Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

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Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Quite a few years ago i hillclimbed and sprinted a yellow Rawlson Imp. This got nicknamed the Pimp (Performance IMP) and the name stuck. :oops:
Image
Unfortunately the car got written off in a roll at MIRA. :cry: :cry: :cry:
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Wanting to carry on competing, I then bought a Clan shell and transferred the mechanics into it.
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I competed in this until now, developing it into a pretty quick Turbocharged beast. This year the class structure for hillclimb and sprints has changed, namely, in modified production cars the minimum number of cars that needed to be produced was 100 per year ( making the Clan eligable) 8) . This has now changed to 1000 cars per year, ruling out the clan :cry: :( . I will have to play in the Kit car classes, up to 1700cc, up against bike powered locaterfields, ah well, at least i've got a roof when it rains :D .

So, its time to rebuild, or more correctly, build, a new Imp - Pimp2.
This will be eligible to compete in the mod prod up to 1400cc ( with a 998 turbo engine), hopefully being competitive against 1400cc mini's

The old steel shell was twisted with a bent roof, and was weighed in for scrap a couple of years ago. The car was not a spaceframe, It had a full imp inner bodyshell fitted with GRP one piece front end, GRP rear wings, GRP doors, and GRP engine cover. It was run in the mod prod clas but had a few illegal points, like the lack of rear wings :oops: . To be legal with the new car, a replacement shell was required and this must retain all the imp steel bodywork between the wheel centres. (within the wheelbase).

I ended up buying a shell advertised on this forum a few years ago from down in Weymouth. This was an acid dipped shell, with new 6 point cage, seam welded but then work stopped. I bought it knowing it was a long term project and wasn't able to start on it for a few years. I wanted to store it indoors, and Chris at Fenn Lane offered to store it in a barn, as long as it didn't take up floor space. I made a steel frame to store it in the air, with room for another car too fit underneath and took it over to its new home. When Jeff saw it, he was impressed with how good the outer body parts were, so knowing what bits i wouldn't need, i borrowed a marker pen and marked up what he could have. 30mins with a plasma cutter and the car donated lots of bits to keep other Imps going :D :D .
The shell was moved back to my house a couple of years ago and sat under a tarp round the back. Its now in the garage, with me wondering were to start.

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Bit of work to go, but aiming for it to be ready for the 2012 season, with a 998 turbo engine.

Eric
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

The Clan originally was heavier, It was am ex-racer and before that a rally car. It is a Luff shell but not a superlightweight one. I would say at the start the clan was 570 Kg and the pimp was 520 kg. The clan to start with was slower than the imp on hillclimbs (with the same 100hp N/A 998cc engine) but slightly faster on sprints where the improved aerodynamics came into play. Over the years, I have lightened the clan to about 520kg whilst upping the power to about 150hp and now its much quicker than the imp was/ For comparison the best i achieved at curborough with the Pimp was 36.05 secs, this year i got the time down to 33.9s, which is only 0.5 secs of the upto 1400 mod prod circuit record, not bad for only going there once a year :twisted: .

Yep, that was the new front end off Colin Rooney, who kindly brought it too the national for me. The rear wings and doors are repairable

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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by colin rooney »

Nice 1 Eric it will be good to see another rawlson out having a bit of fun just make sure you put a saloon cage in it this time :lol:

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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by HARTWELL MK1 »

pimpdriver wrote: Image

Wonder where the rear shelf ended up, :oops:

Eric
Image
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Update time

Had the day off work today and got on with straightening the shell. As Jeff alluded to previously the shell is actually bent. It had been Acid Dipped before i bought it and it looks as though lifting the shell in and out of the acid using ropes or slings under the roof has allowed the shell to bend. See piccies below for how bad it was.

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The whole shell was bent around the door aperture, you can see evidence in the 3rd picture of where the ropes went :x . The door shown is the fiberglass door of the original Pimp, its been repaired but its a lot straighter than the shell :shock:

After talking to Jeff (HARTWELL MK1), and deciding the best course of action, I was advised to straighten it before i cut the sills off to keep the strength in the floor. Jeff very kindly lent me some straightening bars :D , without which non of this would have happened - cheers Jeff :D
These bars are basically large turnbuckles with grips/clamps on the end. The ends clamp onto the flange around the door aperture and by turning the blue sleeve in the middle you can pull or push the bodywork.
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Right - let the straightening commence.

First attempt - try and pull the top of the rear wing in to close the gap with the door.

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Unfortunately all this did was pull the front of the door aperture in, the back didn't move at all. I wanted to get the rear wing at 90 degrees to the top of the sill.

So lets try it from the sill up to the top of the rear wing - that should do it.

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Better - but as i put more tension on, the clamp on the sill started to 'dig in' to the sill, probably because i wasn't pulling in line.

Bit of thinking time latter - i made some plates to weld in the corner to enable a better pull.

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Success :D - I managed to get the rear door line vertical, in doing this you could see the roof pulling back into shape 8)

By putting the bars in various positions i was able to push the front corner of the roof up and out into position, straighten out the kink from the rope in the top of the door aperture and basically push and pull the shell back into shape.

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One last job was to pull the the top of the b-post in towards each other as the had splayed out. Again the brain had to supplied with coffee,but i managed to wrap some sling offcuts round the pillars and clamp them in the straightening bars and pull them in.

Image

See next post for results.
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

After i got the shell roughly straight, i fitted some original imp doors i borrowed earlier of Brian Gomm (cov_climax). I thought i better get the shell to the correct shape, not to the shape of rawlson doors.

