yoeddynz

Yeah totally correct. I'd even been into Nelson looking for alloy ducting but the place that stocks it didn't have the size I wanted. I'd bought a pod filter for the job but it was huge and ugly. I was going to mount it down low. I realise it's gonna be fucking hot up there so yeah.. I need to do something. However I just wanna drive the thing and check every thing out so a top mount filter will suffice for now. Ideally I'd be sticking side mounts in place given the huge amount of room I have there but again.. I just wanna drive it. Imps generate a big vacuum area and the engines get filthy quick (shame) . Certainly have to have a good filter system. The southern hemisphere cars actually ended up with a feed tube from the drivers door frame due to our dusty roads. But it's too tiny for a bigger engine so I removed it and welded over the hole. Id spotted the c20 top hat thing on datto wiki. Looks ideal. Easy to find?

Exciting times here at the only Imp workshop in the valley. It runs! But typically there are a few small hiccups. Some actually quite comical. I think we should re-wind back to where we left off last time. So I needed a new ball to see the gear stick through until I can get a decent proper replacement. I had bought a section of nylon/teflon bar. I made a gauge from card to match the curve inside the socket that the ball would rotate. Then I reversed that into a gauge that I could place over the bar as I machined it. Not exactly brain surgery. Which leads me to a little giggle about this bit of comedy gold... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I he he. Love it. So yeah.. easy job. I got a pretty match and it came out OK. Works well enough but the reverse lockout plunger spring is a bit too keen and popping the gearstick left into the reverse plane requires quite a sharp movement. Luckily it would be easy enough to sort, except for that removing the engine and box bit.... I might just put up with it. At least I'll never accidentally select reverse when dropping down into second before hurtling around a tight corner feeling the full force of the mighty 68 little Datsun Ponies as they rocket me forwards. But before I got too excited about such F1 levels of performance I thought it might be prudent to protect those little Ponies from breathing in dusty air. I needed an air filter that fitted the space I had (not much area in height available), looked good and was cheap. There was nothing available. So I'll make one. I started with an old but perfectly usable filter from a customers Ford econovan (Mazda really..)... I chopped it up, essentially slicing off a section of the right thickness to suit the height I had. I then grabbed a section of 5mm alloy sheet I had in stock, chopped out two discs with the Jigsaw. Put a hole in one with a holesaw which allowed me to hold it in the lathe to machine it down. Reduced the thickness by 3mm leaving a neat lip around the edge to not only hold the metal filter outer in place but hide and seal the edges... For the lid I welded an old steering wheel boss I had kicking about onto the plate. Then I machined the plate down to suit, like the bottom one and then cut the boss off. Cleaned up the marks and ended up with a filter that fits and looks the part too. I'm very happy with it In place... Note the ugly pipe hanging from the rocker cover breather. I need to sort out something there. The manifold the carb sits on seems to be spot on level since modifying it. Welding castings like this can often be a bit tricky what with porosity and dirty alloy. The datsun item seemed quite clean in this respect... The tiny little Hitachi twin choke carb that sits on top is so dinky. I have no idea exactly what model A series engine its from as I had been given it by a friend who had got it with a job lot of Viva parts. I can only hope that the jetting is correct. I'll soon find out. I might try again with research on the numbers. I had to reconfigure the throttle cable layout to suit its new home. This involved a new pulley to suit the cable pull on offer from the stock Imp throttle pedal... So the filter was sorted, carb in place, cables all hooked up (after buying 3 metres of Shimanos finest brake cable outer to suit the stainles brake inner for a tandem bicycle) and it was all getting a bit exciting. I was starting to get those 'first start, will it start, will it blow up, is the engine actually rooted?' feelings and thoughts. I double checked everything and put some petrol in the tank. No coolant yet- no point if the engine turned out to be a plonker. It would only be one more thing to have to remove. Turned the key as Hannah excitedly watched the engine from the back... Whir, whir, whir, whiiiir, whiiiior, whiiiiiooooouur, whiiiour, whour, wooohour, woooooouur, woor, woor, woo, wo, w....w.. Bugger. Well that battery that charged up ok, seemed ok, was obviously not OK. So we connected the booster pack on. Winding winding winding. Nothing. Hmmm. Has to be spark. Fuel pump, barnd