yoeddynz

Ditto that man ^ please do nothing more then is needed t to make this legal to drive on the road and roll it as is. Don't even clean the windows.. Except for windscreen. Its so cool!

Yeah we'll do a bbq meet at ours in September. The imp certainly is bright eh! Sort of needs to be ready to spot when it's about as high as the hubcaps on a typical 4wd ute these days..

There's two sets of holes. The inner ones are about 142mm pcd. The outer ones are around 159mm. The speakers are pioneer.......so I am figuring that the pioneer covers you have would probably work I'll send you a PM.

Cheers Ben- I'm guessing you were working up in Richmond heights?

Yeah it will be put out for sale in maybe November. Its still our house so when it goes we have to move into the cabin until we build a new house that is specific to our aspect in the yard. We had a buyer lined up but he got cold feet with the whole living on a truck thing.

Yeah ok I'll have a measure later today and let ya know.

Ahhhh... Just like a good Morris engine should be. Sweet cheers for tip. Yeah I'll do the sump to be sure and can pop a cap off and look at bearings. ".... And that folks is where the complete and utterly expensive engine build began, leaving the little Imp to fester in the corner of the workshop, leading Alex to buy a succession of other shit old cars to see him through whilst he built the race engine of dreams... "

Oh awesome. The circular groove that the mesh cover would push into is 150mm diameter. The depth needed to clear the tweeter is 17mm if the face of the mesh is flat. Let me know if you can help and I'll ping ya some dosh. Cheers.

Update time. Firstly there will be no more juggling around shuffling stuff to get the Imp on the hoist, or having to drive it down the slippery grass drive that heads to the back of the workshop to get it onto the hoist. We have the workshop back after having finished building this cabin on wheels. We delivered it to its new home where the owner will continue with the build , fitting windows, door and lining it out. It was a fun job but took up a big chunk of space. Well until we start the next build. We will have a 8 metre trailer to build for ourselves soon once we sell the housetruck. So we could now relax and enjoy the Imp. A few little jobs completed and a fair few miles clocked up. Most important thing to sort out was a leak from the nearside transaxle output shaft. After getting back from the trip to Blenheim it was discovered that oil was coming out from what I thought was the seal and getting spun out off the coupling, marking a perfect line of oil inside the engine bay. So the car ended up in this position getting its trans fluid drained. I removed the shaft, doubled checked the seal land which was fine, checked and tightened the seal by cutting a few mm from its spring because it just didn't feel quite tight enough on the shaft. I also checked the shaft too. The early Imps have a splined shaft that the output spider slides onto and is held on by a large nut. The design went through two revisions ending up with the later shafts being a factory press fit and no nut. I was sure that my late type was fine and solid but just to be sure I cleaned and siliconed the end of the shaft visible from outside. Just in case... Put it all back together, a few drives and the leak was still there. After some advice from a fella on the Imp forum I took the shaft out again and checked it in the vice. It was indeed loose. Loose enough that it could move in and out slightly and had broken the silicone bond so allowing oil to creep past the splines and out. It must have been getting worse as the oil was essentially lubricating the once tight fit of the splines. It knocked apart easily, showing the factory O ring fitted before they press them together. Once clean and dry I tried the fit. It was a touch too loose for my liking so out with the JB weld epoxy. It'll never leak again Yesterday we drove to Nelson and back and I'm happy to report that the leak has stopped ! Yay. Now the only real leak is a dribble from the rear main seal on the engine. I'll change that when I change the worn ring gear in the future. Another job was to sort out some sounds. I like my music and not having a sounds system in a car on long trips is annoying. I had already eyed up and sussed where I would mount some speakers. It seems a fairly common place after having looked at other setups out there on Imps. We had scored a JVC headunit from a customer after upgrading their setup. Then we had scored some speakers from a Nissan Bluebird SSS we had been given and passed on but not before robbing its sounds. I also had some ply left over from lining the rear of the Viva wagon floor. So sorted for a cheap as setup. We made some boxes in the sunshine on what was a cold day.... Later on the sun hid behind clouds so all three of us moved over to the warmth of the log fire.... After Hannah covered the boxes in black vinyl I mounted them under the parcel shelves and wired in the head unit, a neat little unit that due to not playing cds is shorter in depth so fitting under the shelf nicely. It all looks neat enough and sounds fine for the size. Just need to find some protective grills to suit those speakers. Next on the list is to get and active sub and mount it under a seat so we can have some fuller, deeper sound. Another job I had planned to do but kept being put off was to hinge the front number plate. I don't want to mount it any higher and block the grill so where it is makes for a great driveway crown sweeper. Driving along our 500m long stone driveway in a lowered Imp with an even lower number plate gets tiring! So I did this... I'll report back with whether it also swings back at 170mph so avoiding speed camera tickets. The other night we had a lovely sunset and the Imp was looking resplendent in the light. I took a photo.. Next jobs to do are fit some carpet and I'm still really keen on pursuing building a full EFI setup. But its going to be a very busy summer for us so that will have to be a project I pursue in the evenings. Alex

Fuck yeah!! Congrats on first drive. It sounds perfect and looks so lush. You'll be taking it to hanmeet yeah?.....