A little more tweeking and now it all seems pretty straight

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The roof has gone back pretty mush to shape but it still has a couple of flat areas behind the B posts, not as bad but will still need a bit of work.
Pretty happy with the results - i can now carry on with the rest of the work, at least with a straight shell now.
Not done a lot of steel bodywork for years, too much playing around with plastic cars. Quite enjoyed this though :D :oops: :D
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Peter
Yep, the plan is to transfer all the running gear from the Clan over to the Imp. I'm not sure what i'm going to do with the Clan afterwards, but its going to be used again this year. Development will continue. This year stronger rear springs have been fitted,A Speed sensor is being fitted to help the datalogging, Electronic Boost control has been looked at and will be attempted again, plus, the 998 engine will be fitted sometime when i get all the parts sorted. I'm also gradually getting parts together for another turbo engine - who knows where that will end up.

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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by cov_climax »

Hi J,

if the shell is straight to start with, (where possible), i would fit the cage and weld the bracing in before removing redundant panles.

depends on if you want to go for a particular motorsport series with regarding extending the roll-cage to suspension pick-ups, get very famillular with the Blue book ( i can probably get you a copy of last years if needed) , or if you plan hillclimbs then sound eric out as he's building this one to keep the mini boys quiet when he beats them :lol:

hope all is well BTW?

Brian
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild has continued - slowly

Post by pimpdriver »

I have been slowly continuing to work on the shell, I guess it is time for some long overdue updates.
There are some gaps in the photo's as I lost a few by losing my phone.

My major work was on the back corners of the car and the parcel shelf. As you can see from the picture below, there is quite a bit missing.

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Image.

First job was the recreation of a parcel shelf. The regs say that the shell must be as original up to the wheel centres, so this meant the 4" or so of the parcel shelf to just past the shocker mounts needed replacing. A nice piece of 25mm square box fitted nicely to achieve a solid back to this panel, to which i could attach the seatbelt mounts and steady bars for the engine mounting.

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A new panel was the made from 0.8mm steel wih folded edges to stiffen it and plug weld holes to attach it

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Image

More to come
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

There's more

Now the sides of the parcel shelf needed making. A lot of head scratching and quite a lot of cardboard later a plan was devised.
Instead of following the original shape, I decided to go in a straight line up from the shocker mounts up to the base of the rear window scuttle underside.
My plan is to have a removable panel to give access to the back (front ?) of the engine and the transaxle, so i just needed the sides and a lip at the back.
Some 16mm thin wall box section fitted between the box section fitted across the car and to the scuttle underside gives me a nice strong straight mount for the panel work. Excuse the shoddy camera work, it does go to the box section just out of shot to the left.

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The panels were cut to join to the inner wheel well and folded round the side to join to the inner wings.

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A tube was fitted through the panel so i can fit flexible ductwork taking air from the side windows to the turbo inlet. Also on this side added a rectangular cut out (with folded edges to stiffen it ) to use as an area where the electrics will pass through.

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I also added ( a bit later) a second box section (16mm x 1mm wall) to join into the old chassis members to help stiffen the rear.
Also in this picture you can see the strip added at the back to close off the fourth side of the parcel shelf access panel.

Image

Image
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Whilst I was messing about with the parcel shelf area I also incorporated an engine mount.

A section of the rear scuttle underside was cutout and strengthened by adding ties up to the top panel, whilst filling in the rear window lock.
You can just see the folded over ends along the edge of the cutout.

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These were plug welded in.

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A piece of 2mm wall angle was then welded into this cut out, with captive nuts on the inside, to mount the engine mount to.
Unfortunately I haven't got a photo of it on its own welded in, just this one with the engine mount.

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The triangular engine mount was then made using a similar system to the one I had in the Clan. The mount is nice and vertical.
I also added some steady bars to help triangulate it, not sure how necessary but makes it nice and stiff.

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Engine access should be pretty good thro' the car if required.

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More to come soon once i have sorted out the photo's.
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Peter
The photo does look like you describe, but it isn't so. The round tube has an 1/2" unf insert welded in at both ends. The box section that goes to the dynamo support casting on the block is welded to the tube and a bracket that goes under a head bolt is also welded to the tube. The bolt thro' the timing case doesn't do a lot, and are steering rack tie rod bolts. This is the bracket off the clan i mocked it up with first,(with a square section top tube) before I made a new one for this car. The steelwork on the side is for the ford coil pack. The bush is a polyurethane universal one from Superflex.

Image
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Peter
The plan is to get the Imp out competing this year, but trying to do it in a way that doesn't make the Clan unusable. I'm not planing on selling the Clan, It might even get 'tarted up'. I've been trying to get the Imp running for a year or so now, I do tend to work on it in spurts.

Eric
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Mike
I was very pleased with the shell straightening, big thanks to Jeff Day for the loan of the Kit, I'm still not sure if it was worth a Parcel Shelf in exchange, the amount of work to replace it was a lot more than I imagined. My loss, Jeff's gain, decisions you make and learn to regret :wink:
I still have the little job of swapping roofs, as there are two dents where the roof hasn't flexed back, I've got a roof and pillars off the Benoys, just got to stick it on :o

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Re: Pimp2 - older roof now on

Post by pimpdriver »

New Update

At the start of the build, the bent shell had to be straightened, unfortunately this left the roof with two huge dents where the metal stretched and wouldn't go back. I'm useless at filling and its a really hard shape to get right ( to me anyway ), so i decided to replace the roof. The Benoys were having a clear out last year and I helped the situation by removing a nice blue roof from their back garden. It's about time I fitted it then.
I was going to cut through all the pillars and splice in the new roof ( well old roof, as the shell is 1974 and the 'new' roof is an earlier one ), but Jeff day advised me how the roof is fitted to the 'C' pillars, so I followed his advice and got out the angle grinder.

