1970 Deluxe aka The Pest a very long process

[Colimp66]

New wheels arrived yesterday afternoon for the front of the Pest. 6x13" Ultralights to replace the 7x13"s I originally fitted. The 7's rub of the arch now that I have corrected the front hub carriers to give a bit more positive camber than the wonky wheel look it had previously.
Primed last night so I could get some colour on them first thing this morning and a coat of lacquer later on today once I have finished work, that will allow me to drop them of first thing tomorrow morning at the tyre fitters tomorrow to remove tyres form the 7's and refit to these. No more tyre rub hopefully after all of that.



Cheers
Col.

[Colimp66]

The Pest had a we excursion yesterday afternoon out of the garage for the first time since last year.

It went well with it's new 6x13s on the front without any arch rub from the tyres so I am a happy Imper.
The other bits and bobs that I have been .doing over the past months have made a bit of an improvement as well. The seats being 3"s further back have made it more comfortable than it was for driver and passenger too with more leg room. Of course the sun wasn't in our eyes with the black sunstrip that has also been fitted

Front wheels don't look as wonky as they once were with the camber being altered on the sub axles.
The short run up and down the farm road was encouraging as the car seemed to carburate much better than before although I will be modifying the air box arrangement to allow a higher air flow as it is restrictive the way it is at the moment. The way it got down the road may suggest otherwise mind it was brisk is all I will say at the moment.

Still loads of things to do but ever getting closer..

Cheers
Col.

[John A. Ross]

Absolutely brill Col, bet you are well chuffed getting it to move !

Might get it to a wed meet yet

[Colimp66]

John,
It was brilliant to drive it again and as normal with these cars there's still bits that need doing and fine fettling as you well know.

Not 100% ready for sitting in a pub to be honest but a meet of some description would be good once it's up an running with an MOT. Hopefully get one of those in March all going well.

Cheers
Col.

[Colimp66]

Work on the Pest this weekend included removing the airbox for a bit of modification for dropping of at a mates who does the ali welding and chopping up a spare sump I bought to allow more ground clearance as listed in my previous post,
I'm taking out around 25mm which will give me around 5" or 125mm of clearance from the bottom of the sump to the ground.
Marking up the sump after making a jig from 40mm angle so when it is being welded back up it won't twist out of shape.

I also made up a jig fir the sump so it wouldn't go all out of shape when being welded back up. Helps to hold it in the vice as well.


I removed the paint on the outside of the sump so there is a clean area to weld the extension to give back the volume removed form the bottom of the original. The large oval hole is where the shortened oil pick up pipe will live. More holes and cut outs along with a bit of baffling will be added later.
5mm plate is being used to build the sump back up.


Cheers
Col.

[John A. Ross]

Nice work Col, you have me jelous, domestic plumbing day here today, sparks sound much more fun

[Colimp66]

Well I am at work now John so no Imp fun for me at the moment but will be back up at it this evening forming the sides to the new sump. Will have to look at the exhaust as well so I can order up some pipe for the mods on that which will be required for increased clearance that I want.
As the car sits now it only has 3" to the exhaust and 4" for the sump, not nearly enough for todays roads really.

Enjoy your plumbing.

Cheers
Col.

[John A. Ross]

I thought your were off toadya Col, where did Monday go ?

Hallr ad is fine, rad in my office still crap, worked once, back to being cold again and I blew out all the lines with air

[Colimp66]

The hole saw came out last night for making oil passage ways in the existing sump, well what's left of the original sump, sidewalls made up and the bottom of it shaped ready for the welding process.
A few photos.


Once the extra pipework for the exhaust arrives that will be next for the chop and hopefully ready to book an MOT for it.


Cheers
Col.

[John A. Ross]

Thats a chunk of work, is the butt aluminium Col ?

[Colimp66]

Yeh, it is 5mm thick so a couple if mil thicker than standard. It has the protective white film over it that it comes with is what you see.

I will put some other baffles in the base of the sump when I hand it over to my maybe who does all my ali welding and tell him where the drain plug will go as well. I need to get myself a TIG and learn how to weld ali, so useful for this kind of thing.

Cheers
Col.

[John A. Ross]

Ali is easy enough Col, problem is mixing grades, the fumes toxic, just avoid WT electrodes unless you are using extraction and full rebreather helmet, cannot believe we used to use them all day long on standard masks. The denser alloys can neccessitate a change of electrode and rpofile for a clean weld, cast parts complete PITA.