new, was working fine, fuel at carb and at correct level. Fuel smells from exhaust. Spark then. I checked the coil- yep. Power to the coil. I checked it had power when turning over (some ignition switches can fail like this). Yep all good. Checked for spark with spare plug on lead. Nothing. Checked on king lead. Nothing. took cap off and checked rotor. Good. Checked continuity on leads to and from coil to electronic pickup in dizzy. Fine. At this point I was getting a sinking feeling that the pickup module in the dizzy was broke. However I knew that the previous owner had the car running not long before I bought it and there was nothing I'd done that could break it. I checked the polarity on the two wires. It was correct according to the electronic ignition swap thread on Datsun 1200 wiki. i had a look at all the photos I had taken of the wiring before I pulled the car apart. Hmmmmm- the two wires are the other way round. I did some more quick googling and it seems that they should be that way. Tech wiki- you lie. Swapped the two wires and this time we had spark- which my hand can attest to as it had 20,000 volts jolt through it. Reconnected plug lead, tried again and this time something. A muffled backfire. Tried again- same thing. Hmmm- timing is way out. Dizzy timing and it was fine- I had previously very carefully setup TDC using the stick and two marks meathod to double check the marks on the crank pulley because the car has got Toyota 5 rib pulleys on it (previous owner had at one point been running a supercharger on this engine) Everything seemed fine. Then Hannah quipped up and said "maybe its 180 degrees out and its on the exhaust stroke?" She was correct. I had spent all that time checking the tdc but not properly checked if both valves were closed. Oh silly me! So we spun the dizzy round and reset its timing. Jumped in the car and on about the second go it started. Yay!!! It sounded good. Not too noisy. Ran it for half a minute, workshop filling with smoke as all the paints, spilt oils, greasy finger prints burnt off. Decided it was worthy of some coolant and so Hannah filled up the system. It took ages to swallow about 9 litres of coolant, even with the bleed nipples open up front. sadly there was a pinhole on the thermostat housing I'd repaired and the old Smiths temp gauge decided that because its parent company was Lucas it would wasn't going to turn up to work. It was getting late so we called it quits and I removed the housing to seal the pin hole. I swapped the gauge over for another one and went to bed. The next day I thought would be the day of the first drive. I excitedly put the number plates on. I didnt want to fit the rear plate in the usual position on the engine cover. There are no holes there, no light, no light mount and the plate is too wide that it akwardly covers over a section each side of the main centre hole. So I drilled two tiny holes and mounted it below the bumper, with a light on one side. I think that I'm going to change the light though for a neat one hidden in the un used and slightly bent crank handle hole on the bumper. But back to the that drive. ooooooh exciting. So exciting I had to go have a nervous poo. Once back I started the car, with the help of the jumper pack and warmed it up a little. Clutch in. oh. That feels weird?.. let the clutch out eased the car out of the workshp into the sunshine, first time this shell has moved under its own steam for a very very long time. Awesome! Righto- lets go. Then suddenly.. gurgle gurgle splatter splatter. Coolant starts running out of the heater onto the passenger floor. Bugger!!!!! Arrrgggggggghhhhhhh! Righto- thats it. I'm over it. We pushed it back in to the workshop, into the corner of shame. I muttered some more choice words and then said to hannah "fark this...Lets go for a bike ride" So we jumped on our cyclocross bikes and went for a strop in the local mountain bike park. I got to contemplate the problems and felt much better once we got home. Then this happened... I had the heater matrix out and on the bench in about one hour of the Craig Charles funk and soul show. Turns out it had frost damage, from cold Canterbury days sitting out in winter (this heater was from Imp 3, the Christchurch car). Luckily I had a good spare!... Then that clutch. It had over extended itself and when I tried it again once back home it pissed fluid everywhere, having jammed a seal... I have swapped in a spare seal, extended the pushrod so it starts from the very start of the piston travel and will watch it- you can pump it out with quick clutch foot action so something aint right. I suspect its the flexible line has inside kink. I'll look to replace it. In normal use the clutch seems ok. Time will tell. Well that was a wall of text! I hope you all enjoyed my ramblings. Oh and the spare temp gauge I fitted is crap too. I'll buy a new complete setup. I promise the next installment will be full of joyous Imp driving tales

Fantastic work. Looking very neat!