First job was slit the back of the roof off just above the rear joint, and then the corner was cut out of the roof above the 'C' pillar to give access.
The roof ( and gutters) is only held onto the top of the 'C' pillar by a few spot welds and a bit of braze. The gutter just sits on the step of the 'C' pillar, brazed at the back with one spot weld at the back, one between the roof stiffener and the rear window surround and one on the leading edge of the 'C' pillar. These were drilled/ground out and the corner was free.

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View on the inside,

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Other side , I hacked the gutter off at the back which made access easier. Bit rustier this side but not too bad.

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The 'B' pillars were carefully measured and cut.

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And so were the 'A' pillars

Image

We have lift off - roof gone.

Image

More to follow tomorrow.
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Time to prepare the replacement roof.

First job was to work out how do I work on the roof without damaging it. Easy, find a nice metal structure, the width of an Imp and support the gutters 8)

Image

The rear window area was removed, again by using a thin slitting disc, and then the metal remaining was ground back to just leave the roof skin at the rear.
The 'C' pillars were then removed with the angle grinder

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The underside of the roof still was covered in the horrible bitumen based stuff that holds the sound deadening felt on.
Using petrol and wire wool and an excess of elbow grease I got this far removing it, and after about 2 hours gave up for the day.

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Another couple of hours on the Sunday saw a nice clean underside to the roof

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The 'A' pillars were trimmed to the correct length and cleaned up ready for welding.

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The 'B' pillars were treated the same.

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The 'A' pillars on the car were then readied to accept the new roof. This involved plug welding in 2" (50mm) long strips of 1mm plate
in 3 places. When the roof is fitted these would be plug welded thro holes in the roof, helping to tie the two bits together. It also gives
a great backing strip for the main weld, making it possible to weld with a higher setting giving better penetration.

Image

Again the 'B' pillar was done the same.
Also you can see, I fitted the Roll-cage to help stiffen the shell, which was much easier to fit with the roof off (making sure all the bolts would come out from underneath :shock: )

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The rear of the roof was then cleaned up and holes drilled to weld thro' later.

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All I had to do now was fit the roof, but had too stop as I needed to wait until the next weekend when a friend would come round to help lift the roof on.

Roof on - and relax :D 8).

Fitted surprisingly easily, just needed the 'B' pillars adjusting slightly to get it to sit down properly. Considering how bent the car was and
the amount of cutting and welding done on it, I'm happy :D :D

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Better start welding, 'A' pillars first. The gutter lips were slightly out, but by clamping a bit of brass in the gutter, I was able to bridge the gap with weld. The brass supports the weld, without getting welded into the structure.

Image

Finished welding and cleaned up, just filling required. This area is lead filled usually anyway, to hide the roof skin joint to the pillar.

Image

The 'b' pilllar needed a bit of clamping to get everything straight, we are talking millimetres here, but it easier to get it right than try to correct it after welding.
Very pleased with the pipe grips and tie wrap clamp, worked a treat. The cage was useful to pull the pillar back a bit.

Image

All welded and cleaned up.

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Last job done was to weld the rear up. The holes along the back lip were plug welded, and for overkill I welded along the seam as well.

Image

This is as far as I've got, some cleaning up to the inside of the car where the roll cage has restricted access, but the roof is pretty much on.

Eric
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild is finished - it drives

Post by pimpdriver »

Huge Apologies to everyone, I've not updated this for 3 years - my bad

As usual these rebuilds always take longer than you expect with life and everything getting in the way, but it has nearly reached its conclusion.

I drove the car on the track last week, so I'll show so pictures of the final outcome and then if people are interested I'll add some of the photo's of the rebuild as I went along.

So, let me introduce - Pimp 2

Image

Image

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These were all taken at a damp Curborough Sprint Circuit last week where I drove it for the first time. I had a few teething problems but it drove very well.
I'll add a few more pics later tonight once I have sorted them out.

Cheers

Eric
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

I f you look at the headlights in the above photos, the intercooler rads are where the inner headlights should be. Piccy with the front off.

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Piccy of Turbo engine fitted, with the exhaust half made, but without the rear wings on.

Image

Dashboard

Image

A short video of the engine on the rolling road, doing a power run after a full day's set up and tuning on new Megasquirt MS3X.

Image
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Re: Pimp2 - FIRST EVENT

Post by pimpdriver »

Evening
Pimp 2 has had its competition debut. :shock: :shock:

I was looking around for a local club event to enter the car for its first competitive outing, but couldn't find one I could enter. :(
So I entered the British Hillclimb Championship round at Harewood last weekend (7/8th May), might as well go for it :P
This is a two day event with practice rounds on the Saturday and a practice run and timed runs on the Sunday. I love Harewood Hill to drive, the organisation is top notch and its not too far away (120 miles).

After the test day a few problems came to light, the worst being I didn't fit the seat - I'm too tall. There is plenty of headroom in the car seeing as the seat is bolted to the floor. I'm 6'3" tall and coupled with the fact I have to wear a HANS device now, the cut- outs in the seat back for the harnesses were about 4" too low. I could just buy another seat, but i'm tight, so I modified the seat to fit me.

Image


Top of seat cut off and raised the correct amount.

Image

After playing around with cardboard and things, I eventually used 3mm Foamex board to create a surface to mould onto.

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2 layers of fiberglass on this side, followed by 1 yayer on the back side once the foamex had been removed. A few coats of flowcoat (gelcoat you can add to the fiberglass after moulding), a lot of sanding and a coat of paint you get a longer seat.

Image



Anyway, seat all fitted, Wiring mods successfully carried out, front grill made and fitted, rear wheel spacers/adapters made and fitted, the car was ready for an MSA Scrutineer to come round and inspect it and issue a new Vehicle Passport. This passed off with no problems a had no excuse but to go up to Harewood.

