Popular Post yoeddynz Posted May 8, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted May 8, 2019 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 51 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted May 19, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted May 19, 2019 Righto. Exciting news. However I shall start where I left off. So last time I moved the car under its own steam resulted in quite literally its own steam, all over the floor when the heater matrix decided to give up. I swapped that out with a spare unit I had, replaced that seal in the clutch slave cylinder, fixed another couple of wee things and prepared it for the big drive. I also lowered the platforms on the front dampers and got the car down to a much better height. I may well raise the front by around 5mm later on so to get the camber a little less negative. I'm not a huge fan of excessive negative camber nor does it aid in handling unless corning at 9/10ths all the time. The car looks so much better low all round. I took some photos.. Now lets take it for a drive! This time I made it about 1 metre further then last time. Then I stopped to look for the cause of a terrible rattle coming from the flywheel/clutch area upon engaging the clutch only. I suspected the spigot bearing (which foolishly ...when will I learn... I thought was a bit worn but it would be OK..) Upon Hannah sitting in the car depressing the clutch for me to investigate the sound, the drive to the box stopped. Bug-ger! I thought it might be a broken friction disc hub etc. Same scenario as last time... push the car back in feeling quite a bit pissed off and this time we both went for a decent run. Get away from that car I thought! Proper exercise is my go to thing for instantly feeling happier So that night whilst in the middle of engine and box removal I discovered that the clutch slave had pumped out, again, and was holding the clutch in I released the bleed nipple and the clutch fork returned home So I now suspected two things here: Either the flexi hose had broken down inside and was restricting fluid returning quick enough so instead the master refills from the reservoir. So I had a new hose made to rule that out. Or was it the little one way valve within the master, of which I had made a new spring for to replace the missing item, opening too easily. Possibly it was easier for the master to draw fluid in quicker via that valve then refill from the returning fluid from the slave. Hence the slave was getting pumped out with each push of the pedal. It stayed out in increasing amounts by about 4mm each stroke! So I bought a new 'proper' spring whilst I was at the brake shop too. So there it sat- engine not exactly where it should be. But I do like this shot though... So out with the engine and trans. I made a wooden cradle this time which I lowered the engine into. It made it much easier and meant I was able to have the engine and box sitting on the large mobile steel bench and I could then work on it at a decent height. I removed the transaxle, then the clutch, adaptor plate and finally the flywheel. Gave all those bits a clean. The flywheel has been lightened quite extensively and weighs up at 6kgs. A standard item is about 9kg... Here is a good shot of the alloy adaptor plate that joins the box to the engine. Its quite nicely made... The spigot bearing was indeed pretty worn once I had a good look at it... It was indeed allowing the first motion shaft to just tap inside the release bearing guide tube. I bought some Phosphor bronze and made a new spigot bearing. No photo of resulting new bearing- but rest assured it looks pretty much like the old one but this time without enough room between its bore and the shaft to house several Badgers. I reassembled that lot and had a looksie at the transaxle reverse gear plunger... I was not happy with how much effort there was involved in moving the gearstick into the reverse plane. I knew what was 'grabbing' and had an idea on how to improve it... There is this lockout plate that rotates in an arc as you move the lever across the gate in neutral. There is a spring loaded plunger that has to be pushed in to select reverse. However the edge on the plate is very sharp and rather then sliding over the plunger as it pushes it in it digs in a bit. I could feel it through the lever. You can see it here... You can see scrape marks on the cone of the plunger... So I gave the edge of the plate a gentle tickle with the grinder.. I also took the corners off on the plate here... where they slide through the slots as you move across through neutral here ... Resulting in a much nicer shift. It will be improved further when I get a proper ball for my shifter and I suspect my flexible coupling at the end of the shifter tube onto the transaxle is a bit too flexy. The trans was reunited with the engine and slung back into the Imp. It all went back in nicely. This morning we re-bled the clutch system and YAY !!! It works better with the slave returning instantly. Filled the cooling system back up, having added a bled nipple on the thermostat housing which improved the bleeding of air from the system hugely. I'd also forgotten to mention that a fair while ago a fella on the Imp forum mentioned that my stainless tubes tat run under the floor should not really be touching each other all the way down. The hot one will heat up the cool one. Not good. I didnt think too much of it but it bugged me so quite some time back I ended up ovalising them which gave them clearance all the way down... I also made a throttle stop so not to break the cable... With that it was about time to go for a drive.. Success! This time no rattles from the clutch area, clutch worked fine, battery was good. Ran it up to temp and bled all the air out. Temp went up to about 80 degrees C indicated and sat there. It was a fantastic sunny and pretty hot Autumn day for a drive. All the smoke from oil spills, coolant spills etc burnt off. I checked the timing which was about spot on at factory setting. Gave the carb a tweak so the car idled nicer but it'll need more attention. It has quite a worn primary throttle spindle and I think that combined with that light flywheel makes it hard to get a super smooth idle. Enough is enough though. I finally took the plunge and did this....... I came back beaming. It drives pretty well. Wanted to stall when stopping, because of that lumpy idle. Has a slight flat spot down low but once on the secondaries it fair flies along (well.. for a Datsun powered Imp) It sounds much better then I was expecting. I parked it up and checked all the usual things. No obvious leaks and the fan came on after I adjusted the knob on the thermoswitch. Fan is loud but works really well- very efficient. Happy, relieved, excited. We both sat down on the sofa, had lunch and a cold beer and admired the little blue car in the sun. Yay 81 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted May 20, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted May 20, 2019 Hannah got to drive it yesteryear evening. She loves it I knew she would. Hannah's first classic was a little imp super she bought in the UK and she joined the imp club back then. Did a few local meets in Oxford. This was her first drive of one since then. We popped down to the beach last night... The little car is going well but for a stumbling idle. I cant quite tune it out because the throttle spindle was so worn. So last night I took the carb off and stripped off the linkages... The gap is quite large! .... I'll keep a look out for a better carb body but for now I have to improve this one. So I went through my collection of rubber washers and found one to suit, which I did. Its a good snug fit over the shaft and sandwiches in neatly between the body and the first bit of linkage... Then the other end. Nothing to sit a washer on. So I dabbed a bit of automotive silicone on top and let it set. It flexes enough to let the shaft turn so its now well sealed... I have yet to try it out. The car is booked in for a WOF today so wish me luck 24 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted May 21, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted May 21, 2019 The little IMP is now all road legal !!!! I refitted the carb this morning, hoping for the best but it was still terrible. I just couldnt get it to idle below about 1500 rpm and it had a big flat spot on light acceleration. So I gave up and we drove it to town, the long way through Kaiteriteri so I could have some fun on the windy road there. Wow its fun! Soooo much fun. Even with an engine that wouldnt pull properly, horrible flat spots, tyres that are definitely too high in pressure, a few clanks from the yet to be fully secured pipework, noise from the un-insulated engine bay shelf, noise from no carpets, fumes being drawn in through the old heater hose routing holes etc etc... it was still fun. It really is like a big go cart. The steering is lovely. Gear shift is great. Brakes getting better as they bed in. The temp gauge sat pretty much bang on an indicated 80 degrees C whch I reckon is more about 90. Fan only came on when we stopped, as expected so I was really happy about that. We got to town and straight into the booked WOF slot. Our local friendly wof man just loved it. Kept saying how cute it was, how neat the install was etc. Really impressed. Did all the check things as usual, test drive and it was all good. We looked about all the neat stuff in his workshop.... WOF attained and we went to the local council and got a years license. $47 - yay for old cars. Did a shop at supermarket, did the proper look back over my shoulder at my little Imp, sitting there in a sea of bland grey modern cars, looking sooooo tiny. On the way home we popped in to show it to another couple of fellas who run a nice country workshop and had sorted out the tyres for me. They too loved it and the older fella reckoned it was running way too lean and certainly had a big air leak somewhere. Then off home, this time driving over the much steeper longer climb. No worries even with terrible carb. No increase in temp. Yay for that. I got home and removed the carb. Discovered two things. Firstly. Spot the schoolboy error here... Yep- That accelerator pump can go downwards for sure, but not if the lever pushing it down cant go up at the other end! My air filter base was stopping it. This also meant that along with only a tiny bit of travel I was also not getting the secondaries to open properly. Easily sorted with a hole, some alloy and some epoxy. Second thing- this... There goes my air leak. Air getting pulled in through that huge split, past the accelerator pump piston and into the venturi. Well at least I am pretty damn sure that this is the culprit! Reporting back with findings soon..... 53 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted June 7, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted June 7, 2019 Because I'm such a hardcore Friday night raver I'm here doing an update on an old car whilst my cat sleeps in front of the fire. Rock on. This