Wow. As the new title suggests. All those little jobs. As all those who have or are undertaking a car project will agree these little jobs certainly do add up. I can skip them or rush them especially as the canvas upon which they attach is so clean and tidy. So is no particular order, due to the fact that some of them I start, then stop when I realise I am missing a vital part which has to wait until the next visit to the big smoke, start on another job in the meantime, go back to last job, forget where I was at with it, then realise I forgot to get the bit even though it was on a list, then start on another bit. While all this happened there was also a fair bit of mini adventures going on because Hannah's brother was over from the UK on holiday. We did some very nice camping, biking, hiking trips with him. Because we all like pretty pictures here's some from a few of the adventures had in a last few weeks... So yeah- working on a car project is tricky when tempted by the outdoors like that Back to the Imp. First big job since the last update was to sort out the wiring. I basically re-wired the whole car. The original layout was not going to work how I wanted it to. There was a fair bit to add for safety, extra features, ease of disassembly, neatness. I bought an extra fuse box as I realised 6 fuses were not enough for what I wanted to do. Photos.. The wiring shop.... I have a fair bit of automotive cable I have collected over the years to use... I mounted the boxes and relays onto a piece of clear lexan. It worked out a very neat way to do it. I also took the instrument cluster apart and cleaned it out 50 years of dust. You can see the amount of connectors that have to be undone to remove the instruments... It just does my head in when I am so used to a couple of plugs, even on the Viva which is the same era. So I added multi pin plugs to the loom. Easy now. Fuses and relays in position... The race car came with an extra gauge pod below the dash. I bought a new electric oil pressure gauge, got given a very neat wee rev counter by my good friend Dean (cheers!!! ) and kept the Smiths temp gauge in place. I didnt like the way the pod was wider then the heater control bracket I was mounting it to. So I made a tapered mount to fit between them.... Gauges and dash etc as it now... Other things added were a neat wee push button switch for an electric washer pump because all the squeezypush type squirty rubber butons had perished. I added extra wires for a stereo, amp, electric water pump, under dash footwell lighting etc. Moving to the back. I re-wired the whole lot. Not much to see because all the wires are now tucked out of the way. I needed an alternator belt tensioning bracket. The datsun item was horrid.. So I made a new one. However I cocked up and soon found out it didnt quite line up. I had to had a bit.... In the end it turned out sweet and I'm very chuffed with it ... Now moving up to the front. The battery. It needed a home so it wouldn't slide about. I made an alloy box from some thin sheet. It bolts in place to some alloys bars attached to the bulkhead so i only need to remove two cap screws and it can be removed if I need to take the tank out etc. In photos... I made a stainless bracket to take a washer bottle, of which I can not remember where I picked up but have had for years waiting to use on a project. Finally a home for it ... Heater tap. I needed one. The Imp one was knackered so I went to the wreckers and got a couple that would work. Picked the best fitting. I think its from a Honda. Really neat item and should last. Would be an idea replacement for a stock Imp setup too. However I am running both hoses, inlet and outlet, from one side now where they tee off from the main lines. Anyway. Photos. I needed to adapt the old brass fitting so I machined it out and soldered in the straight section of the old u angle pipe... Altered the Honda bracket and made it all fit... Played with some hoses... and ended up with this... Clutch time. hannah and I had a hell of a time trying to get it to bleed up. I finally worked out two things. Firstly- the replacement seal that I had been sold by a 'reputable' brake specialist was the wrong one and its heel diameter was slightly too large meaning the piston was struggling to return. It was a friday, no chance get another so I went through all my seal collection and found this... However it was too large and wouldn't fit. I looked again. Next up out of the box was this... Still no good! Bugger. So instead I machined a new piston to suit a seat that was the right OD but had a larger ID... Now the piston returned. But it still would not drag in fresh fluid. I took the master apart for the 14th time and looked at some other diagrams online. I soon realised that there was a teeny tiny spring washer missing behind the rubber inlet washer. Its not visible in the Haynes manual or mentioned that I could see. I made one from a coil of spring and now had a fully working master cylinder. The clutch bleed up pronto and works fine now! Phew. Latest job I did was last night. I removed the exhaust and added a boss I machined from a 18mm nut for an O2 sensor. Then I was mucking about prepping an 18mm bolt to make a plug for the time being and remembered I still had not only a boss but also a stainless plug left over from the Innovate wideband kit I had fitted in the V6 Viva. Sweet. A nice treat. And that is all for now. Its getting very close. Engine has a new oil filter and oil, coolant needs to be added (and I bet some leaks will need fixing....) and then I just need to make an air filter assembly for the carb. Nothing available to fit the space, at a price I like, so I will build my own from one 5th of a Mazda Van filter I also need to machine up some Nylon bar I bought to make a new pivot ball for the gearlever. Big thanks to John875 from Australia who bothered measure one of his balls for me and post a photo online. It looks like this...

Ok cool. Could be a source for new cheap jaws. Most I've seen are all the same size.. All copies.

Your shrinker stretcher. What make is it. Do you find that sometimes the shrinker jaws won't 'grab' the steel enough to shrink. I've cleaned the little ridges on my set of shrinker jaws but I think they might be worn. Sometimes it takes several attempts to get them to grab the steel.

Yeah - they have moved back further now. Trailing arm suspension.

