yoeddynz

Its pretty modified. I think they even ran a drive shaft through the V to get the engine as low as possible!?

Its gonna sound so sweet with those ITBs!!! Pic for inspiration. Mondeo touring car with Mazda V6 (albeit quite modified...)

Wow! Its been a while since I've updated this thread. Work on this wee car pretty much ground to a halt after the last update. I got busy with other peoples cars for work and then took off to the UK for a holiday. 4 weeks of sunshine and loads of cycling. Nothing to do with cars at all. The one car that I spotted whilst there and liked was this absolute gem... Drool. Anyway. Got back to NZ and spent the next few weeks dealing to property jobs and more customer jobs. Finally last week I pulled the Imp out from its spot and finished off the panel work in the back. Now there's something we have to go back in time to jog memories. Normally in order to jump time I would just jump into my trusty police phone box as seen here in the Viva thread.... But I have had ongoing issues with that mode of transport. Things like oil leaks from aged seals and fading paint to name a few. So I sold it on at the end of summer to some fella called William who I met at the local market. Strange bloke. Not seen him since. With that machine gone I realised I had a desire to build another. Maybe a Delorian? Nup- prices had gone up beyond what I could afford at the time... so I based my new creation on one of Britains finest machines made. So now folks I shall introduce you to the Princlorian... With my new creation I was able to travel back in time to show you all a period in my Imp resto that I regret wasting time on. So in the beige wonder we shall travel through Hillman Imp time.... Whoops. That's too far. Hang on, try again... Oh dear. Must be the electrics. The fella at the motorist discount centre told me it was a 'new old stock' Lucas flux capacitor! Try again.... Ennnnggggrrrrrr!!!! I flicked the wrong rocker switch. Sorry. Hang on.. Righto this is annoying. But I think I've worked it out. Here we go... FINALLY!!!! Right. So way back when I first got the replacement shell I spent a long long time doing this... To this... I now wish I didn't. Instead I should have just chopped it out. Which is what I did in the end and had mentioned it in one of my last posts. Well with it all gone my next job was to rebuild it all. This is what I did last week. Imp back in its work spot with customers cars waiting... Working on building up ones shelf.... (terrible) To suit the fiberglass engine cover that came with the race car.. Fill in the blanks.. With that finished I rebuilt the rotten gutter above the bay.. Hannah has painted the lot in epoxy primer and I started on the front end which had been bent at some point when the shell was moved- probably a lifting strop or something I guess. I was originally thinking I'd have to cut it out and let in a straight front panel but actually after about an hour with lengths of wood, a jack, hammers of various sizes and many different shaped bits of steel Hannah and I managed to straighten it out fine. Very happy with result. Before... After... Now I need to remove the rot from the front of the bonnet. I carefully hammered out a small dent. Hannah laughed. It could have ended up like this scene... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IL22sLF25s Then I can modify the front end to take the radiator. I must crack on because summer is coming quickly and there's so many other jobs we want to do here ! Planning on selling the housetruck this summer and building a new house trailer so that is one huge amount of time that I'll need to find. Please keep tempting me with racey little Imp photos and encouraging chit chat here... https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/58205-discuss-here-about-yoeddynzs-little-imp-project/& Alex

I'm planning on going down there with a friend from Nelson who has an old Indian bike (I'm building a rack for it right now) I'm guessing there's lots of bike stuff too? But as such it will be up to him as to which day we head out- hopefully the Saturday to see displays and catch up with OS folk. However Mr Bling.... does Friday have a better selection or something?

Cool. I shall start dreaming of crazed old British taillights for some car I don't have but at a price I just can't refuse. Hopefully I'll find a stash of old English car magazines with lots of subtle black and white porn photos of chicks advertising ciggys or badly manufactured DIY rear screen dismisters and bolt on headrests.

Is there going to be a crew heading to the swap meet at McLeans? I'm hoping to make it down, drop off lathe, pick up other lathe and then go collect shit I don't need. It would be jolly nice to catch up with any chch peeps and have a cup of tea whilst discussing the finer points of some manky old obscure truck grill etc

Yeah I did that with some other dirty castings. Got boring real quick. But if its something that has to be welded then it just has to be done.