little Imp...its great fun!!!! I have not really clocked up many miles yet, as you'll find out why soon, but those miles that have been driven have been fun. Its taken a little while to get used to the balance, steering feel, brakes and sheer grip that exists. Still not fully confident at flinging it about but getting there. Its a giggle. I'm just weary of the slippery wet corners that are about now we are into winter here. The little Datsun engine is a gem! Its still not quite perfect at idle and just off idle but once rolling its great. I can really see why the Datsun 1200 cars have such a following- they are about the same weight as an Imp with similar gearing and were well known for being peppy little performers. The engine sounds pretty cool when trashed. I have since found out that this is indeed a completely stock unit and it was a different engine that the previous owner, Rob, had fitted with a supercharger. Anyway- onto fettling. There are always a few things to sort on a fresh build. First off was to sort out the dodgy running carb. In my previous update I thought I had found the problem with the accelerator pump boot being split. Turns out that wasn't the problem... I managed to locate a couple of A12 carbs from a local fella for beer money. One was a complete standard 1200 carb with stock sized jets etc. I took my fitted carb apart and soon discovered that not only were all the jets completely wrong, way too big and pretty butchered as well they were also housed in the wrong carb for my engine! The carb I had fitted was off an A15 which has larger throats and venturis. Great for a slightly hotted up motor but not what I'm after right now. The leaning out issue was because someone had fitted a air bleed that was way too big for the primary jet, among the many wrong other jets. So I rummaged through both carbs, got the best bits from both and assembled a nice new carb that was stock and set to factory specs. I had a page covered in jet numbers and felt happy in the knowledge that I can now possibly join the elite group of carb Barries forever chasing the perfect tune (when the know full well that injection is just soooooooo much better in every way! ) A photo of some carbs in pieces.... So with the Imp now fitted with the right carb I took it for a spin. Because the work shop is now clogged up with the start of a tiny house build I had to drive it out from the back of the workshop and up the grass drive to the cabin. I thought it best to get some photos of it next to the other Imps... I did a few test drives and I had to remove the carb a few times to dial in the float height, getting pretty quick at that process I must say. The difference is huge. Much better all round except for a hesitancy just off throttle. I'll continue to tweak things and see if I can improve it but I am starting to wonder if the vacuum unit I got from another car for my electronic dizzy has too stiff a spring. I think it might not be advancing the ignition enough under light throttle loads as it should. Ill get back on that. Next issue was a funny one. Some of you will have seen it already. Not funny for the amount of pissing about I had to do to fix it but funny in what I found. A work of art really. Rob has to be proud of his handy work at creating such a masterful bit of Barry engineering! The story goes like this.. After getting back from a quick drive checking the carb was OK I noticed a horrible vibration in the engine. I popped the lid to discover a very out of balance main pulley. Bugger. I knew it was a hybrid pulley made up of what I think is Toyota pulley on the Datsun hub but I had never looked further into it because it just worked. But not any more. I removed the pulley to discover this on the back... Hmmmmm. Lovely welding. Purposeful. I'll have to grind that lot off and make a new hub. I'll start by removing those two screws.... Eh?!!! its not weld. Its magic fake weld thats been machined into a flange(like)thing. Its wonderful! Just look at this art ... The Datsun hub had a crack running through down the keyway too. I had no choice but make a new hub to suit. First off I cleaned up the pulley and had its running perfectly true... Then I popped to my local steel supplier and get a big lump of steel bar from which I machined a new hub, with a centre locator to tightly locate pulley central. In photos.. Then the internal keyway. When I was working as a (young) fitter turner back in the 90s I would use either a broaching machine or a shaper, depending on the size of the key way. I have none of those tools. I did contemplate milling it from each side with a end mill and filing it out square but that would take ages on this fairly hard 1040 steel. So I made my own internal shaper bar to use in the lathe and just scraped out the keyway using the carrige. I bought a lump of 20mm bar at the same time as I got the round and cobbled together a tool holder from it. This will now be handy for future jobs I'm sure... and in action (well about as actioney as a photo of a non moving lathe tool can be...) Resulting in a nice neat keyway.. Which fits nicely right here. Beefier then the original Datsun offering too Hub drilled and next to pulley.. And altogether now, in a uniform coat of black paint... Much better. In order to tighten the main bolt, of which I had to buy a new slightly longer one to allow for the beefier hub, I had to make a tool to hold the pulley. I had tried tightening it up with the car in gear, on the ground, with the handbrake on but I didnt like the feel of trying to put the 110 lbft through the transmission like that. so yeah- tool time. Now I have another random tool to got in my wooden box of other random tools specific to only one thing... Doing its random tool thing... So I had a working Imp again that was not going to rattle apart. Best thing I do is to take it for a drive. I took it to town where we met Sam and is son Chris, who jumped at the chance to go for a ride with his Dad in the little blue car. Here they are returning... While in the shop buying stuff a Honda city turned up and parked (badly) next to the Imp. What I always think of as tiny cars looked huge next to the Imp... We went to the steel merchant for some more steel bits for another project. The rear opening window is handy for shopping. Note the lovely old land cruiser... While in town I rang Rob, the previous owner of the original race car shell that donated all the running gear for this restoration. He popped down and met us and had a good look over it. I reminded him of how I'd love the Weber sidedraft manifolds he had left over from his ownership. Well good old Rob actually popped home afterwards, found them in his piles of stuff, tracked us down later on in town and handed over these to me ! ... Wow! awesome. Top bloke. I'll now be able to fabricate a decent inlet setup for injection in the future. Yes!!!! Later on that afternoon we parked next to another small car... This evening Hannah and I took the Imp out for a hoon on our local roads which are just perfectly made for little nippy cars. It was such fun! I love it when the (tiny) little secondary opens up. Its got a lovely induction sound (right behind our ears, even with two thick blankets covering the engine cover..) We went for a nice evening walk and I took a photo of it parked up on the near the beach... Closer... Tune in next time to hear about the stupid mistake I made when buiding a cold airbox setup.... 49 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted June 24, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted June 24, 2019 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... 51 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted July 16, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 16, 2019 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 51 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted October 2, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 2, 2019 Well its been a while since I've updated this thread. Mid July was where I last posted up anything of worth. Little Imp got parked up in the corner of the workshop so leaving anough space for our neighbours to make use of the shed while we took off to England for a decent holiday. Hannah got to catch up with her family, we both did heaps of cycling and running, had plenty of sunshine and beer plus I got to go along to the retro-rides gathering 2019! As I always do I had a fantastic time there and came away with boosted Mojo and lots of ideas. Before leaving the UK I ordered a few spare parts for the Imp... We got back to NZ in September, just in time for the start of spring. The Imp was sitting there tucked away, a tiny little puddle of oil under the sump just like a good little English car should have... First job was to fit the shiny new lenses. Hannah jumped straight into that, an easy but so very satisfying job to do... We then took the steering rack out and fitted the new centre gaitor. Hooray for a rack that holds oil... Having decided I was pretty happy with where the temp gauge needle sits once fully warmed up I carefully measured the resistance across the potentiometer I'd been using to adjust it. I then made a little joining lead fitted with a resistor of the same value. This replaced the adjustable item and should be it for the temp gauge. At some point in the future I may well make a new instrument cluster to suit the dash as I rather fancy having a rev counter in a place that I can actually see it ok. We have been driving the Imp since getting back to NZ as much as possible. On its first journey out since back I got this pic... We've had a few decent trips including a one really neat drive all around the local valley roads and hills, some gravel roads etc. Its so fun to drive. I'm really getting more confident with the handling and how to get the most from it. The engine seems fine and loves a good trashing. The carb is still a bit iffy with that worn out primary spindle still allowing some air to sneak in. I have ordered a new carb from China and will see how it goes. It was cheap enough to try and when I eventually fit injection I can sell the carb on. Whilst out on that really fun drive I got this photo. Shame I only had my phone as the sky was quite moody... After lots of driving I checked the plugs. They look fine with what I think looks to be a good colour... I thought it better to fit the fire extinguisher I bought before our holiday. It tucks away neatly behind the drivers seat... In other news I have been collecting many different parts needed for a conversion to fuel engine management. I just scored another megasquirt one (2.2) ecu plus a full loom and some edis bits - this time from our mate Rob in return for me doing some machining work for him... I need to decide on a few bits needed and also in which direction to go for the inlet layout. Maybe Itbs but maybe a plenum with a single tb. I foolishly dillydallied about when there was a full set of cbr900 ITBs on trademe for $55 including injectors and loom and subsequently missed out on them. At the time I wasn't sure about the suitability but for that money I could have made them work. Not sure on ideal throttle size but they were 40mm each which given the Datsun only has 30mm inlet valves I figure they'd have been plenty. Then I would have had all of the doorts! I'll keep looking... I'll be using a 36-1 trigger wheel, also supplied by Rob. Luckily there is ample room to mount it on the back of the main pulley. Both MS1 ecus I now have use the earlier version 2.2 board which don't have built in VR conditioner circuits. I can make a VR conditioner board and use VR sensor, of which I have many. Or I could use the Edis setup (which has a VR conditioner built in and uses a VR sensor) that came with the MS1, of which I suspect the ECU has been supplied already configured to use. I have never used Edis before. Hmmmm? Its a bit ugly and clunky though. I dont like the quite large ignitor box I'd have to sit somewhere. Or I can go with a Hall sensor but then I'll have to locate one from a wreckers- but what car? As usual I want to do this conversion as cheaply as possible because its just more satisfying for me that way. In my first few casual searches it seems that they are quite pricey and can be a bit frail or temperamental in use? More research is needed, of which I must say I do find to be one of the most fun parts of modifying! Oh also - I fitted a new speedo cable and now have a speedo needle that doesnt wibble-wobble all over the place. How thoroughly modern! 