Thanks dave. Just did a, hopefully last, shipping mission for parts in Nelson. All those little bits adding up. Running out of moths. Bought a pod filter from supercheap. Extra 15% bhp right there. I have been gifted 3 days to myself to work on imp whilst hannah is off tramping up in the Mt Arthur region with her brother.

Fuck this is looking so good. So close! Please-never ever paint it.

It is certainly about time. However- I will spend any spare time working on my Imp for now- then can look forward to going for a drive somewhere, get something to eat and do the default 'look back at my classic parked in the sunshine' glance

I can ask. Make a list and pm me. Cant promise anything as I think the fella is a hoarder.

Oh awesome! I never realised you had come back on here and started a thread about this after having told me about the dickhead mod at xmas time. Fuck this is looking good! Top work going on. loving your new shed too- damn I bet its a relief not to be shafted with absurd rent anymore. Looks a lot warmer and lighter too! We are still planning our similar project with a Bedford K series cab and have found a supply of Safaris. The planning continues- now even more excited after seeing your project.

Its been a while since the last update but i have been chipping away at this project. I finished the weldathon on that bus and it was picked up the next day. The owner is really happy with my work and it turns out he has quite a collection of classics. He now wants to bring me some of the cars, including a mk1 mini cooper, for some rust work. Cool! While the bus was taking up space I had been sneaking in some work on the wee Imp. I fitted the engine up to the transaxle, weighing the engine first. 87kg with the flywheel in place. Not too bad at all. Not super light like the standard Imp all alloy unit however I have moved so much stuff to the front that it should still be well balanced. I do love the idea of an all alloy Nissan cg13 twink from a K11 Micra- however that would require a full re-certification. I prefer the idea of a Goldwing engine engine more! I digress. So anyway- I had slung the engine in place using a lump of timber and a ratchet strap. Worked fine. Then started making new engine mounts and cross member. I was not happy with the state or look of the old one and knew it could be far better. Not really a lot to say about making fabricating it all- the usual story of lining the engine up exactly central and building things to connect. I wanted to make sure that the exhaust manifold and starter could be easily removed without touching the cradle. I probably over built it with extra bracing (I even ended up adding extra gussets just before painting it, because ocd paranoia) but all up it still only weighed in at around 7-8kg. In photos. I didn't take many as work progressed on this bit really quickly.. Clearance under the car was still really good, considering how low the sump looks from the back. I think an optical illusion due to the rear panel not being in place. Then painted in black epoxy.. Next up was the exhaust. The manifold that came fitted was running really close to the drive shaft! Enough that it would contact when the car was lifted off the ground. There was quite a bit of damage, dents, poor welds and other bits that needed attention so I chopped it all back and carefully shortened the bottom pipes then systematically pieced it back together. I required quite a bit of forward thinking because the access to weld to pipes all the way round was really tight. No photos of work though as I was so immersed in the process I forgot to take some. Really happy with the result though. Fits perfectly, cleaner runs and still equal length (as if a Datsun A12 with a carb the size of a small cup would care. But hey, every little helps ) Later on I painted it and then wrapped the upper pipes to ward off heat from the inlet and coolant pipe. I know some dont like heat wrap but I think its great! Its worked well on my last several car builds. Luckily I live in a dry enough area to get away with it and not worry about potential corrosion. With that sorted I moved onto the rest of the system. I have always had a picture in my mind of what I wanted it to look like and I wanted it to be rear slung with a side exit to avoid the car filling with exhaust fumes. Apparantly these early Imps with the roof vents can suffer from fumes being pulled into the car by the vacuum. I also had a rough idea on how I would build my own silencer and there wasnt anything available that fitted my ideas with a price I liked. I had built one for the Mazda Rx3 and it worked well. Money is tight (I'm too tight..), time is plenty and I love making things so I started building. Using the pipe from the original straight through muffler.. Then fabricating my silencer using some ideas I nicked from Google along with extensive coffee fueled airflow thinking in my mind. I have no idea on what it will sound like but it was a fun process and looks neat. The stainless pads worked well in my last muffler along with some glass matting I got from the neighbour. I'll report back In photos... I had a pipe bent to 90 degrees and added mount points to the muffler so it slings up under the rear valance. I made a stainless heat shield to deflect heat away from paint and bottom pulley. You'll see that later. I have yet to decide on the length of the exhaust tip, cut it and then weld it on to finish. Then the inlet. Because the Datsun engine sits flat in this Imp, unlike the rear sloping angle in its usual Datsun 1200 home, the carb is not level. I chopped off the mounting face and milled the manifold at angle to suit. Then I welded it back in place. Carb is now level. I filled in an unused vac hole, cut off the extra unused lugs and gave the whole thing a clean up till it was nice and smooth. While I was playing with alloy I made a new alternator bracket... and had to rebuild a very corroded thermostat outlet. it was knackered... I was given a better spare by a nice fella with a Datsun 1200 ute but it pointed upwards. My outlet, most likely from a van, points down and suits the pipework routing I wanted to do. So I had to fix it. I found a suitable piece of alloy pipe on an old scooter handle I had rescued from the local scrap metal pile at the dump... Much better! Then onto the pipe work in the back... Just a case of sussing out a neat route to suit my tastes, remain easy to work on and remove and allowing for a potential Davies Craig electric water pump just in case the Datsun pump is not up to the task (and also because I do rather fancy the geekiness of the little display unit not to mention how much better it could work) With the pipes sorted I replaced the transaxle output seals because well, for $20 it made sense to do them now. I machined up a stepped tool to make sure they went in straight and to the correct depth. New seals.. Then mounted the brand new BMW couplings I bought from Rockauto. I had to make some spacers to suit as they are narrower then the stock Rotoflex couplings. With the car on the ground the driveshafts sit almost bang on parallel to the ground which is good for their longevity. I didn't fancy reusing the red Nolathane couplings that came with the race car because whilst strong in shear and rotation they didn't have much flex in and out which would impose quite large stress on the transaxle casing as the rear suspension went through its motion I felt. I then did some fun little jobs (but its all fun really..) like cleaning and painting the starter and alternator... I dug out my old art oil paints and mixed up a suitable orange to paint the inside of a very faded rear indicator lens. It'll do for now but I do look forward to locating and buying some better ones when I go to Blighty in July! Then began the wiring! Like all my other previous car projects, I enjoy this part immensely. I love the challenge of hiding as much of the wires away, re-configuring the circuits to suit add ons or just to make them better. In the case of the Imp, which has no fuses fitted at all (until the later mk3 Imps came along) this was an essential item to address. It also has a terrible dash wiring layout whereby you have to unplug everything to remove the instruments. Almost everything seems to run off just one piddly feed wire coming from the key. I'll sort that lot out with some plugs. Add in some relays for the lights, fan. Wires for a potential electric pump, sound system, high stop lamp (I have a neat idea floating about in my head for that) and making sure its future proof because later on I would like to inject this engine. I have also added in a tail to attach a trailer plug to. Because that will be a thing So I had two extra looms going spare which I pulled apart. I now had a large amount of extra wires for my project. Wiring isn't the most exciting thing to take photos of. I have now finished the engine bay wiring and I'm pretty happy with it. Now I've refitted the rear valance panel and exhaust and can lower the car down and start on the interior wiring. I'll be making a removable fuse box/relay unit and fit it under the dash if all goes well. Some photos of where I'm at now...log burner in use as the nights get colder. Sofa wheeled over to middle of workshop for max stereo imaging whilst I drink beer and play with wires... Wires hanging from engine bay.. Engine bay completed (missing hose clip noted..) but for an over flow tank from header tank to fit. I will build a better two part tank in the future I think. Exhaust tip length yet to be decided and cut. Note stainless heat shield. Bumper also to go back on, with bottom mounted rego plate.