Arrived at Harewood at 8 ish on Saturday and parked the car up in the paddock between my two class rivals. A Mini and Andrew Russell in his orange Ginetta G15 with an 1120cc Imp engine. I haven't competed really for 3 years so I was a bit nervous that I might have forgotten how to drive a car with slicks on.
I started my first practice run and all the way up the hill the engine felt flat, I wasn't getting that 'rush' as the turbo came in at all. Quick investigation in the paddock showed that the main hose onto the plenum had come off - that will explain it.
2nd practice and the car felt much better, this is now turboed :twisted: . finished my run and was very happy with my time, the car feeling great. I was running it with 10 PSI of boost to play my self in.
3rd practice and I was really starting to enjoy this until halfway up the hill, it all went flat again. :x

Hose had come off again, but looked a bit weird. Something was sticking out between the hose and plenum :? . Took the hose off to discover what it was.
When taking the engine out of the Clan and fitting in the Imp, I had a clearance problem with this hose and the bodyshell which involved me cutting the plenum chamber pipe down to a short stubby length. To add a bead on the end of this cut down tube, I wrapped a few tows of Carbon fibre and epoxy round the end to provide this bead. This bead was now loose and sticking out, it was like a rubbery 'o' ring. It looks like I didn't mix the epoxy properly and it had never really cured.
I managed to beg and borrow various cleaners, sandpaper etc to prepare the carbon tube, to which I added a bead of epoxy putty.

By Sunday morning this had cured and I was ready to go again. Practice went well with the car behaving perfectly.

Ist timed run arrived, and I started to get the hang of this with the fastest time in the class and setting a new class record :shock:

2nd timed run and I was really starting to push until the drivers door flew open on the first left hand bend, I managed to grab and shut it, but it flew open at the next bend so I gave up and drove to the top slower whilst holding the door :oops: Luckily Andrew Russell who was very close in times to me, didn't improve enough to beat me.

First event, Class win and Class record - I'm over the moon to achieve that on its first outing.
The record is not the Hill class record, but the British Hillclimb Championship Class record, but i'm still happy with the cars performance.

I forgot to take any photos until the end, so here is one one the trailer with the high speed tow car.

Image

Cheers

Eric
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by moose »

Hi Eric good to meet you at Harewood thanks for letting me have a good look at the car, i never managed to put this thread with you at the time but my head was elsewhere with the miss fire we had on Grahams car, all sorted now, thanks for the loan of the plugs i cannot remember even if they were brand new if they were i shall get a new set to you, PM me your address. Long story short car had gone to a rolling road before it came to us for a wiring loom, we were asked to replace the main jets that the rolling road had fitted as the engine builder had found out they had gone down a size. so we replaced them, the reason that they went down a size was due to the fact they never checked for full throttle so set the car up with the linkage only making 3/4 opening, as we have found out back in the workshop after harewood they changed emulsion tubes and air correctors, i have now replaced these and the car goes alot better but being a race car needs to go to a track for a full test. thanks again for the plugs and your imp is a credit to you. hopefully see you again soon when i wont be working at an event and we can have a proper chill and chat. Are you doing Barbon?

regards mike
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Evening
A bit more work finishing off non essential bits and trying get round a few problems.

Charging has been a bit of a problem. I'm running a little lithium polymer battery, approx 7AH and weighs under a kilo. It feels like an empty box :shock: .
Anyway the Pimp2 uses a lot of electricity, Electric Water Pump, Electric High Pressure Fuel Pump, Electric Turbo Oil Scavenge Pump, Electric Intercooler Pump, Injectors, Coil Pack, Boost Valve etc. and this lot was running the battery down very quick. I have the small Nippon Denso Alternator (35 Amp ish) fitted, using my own toothed belt drive. It seems that the little alternator couldn't supply enough current at low revs to keep the battery charged. I've replaced it with a very slightly larger one I got off Ebay a year or so ago that produces 60 amps. This worked better but still wasn't charging enough. If I raised the tickover to 1600 rpm it would improve things, so I decided to replace the 18 tooth Alternator Pulley with a 15 tooth one.
This has sorted it, a nice 13.5 - 14 Volts at tickover at 1200 rpm. The only slight worry is will it hold together at high revs, well I'll soon find out. :roll:
Image

Other tweaks I've been sorting is a rear view mirror - with HANS device on you cannot really turn your head to see behind, make parking in the paddock a lot easier. I've managed to sort out a few problems with my wiring for the Megasquirt MS3x ECU i have fitted. I have now got the speed sensor working on the front wheel so I can do speed controlled Boost to help save the gearbox in the lower gears. Also I have sorted out the datalogging on the SD card fitted to the ECU, which means I can check after run temps, Mixture, Boost , oil pressure, fuel pressure etc. Hopefully this is the wiring now fully sorted - it is definitely slighly more complicated than points and a coil.

I never actually finished off the front end of the car, it didn't need the grills and headlight surrounds for the first event. I have been working on getting these done.
The front grill is a fiberglass moulded outer shape with a grill mesh fitted behind with blanking plates behind to ensure the air only goes through the radiator.
I painted the grill green myself, the paint I used is not a good match for the rest so its gone to be resprayed correctly using the original paint.

I modified the one piece front end to a 4 headlamp one, mainly because I prefer the look of them, but also to allow me to fit the intercooler water radiators where the inner lights should be. I found some 5" pizza grill bases, which when pressed with a domed tool make nice headlamp styled grills. These are fitted to a hinged alloy plate which is sprung loaded. This allows me to push the top of the grills in, to give access to the hidden levers which open the front end.
These are now away for paint with the bezels.