32 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted October 9, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 9, 2019 So Hannah and I took the Imp for a two day road trip. Part business and part holiday. On Friday we drove up to Lake Rotoiti, Nelson lakes national park. On the way we checked out some old classic cars a fella owns who wants me to do a load of bodywork on. The Imp drove really well. The sun was out and the music cranking (some ambient tunes from David Tipper since you ask). We had a good coffee and then a nice walk on tracks around the lake. That evening we drove through to my olds place in Blenheim. A nice day out. Here's some photos... Chilled out at my parents, a feed of fish and chips, wine. A grand way to finish a day. Following morning we set to head home. Filled the Imp up, did some maths and allowing for a very optimistic speedo we reckon on around 40 mpg. Not bad considering the gearing at 100kph. Headed home, sadly into rain as a cold front was moving up the Island. Drove long way via Picton and Queen Charlotte drive because narrow twisty roads and go kart car... Over the Rai Saddle, sitting with the flow of traffic. I give the car some stick to pass a motorhome up the saddle and then when cruising down the other side the wee car does that thing.... 'JOLT!' The car does a small but very noticeable stumble. Like a tiny rev limiter. For those that have tuned megasquirt, or maybe other EFI, it felt like when you click burn. "What was that?" Hannah asks. "Shit- I don't know but it felt like an ignition thing, not spluttering fuel thing" I reply. We both go quiet. I almost want to turn the music down and listen for any untoward mechanical sounds that might be there. But I don't. I'll play it cool. Don't worry. Don't get Hannah worried. It was probably just a... fuck. I don't know. I'll just say nothing, drive a little slower and whatever it was will be a memory soon. The silence is piercing. Now I notice every bloody vibration. I'm watching all the gauges like a jet pilot. All the time my mind is going through all possible scenarios. What could that have been. What if we breakdown? 3km pass. It seems ok. I start to relax. Only one big set of hills to go. I pass another rental car, most likely the scurge of the kiwi roads, a Nissan Tiida. I dont know because I'm still having a mini stress.. 'JOLT'. Here we go. This is happening. This time its for good. The car dies and I have to quickly think where I'm going to stop to fix it and quick before I slow too much and that silver blob I just passed drives up my bum. I spot a forestry road on the right, coast across to it (whilst trying to make it look like nothing is wrong so saving face for all classic drivers who get the "oh old cars are so unreliable...") I pull to a stop and the engine splutters to its last road driven rotation with a bang. Bugger. Remain calm. Reception on phone? Not a chance. Tool kit in boot comes out and we go through all the obvious things, concluding that it is indeed the ignition. Annoyingly it was the ignition module, of which I didnt have a spare. If it were points I'd have fixed it. Such is life. Luckily the rain had stopped and double lucky that across the road from the forestry road we parked on was a farm house. The kind farmers wife took us in, let us use her phone and fed us tea and biscuits. I called a mate out with his trailer. We have AA membership however its the basic cover that would have got us to a garage. I knew a Garage wasn't going to fix this and we'd still have to get home. Yeah nah. Stuff that. Mate turns up with his trailer and we have a choice as chilled out trip home. We fed him dinner and it was all good in the end. Big thanks to @Sanfiddy for rescuing us! Oldschool spec favours. I only took one photo of the day... So that was that. On Sunday I removed the dizzy and then the module. It fails the tests as predicted. Here's the troublesome module... Come Monday and at my local wreckers looking for a module. I dont want to spend $120 on a new one when I'm about to fit full engine management. No luck locally but we were in Nelson on Tuesday and I found one at a wreckers there, cheap too. Fitted it that night and brooooooommmmmm The replacement was a proper Hitachi module whereas the one that let its smoke out was a no brand cheap one. Even felt lighter if that means anything. I took the broke one apart and it looks like a little cityscape inside- heck it would scare a Barry used to the kettering system... I also managed to score a spare couple of dizzies, converted with accuspark. My bench looks like a bomb went off in a hitachi factory... I'll need to fix them up, check them out and then I could always have a spare setup in case. That is until I fill the Imp with boxes of electronics and then there's no chance Mr AA man can help me. It'll be like every modern car- useless when broke. In other news- this turned up from China the day we left for the lakes... Its a brand new Hitachi 306 clone, all for not much more then a full carb gasket set costs. I had ordered this before I had scored all the other Megasquirt bits. Anyway- I'm still looking forward to trying it out because my worn out carb is about as good as I can get it. The new one looks so shiny. I'll report back with my findings on how deep the quality goes... 44 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted January 30, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted January 30, 2020 Crikey! Its been over 3 months since I last updated this thread. The reason being I have been busy just enjoying summer and driving the Imp whenever I can. Its such a hoot . I'll use any excuse I can to take it for a hoon. We have now covered over 3500kms since getting it on the road at the end of May last year. Considering we work from home so no commute I was quite surprised at how much its had! Its been incredibly cheap to run (very easy to get over 40mpg while still having a laugh) and is sooooo much fun to trash along on windy roads. The reception we both get whenever either of us uses it for a shopping run etc is fantastic. It really does make people smile- which is nice A few various friends, some from Oldschool, have also taken it out for a good thrash. Its really interesting seeing how different people drive it, their style, ease with the handling and gear change, confidence. Generally they have all found it super easy to drive and all seemed to love the handling. If only it had another 50 bhp... I have done a few little jobs here and there to improve it. Back in the last exciting episode I left off with some sexy photos of a new Hitachi carb. I swapped the relevant linkages/cable stops I had made for the previous carb across onto the new one , bolted it in place and hoped for the best. Started the car up but flooded it because the new carb seems to have a more effective choke. Cleared it and started it proper. Straight away I noticed how better the engine sat at idle. I few twiddles of both the throttle stop screw and the idle mixture and I had it running sweet at idle. I then took it for a hoon up the road. WOW- what a difference. No more flat spots, the transition off idle was smooth as, the transition onto the secondaries was smooth. No stumbling when coming to a stop and a super smooth idle. The jerkiness at slow speed in high gear was gone. Overall a huge improvement. Best $120 I'd spent in ages!! Here's a pic of said wonder carb.. Next job on the list was to improve the brake pedal feel. They work really well but I would still prefer a firmer pedal. I knew that the original Honda Civic brake hoses on the front were far too long, needlessly long. So that was a good place to start. I ordered a pair of new stainless braided hoses from Nelson brake services, impressed I was with the previous set I had them make for my Viva. $55 each which is a bargain. I fitted them and noticed a big improvement in feel. much nicer firmer feel with a better defined bite point on the front. But it can still be better and I think that its possible the brand new Lada master cylinder fitted has a slightly weak seal. If I press hard on the pedal and hold the pressure the pedal will slowly sink. I can also pump the pedal up a bit harder and I have done so many attempts at bleeding it I am pretty sure there is no air in the system. @NickJ ever so kindly sent me a spare set of seals he had. However Nick has warned me that they are from the same vendor he got the master cylinder from, which did come wrapped up in newspaper with these two fellas on the front... Interestingly the seals are a odd shape I have not seen before in a brake cylinder. They have a curved edge, like a worn o-ring outer rather than a lip that is forced against the bore like most brake seals I know.... I thought this was possibly the problem but after some googling it turns out that this master cylinder design and bore diameter is a very commonly used item across many Fiats, ladas and some other brands. So the seal design must work fine in use. Hannah's mum has come over from Blighty for a holiday and essential sun. So over a few weeks previous to her boarding her plane I kept an eye out on Ebay UK for anything interesting. She ended up bringing this stash of goodies... Apart from the very obvious Marmite with proper actual taste I bought a Haynes cutaway book filled with lots of Terry Davey's best pics, plus two old magazines with road tests on Imps- one of which was printed at the release of the Imp and is filled with heaps of articles, photos and fold out pages with extra large exploded diagrams. A total treat for any Imp nerd and one which kept me