At least back in the day all the ally sturctures I used to weld up were most tubular and all same alloy, repairing castings in the fiat gearboxes, broken bits on imps, heads, I used to just pass to my mate as at that time it was all too much money back then, beer was cheaper


I have one of these cheap Andeli 250P tigs in the garage to play with but I have been too tight to buy in a bottle or pure Argon and rods to mess with it. At £350 they are buttons, however the size is off putting as regards duty cycle.

Ideally I would have liked this one From R-TECH or the one up to give options on electrodes however tooe xpensive to live in my garage for 11.5 months doing nothing

What I was planning to do Col is get a laser cut Coventry Climax template done out of steel to weld in the text to top of an ip rocker cover and maybe make up an aluminium sump withh fins (kind of period go faster look)

Just little things Col that run through my nutty brain, some cooling ridges on bottom of te BB sump would look cool

[Colimp66]

They are a bit out of my price range at the moment John and like you may sit in the corner longer than they get used but still be a nice thing to have there.. just in case.

A finned sump..Mmmmmmmm.. You have me thinking now.

[John A. Ross]

Would look cool and keep the oil a bit cooler, then again not sure how badly the oil will suffer getting cooled so much that quickly then heated up.

It knocks the crap out the Millers oils I use in the air cooled flat 4, my oil change light comes on when the oils knackered as it pees on the drive past the seal when its done

mike might have more knowledge on this moose549


John

[moose549]

Be careful going away from manufacture design, they are clever people and even though restricted by budgets they usually have the correct solution. Like imp suspension, Take out the mistake on the MK1's If you use MK2 imp suspension, poly bush it, proper dampers, slightly shorter springs, use modern tyres (nothing wider that 165 and no lower than 60 profile) The cars handling is out of this world because the engineers got it right, more weight at the rear so big springs and trailing arms at the rear and to compensate for less weight at the front wishbones on a coil over damper. As soon as i hear of I moved all this into the boot area batteries, tool kits, front rads etc to improve the weight distribution to near 50 50 like a BMW road car which are awesome and handle so well because of the 50 50. It works on the BM but on on a rear engined car! Bit off topic but the point i am making is the bloke who designed that bike engine was clever (not saying you are not Col) he designed that sump to contain the correct amount of oil at the correct temp to look after the bike engine including it stood on its rear wheel and lent over from side to side so consideration needs to be applied, the angles are not going to be there in a car so could the sump already be baffled more than enough in the car application. As for reducing the volume and then adding fins to compensate for the lack of volume cooling it could go two ways, cool too much and you get temp shock as John mentioned and too little oil over heats and you need to add or enlarge the oil cooler. To find this out you would need to put the car through all kinds of driving testing like slow town, stuck in a jam, high revs high speed wide open throttle for extended periods, 30 mph average etc just so that it does not catch you out and damage anything should you use the car in any of the above conditions. On the rally car i run 6 inch approx ground clearance so 5 should be fine for the road so don't cut that sump up yet LOL! Hope this does not come across as criticism of your project but some times the big companies got it so close to perfection within a budget there is no gains to be had by the man in the shed yet on other stuff that are being used outside of their design spec man in shed can make big gains. Always the proof is in the pudding and i have seen front rad conversions where people have stated it cools properly now compared to rear rad set up and they have just dumped a big diesel car rad in the boot in front of the tank and never driven anywhere fast or long enough to over heat the volume of water, they do not realize this and think 90 deg C is an acceptable temp for the imp they have running constantly as no air to water cooling is taking place but lots of people follow suit and fit the same kind of rad with no ducting and it works for the use the car gets and gets passed along as folklore as a well engineered solution. So go for it, try it, but think about how you can test it is looking after your oil and do not fall into the trap of i have done this and that so therefore it is better and then just drive it, make notes of outside air temp engine bay temp, oil, temp, coolant, temp, how hard and fast you drove, for the first few journeys to build up a picture of what is happening and this will do one of two things prove you have not gone too far away from the original design and it still works or it produces problems for example when you go fast on a day above 25 deg C in which case worst thing is fit another sump from another engine and live with slightly less ground clearance and maybe then think about adding some protection to the sump. Keep us posted Col it is very interesting and being well executed. Cheers Moose