Cool- it'll happen in good time. I'll send this dow when I have finished reading it/remember to take it to town next

Top job! Cool.

@datto_610 My parents found this the other day. Belongs to your wagon. I'll post it down. Its filled with period correct old Barry type dad scribbles and info

Yeah they work fine Perhaps you'd put up the wrong 'share' link on other photos? My brother in the UK is kind of keen on getting another vw van. He used to have a newer design, square looking thing, with a 1.7 diesel slung in the back. Fuck it was soooooooo full of rust. I think he wants a bay window now but prices there are stupid for good ones.

Are those Honda Prelude seats I'm spotting in there? If so then I had some in my first chevette. Not exactly period but bloody comfy Please repaint this the original blue (I'm not a fan of BRG either...)

A lot of your photos are showing up? Just pops up some insta thing?

I'm sure you'll get advice from someone on here.....

In the amount of time you've spent fucking about talking about trigger wheels you'd have cut and filed one out by now. Honestly--it's not a rocket science job. Tools you'll need. Vice, Hacksaw, File.

Still better then dizzycrabs

I think there's a buffer built into the code anyway. Or am I just talking lots of food.

Just make one- I made one from 2mm steel disc. Marked out the teeth, cut it with hacksaw and filed smooth. did not take as long as expected and was a nice simple srarngely satisfying wee job to do with music cranked up.

Ooh Oh - on potential injection for imp.. Previous owner had just told me he still has a couple of sidedraft twin weber manifolds and will get me one