thoroughly delighted while reading it in the sunshine on coffee breaks... Lastly and more recently I have decided to sell on my Viva wagon. I'm not using it and have utterly fallen for the charm of the Imp. I would rather someone else make something of the wagon and what money I get for it can go towards this car (as well as another few projects in mind, and probably pushbike stuff...) So with that in mind I decided the VIva did not need fancy Recaro seats but the Imp does. The Mx5 seats are ok but not quite as figure hugging as I like, nor do they seem to offer the same lumber support that the Recaros do. Plus the Recaros just look so damn nice and fit in well with the little nippy go kart like car ethos I like in Imps. I was worried about them being a lot heavier but they only weigh 3kg more each. I can live with that for the comfort they offer! So I had to add some slightly wider spaced mounting points. Because the mx5 seat mounting points were welded on the back/inside of the box sections before they were welded on the floor I had to instead make up some flanged threaded bosses... which I then tigged in place (rather then risk mig splatter everywhere)... It was when tigging I remembered the steel was zincalume and made my welding a bit messier then I had hoped as the fumes came through... But all good and strong. I shortened the reach adjust levers while I was at it.. I also had to fix the mountings for one of the plastic covers which no matter what I did with the old push in plastic rivets would always come loose and rattle about . I machined some wee stubs and epoxied them in place... This (blurry..) pic dates the seats somewhat... (kids- ask your parents) I finally mounted them in proper and they look great. Much better to sit in and they also swing forwards further than the Mx5 seats - which to be fair really were never designed for a car with rear seats were they. The Recaros have a more suiting mixture of grey and black which suits the interior better I think. However I'll still keep looking for some suitable red leather sports seats much like the ones in my previous Viva for they were the best looking seats I've yet seen, although being slightly wider for 'larger" Alfa Romeo drivers and covered in slippery leather they were in use a little less hugging than these cloth Recaros. So that lot takes us up to date. Next on the list is to fit some carpet, now that I seem to have finally sealed the windscreen properly although the car has not seen much rain recently- its been so dry here since the start of December. I'm still tempted to play with injection. I bought a spare engine for $100 from the local wreckers. Its a 1500 and has the later oval port head. Larger ports and larger valves. We stripped it down together and its pretty good as far as wear goes on the guides etc. Certainly a good head I can clean up and fit without any machining. I have a inlet manifold to suit. However.... I may still yet re-power it with another engine, yet decided on. I do really like the idea of regaining my rear parcel shelf, currently cut to allow the valve cover to go through, because its missed and would be very handy for the weekly shop! Datto engine in the van after pickup... A tiny little tool box a found at the warehouse which was just soooo cute I had to get it... Goes here.. A tiny little trailer we built for some locals kayaks. Had to size it up... I sold the race car shell and it headed south to Queenstown on what was a comically huge transporter. Fuck I laughed... My Imp making other normal cars look huge... Finally my parting shot- because well... I just like this photo 60 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted April 5, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted April 5, 2020 Well I must say I do love the new Recaro seats. They are so comfy and hold you in place soooo much better in the corners. I had still been using it heaps through summer. Got a shot of it next to an I8. Huge cars!!!... What else? We took the Imp over to Blenheim for the big classic car show they have there. Its getting bigger every year and I have kept missing it each time. Not this time though! The weather was a perfect Med like blue sky day and the cars that turned up for the show were a really nice mix of everything. My parents came along too. My dad is 87 and not too fast on his feet having pretty bad lungs now. I was worried he would struggle but I kid you not- he seemed to perk up more every minute and flitted about all the old cars really quite animated. It was great to see and I'm so happy he made it along. Mum loved it too and we met some great people. Pics.. The show.. Dad pondering if he could have fitted a V10 into his Moris traveller he once had, or maybe the 120y wagon they had... Hannah's favourite car of the show (and her dream car)... Some sweet old boats there... Me next to dad, holding a 8 month old Kelpie puppy(my favourite brand of dog, we used to have one).. The Imp (wtf the Toyota Pius was doing there we don't know..)... There was actually a car there that made the Imp look huge... The Imp was popular, being bright blue and the only one there. Lots of people checking it out all morning. I printed off some photos of the restoration onto a4 sheets and stuck them in a plastic binder with a quick note for each. People I spotted seemed to enjoy the read and I imagine it made for more admiration for the little car that was rescued from a field. The trip to and from Blenheim was fun and uneventful. The Datsun engine impressed again with its thriftyness by managing 44.8mpg and that was with some spirited motoring too Drove some nice roads near my old home town. Very very dry over there and sadly they still have not had much rain. But fantastic grape season if that's your thing. Once back home I decided to put the car up on the hoist and deal to a couple of jobs I have been putting off. Those of you with a good memory may well remember the state of the ring gear. It was worn badly in two locations, 180 degrees apart. This meant that it had a 2 in 4 chance of stopping roughly near one of those spots. It seems that sods law dictated a sliding scale of when it would stop and this scale was linked to how many people are around when I would go to start the engine. Worse if those people were probably of the type that think 'oh that a nice old car but they are very unreliable'. When the time was right the starter would ignore my want for turning over the engine and instead may a horrible loud racket as it wore the ring gear worse. I would have to then sit the car in 4th gear, put my foot out the door and rock the car- so moving the flywheel around just a bit. Then start the car and drive away red faced as the people now watching tut tutted... Never did it do this on our property btw... The other thing was that the rear main seal was leaking badly. Bad enough that the clutch was playing up and I'd have to think carefully about where I was to park the car when going to the country club* for fear of meeting those same people again and only going to reinforce their misguided opinions about old cars. I had the chance to replace the seal when I took the engine out way back at the beginning. But remember who I am - a tight wad who likes to save money and $25 seemed like an awful lot for a seal that 'looked ok' Silly me. So out with the engine then. Made easier by using my special custom made bespoke 'Datsun A12 engine cradle' Here's the worn ring gear. I drilled it and broke it off. Removed the old seal. It was indeed very hard and not very sealy. More like a ceramic ring then a seal.. The oil had coated the clutch disc.. Luckily that cleaned up sweet with a load of brake cleaner and was deemed good to use (please refer to note above about tight wad..) Went to my old workplace, Autofocus in Nelson and used the gas set there to remove the good ring gear from another flywheel that came on the A15 engine I had bought. I then dropped it onto the A12 flywheel... With that done the engine was given a quick clean whilst out and slung back in place. Oh but not before making using the opportunity of an empty engine bay to size up a different engine. That however is secret squirrel and will be announced later in the year The Datsun was all plumbed and wired back up. It started straight away and after bleeding the coolant system I took it for a hoon. Clutch feels great and no horrible starter noise roulette... However..... the bloody speedo gave up and decided that the needle should reside at around 90 mph. It had been getting ever so more optimistic over the last few months and I had read that the springs can weaken. It doesn't affect the odometer which is mechanically linked to the speedo cable, just the speed reading. Now though, having just fixed some other issues my 'unreliable old car' decided to throw another at me. When I returned home from said hoon the needle decided it would resolutely remain at around 60 mph even when the wee car was stationary. So this happened... I'm so glad that I had added plugs to the wiring birds nest that resides behind the instruments because it made removal much quicker and easier. I took the speedo apart and found this... It seems that the sponge sealing which fits between the telltale warning lamps and the speedo face had broken down and crumbled into the speedos magnetic disc area so creating drag. I'm not sure but it was messy in there with lots of friction. Rather then muck about trying to clean it all out I instead pulled the spare speedo head from my stash of Imp parts and fitted that instead. I removed all traces of the old foam, opened my little alladins drawer of various foas and double sided tapes and stuck on some new stuff... This lot will be binned in the future as I fully intend to replace the whole cluster with nicer modern gauges (but with a classic style to them) including moving over to an electronic speedo head. Speedo cables and all their wobbles can leave by the back door thank you please. So since the world has gone a bit weird and we all have extra time I decided that instead of refitting the dash into the car in the poor evening light I would instead do an update. I'll refit it tomorrow. One other job to look at is a rattle from the steering rack. I think I know what it is and I have already stripped and inspected a good spare that I might swap in. Other than that I'll just get back to using the Imp, obviously only for shopping purposes at this point in time. I now have plenty of other tinkering jobs to do and hopefully in the next update there will be some very exciting news * I don't actually belong to a country club. But I do like a spot of lawn bowls.... 