Image

Image

Image

A bit complicated I know but I'm happy with the final result.

I'll be at Crystal Palace this Sunday (May 29th) competing at the Sprint. Its a good day out with lots of other stuff going on. If you are coming along pop over to the paddock for a chat.

Cheers

Eric
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Front end finished - or is it ??

Picked up the front end bits from the painter during the week and I fitted them this afternoon.
I'm really happy with the light grills and surrounds, but I asked for the radiator grill surround to be black and the radiator grill to be green, but he did them the other way round. I'm not sure if it was a pure mistake or that he thought it would look better.

What do people think

Image

Image

Grill as was but the green the wrong colour

Image

I'll be leaving it as it is for this weekends fun at Crystal Palace, but I might get them painted again. The grill might be getting heavy as it started off black as I bought it, sprayed it green (wrong green), now its been sprayed black again, and it might go back to the right green :D


Anyway the similarly coloured Irish Clan passed its MOT today, these nice reliable modern cars, its 30 this year :lol:

Eric

Oh Peter, forgot to say, the car is not road legal so all testing is going to be done at events, or I might hire a bit of Bruntingthorpe Proving ground for an hour or so to prove/check a few things - its only 4 miles away.

Image
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Had a great day at Crystal Palace. As usual a brilliantly run day by the 7 Oaks club. I didn't get to see much of the rest of the show outside of the Sprint as it was a quite a busy day. The car created a lot of interest, especially by people asking me what bike engine is in it. They seemed amazed that the car still had a little old original imp engine in it. Met lots of fellow Impers, including a guy who had a beautiful Classic Side-car with an Imp engine in. The only bit of the show I saw outside the Sprint was the Imp Club display which had a great selection of variants.

For the Sprint itself, the car was going very well with me having a tussle with a long time adversary in a 1380 BDA powered Ford Anglia. I came second in class at the end with the Anglia beating me by 0.2 secs on his last run. This was in the class for modified cars from the 60's , no cc limit, but the little cars find the tight track a bit easier than the more powerful larger cars. For the last few runs in the car it kept on jumping out of second gear, so I was having to hold in gear whilst negotiating the tight bends. I'm not sure what is wrong, but it being a Jack Knight 4 speed box, it is probably the dogs on the gears may have worn too much after years of abuse. Gearbox is now out of the car but I'll wait until tomorrow night to open it up.

Andrew Cairney was going very well in his well turned out less modified car and I think got 5th in class.

Only downside was the journey back, left the park at about 8 o/clock after too much chatting. Got lost trying to get out of the park, and then got stuck in London traffic on the way home and arrived back at midnight.

I've entered 2 events in a fortnight, I hope to get the gearbox sorted by then or else I'll have to cancel.

Cheers

Eric
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Update Time

I've done another 4 events since Crystal Palace.
A busy weekend with a Hillclimb at Barbon Manor in Cumbria and a sprint the day after at Curborough nr Lichfield in early July were the first two. Unfortunately it was a very wet weekend, but the car behaved perfectly at Barbon but a few problems at Curborough. The electric scavenge pump for the turbo oil decided to seize and blow a fuse, which let a lot of smoke out. A couple of fuses along the way and I finished the event without too many smoke signals . After my last run the gear linkage fell apart as I selected reverse to line up with my trailer.
So during August I examined the scavenge pump, and it all seemed fine. But when left running on 12 volts it became too hot to touch after 10 minutes. I had a new spare one, a bit bigger, heavier and more powerful but again left running on 12volts was still cool after 10 minutes. So the bigger one was fitted, which needed a new bracket of course :x
The gear linkage was one I made years ago and was a bit agricultural, so I've made a new one using carbon fibre tube and Igus plastic spherical bearings.

Image

I have also made a mounting bracket for a 10 " tablet to use as a display screen for the Megasquirt ECU.

Image


The beauty of this Tesco Connect, Windows !0 tablet is that it was £60 and I can use the native TunerStudio software and customise my own dashboards. You can configure it how you like, and on the set up I have on the moment, I have made the Boost fiqure the main display with all the others ( Water and Inlet air Temp, Battery Voltage, AFR, Throttle angle etc) all around it. I have configured each gauge to change colours at certain readings to help see problems at a glance. It works brilliantly, but as usual, i'm too busy driving to look at it too much during a run, but it does make problem solving and tweaking things easier.

Another busy weekend saw me at Loton Park at the Satuday of the National, where the car again worked perfectly, with me winning the class by 1.5 seconds against a very varied group of upto 1400 modified cars. There was a Mini, an Ford Anglia, A Fiat X1/9, Vauxhall Corsa, Opel Tigra, MG Midget and A Rover Metro. A great day out with a very friendly class and perfect weather.

Put the Car on the trailer and headed straight over to the National at Hatton.

It was great to catch up with everybody and what a brilliant event, I stuck the Pimp2 in the Competition Class on Sunday and was very happy to collect 2nd place.

This Sunday I was back at Curborough again for a club event. This was the Reliant Scimitar clubs National weekend and the sprint is part of the event on the Sunday. I've been Secretary of the Meeting for this event for the last 10 years, but having passed it on, it was good to back driving the car again. Not much chance of a pot here as the class I was in was me and a very quick Westfield. Practice runs were both damp but enjoyable, 1st timed was frustrating as part of my gear-linkage popped out so that gears wre impossible to find. Final run, gear-linkage fixed and had a storming run which felt great and very pleased with my time.

I did however collect some datalogs of my runs, and this year I have fitted a speed measuring system. So I checked my 0-60 times for interest.

