yoeddynz

By the time the fins rot on this rad ill hope to be busy building my next project...

Front radiator time. The race car came with a radiator mounted in the front. Not sure what its from, I think the previous owner said it might be Toyota starlet. Anyway- it was loosely mounted and not sealed at all. I want to fit it into this shell neatly and so it has the very best chance at pulling off heat as well as possible. For those not familiar with Imps here's the front with its original little grill (off Imp number three because I couldn't find the other grill.. then discovered two hiding on the large self built onto the table)... Here's it with grill removed. Not much of an opening. Its filled up with whats called a horn box and also supplies the ventilation system via a fan... I cut that box out. Easier than I was expecting luckily. I made the hole bigger... Radiator plonked in place... I'll fabricate a box for it to fit to. Then add back in some strength now lacking from not having that box there- to support the mounting area for the front suspension wishbone pivot brackets. I'm also hoping that by the time all the rad cowling/shrouds are fitted it'll all be nice and strong around there. I'll have to try my best to impart some element of crumple zones within the structure but hey- I'd rather just not crash. Looking from the front to the left, I'll make another partitioned off box to gather air for the ventilation. The large vent pipe will have to locate further up the side or on top of that second box because it will effectively be moved left towards the chassis rail and drivers headlight area. I'll then cut a big hole in the spare wheel well and fabricate a shroud to guide the hot air out and under the car. I realise that some other Imp owners have vented the hot air out upwards and forwards into the low pressure zone in front of the bonnet gap. I really dont want a open gap. I'll go for down and under the car. I have a fan. Its good grunty wee fan off the old aircon setup we ripped out of a customers Toyota Hiace. I kept it when I spotted it was almost a perfect fit for the little radiator. Orginally I was planning to mount it right on the back of the rad... But then the non- fan covered areas would require a shroud so to keep fan effective. I didn't want to shroud this rad so closely and create a buffer that would hinder airflow through the rad. I then thought about mounting it facing down over the outlet hole and shrouding it there. Not sure on how this will still potentially create a resistance though by making the outlet hole effectively smaller... I had to do some thinking. I had a cup of tea and pondered the layout... Fitted the tank in place to double check on room and theres plenty of space. Spare wheel will have to go on top of the tank. I shall scheme ideas the fan situation overnight. I have an idea already but it its a bit more involved. Any ideas or airflow advice most welcome.

Chevette life.

Go wash your mouth out young man!!! We wont be having any of this 'two piece rope seal' talk around here. Keep your backwards BMC material away from Vauxhalls Viva which has a fully modern sprung lip seal. Pfffff. You should be ashamed. You should know better- your Chevette had the same engine.

Speedo actually reads bang on! Checked it all out. First car ever that I've had that is correct. Quite funny because I'll be cruising along at 80 and a car behind me will be thinking I must be doing 90 'cause they'll slow right down when we hit an 80 zone. I'm not sure what these cars could do max when new but yeah- 120 would probably be about it for this one.

Oh classy. Just what I'd expect.

So not long after having fitted the Mx5 seats I locate a pair of Recaro fishnets. I had gone down to chch for the swap meet and about a half hour into looking about I spot a par of dirty but complete and unworn Recaros. I sat in them, ummed and erred and bargained. Got them for a price I was happy with and carted them away. Then completed my day of looking about at various tat for sale happy in the knowledge that I'd got my bargain for the day. Back home and Hannah gave them a clean with some rug doctor upholstery cleaner stuff. They came up really well... Then she removed the mx5 seats and I started modifying the rails on the Recaros to suit. Luckily they were pretty close in dimensions (although the burlier Recaros weighed 7kg heavier each!) and the Recaro rails seem to be a modular thing that lends themselves well to being retrofitted into other cars and they went in fairly easily after making some 5mm thick plate adaptors. Fitted them and sat back happy with results. Apart from being a fair bit more supportive they just seem to be more 'period' in a modified old car way. Still nothing like the Momo seats I had in the other viva as far as blending in goes but these actually a lot more supportive than those slippery leather Momos. This weekend we went over to Blenheim in the Viva for Dads birthday. The Viva drove really well and keeps surprising me with how good it goes for a tiny little 1159cc engine with less than 50bhp. Sat on about 90-100 (tailwind permitting) and over the hills fine. Filled up and it had returned 34 mpg. As someone noted in the discussion it had also been spotted by a member of the public today ... Kevin the cat came along for the trip and upon returning home it was pretty obvious that white fluffy cats and dark coloured Recaros dont mix... I have also picked up a Magnum 1800 axle, same as I used in the V6 Viva. Slowly I have almost accumulated all the bits I need for engine conversion.. just need to finish the Imp so the Viva can be pulled out of daily service.