29 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted April 7, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted April 7, 2020 Some of the UK readers of this forum may have already see this episode of car SOS- its a goody. The Imp they restore is like Hannah's first classic car , a 1974 Imp super painted in Prairie wind. A little car we enjoyed immensely and what made me always want another... The episode can be watched here.... https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7t30c3 18 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted July 14, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 14, 2020 Not sure where to begin with this latest update really. I have kept this side project fairly secret squirrel with only a few folk here and there knowing about it. I'm sure others will guess pretty quickly. I have soooooo much to write and many interesting photos to post up. I was going to hang on for longer because the engine build itself is still a long way from being finished and then I have to chop the Imp about to fit it, build an ecu, intake, exhaust to suit plus many other jobs to make it work. Its going to be a big enough mission to write about it all but I'm pretty confident it'll be interesting enough to make writing about it worthwhile. Where to start then? Well.. a long, long time ago I was chatting to a certain Mr Pete Valiant at the Oldschool nationals in Banks Peninsular 2018. The subject of my engine dilemma from early on in the restoration came up. Pete had been thinking about it. He had an idea so simple it just seemed like it couldn't possibly work. But it got me very excited and I spent much time on the drive back home from Nats looking over a downloaded workshop manual of 'the engine' trying to nut out how it might work. This process lasted for an entire year, often going on the back burner as other things in life stepped in the way. Then I found out about an engine up for grabs, sussed out a deal and thanks to a very helpful fella called Neal I ended up with this pallet of goodness turning up in Nelson - the day before NZ went into full lockdown ! ... Then the work began. More to come soon 36 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted July 15, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 15, 2020 So what was this engine that I was so excited about arriving just in time for lock down to begin eh? All carefully placed and tightly wrapped up on a pallet by none other than mr @Threeonthetree and sent down to Nelson in the nick of time. The forklift driver chuckling away after I explained what it was and what car it was going into. Just a little glimpse through the plastic. Those magical numbers I had been after for a fair while after having decided to take a chance and just go for it. But finding one of these engines complete, without a massive bike attached, at a price I could afford was proving to be tricky. We got home, having completed the rounds about Nelson of whatever shops still happened to be open for emergency lockdown supplies. I knew full well that at some point during the next 4 weeks of my of enforced tinkering I would come up to a road block. Something essential would be needed. Something silly and normally easily available. But I didn't care. I would deal with it. I just wanted to get stuck in. The wraps came off. Oooooh lordy. Its a beaut. But a beaut that was in urgent need of a diet and trim in size... So this is what I have bought. A 1991 Honda Goldwing 1500cc flat six. Now going back in time, way back in around April 2018 when I was restoring my Imp shell a guy named Darkspeed on the Retrorides forum was chatting about engines on my thread. He's had a few Imps and Ginettas over the years and has always been looking at other engines. He uttered these words .. "I also pondered the Honda Goldwing lump for that mini 911 Vibe" Now this struck a cord for me. It just seemed right. It was far too interesting for me to not look further into and I did just that. I did lots of research, studied the pictures so carefully on a downloaded workshop manual and had sort of sussed out that it might just be a viable option as a swap. Not for this car but maybe my other shell. But then he came back with this bit of info... "I cannot recall why I actually dropped the idea but I suspect that they maybe counterclockers " Bugger! I said. He was right. Somehow I had completely missed this fact in all my studying. It was indeed, like many Honda engines, a anti clockwise rotating engine. Damn. So I put this idea right out of my mind and continued on with the restoration. Until, as mentioned in the previous post, Mr Pete Valiant stepped in at the Oldschool nationals. He had been thinking about this and the idea popped into his head of taking a Subaru gearbox from a fwd Leone or Legacy, turning it around 180 degrees and in so doing counteracting the 'anti clockwise' rotation of the Goldwing engine. Simples! Wow. So this idea played on my mind for the rest of the nationals weekend, I downloaded manuals again, looked over them and schemed. It was not going to be easy and simple though. There were going to be many hurdles. The engine was heavy and quite tall with its built in transmission. There was no bellhousing. Not even a resemblance of one. There was no flywheel and the oil pump was driven by spur gears and a chain that had to go in order to allow for a flywheel. The engine is also a clamshell that once together does not allow any access to the insides without completely taking it apart - so new head gaskets each time and a whole load of work just to get to the oil pump etc. The starter and alternator were integral to the gear system so they wouldn't be viable to keep in place. But the crank does have a flange to which an adaptor could be added to and bolt a flywheel up to. However I could not easily work out the size of the flange or bolts. It seems to be that these engines just keep reliably going for a long time and when they die not many people rebuild them. Its just cheaper to just swap in another engine. There was/is not a heck of a lot of info out there on them like you might find for other engines. Excluding trikes I could only find two other vehicles that had used a goldwing engine and they both used them with the transmission through a diff. That wasn't going to work in an Imp as it places it too far back and high. But I was keen on the challenge and wanted to have a go. If I could find a cheap enough engine I could have a crack and if it all went pear shaped I would cut my losses- so long as it entertained me and challenged me. I needed a cheap engine and had been keeping an eye out for one everywhere. Too expensive to import, too much of a risk to buy a complete non running bike. Then one popped up in Auckland and it was fitted in an Imp of all places!!!! Wtf Turns out that a fellow kiwi Imper had bought a Imp race car project that was built some 20 years ago or so. I don't think they ever got it racing. He had bought it for the shell mainly. It utilised the entire Goldwing setup, like the other two cars I had found and ran the power through a Holden ( I think) diffhead along with the Goldwing electric reverse. It was indeed mounted really far back and quite high on a pretty lacklustre framework of angle iron, hopes and dreams. But it was there, complete and really low mileage. I heard it running, it sounded mean and I wanted it. We set on a price of $500 and Neal kindly sorted out getting it down to me. So that is where this pallet of goodness comes in. Now to see what I had bought and let myself in for!.... Carbs had been removed by Neal so they couldn't get damaged... There was this plastic board with a very carefully laid out Goldwing engine electrical system complete... There was a book too. Very handy. This would make for great on the throne reading... So this engine complete with transmission, starter, alternator, carbs is around 126kg which was a bit too chunky to risk lifting between us both. I lifted it out with the engine crane plonked it on the big steel bench and removed the exhaust manifolds, inlet manifold. Still too much engine... I removed the starter, alternator. Looking better already for sure but there no doubt about it- this engine was going to go on a intensive weight loss course! I was already enjoying this new project and looking forward to the next step. 66 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted July 18, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 18, 2020 Gearbox time. As mentioned in the last post I was pretty set on using a Subaru Transaxle. I could also have entertained an Audi unit or perhaps a Renault 21 item but they are harder to find and more expensive. Subarus are everywhere! So way before I had found a engine to buy I started looking. Now initially it was a Legacy front wheel drive trans that I was looking for but when I realised that early Leones also came out as front wheel drive with a smaller lighter 5 speed Transaxle they got added to the list. Not as easy to find though! Then one day a leone boot lid popped up local to me on my Trade me favourite search. I contacted the seller on the off chance that he might have a box. He did. In fact he had two. A early 1600 item and a later 1600/1800 unit. So we went for a drive and paid him a visit and what a thoroughly top fella he turned out to be. A mechanic by trade, ran a local garage before retiring and now works from home on locals cars. However its what he does in his past time that was really interesting. He has been building small hover craft for years and became well known for building one with wings that could fly.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhGN4gFYPLk But I digress. He had some boxes because he had been using subaru engines for his hovercraft. So I bought a couple of boxes (one which came with a 1600cc subaru engine attached) , two starter motors, an 1800 ring gear. All for bugger all because I think he just liked the nuttiness of my plans for the Imp. So here is a box. The earlier 1600 in the small casing. about 4 kgs lighter with a smaller diff and takes a smaller flywheel.. This next one is the one I'll use... Its a later Leone 1600 T71G which shares the same slightly bigger stronger casing as the 1800cc. Ratios are 1st 3.636 2nd 2.157 3rd 1.266 4th .885 5th .725, Rev 3.583 - these coupled with a 3.9 final drive ratio should suit the Imp pretty well on its 13" 175/60 wheels. Here it is again next to the stock Imp box. Its not too far off but the gear selector is higher and points up at an angle. The box is also taller at the rear so the tunnel will need to be raised and the removable cross member chopped about. At 35kg its about 9kg heavier than the Imp box. I can take that. An interesting and very handy fact is that the box selector rod works in exactly the same way as the imp item, even the movements in are pretty much the same in travel both in rotation and back and forth ! So that is nice. Now as discussed previously there is the fact that the Honda will be rotating this boxes input shaft in a direction opposite to the norm. It has been done successfully with Audo boxes and I know of a fella who has run a box backwards behind a 440ci engine with no dramas. I'd also had the discussion about the new thrust loadings with a fella in the UK who's into Goldwings. Came to the conclusion that being a Japanese box from a much heavier car, optionally with a Turbo. So its not been to much of a worry however more people have questioned it and now I