Image

The purple line marked 'Speed' is unsuprisingly the speed trace, and I've set the time to start as soon as this changed from 0 mph ( i.e. I was moving). The green line is the throttle position, the yellow line is RPM and the red line is boost.
To reach 60mph with the gear ratio's i have got now, I need two gear changes, but it still did it in 4.382 secs, which i'm very happy with. With i slightly higher 2nd gear I'm sure it would go under 4 secs. Not bad for a 1960's shopping car.

Eric
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by Lotus-e-Clan »

Yeah not bad for a 1960s shopping car -with 'brick' aero! :shock: - although clearly you have plenty of turbo power with which to overcome the resistance (who needs BMW power?) 8)

The speed gradient is dropping off as speed increases (although it's still not too shabby!) - so I'd guess, as well as the gear change losses, the more aero Clan might have had a purely linear speed gradient?

I like the large tablet idea ...I might copy that for the TechEdge O2 /Canems Ignition logging/display software - when Clan is back on the road (MOT to do).

Does Win 10 still run old XP (32 bit) software - or indeed good old DOS 5.0? ( :o ! ) I've heard there might be issues with Win 10 running old s/w.

Maybe I could get an older tablet for even less, mind?
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

End of season Roundup

I have done 2 more events in the car, Gurston Down near Salisbury at the end of August and Shelsley Walsh this Saturday. For both events the car ran faultlessly, I didn't have to open the toolbox during the events and between them.

I had a superb weekend at Gurston, the event was a 2 day one and part of the British Hillclimb Championship. I was originally put in the wrong class as the organiser though it must be a spaceframe, but I got it changed to the correct, upto 1400 mod prod class. A nice selection of cars, mostly Mini's with the 2 main contenders who are Gurston regulars with nice 16valve injected 1400cc engines (BMW k100 headed). Andy Russell was also in the class with his lovely orange 1140cc Ginetta G15.
The weather kept on changing over the weekend from dry (2 runs), soaking wet (one run but I didn't as I hadn't got my wets with me) to, on the Sunday, 1 practice in Drizzle, 1 timed run in damp conditions and a final timed run in the dry with damp patches. I havn't been to Gurston for at least 5 years so I was trying to learn/remember the best way to attack the course, not helped by the conditions constantly changing.
In the end I managed to get second in class, splitting the 2 mini's, which I am really pleased with. As the commentator mentioned to me after the meeting, this is probably the first ever time that the guy in third (class hill record holder) has ever been beaten by an Imp !!.
All the guys in the class were really helpful, in fact the guy in a mini behind me on my first start, noticed that off the line I Ieft 2 sets of 11's, one behind each tyre. This meant I have probably been running the rears a bit soft, so the middle of the tyre wasn't really doing a lot. The Clan seemed to like 15 PSI rear and 12 PSI front, but it looks like the Imp needs more pressure. I upped to 17 rear 15 front for the next start, which was better and the guy behind said that more of the tyre seemed to be working. I have now settled on 18 rear 15 front. These Avon Crossply Slicks don't like to be too hard and you run low pressures so they heat up very quickly, but It looks like I had gone too soft.

Last Saturday I went to Shelsley Walsh, A very special hillclimb course steeped in history. At is the oldest surviving motorsport venue (over a 100 yeas old), still running the same course. It is a very fast hillclimb, very steep with a couple of lower fast bends and the esses, a challenging s-bend with mot much room for error.
Again I was in the up to 1400cc Mod Prod class,but were amalgamated with the 1400cc to 2000cc class as well. 6 other competitors with different cars , A Peugeot 205 GTi (1995cc), a Peugeot 106 (1600cc), A Mini Cooper (1380cc), A Fiat X19 (1396cc), a MGF (1800cc) and a Alfa Romeo Giulia (1962cc).
A nice late summers day with conditions pretty much the same on each run meant I could concentrate on improving on each run. Again, not having been here for 5 years , I started slowish but really pleased with my final run to get a 33.81 second run up Shelsley's hill. I won the class by over a second and beat the championship class record and got within a second of the Class Hill record. The car ran like clockwork all day, the only slight problem is the slightly high air inlet temps at the end, hopefully something I can cure during the winter.
I got lots of positive comments during the day, about how nice it is to see a Imp out on the Hills. A lot of people, after seeing me run, had to be shown that it still is an Imp engine in the boot. :twisted:

All in all, I'm very happy with my season, and it shows a 1968 Imp can be competitive against modern machinery. The class I run in is not for Historics or classics, it is for any car from earliest cars to 2016.

Cheers

Eric
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

The start of my season approaches, with my first event of the year being at Prescott this coming weekend
This year I am competing in the British Hillclimb Leaders Championship, basically going to all the top hills in the country.
I'll be in the same class as other championships I have been in, namely, Modified Series Production Cars upto 1400cc, but I thought I'd have a go at the top championship this year.
Over the winter (well after new year anyway) i've been doing a few changes/improvements.

Intercooler Rads.
Last season, at the end of some of the warmer runs the air inlet temperature was reaching about 55 - 60 degrees. This is a bit on the hotside for power and keeping the pistons together.
From the datalogs, I could see the temp rise in virtually a straight line from 20 degrees at the start to 55 degrees at the end of the run.
The car uses a water cooled intercooler, which is definately big enough, so the rise is how quickly the water in the system removes the heat. If I added more water to the system the rise in temp would be less over time as more water will absorb more heat. The system at the moment has about 3.5 litres of water in it, so I could just add a tank with more water in, but I though lets pur bigger rads in, more water and more cooling area.
I drew up a rad that spanned the whole width of the car at the front and got quotes of £500-£600 back.
Looking at the main radiator, Fiat Cinquecento, I thought maybe I could fit one of them as they are cheap and very light. Well as you can see below I could fit 2 in. They are a very tight fit, even to the point that I had to make supports at the end to pull the rads down to clear the bonnet. They are in and I don't think I can fit anything bigger :D

Original heater matrix rads, with the air fed only by the inner headlamp holes

Image

New improved, slightly bigger rads, fed by all four headlamp holes.

