber breaks down and falls apart. Now for some reason the person in charge of designing this aspect of the K11 decided take make sure that the hole the clip fits in is sited right above the ventilation intake... So the water runs right off the bottom of the screen, through the perished seal and down through the vent, through the fan and out the bottom onto the floor. In this pic you can see a drip of water making its break for freedom off the fan motor base below the plug. This will explain why Millys fan had stopped working... So we removed, cleaned and with some decent adhesive sealer sealed both the green clip and the one to the right of it. The second clip doesn't hover above the intake but its better to not have water festering about the clip holes anyway. We did seal Mollys clip later on, if only to stop fish from breeding in her footwells as she sat out the back of the shed (the area we now refer to as 'the place where cars go to die' ) Luckily none of the cars had any rust around the clip holes. Its a common rot point for UK cars due to the salted road spray running off the windscreen and doing its marvellous thing in good fashion. Here is just one sample photo taken from 'one of' the aforementioned micra forums of some classic clip rot... So all sealed up and now dry as a bone Hannah happily reinstalled the dried out interior bits and we revelled in such lovely clean, whiffyless and dry interiors. Until it rained again. Fuck. The floor behind Minkys passenger seat was sodden. Like properly wet right through the carpet, underlay and up the tunnel edge. I couldn't understand how it could get so wet? I presumed we must have left the passenger door cracked open and with the last torrential rain event (we've had enough of them already- it feels like the tropics here, only with frost) there must have been a leak straight from the top edge of the door onto the carpet. So out with the blocks of wood again. This time I had to remove the underlay stuff and wring it out. Most of it disappeared into the bin actually.. Anyway..same story. Dried it all out. Thought that was that and lessoned learned to check the doors. Then Milly started to smell bad. Really pongy. WTF!!! The back window started to go misty but the carpets were dry as. A few days later I popped open the boot and found a towel hidden in the spare wheel well that we had used to wrap up the noisy wheel nut wrench/jack handle. It was sodden and smelled like a dead ferret. So that got binned. Righto - here we go again! Some how the hatch was leaking. First port of call was obviously those world famous forums. "It could be the hatch seal. Or the seals between the rear light pods and the body" they remarked knowingly. But ours were fine. We tested them. We had great fun taking turns to sit inside the boot and watch for leaks as the other ran a hose around the hatch. Nothing obvious. There was a light gap at the top corner where the seal didn't quite press against the hatch but that wasn't the cause. We added some foam just in case. Kept looking. Nothing. So we left it, annoyed and feeling a bit defeated. 'Maybe it was the hatch not being closed properly" I muttered with a tiny grasp of distant hope. "bloody Japanese cars. They shouldn't do this. Might as well be British. Even my Imp stays drier" I muttered even louder. Roll on another week or so. Fairly dry weather keeps our spirits sailing high. Cars are dry. Things are looking up. Then more rain. And more smell. I could have lit a match. This time it was Minky. She had 'that whiff' again. It smelled around the rear seat area. We lifted out the seat base and sure enough underneath it really hooned. "fuck- there MUST be a dead rat under here" I proclaimed with a hint of almost excitement at the thought of not finding a dead rat but finding the cause. I could hug the dead rat I was so happy. But upon lifting the seat out we found no dead rat but instead a damp seat base. "WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!!!" was apparently heard as far as Golden bay. The seat base was wet but the top was not. Right. This means war! "Get that hose!" I shouted as I scurried my way into the 'boot of certain death smell but no dead rat' and watched for tell tale leaks.. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing......hang on! There was a tiny trail of water running down the seal. It had to be crossing over somehow. We opened the hatch and followed the water beads. They tracked down the seal around to the bottom corner and disappeared. We popped the seal off and found a little hole between two panels... An intentional hole by the looks of it but in a silly place. Water tracked through the hole and down the inside of the panel. Its been doing this a while. Note the water track lines... The same shite design feature was found on Milly too and she even has the same little rusty water stains. From that hole it runs down the panel onto the boot floor and along a pressed channel that leads to under the seat (a perfect design..) Once the cavity under the seat is full it runs off forwards and cascades off the edge down beneath the carpet behind the passenger seat. It almost seemed unlikely when you glanced at the pathway, like as if a Nissan engineer had been reading a book full of Escher drawings while on the toilet and decided he'd design in a backwards waterfall into the K11 for shits and giggles. The tosser. So I had to design in my own anti waterfall features. My first line of defence was to block the hole. I used some self adhesive alloy tape... I then cut a hole in the seal so the water that was tracking down the seal would fall through the hole and out on the outside of the hatch opening.. My last line of defence, just in case the other points fail, was to drill a hole in the channel on each side, paint it, and build a wall with epoxy putty so any really determined water has no choice but to drain out... Take that water - I am the master of dry!!! So far its worked. We have had some huge rain events since and both Milly and Minky are dry and no horrid smells. Molly is still out the back, probably full of fish I shall sell my design fixes to Nissan. If they actually care. Hopefully this will be useful information to the hordes of future K11 owners residing on oldschool...

This thread is one of my favourite reads! Lots of good pics and description of the work involved. You've done a fucking sweet job! What's cool for us readers is that you'll be selling this and having to start all over from the very beginning in Takaka. Neato! I'll come round, use your spotting knife, drink your tea and watch as you build. I might even offer some sage but useless advice.

But really what actually happened was this....