was really curious. I decided to strip the spare 1600 box down (same internal structure but a smaller diff and different casing) I got as far has the last bearing and syncro hub to remove and my puller broke. I'll use friends press but even so I am now happy that it will be fine. 5th gear is the one with the least thrust area when run opposite direction but that wont be so loaded up. Here's some pics I took... A beautifully done bit of technical description in this one showing original (green) and new rotation thrust bearing positions. (My Samsung note phone needs a new stylus!) On a side note- it has to be the easiest gearbox I have ever taken apart (ignoring the fact I need a press to remove some bits from the shaft) so I will take the box I'll be using apart and rejoin the casings for mocking up purposes later on. Much easier on my back. So lets put the box away in the corner and get back to the fun bit. The flat six. I was really looking forward to seeing how much lighter it was gonna get as I removed all the un-needed bits from inside. With the alternator, starter, inlet manifold and coolant pipes removed I weighed the engine. It came up at 105kg. Diet time! I removed the rear clutch cover that has the slave cylinder built in. Removed the clutch unit. Took off the drive gear housing. Ohhhhhh. Clean and shiny. Neato. I was told that this engine was possibly a low mileage unit but I was not to know until I began to strip it. I was fearing sludge or bad staining inside the castings but its super clean. Here's a shot with a few of the spur gears missing and showing the various bits... Clutch unit added back but without the main rear casing on so you can see what it looks like.. This was fun. I like learning new engine layouts. Here's the front of the engine which will now be facing backwards. Cambelt covers removed and you can spot not one but two VR sensors for the Honda CGI ignition setup. It has a 12 tooth trigger wheel which with a tooth removed could be used as a crank angle sensor for the EFI I have planned. More likely I'll make a 36-1 wheel the same size for better resolution. There is also plenty of room for a cam angle sensor to be fitted- Ideally I would rather run this engine on full sequential injection if ("if !?.... hahahaha" they laugh..." he said if " ) I use ITBS. Cam covers off. One of them had some welding. I suspect that the reason is that the bike was crashed and one cover got hit. Fella who originally had this engine for his project had bought a complete bike. You can see the nifty hydraulic valve lash adjusters.. I removed the cams then the heads. Carefully stashed all the bits in order on a shelf I had cleared. All the bolts and bits were being placed in organiser trays I had bought for the project. I knew full well that this project could well drag on for a long time given life etc. With the help of Hannah we split the crank case and revealed all the gubbins inside... Lots of heavy stuff in there to weigh in! Yay. All this stuff I didn't need went in this box... and that box went on the scales... 35kg Sweeeeeeeeet! That's more like it. A little bit more to lose when I start hacking the crankcase apart. Now I'm aware that I'll be adding some weight back with a flywheel and clutch but hey- this is a good place to start. Its now a 70 kg flat six. Next thing to do was sit it next to the box and line some things up... You can see where I'll have to fabricate a bellhousing to fill that 40mm gap. The Imp was at this point in time 'up on blocks' as I had the Datsun engine out to replace the rear main seal and ring gear. How handy then because I wanted to see how the engine sat in place! I bolted the heads back on loosely and slung the lot up under the imp. I lined the transaxles outputs with the driveshafts so positioning the engine front to back. I took a few photos, took some measurements and noted some stuff. I then removed the transaxle from the equation so I could lower the car down so the engine would sit roughy where it will end up. I stood back and admired it. Wow! It just looked so bloody spot on in there! Man - if my juices weren't fizzing with excitement previously as I stripped the engine down they certainly were now. I'll let these last photos I snapped end this update 81 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted July 22, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 22, 2020 OK so I had the engine sitting there in pretty much the spot I wanted it. I had taken loads of measurements and pondered many aspects in an attempt to really look into the future and pick up on any potential problems that could arise. It was pretty obvious that the bodyshell was going to need a fair bit of chopping about in the tunnel region (ooooooohhhhh I can see the originality preachers trembling already..) and that the engine was too low in its nether regions. You can see it here. Its not stupidly low and I have seen worse but for a car that has to navigate our driveway with its rocky surface it needed to be better... It had a nice burly bottom but my intentions were to raise that and make a removable sump plate. Still with fins though to help keep the oil cool. Here's what the underside currently looks like... I pulled the engine out and sat it on the bench. The Imp then got its little Datsun heart bolted back in place and reassembled to working order (yay for no more leaks I thought..but it still leaks because British) I poured myself a whiskey. It might have been a few. I studied the crankcase and sump carefully... I then went over my plan of attack. My main issue was the oil pump. It was going to have to move further up in the block so I had to find a suitable place to mount it. I also had to work out how I would drive it. Originally it there was a larger spur gear running off the crank, driving another spur gear. Off the centre of the spur gear was a sprocket which ran a chain down to a sprocket on the oil pump shaft. The oil pump shaft ran not one but two oil pumps. The main pump in the sump area and a smaller scavenging pump in the clutch housing area which squirted oil up over all the gears. The shaft also ran through the main pump to the front of the engine (what is now going to be the back) and powered a water pump. A bit tricky to picture? Well here is a stunning bit of pencil art I did just now ... Plus a photo of the all those gubbins on view at the back. The driven spur gear is missing in this pic but you can see the splined hub it slides onto with the driver sprocket on inner end... Honda had made it all very neat but also all very complicated for what I required. I just need one main oil pump to feed the bearings. So I move the oil pump up. Fine. I'll mill a flat area and make new mounting blocks to suit. But because I have removed the spur gear arrangement (no room for that lot with a custom flywheel planned for the crank) I'll have to chain drive the pump with sprockets (at the correct speed too). OK. That should be easy enough. But no spur gear means the pump will be running backwards. Oh bother. So how about I mount the pump on the opposite side of the sump casing and so turn it around. The shaft is long enough because it goes right through the pump each way. I took the pump apart and checked if this was feasible. It was. Yes! Now why not just run an external oil pump and dry sump it etc ? Well mainly because I am not Mr Money and hence prefer (have) to do it as cheaply as I can with what's at hand (more of a challenge this way and more satisfying too) Also- if I use the Honda pump and keep the required oil routing sensible then it sort of remains factory. I am also going to do my very best at keeping the external look of the engine as clean as possible with a nice uncluttered engine bay. That's just the style I like. Plus we were only just into lockdown here and I wanted to crack on, get as much fabrication as I could done while on my ' holiday in the shed '... So now I had a plan to follow and could start chopping things up. I chopped it just below the engine mounts I intend to use. There is a myriad of long bolts running through the cases clamping them together. The main larger ones are all up around the crank area. Then another two lines of smaller ones below (which hold the cases together under the against the loading of the transmission shafts- now gone) Plenty enough bolts so the lowest are now gone. This lot will be stronger when I have finished with my idea. I kept chopping it up. Took a bit more off because it was fun. Lovely alloy too I might add. Very clean castings. Ended up with an engine a fair bit shorter in height... I got the cuts pretty square and straight. Made easy by the fact that Honda had nicely added reference lines for the purpose- just like on a pack of butter... Now I had to mill it flat. It would take decent sized knee mill to clean up something this size and awkward. Or how about a little drill mill, a steel bench and a big plate of steel I had rescued from a Japanese dentist chair I stripped for bits... I had to position it just right and use the swing on the radial drill mill to run over the cut edges. It looked a bit suspect but it worked fine with light cuts. After the bottom of the sump case was flat and square I then milled a flat area on the face below the crank flange. This would leave a good flat surface, perpendicular to the crank centre line, to mount a plate with an idler sprocket on it for the oil pump drive I had sort of nutted out in my head (but really had not gone any further then just that and it could well have been just nutty) That area ended up like this... The pump would fit somewhere in here like this... Then I threw the lot on the fire... and swept up all the alloy chips that seem to have gone everywhere! When it was nice and warm I welded some new flanges on. Very carefully and slowly I tacked them, taking my time to make sure they stayed true and square and keeping it warm in between tacks. They did. Yay I welded as much as I could reach with my torch along the tricky edge leaving just a few spots that I'll seal at build time with JB weld. It turned out so good that I barely needed to give it a tickle with a larger file, more just a clean up and sits square on my bench. Straight edge reveals my bench is indeed flat too- I had to check! I was so happy at this point because it was one bit of the conversion I feared could go wrong - however I think the warming up and that fact the block is a complex very rigid shape helped keep it all straight. I sat back with a cup of tea and admired my nice burly flanges that I will bolt a plate to... 64 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted August 1, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 1, 2020 Here I go, late Saturday night and another installment. Because that's how I party... I thought I'd post up a pic of all the other bits safely tucked away on my beautifully arranged 'Honda Goldwing cylinder head apartment storage facilities. At the right height to peer at when needed (maybe for a mojo boost one day - "oh yeah.. that's what the rest of the engine looked like