Image

Image

Image

Suspension
By taking the whole suspension off the Clan, the Pimp sits a bit higher as the Clan sits lower than an Imp, with the subframes and sping mount sitting higher up in the Clan shell. Also with the wide front arches, the wheels sat a little bit too far inboard for my liking, not filling the arches properly.
To lower the car, I could just get shorter springs, but the rears could be quite expensive, so I decided to lower the sping pans I had previously welded into the fabricated arms I had.

Original sping pans (wishbone upside down)
Image

New lower spring pans,

Image

These should lower the car at least 1.5 inches.

At the front, I couldn't fit wider, or bigger offset wheels, because on lock, they would catch the inner wings.
I decide to space the wisbones out, as well as the steering arms to move the whole hub 1.3 inches out each side.

Image

I also changed the track rods to rose jointed ones

Image

And I made a bracket to lower the bottom shocker mount on the fabricated wishbones.

Image

I will soon find out if this has made any difference, All these mods have added a few kilo's to the car, but I have now fitted a set of split rim Allycat style wheels which being lighter should balance out the changes.
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

The Nun wrote:On the rear arms youve made do you use the original bearing housing removed from a standard arm and weld back on to yours, or have you made up new ones and machined them after fabrication?
I didn't make the front or rear wisbones myself. They were supplied to me quite a few years ago by Pete Richards who had them made. The rear originally didn't have any spring pans in as they were fitted to one of Pete's Clans that used a coil over spring on the shock. I had to fit spring pans as I'm not allowed to change the suspension layout. I fitted the spring pans to suit the Clan I ran previously, but on the Imp they needed to be deeper.
Anyway back to the question - the housing were new as far as I know and machined after fabrication.

Eric
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Update Time again.
After my fun time at Gurston that Steve kindly talked about above I have done a few more events.
The car has run faultlessly, with time between events spent doing little improvements instead of repairs.
In June I competed at Loton Park, a lovely twisty hill near Shrewsbury. Saturday practice and Sunday competitive runs. Saturday was fun with Brad Drowne in his Citroen AX pushing me really hard for top position in the 4 strong class. On the Sunday timed runs I managed to beat Brad by 3 tenths of a second in the first run, then on the second run I managed to spin the car., within its own length, at the top of the ‘straight’, but still managed to stop the car on the tarmac. Brad pulled out all the stops with a run which was quicker than me all the way up the hill, and won the class with a brilliant drive.

After Loton I was supposed to do an event at Barbon Manor in Cumbria on the Saturday and an event at Harewood in Yorkshire on the Sunday. Unfortunately the event at Barbon was cancelled on the Thursday because the grass paddock was flooded and not much chance of it drying out by the weekend.

So Off to Harewood again for a 1 day meeting, again though a small turnout for the class with just me and Roy Bolderson in his Mini. A nice, if cold day, staying dry and a great days motorsport.
I beat Roy and won the class, as well as lowering the class record, which I set in May, by nearly a second . This was on the first timed run, on the second I was 1.5 seconds slower, for no real reason. Car felt fine, but all my splits were slower and I just wasn’t ‘on it’. Anyway, a new personal best is great.

July was very quiet, with no events to go to, and no real fettling to do to the car. So I did other things, like holidays and other stuff, and fettling the road Clan.

August arrived and I went down to the IMP National With PIMP2 on the trailer, after setting up camp with the Leicester/Cornwall guys, it was time to catch up with all the great IMP friends, all within easy reach (usually near the bar).
On Sunday I actually wiped the car down and give the car a bit of a clean. Along with all sorts of micky taking, by the nearby ‘helpful’ team.
Stuck the car into the Line Up on Sunday in the Competition Class and was very pleased to be voted top car in the class, and have to line up in front with all the other top cars. Whilst the deliberations were going on I nipped off to Mark Maynards to buy a couple of gaskets I forgot to get earlier. As I returned I was surprised to hear that Pimp2 had been voted Top Car and presented with the beautiful Perpetual Trophy. I didn’t expect that, and thanks to all the people that voted for it. As a real ‘Peoples Award’ I really am grateful. I’ve tried to build the fasted Imp I can within the rules of the sport, but also tried to make it look good as well – makes it all feel worthwhile.

Anyway back to going fast.

After the Harewood meeting, a friend sent me a picture of the car under braking after going thro’ the farmhouse section, and the spoiler was almost touching the ground and the front wheels had about 5 degrees of negative camber. So the brakes work well, but the front springs could probably do with being a bit stiffer. I measured the old springs and worked out they were 250lbs ish, so I bought some 300 lb 8inch long ones and fitted them.

Also just before Harewood, I added Launch Control to help make the starts more consistent. With the turbo it is very hard to hold a steady start revs and also the turbo isn’t ‘spooled up’ when starting. What Launch Control does is add a lower rev limiter when the clutch is depressed, which allows me to hold quarter throttle, whilst the engine is held at 7300 rpm (popping and banking), this allows the turbo to spool up to 11 PSI, drop the clutch and off we go.

On Sunday I competed at Shelsley Walsh at the BHC 70th anniversary weekend. I had entered both Saturday & Sundays events but only got an entry on Sunday due to both days being very oversubscribed. A glorious day, with most of the British Hillclimb champions present, doing a parade at lunchtime, some in their winning cars.