Phew. Well that bonnet took a while. In between other jobs I whittled away at the rot on the bonnet. Some awkward shapes going on at the front. I did my best, without getting too carried away, at rebuilding the shape correctly in steel. It will have filler on top however I wanted to avoid having to use filler to get gaps between the bonnet and the car correct. I don't really like the idea of filler on edges that can get knocked. Not really a lot to explain in the process of rot removal on this. I think the photos do a better job. You'll see I started the main repair by fabricating a new front edge and welding it in stages so checking it lined up with the body and the gap remained correct. It was so rotten that I sort of guessed the gap just tried to make it look 'correct'... The front repairs puled up in welding slightly- enough that I wasnt happy with gap. Had to slice open and stretch it bac down. Lucky an easy rscue.. Then onto the underside repairs.. That's probably enough photos of a bonnet for you all. Next job is to modify the front panel and inside the frunk to accept a radiator.

Neat. Yeah I'd pulled over to let anyone past. Must do update. Car is going really well. Actually managed to get 115kph from it- might have been 120 if the wind had blown harder. * * on private race track.

It is an easy job and you only need to lift the crank up just a smidgen so even the pistons don't need removing etc. While the front cover is of you can replace the front crank seal too. Id offer beers and bbq and get some os chch folk round to help. Then you can learn too

I agree. Enjoy this part where things are free/just time. Please dont be drawn over the tracks to the wrong side with this car. Keep it oldschool. Similar warning I had to give Mason when he started to veer off track and things were approaching this....

It would be fair to say that I'm a tad ocd when it comes to start up and idling. I was forever trying to get it better. Enough that I notice when factory setups seem rough. So if I had set that up wrong, which or seems I might have, then I'm not only a bit embarrassed but also annoyed with myself for the amount of time id spent chasing the perfect idle. Oh well.. Worse things in life.. First World tuning problems.....

Mmmmmm. I'm going to have to learn more about this. Next engine, the 4 cylinder going into the wagon will be running sequential injection. But for Charlie ( @Guzzi Rat) , the new owner of the v6 viva, it would be cool if he could get it to idle even better.

After having talked to @Gozza about injection and running through some general settings stuff for his megasquirt he's built to run on his Triumph straight six I have realised that I had been running injection timing on the V6 in my previous Viva potentially out of sync. @Guzzi Rat listen up There might be some potential idling improvement to come... So I had set up the injection as batch. Two seperate banks of three injectors. I had 'timed' the injector opening times to coincide with the engines firing order. I was trying to explain this to Steve (Gozza) so he could do something similar with his six. But he pointed out that how could I do this when I was only running a single 36-1 trigger wheel but cam timing pick up so no way of telling the ecu what stroke the engine was on. Ie could be the compression stroke or the exhaust stroke. My ignition timing was wasted spark so that was always OK. So the injector timing would be random. Pure luck when the engine starts as to whether the correct bank of injectors was firing at the right time. Now I know that this wont make that much difference once the revs are up but certainly at idle it would be noticeable. It certainly could explain why my idling was inconsistent. Sometimes after starting the car the idle would be super smooth and clean. Other times it would be slightly lumpy and smell rich. I could never seem to get it spot on. It might also explain the random backfires that happened (twice so hard it blew the lid off! see thread) So am I (and steve) correct? If this is the case then I wonder what injection phasing one uses with a V6 (or any V engine) when only running a single trigger and no cam trigger?

Yeah 28/32 would be more than enough on a 1256 me reckons.

Yeah that's looking sweet! I too would get a posh person to weld those up if at all in doubt- like ya say ..everyone will see them as soon as you open the bonnet. Man you could make some sweet looking filters to suit them. Like one piece long K&N style. Buy some filter material and make alloy plates to sandwich it. Or just be a boss and stick an individual chrome Ramflo on each ITB. It is an escort after all so needs Ramflo technology....

I had looked into doing a similar crossover type of inlet and I had found that due to the shape of the inlet ports along with position of the bolts that hold the inlet flanges to the head it was not going to be a feasible task. I was however looking at it in simple fabrication terms, using tig welded alloy and what ever else I had easily at disposal. Possibly could be done with magical use of laminates etc because.. well....fuck- just look how sexy that above picture is!!!!

Was good fun. Nice to catch up with a few of ya that I bumped into. My scores for the day were.. A tidy pair of recaros fishnets for viva wagon. A couple of Datsun books and a washer bottle for imp. Cheers Chris. A vice grip welding plier. A drill bit for poisoning pines. And the last thing and possibly best score (free)... This random fella. If only to have annoyed and embarrassed my mate as we walked about. Glad the sun came out after a bloody cold start.

Thats the old thread I started ages ago. Its just been our good old work horse since then Your English is better than my French!

Hiya Stephane - Lovely looking van you have there. Very tidy! I had no luck finding electrical diagrams so yeah I'd like to see what @4AGEMAD has that might be of use. We'll be doing a small bit of restoration work on our van soon. We have just met a local fella who is also restoring one just like ours so we now have a van buddy

Fuck God damn its cold here today. Hope it clears up for tomorrow.

Just think of all the saab bits that you will find.....

I'll be out there on Saturday. Hopefully the rain will be gone and it'll be sunshine on all the glorious benches of tat. Looking forward to catching up - where is the display at?

Always fancied a 2 door gt version. Lowered on turbos with a rotary or v6 etc. Something absurd.

Spotted a 900 turbo 16 2 door hooning round a corner on a nice road whilst out riding bikes. It was a manual too and in black. Was very lush. I swooned.