before I pulled it apart, chopped it up and started a whole can of worms type project from it") Here's a piston storage rack that would make Maclarens factory effort look like something from scrapheap challenge.. Carefully laid out heads- these engines have identical heads, cam carriers, cams etc for each side. Don't mix them up!.. All covered up by a lovely sheet so not to get covered in dust. (It makes it like a secret stash of engine goodness).. Now back to the block/engine casings. I'll call it a block from now on, ignoring the fact its two halves. So I have now got to re-mount the oil pump on the opposite side, higher up and turned 180 degrees from where it was originally mounted. It has to go about here... I also had to work out a new way of getting the oil from this new position to the oil filter and then onwards to the starting point of the main oil gallery. Here's a lovely picture you can ponder over. Best pondered with some strong coffee... The standard oil filter location. This is on what was the front of the engine but is now the back and right where I wanted to put a cross member to hold the engine up. Not to mention a big chunk of that lower half of the casing has disappeared after I chopped it off, right through the original oil filter centre line... So that had to go. I looked over the engine and eventually worked out a spot that would suit a new filter pedestal to be mounted so allowing easy access for filter removal. It also had potential to allow for a Mazda style oil cooler or a take off plate to suit a normal oil cooler. It was going to mount roughly about here... It was going to require a big hefty lump of alloy to start with. But I was on lockdown along with most of NZ. Luckily the local engineering workshop that I go to for many bits of random steel stock was doing 'essential' jobs for some industries still running. The workshop foreman left me a lump of alloy in his letterbox that happened to be on the way home from the supermarket shop. This was a lucky thing! Here's the lump of alloy after a lot of it was turned into many many little tiny shards of alloy... I'll get back to that lump later. Next thing was make some flat areas that I could mount things on and line stuff up with. The block was split in two luckily I was able to clamp it to the bed of the mill. I machined the inside so... I had to do this on both sides in different areas. One side had to be machined to suit a new location for the oil pump. On the other casing i machined out pockets to take machine bits that would locate new oil pump feed and return pipes. I was going to do oil the pipe work in alloy using the same size pipes and o-rings as previously used by Honda for the original setup. But now I'm getting ahead of myself and even forgetting where I'm at in writing this. In fact - many times as I looked over the oil line layout I was scheming I would get a bit confused. I felt like this bloke who had just turned up at this new city for a job interview and discovered his phone was dead, his map was 40 years out of date and he didn't speak the local language... So where was I?... Machining things and making a mess of the floor, trailing alloy swarf everywhere inc into the housetruck. Not making friends with Hannah or the cat. Anyway. That oil filter pedestal/mount? needed a flat pocket to mount to. I machined away the casing so creating such an area... On the other side of that I machined out a matching pocket. It began sort of like this... ..and continued like ... Because it was so fun I took away more alloy... Now I had a nice location for the mount. This would be pulled into the outside pocket with a custom gasket sealing it, via bolts from the inside going through another bit of alloy that would be machined to help locate the pipes in and out. From the outside it would sit like this... I drilled the mount and then set about to tap the M18 thread. But I didn't have a M18 tap. Its lockdown so borrowing one from someone was out of the question. But I did have a few spare old Mazda V6 oil filter mounts so I nicked the threaded pipe from one of them and made a tap... It worked fine (phew! ) .... I then turned out the oil groove to suit the Honda filter. I didn't take a photo of this but you'll see it here as I was drilling the oil ways through... Drilled and tapped some mounting holes... Now I had a lovely oil filter mount... Annoyingly I didn't take any pics of the oil pump mount but I can describe it. The oil pump bolt via three bolts to a alloy plate. This plate is bolted to the inside of the casing via bolts that come from outside through spot faced locations... The oil pump shaft runs backwards towards what will be the flywheel area where it will be driven by a series of two chains off the crank adaptor - sort of like the original. But backwards and on the other side. That you will see soon along with a network of machined pipes and fittings that almost need a subway map to follow. More soon.... 54 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted August 9, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 9, 2020 Took the Imp for a hoon on Saturday. Went to visit a mechanic who works from home up a valley not far from us because he has fields of cars and I had spotted some Subaru Leones. Sadly he doesn't have an front wheel drive models because I wanted to nab any gear boxes that I can just as spares in case my decides to detonate. Top bloke though- he knows his scooby stuff having been a mechanic for Subaru NZ. He's given me a contact to try for boxes. So since it was a very lourverly sunny spring day indeed we thought we'd continue our drive further up the valley and check out a load of nice roads we normally cycle on. It was so much fun. I didn't drive super quick. Just enjoyed the nice handling and it feels quick anyway when you sit so low. I took this pic along the way. (some fellow oldschoolers might know the area because it was part of a circuit I lead folks on for a friday cruise on the weekend of the oldschool nats, Marahau 2014. We went to Mapua for lunch and hung out with all the posh people there. Then home via the supermarket to end a nice day out in the Imp. The day before I had picked up some carpet that local lady who makes funky cushions had sorted me out with for cheaps. Proper auto carpet, same as what I had used in my Viva... The workshop is finally a fair bit emptier having smashed out a few other jobs and got them picked up/delivered. One job we just did was build some hefty steel art deco styled gates and a large set of doors for under an outdoor cooking area for a customer in Nelson. We reckon the gates look really neat so I have to share ... Now going back in time to where I had finished off in the last post. The oil pump was now mounted and I had a oil filter mount in place. I had forgotten to take a photo of the inlet/outlet off the mount but picture two tubes coming out of its base and going through the wall of the engine block. I now had to link those two pipes with things. One had to make it way to the oil pump and the other had to work its way to the back of the engine (as positioned in the Imp) and link up to the main oil gallery into the block. I had to have a good think about this. Whatever I do to make it work has to be easy to assemble, through the bottom of the engine with the sump cover removed. Once the engines two clamshells are placed together I don't want to ever separate them again for two main reasons... 1 : Because that involves removing the heads so new gaskets required and that costs money and I dont like spending money. 2 : It also involves a tricky little system to fit three pistons into the bores, from the bottom of the bores, using removable piston ring compressors through a gap of about an inch inside. You'll see more on that later. I am NOT looking forward to that bit. Originally the Honda oil feed system used pipes and sealed everything with O rings. It works well and makes sense. I could work with that. I did entertain using lots of AN fittings and hose etc. However there was a few reasons why not. They are a bit pricey. They were not easily available locally, especially during lockdown. It is not at all easy to swing spanners inside this engine block. Did I mention they are pricey ? Ultimately if money was not really an issue for me I would dry sump the engine and run a external pump. But ugly, expensive, external oil tank in the way somewhere, driving the pump off a currently non existent belt drive pulley (not even got to that point yet for an alternator but I have an idea) So keep it simple with stuff I have to hand! With that I rummaged through the pile of alloy stock I had and found a few bits that would work... But O rings were going to be a bit trickier. The size used by Honda didn't match anything I had nor anything I could find on my suppliers website. They were odd. I looked through a Honda parts diagram online and found the Honda part number along with the exact size of the O rings. Nice of Honda to do that! Looked up sizes online and it turns out that they are a JIS standard Oring. I never knew of such things. Actually very common among many Japanese cars. Even better - when I searched through my suppliers website they actually had them! But wait - there's more!!! They were cheaper than all the other O rings close in size. Yay! But the shop was shut to public and I couldn't visit it anyway. Boo! Thanks Covid However- the shop was open for supplying engineering places that were considered essential services. It happened that one of the employees lived not far from me. He delivered some and left them in my mail box. Yay! So now I could start what Hannah refers to as the London underground of oil tubes. I worked my way from the oil filter and made various blocks with holes and tubes with grooves. All very carefully measured to fit just right and tight but constructed in a way that it could be taken apart from the sump opening. I was lucky that I happened to have a large drill bit that was spot on for the final pass on the bores to suit the pipes and O rings for exactly the same amount of 'squish' that the Honda factory pipes and fittings have. I made sure that all the bores were as big if not bigger than the Honda setup so not to increase restriction on the oil paths. You'll see later that I will be over driving the pump in speed by a notch but that's another story. I must add that the job of planning, measuring and machining up all these little bits was a super fun way of spending time during lockdown (in between going for heaps of bike rides on super quiet roads!) Here's some pics of my subway tube network. These are the two blocks that seal onto the in and out pipes for the oil filter... The closest hole will feed a pipe heading back to link to the oil gallery. The further most block has a hole that takes a connecting pipe from the pump. Here's a view from the side... Lets zoom out a bit so you can see where they are in relation to the pump... You can also see how the pump is bolted to an adaptor plate which is bolted to the inside of the block. My connecting pipe