So really, because it's a hatch back you should midmount the engine and 3d print a nifty engine cover.

I hear ya on being able to get to service items without swearing...

I do love a good nerdy thread and your thread never fails to make me smile. Just wondering though.. have you been tempted at all to just chop out that ugly bulkhead and move the engine even further back? So many positives.. Even better balance, shorter exhaust and driveshaft gives you weight savings you can happily picture as you go to sleep. It will be extra work and I guess a re-cert if you want to be all official about it. But if you're in no major rush it would be a neat extra add on to your evolution of this car. Hand brake might have to move back and I dont know where the gearstick is on these boxes- are they a long box and hence it would end up in a silly place, so making gearshifts awkward? Hmmmmm. Just pondering... Oh and re-reading back through your thread while having my coffee this morning and I wonder why not ditch the brake servo, fit appropriate pedal box (having fun working out leverage, bore diameters and drawing graphs to suit) and create a shit load of room right where you need it for improved trumpets? You do really get used to the increased effort needed with no servo and the extra feel is lovely.

Yeah all good. I bought a new grunty battery this afternoon and took all the charging circuit apart. Had been completly altered about by pervious owner. New wires everywhere, all the wrong colours, missing plugs, extra plugs. Got to sort that shit out before I even look over the gp system. Oh the joys....

Oh you are such a star! Hugs from me False edit. That is for a 1990. Later model to our old thing. I am not sure if they have the same setup? False edit #2 - wow its a much simpler circuit then the one our van has.

It currently has a 520ccc. Not manly enough and 4 years of abuse plus cooking it with a shit regulator had dealt to it.

Oh I like the idea of a push button. Cut all the crap out!!!! @mo999 any schematics of what you did? Just a simple as grunty current handling relay? Or a bit more involved?

Oh you guys....

Ahhhhh. Just had battery tested and it's well and truly fucked. Plus apparently way too small for the job, in winter. I'll check the spare regulator we have as the one fitted is over charging, swap it out and get a new proper dopper battery then see what happens.

Pardon the Russian but ™®¢¥¿^¬`;\|¦¶§× I can't find any really good explanation on how this system works and how best to test it. Our old hiace (87 lh series 4wd with the mighty 2L engine) we bought it in 2010 has always needed the glowplugs to kept on for longer then the glowplug (from now on GP) light stays on. We wait till we hear the first relay click, about 10 secs. It would then always start fine. How've more recently it wouldn't. The relay would would clock earlier, we'd try to start it but no good. So we leave it longer before starting. Now the second click @ about 1 minute! In order to see/read what's going on I had fitted a volt meter to the dash. At the first click it goes from around 8-9 to about 10-11 volts. The second click coincides with it going back up in voltage. However I'm worried that leaving it for that long with out would be burning out the glowplugs. I'd checked all the connections. Battery is pretty tired so will be replaced. We've never fitted new GPs so bought and fitted a set a couple of days ago. It's still hard stater. We will put a new battery in this week but for now have to use the jumper pack. I don't want to fuck the new GPs. I can't find any solid info on how the setup works. It's all a bit conflicting and even the Gregory's manual we have tells me fuck all. Alot of the info or there on superglow is based around landcruisers etc. There are many links in the chain. A timer control, A relay, Another relay, A current sensor, A gp resistor, A temp sensor, The GPs. Can anyone here please shed some light on how it all works and what in their experience usually fucks out. Has anyone got some proper wiring diagrams that show how the system works? Access to Toyota workshop manuals on the system? Cheers. Alex

He's gone on holiday. But when he gets back we all need to give him a mild bitch slap and tell him to get his arse into gear and continue with this conversion!

Hmmmmmm Please tell me more about this adaptor plate you speak of.....

