JDL 889 F aka George - 1967 MK2 Singer Chamois The Full Story !

[John A. Ross]

And some bashing on curves for the bottom of the spare wheel tub, was not big enough to justify cut out panel and fit used one

Turned out not too bad

[John A. Ross]

And of course we cannot forget our balls

Replacement of the lower ball cup in the gear change selector.

This is the old style one, replacements these days from Bob Allan at Imp Club Spares (membership required to purchase) are now a different style and I will add an article in later next month on changing it using new balls

[John A. Ross]

How front suspension mounts, a notorious weak spot for imps were totally rotted so I foolishly cut these out completely and repaired the back skins (just single skin on this car as its a later shell)

Went to order from Malcolm Anderson and unfortunately he did not have any left and could not get a hold of the fella who made them.

So was time to make my own.

First get the repair areas cleaned and ready

[John A. Ross]

once reapired its time to find something to fit in there, I had fitted Malcolms H mounts before and they were a great fit but with none on the horizon time to make some. Maclolm kindy let me have a factory one to use as a template, cheers Malcolm, top man.

Unfortunately I cannot fold like Malcolms fella so I did what I know best, made some drawings and models and created the same thing but as a cut list for sheet metal, this required an upgrade so the edge sections ended up being 2mm and the double sandwich in the middle 4mm which is a bullet proff upgrade.

See below the outcome vs original and accepts the top spring mount perfectly like an original with caveat that there is less exposed thread length out top due to the extra thickness.



Side view with the flat sheet cuts for the others on the right hand side




Face on view

[John A. Ross]

And of course you need to get them in there and more importantly set the heights correctly so the top spring mounts are at same height on both sides, no opto flex here so old sschool.

Using the steering rack mount as the horizontal reference getting shell level on jig I used a standard wide builders level with a small digital inclinometer on top to set the bead as level and exact same disctance from shell surface to under sid eof the bead, so now we have level shell and a reference above the location point for the H mounts.

Not only does the H mount need to be the correct distance but also at the right andgle !

See use of digital incinometrers, steel rules, masking tape and a bit of maths to set H mount heights and these wer then welded in place

[John A. Ross]

Anf finally, very important also to make sure the H brackets are all the same !

So made this nifty jig out of the scrap, the flat parts are held down with magnets and then welded up, what a pleasure to weld proper clean metal.

You can see the double thickness middle sarnie to the right

[John A. Ross]

And the original flat cut/assemble 3D model I did for the H mount lower, I have the rest and the cut list somewhere and will post it if i ever find it !

[John A. Ross]

For rear corner repair I had several options

The first was fibreglass back lower corners by Chris Farren.




These would have been a fantastic fit but I canned them as I prfer working with metal

Second was the ones I bought for the job, unfortunately those were nowhere near a good fit !

nothing lines up and left / right were nothing alike



Now to be fair the seller was advised, apologised and immediately replaced them for some new ones. All reasonable as these are hand made panels.

Second time out they fitted in the areas shown above but the butt stuck out way too far, see below



The back line should be a straight vertical down.

At this point on second set I surrendered as it is way too much work to do those panels, i could have done better myself.

So new ones ordered from Expressed Steel Panels and fitted

Perfect fit, nearly no fettling at all.






Ready to go, done and skim filled with epoxy.

[John A. Ross]

A couple more from the underbelly prep and paint, the paint booth I use is fantastic, ventilation is great you can hardly smell a thing !







All done, rust treated, epoxy layers, seam sealed, primered, colour coat, gravitex hit wet on wet, more primer hit on gravitex then two coats of green.

I hate when you see paint chips and no paint undr it

[John A. Ross]

And a couple of the seam seal stages I missed

[John A. Ross]

So time to run the lines while there is easy access



And a small extra seal on the aftermarket throttle cables to keep water ingress out

[John A. Ross]

And least we forget the time taken cleaning and chasing threads, coating, greasing, fettling

[John A. Ross]

And of course prime time in the super duper big booth, I feel so spoiled sometimes

[John A. Ross]

And then the modifications start

Example is the twin resevoir cylinders seen in the image and then the fuse box and wiring






NOT to forget the new headlining provided by Lesley Smith (article to follow on that) and supervised by quality control expert wee baoby just after the carpets were added

[John A. Ross]

A closer look at the head linings remanufactured from Lesley Smith

Lesley also provided the sun visor covers and rear arch vinyl covers for the car.