Yeah I have had a good look into them. Problem is the bolts holes and plug holes dont match at all. i originally thought I could cut one down to the flange, mill it flat. then repeat on the top from the other side. stick the two halves together and weld them. But plug holes would need moving too. Its a fair amount of work. Certainly nothing I'll be doing for a long time with all the other projects to do.....

Cool- you have clearance!!! I reckon silver top itbs would be a good match too. No injectors hole to plug and neat flanges to use. Given your impressive steel tig skills so far I reckon you'd be fine at having a go on Alloy. I jumped in at the deep end and my first proper go at alloy tig was my manifold. I just did a little practice first. I'd avoid trying to muck with the cam covers- I welded up a few holes on mine and they are pretty dirty casts- not so nice to weld really. Especially considering they are used. Mine were cleaned out but still had crap almost soaked into the alloy it seemed. In saying all this I still want to modify some covers for the next build- it has always bugged me that they dont match.

Could you do them like this but angled backwards? Although I think you have the same issue on clearance at the front end of the engine that I had with the Viva install. My bonnet was just a bit too close to get away with itbs sitting over top of the cam covers.

He is a Californian after all. Yeah so it was a chilled out day inhaing nature and talking about mad car projects and fluffy cats....

In my quest to work out what I could get away with I have weighed everything to do with the V6. With everything on a standard engine with flywheel, clutch, alternator, excluding the exhaust manifolds and inlet manifold but including the cut down inlet flanges with injectors attached it weighs in at 135kg. The manifold I made was pretty light, maybe 5kg. The single mazda TB is 415 grams. Steel fabricated exhaust manifolds wont weigh much.

He broke my handbrake cable.. but we did get lunch, dinner and joints supplied Plus it was a fun interesting day.

Oh I know- if it wasnt for the extra weight, which is fuck all really, I'd be slinging my spare KLZE into the wagon and not a Duratec. I just know that the four pot will never sound as lush as the V6 nor will it ever have the same mid range grunt. But time for change and I want to save my v6 for a future mid engine lmp style build (way way way in the future...) So I shall just sit back and live the V6 dream by watching you and that "a bit slack right now eh..." @Transom do your builds

You'll be soooooooooo happy when you first hear that V6 wailing past 6000. It will all be worth it- trust me Such sweet engines!

Yeah sweet- I'll have a think about what I might need. I do need an indicator LF lens because I foolishly dropped a lump of timber near my wagon the other day and took it out. hopefully getting one from @nzvohc though:-) Work on my wagon is on hold until the Imp is finished.

I'll just put this here...

Fuck she's beautiful! You lucky man. Putting this on my watch list so I can keep perving at her.

Sweet build so far. Will you be replicating the paint scheme of your inspiration? Will the interior remain stripped out or will it be 70s spec pimp? I'm after a crack free hb dash top pad if you know of any. Please keep the build photos coming. Alex

This bit.. "Cant fucking believe it... I just made a computer and so far all the smoke is still inside it somewhere!" Yeah it's a cool feeling. Such a neat thing to start with a bag of bits and send up with a working ecu. Building your car, not buying it. Great way to learn how the thing works too. Did you end up going to see Stuart? Top fella him. Helpful as.

Me too!!!! Waiting for its maiden voyage to nelson and I can give it a fang!!! In return you can try out my 50bhp wagon and compare it against the V6.

Plus not forgetting the real reason outboard injectors suck... You can't fit your ramflo air filter in place.

@fletch You could point the injectors up from underneath after TB so then hidden? (but if this is going into a trumpet? then its a no go unless one wanted a melted mess of injector all over exhaust manifold..)

This is a cool thing! I was always chasing a smoother idle on the V6. I will try this next time although not sure if tuner studio allows it? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

Yeah that above pic was what I was thinking but with oval section tubes under the lowest suspension point. Straight through pipes as kk suggested would sound sweet. Then convert to manual box.