Well now.. its been a few weeks and time for an update. So far the Imp has been reliable and not let us down but it has also been true to its English form and left a few little puddles about. I'll talk about them soon. We took it on its first big road trip which was fun, although a bit noisy. I couldn't really cane it super fast on the hills because Kevin the cat had to come on the trip with us. It was a few days away to visit my parents so we cant just leave the kid at home... The car did the trip with no hassles and returned an OK 35mpg, not bad considering its geared quite low, has had heaps of sitting on the spot being tuned and due to the constant annoying flat spot right off idle I had to accelerate faster then I'd normally bother in average driving. It certainly hoons along very very well although it has an exhaust boom right around 60mph, which is around 4000rpm thereabouts. It became a bit too tiresome however should be better now I have added a load of sound insulation on the back parcel shelf. I am super impressed with the Datsun A12 engine!! Its really peppy and fun, very smooth (allowing for the annoying carb issues) and just works so well. I can totally see why they have such a cult following around the world. Everyone who chats to us about the car (and its ALOT of people.. its a right little magnet this car) think that the Datsun conversion makes so much sense. More often than not folk are full of praise for the Imps they knew, had, learned to drive in etc , except for the standard Imp engines reliability. This is a shame because I think the standard Imp engines are great however one must accept that they do need to be cared for a bit more than many owners obviously could be bothered. But the Datsun engine- first comments are usually " what a great swap- those are bomb proof engines " usually followed with the comment "it must be hard to get those engines now because all the ministock racers have got them all"... So anyway.. the wee Imp ran well and got us to Blenheim and back. But before that big trip I wanted to sort a few things. One job was to build a cold air fed filter box and carb lid to let the engine suck on some cooler air rather then the super hot air floating about in the top of the engine bay, due to Imps not having the luxury of lots of cold air running through over the engine. So I built a filter box, sized to take a modern Honda filter. I have made the box large enough to handle bigger pipes and the volume that might be needed when I plan to upgrade the induction. Box... With filter in place... This box fitted under the parcel shelf above the gearbox. Sort of out of the way and hidden but easy enough to get to. It was fed with a flexy alloy pipe from under the car. Another section of pipe headed backwards to a plenum/tophat thinggee I made for the carb... It was all going so well I thought. I splashed some black paint on it all so it looked a bit neater... Then I fitted the tophat to the carb. This is where things went a bit... tight. It seems that I had completely forgotten to measure how much room I had just above in front of the carb. Not enough it turns out .... The engine lid wasn't able to go back in place! A few choice words that somewhat rhymed with duck along with a sentence that sounded quite similar to 'well you stupid punt' were uttered. I then calmed down, realised that at least I have now got a filter box sorted for future upgrades and with that I removed the lot and refitted the previous air filter I made. At least its winter so a bit of hot air cant hurt I did another couple of jobs before the trip. I swapped out the fuel gauge which wasn't reading correctly for a spare unit I had.. I was also fed up with trying to adjust the clutch. The slave cylinder fitted had a 7/8" (22mm) bore and being pushed by the standard Imp 5/8" (16mm) master cylinder, which happens to be the same size as what the Datsuns use. However- Datsuns use a smaller 17mm slave to get the correct amount of stroke at the slave. I wasn't getting enough stroke so the clutch pedal and release fork clearences had to be set very tight to clear the gears. But I did have a very light pedal... So I worked out that the amount of stroke available from the Imp pedal, whilst being very close to that on a Datsun, was not quite enough I could get a good working system with a slave of around 3/4" (19mm). However- there didnt seem to be any slaves available out there that had the same mounting lugs, in 3/4" bore, with a metric fine hose thread. But I did have some spare random 3/4" seals, some stainless bar for a new piston and a big lump of alloy. So I made a new slave cylinder to suit. I could have sleeved the existing one down and I have a 3/4" reamer to help but I wanted to keep that one intact in case it all went pear shaped. Plus...its more fun making things ! I offset machined the lump of alloy down in the 4 jaw, bored and reamed it to suit, milled the shape up and machined a new piston to suit. But I was having too much fun and forgot to take many photos.. New next to old... It works heaps better! I can now have a bit of slack at the pedal and at the release bearing and still get my gears. Another job was to take the carb apart for the 14th time. I'm getting very quick at this and can field strip a Hitachi 306 carb in under 15 seconds, blindfolded, with both hands tied behind my back, whilst under water breathing through a straw. The carb had a few leaks. I realised that the top lid was pulled out of shape... I carefully filed it and the body flat, cleaned it out again for the 10th time and made a new thicker gasket to suit... On the next test drive the leaks had gone but I had still had not cured the flat spot. So I gave up and made a parcel shelf instead. I did have an original Imp one but it was a bit wobbly and a pain to fit. I made a new wooden one for the passenger side so now actually had somewhere to sit our phones, wallets, bag of Werthers originals, old parking tickets, a broken pen, out of date fuel vouchers and, most importantly, a screwdriver for constantly tweaking the carb settings. Again, so much fun but no photos. I finished the shelf the morning we set to leave. We plonked Kevin the cat into the car and set off. A lovely trip was had with the only downer being that the cold I had caught at fire brigade practice a few days before was really kicking in to full runny nose time, while the weather was a bit... Wintery. Got to test the wipers out though (must fit intermittant control kit I have) On the way over to Blenheim. You can spot Kevin. I took my Dad out for a hoon in the car. He loved it and only complained about the wipers being in the way of his view. Not a car fault but more down to the fact he must only be about 4'5" tall now... Back home and more recently things have happened. I weighed the car at the local tip... 750kg. The guy said the scales are within 10kg. So its in the ballpark for what I was guessing. A bit heavier then a standard Imp to be expected with a heavier engine, seats, exhaust, radiator and associated cowling, water pipes etc. But still light enough I think standard Imps are around 700KG ? More recently- one of the output shafts on the box leaks. I think it might be the shaft moving out just a touch too much on certain corners and the seal running off the land its meant to seal on. Or the seal land on the shaft is too worn. Or the new seal I had fitted has moved. The car will soon go on the hoist and I'll have a look. Cant really drive it until I sort this. Expensive stuff this oil- even more expensive if its loss means a buggered transmission. In other news I have made a parcel shelf for the drivers side. Now I can stash all my own crap within easy reach .. I am going to make some speaker boxes to mount under the shelves alongside a headunit. At a later date when I can afford to do so I'll fit an Amp and sub. I do like my music and there is only so much of Datsun A12 at 4000 RPM booming I can cope with so I need to drown it out. That is about all for now. Wish me luck with my seals...