that goes between pump station and filter station is in two parts so it can be fitted easily from below... Together its like this (lighter for scale... because all the cool kids measure the dish of their hand machined oil pump pipes with lighters like this)... Then fitted in place... Connections man! So I had the pump to filter sorted. The filter to main gallery looks like this... That pipe sticks out through a hole that was originally for the shifter mechanism ( I think. But whatever... thanks Honda for your convenient hole) You can see the oil gallery below. I will make a bolt on block with oil ways to connect them. I will also design it so I have the potential to take off from there and add an oil cooler. I would rather run the engine without one. It never had one as a bike but the engine did have more air flow over the engine though. But my engine will have a well finned sump cover to pull off heat plus be free to radiate heat better than on the bike. I shall run it and see. Its not a race car so I suspect that with really good synthetic oil I'll be fine. Its a pretty understressed engine anyway. Maybe I can add an oil temp sender to my filter block and run that through the ECU so I can have it show up on Tunerstudio for evaluation? Hmmmm - I like little things like that. But either way- keeping it as an option is good. I have yet to make the cover plate (some alloy plate is under my bench for it) that will go over that end. All simple stuff that. Once that's in place I can make a union block to suit the pipes. That cover plate will also have the oil filler and possibly a centre engine mount to suit a cross member but I have not yet decided on that. Moving around to the flywheel end of the engine you can see where the oil pump drive shaft hangs out, waving about like an unsupported shaft with no attachments... That shaft needs some motorvation and that is going to be part of the next exciting instalment. It involves Shimano.... 45 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted August 16, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 16, 2020 " Shimano? " you say... Well its not really that exciting. Please don't expect a Heath Robinson like contraption using XTR derailleurs, in the lovely pewter colour that the 965 series came in. Or better yet - some mint deore XT thumbshifters used as tensioners. Oh yes- the bike geek is strong in this one! But I'm jumping ahead again. First off - I needed a way to take drive from the crank while at the same time beef up a problem area. Now have a look at this next photo... See that big splined shaft sticking out. That was the main drive to the original clutch setup that resided in the removed rear casing. It had to go. So I chopped it off. I did have a photo that Hannah took of me chopping it off with a cutting disc (there was no way our bandsaw would have touched it) but I cant find the photo. However- here is a photo of that bit removed and now residing on our shelf of random bits.. Now luckily there is actually a flange on the crank. This was one item I had been trying to check before committing to buy an engine ages ago. I didn't know how think it was though, nor had I confirmed what the size of the six bolts were although I was fairly sure they were 8mm (but really hoping for 10mm). I was not going to be happy taking power off the crank, albeit its only 100 bhp propelling a little Imp and so I had a little think about it. I needed three things here. 1: a decent flange with 10mm bolts for the flywheel 2: a surface to run a main crank seal against because my engine design was going to have a sealed up oil bath for the oil pump drive 3: a larger flange to put a sprocket on. The design I came up with was an adaptor hub to bolt onto the existing flange using the six m8 bolts. But instead of just relying on the bolts to hold it I would machine it to a shrink fit and really make sure it wasn't going to move. Probably a bit overkill but why not. So I machined up this out of a rather large lump of steel (so filling my steel bin with a lot of swarf) It has two axial surfaces to shrink onto the crank- the flange outer and the stub I left over from the original splined sticky outy bit and clamped in place while it cools with nice new stront cap screws. Here I am tapping the threads for the flywheel hub.. Here's a small benchtop oven making things grow in size with heat and in the back ground is a crank just having recieved its new hub... In place and cooling down. Would be a bugger to remove now.. You can see the larger flange to which a sprocket will attach to. Now I needed to sort out a nice flat, removable surface to mount a potential idler sprocket and tensioners on plus an square surface to mount the oil pump driveshaft support on. I cut a piece of 6mm alloy plate in the faithful ( and noisy) tablesaw. I had several useful threaded bolt holes left over from a variety of the original transmission bearing holders, shafts gubbins and shifter wotsits. I machined up a little pointy bit of steel with an offset slot. Then I was able to screw it into a hole leaving the pointy end just proud. With my plate lined up where I needed it I gave the plate a smack with a hammer just over the pointy thing below, thus leaving an indent I could drill through. Repeat for the others and I had perfectly lined up holes... Cool. I could now support the oil pump shaft. I machined the end of it and tapped a new hole. Then machined up a bearing holder like so... Next little thing was to join the cranks rotating motion to the oil pump and make that rotate.... Hmmmm. I had to really think about this one. There was not a lot of room for industrial chains and sprockets. I thought about using a toothed belt that can run in oil like some of the later cars. But apart from the prices (!) they are not available in many sizes and are apparently prone to throwing their toys from the cot. I couldn't run a dry belt due to the bottom half of this area being part of my new allocated sump capacity, not to mention sealing it would be very tricky. So really- chains and sprockets were the best choice. Why 'chains' and sprockets? Not just one chain?... Because I wanted to drive the Honda pump at or as close to the original speed- which is slightly under driven. This way I would be sure that the pressure and volume would be about right. No ifs or buts. I didn't mind going slightly faster because the stock goldwing has a low oil pressure at an idle of 11 psi at 800-900 rpm. I'd be happier if that was a bit higher. With this in mind I had already worked out roughly what gearing I would need to be in a certain range. I had worked out the original gear ratios and then used a gear calculator to play around with ideas... But what chain and sprockets to use? I enquired with so many places and had done loads of internet searches but the answer came to me when I lifted one of my bikes down from the wall before going for a ride. Of course! Bike chain, chain rings and sprockets! At first I worried about the strength and durability but thought about the abuse my chains go through, especially on my singlespeed MTB. I have only broken one chain and it was after it had been jammed. Over about 15 years of being a bike mechanic in several different shops almost all chain failures I had seen were due to something else cause them- unless they were a cheap unsuitable chain. So I went through my varied collection of chainrings and cassettes (I have many) and selected out the ones with a tooth count that would work and fit. I machined up a spare shimano freehub to take bearings like this... Machined out a Shimano mtb chainring and cobbled together a mock up to see if it might just work... It looked good but I was not happy with the 3/32 width ring and sprockets. Even though they will be in a oil bath there was still not a lot of thickness to the teeth. I was not expecting this engine build to do Lexus levels of mileage but I wanted it to last long enough to do some good hoons for a few years at least. I had enough room to go up to 1/8th width chain but no more. I looked into BMX chainrings but very hard to get the toothcount I needed and sprockets were much the same- plus bloody expensive when going odd sizes. So a mate at a local engineering suppliers priced up some american sprockets that I could grind/machine down. Wow- cheaper then shimano stuff and tough as. I bought a set of four and set to turning them down. Not easy- in fact it took ages as they are induction hardened teeth. But I finally took them down from 5mm to 3.3 and they fitted a spare bmx chain I had perfectly. Much more sturdy... I have now got a very durable bmx/e bike chain that has flat straight outer edges on its plates- this will suit my tensioners. I have a couple of tensioner ideas to try and think I have nailed how to make them easy to fit and effective. Remember- I want all of this lots to be super easy to unbolt and swap out. Its all a totally unknown design with regards to longevity so it needs to be easily serviceable. More soon ...... Alex 54 5 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post yoeddynz Posted August 26, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 26, 2020 Just a small update to say that there wont be much work taking place on the engine for a few weeks because the workshop is now full of timber, wood shavings and dust as we build a rather large shelf (some might say a mezzanine floor but no Mr councillor, this is just a shelf to store stuff on...) I'm pretty damn excited about this shelf project it must be said. A chance to properly sort out the workshop and move all the non- engineering like stuff and various car spares upstairs. Its all a bit hectic though. There is loads of paid work on that we are putting off for a bit plus the housetruck sale has gone too contract so that is another load of things to sort out. But fear not- I am still mega excited about finishing the Imp off and luckily because the updates on here are a bit behind I still have a few more stages I can post up. I shall eek them out though, buy myself some time.. In the meantime I'm going to post up few vids I have found on youtube. Ones that keep me enthused about the build- mainly because of the sounds I hope my Honda engine should emulate. This one here I found recently. Now I imagine the aircooled 911s do have a lot more engine noise but the exhaust note is what I'm loving in this vid... This next vid from Harry Metcalfe has some nice bits (in between his lovable waffling on) and the car is just lovely!... And finally here's a clip of a Goldwing that gives an idea of the similar exhaust note when extended. It sounds lush! ... I'm looking forward to the exhaust stage of the build but I do need to learn what's the best layout for sound. I'm also doing continued research into Itbs and injection, plenum chambers feeding itbs, remote air feed etc. That's definitely more of a subject to discuss in the injection thread though. Excited about that stage though!!! 21 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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