Hey Feral - for adjusting the camber you can drill out the factory rivets that hold the top ball joint in place and bolt it in place as is usual for replacement of it anyway. By slotting the top arms and making an extra spreader plate to go above the arm you can then fine tune the camber. I can't quite fermenter but I think the 1.8 magnum and bigger engined firenza hc vivas have longer bottom control arms so giving you the preferred negative camber to start with. If you want period correct larger discs on the front, (abiding by pre 65 rules?) about a big as you can go then the fd 3.3 lower arms, ballhoints, hubs, discs and calipers are the way to go. But the ball joints and inner hub bearings are becoming unicorn like to locate new these days. I had them on my last viva and struggled to find bits. I'm fitting magnum brakes to the wagon this time as they are only a half inch smaller in diameter, much lighter in the hubs and easy to get bits for. There is a vented Renault 21 disc that can be adapted to fit and then widen the calipers to suit. As for bushes, like you've found out with your capri and what jake said, do avoid the poly bushes. They are too stiff and don't allow the movement that is factored into the rear end on vivas. The rear arms need to be able to twist a bit- especially the top arms. They just don't last. I fitted a factory harder/stiffer at of rubber bushes. A good compromise if you can find them. Rated at 65 seems to ring a bell.. One place I did for poly bushes was on the front control arms to chassis. They really improve the front braking under heavy use in the corners where sifter bushes will allow a lot of castor change and associated shimmy. Avoid superpro though--their listed item doesn't fit. Get superflex items. Spax make a full set of adjustable dampers that are period correct as they are an old company now. They are n nicely built, last well and offer a good range of damping adjustment. For road use I never needed to go further in them about 7clicks out of 20 each end. There were front sway bars available from factory, off the larger engined cars. But in an already stiff setup, especially if fitting the heavy engine, you'll lose vital grip on the front and it'll push even more. I ended up keeping mine off for better feel and grip at the expense of a little roll. Rear ones can be had but id had no luck finding any.

Hiya, Cool car!!! Nice wheels... In my opinion, based on having set up a 2.3 in a chevette, owning a FD victor wagon with one and having driven a fair few HBs with the slant fitted.. I would use something lighter and better then the slant 4. They are asthmatic heavy old lumps with a terribly designed oil system. Fine for a road car (although always bloody thirsty no matter how you drive) but horrid for anything you want to trash all day long on a race track plus be able to go around corners properly. Your car will never be as good as an HB can be with one of those. Now you'll get your slant 4 fan boys quipping in and saying things like " oh but they are torquey and strong and Gerry Marshell was a god behind one etc etc " Yeah fuck that shit- one fella who told me off sternly at a NZ Vauxhall nationals for having stuck a Japanese motor in my Viva ..." how dare you put that shit in there! " followed it up with "you should have fitted a 3.3 Cresta six instead! " Obviously not that keen on going around corners with grace that man.... You could look into loads of great engines that are lighter, stronger at high revs, will last longer. So many to choose from. If you want to keep it looking all period then I would fit a Ford crossflow (who cares about badges...its just a car). I fitted one and they are quite light, look cool, sound great and can go fucking hard. With enough money thrown at one you could get similar horse power to a worn out old toyota 4age.... or mx5 engine with a turbo. My choice, when I get around to it, for my HB wagon will still either be another v6..because I just love the sound and revs, or the Duratec/Mazda L series engine I have sitting here. Tough choice- the V6 is still a tad heavy for the best steering. If you insist on fitting the boat anchor then do the handling a favour, cut the firewall out and mount the engine back as far as you can. Then buy an Accusump for the oil system... I hope this doesn't sound all high and mighty. I just think you can do that car so much better then a slant 4. Looking forward to seeing another Viva thread on here !!! Alex