My normal class was merged with the upto 2 litre class, so I ended up against , Andrew Russell in his Ginetta G15 (only 1040cc at the moment as his 1120 let a lot of bits escape a few months ago), a double drive Lotus Elise and a Lotus Exige. So the only tin top in the class. Practice went well, with my first run up the hill under my best time set in the car last year. Ist timed run was okay but a car had left most of its gearbox oil on its way up the hill and the cement dust was rather off putting, so I took it a bit carefully. Second timed run and lets go for it, I got a brilliant start (2.14 secs) and carried extra speed through the first corner, which meant at the second corner I arrived too fast for third gear. So I stuck it in 4th gear and lifted slightly and the car just flew round the corner, back on the power early and carry the speed up to the esses. I manged to stop the car and do a good line through the esses , and then power out to the finish. Crossing the line you have to brake very hard to park at the top of the hill, and they have conveniently fitted a time display as you enter the top paddock. A look across and It said 32.67 secs, a second faster than I had ever been up the hill. It felt like an absolutely perfect run and was really pleased with the result. The Exige improved as well and beat me to second place by 0.09 secs. When I went to the timing screens, once I got back to the main paddock, I found out that I had broken the class record – result.

Shelsley Walsh is one of the most famous UK Hillclimbs, and to now be the holder of the class record for Mod Prod cars upto 1400cc cars, (displacing a mini) really feels good. Especially as it is in a Imp.

Shelsley Results

Class C1 and C2 (merged) Modified Series Production Cars up to 2000cc
Record C1 Tim Dennis Mini Cooper 1380cc. 32.76 secs. 4 5 2014

47 Paul Jones Lotus Exige 1900 2005 32.58
45 Eric Morrey Hillman Imp 998T 1968 32.67
8 Eynon Price Lotus Elise 1800 2015 34.39
48 Andrew Russell Ginetta G15 1040 1971 34.87
46 Tony Adams Lotus Elise 1800 2002 35.43
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by chris d »

as above
me as well
awesome car and build
well done
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by Lotus-e-Clan »

So glad you are doing well Eric. I'd like to believe that you'd be even quicker in the Clan but no doubt you've got the imp to be even faster than the old set-up by now.

Water might not be the best coolant against fast-moving hot air because it picks-up heat slowly - yes it holds a lot of heat but it absorbs it slowly and let goes of it slowly too. so increasing the water flow rate will have a limited effect.

You probably know what i'm gonna say next!

Evan waterless coolant picks up heat faster than water but has less heat capacity. It also releases it's heat faster than water so higher pump flow rates are needed. Unless Evans is banned from use in your event then it's worth considering. You might be able to tune the flow rate and radiator size to your advantage? Clan004
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by ylee coyote »

Charge cooler temperatures are all about heat transfer ,coolant flow will help (bigger pump) or losing more heat from the radiator ,so size of radiator ,airflow through the radiator ,should make a difference ( I have seen ice boxes ...) As for the coolant to use ? water has the best heat transfer ,ethylene glycol mixes are less ,Evans coolant are about the same as a 50/50 ethylene glycol, polypropylene glycol (the safe stuff ) has the lowest heat transfer properties.
I ran my 500 hp turbo car with a 20% ethylene glycol mix with best results
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by Lotus-e-Clan »

Ylee. I've read that sort of stuff before. It is more about panicking about coolant RUNNING temperature (the temperature reading on the gauge) rather than the DYNAMICS of heat transfer...and misses the point I was try to make. I run Evans in the Clan and the Lotus - both have an EWP of which I can control the flow-rate from the cabin and so I have first-hand knowledge in real-world driving that Evans indeed needs a faster coolant flow rate than water to transfer heat effectively.

To enable me to get an objective view on the difference between water and Evans as a coolant I performed a basic (but controlled) experiment on the bench to show that Evans heats faster than water for EXACTLY the same heat input (See results of my simple experiment here). The reason the water temp is slow to rise (in the car and the experiment) is because water is a better heat BUFFER than Evans. But being a better buffer of heat (high specific heat) has its down side. Yes water heats more slowly than Evans but it cools more slowly too as I proved in the cool-down phase of the experiment! Yes water holds more heat than Evans per unit volume, but Evans lets it's heat go more readily than water. Water is a great heat buffer ..but that very property limits both the RATE of heat gain AND the RATE of heat loss. ..which can be a curse ..or an advantage ..you just have to design the cooling system specifically to harness the different properties of Evans ..a system designed for water won't work so well with Evans which is what the world and his wife keep complaining about without considering the fuller picture.

So the point I'm making is if the air is too hot at high power (lots of inlet air flow/consumption) then you need either a bigger intercooler radiator, or QUICKER heat removal from the intercooler to cool the FAST-MOVING air efficiently.. As explained above, water is definitely SLOW to pickup heat compared to Evans - I've proved that to myself at least. So for a given radiator(intercooler) size with water as a coolant you reach the ceiling of heat transfer at faster water flow rates. You can flow Evans faster than water and still pick-up useful heat but then you have to dump that heat quickly into the main radiator...Evans won't HOLD the heat as well as water so you have to get it to the main radiator as soon as possible or it loses heat into everything it touches ..including the oil...which is a problem for a road car ..but not usually an issue for a hillclimb car on a 2 minute sprint!

OK you can solve the problem with the current water system by fitting a bigger intercooler ....and add more weight :( ..or try to cool the intercooler faster with Evans at a high flow rate :) ...and use more AMPS :( ..no such thing as a free lunch I guess. :lol:

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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Interesting discussion on the cooling. I looked at ice and all the other things and decided it was too much faf. Theses things are great until you have to wait on the line for 20 mins after a big off, have to have an imediate re-run etc. So unless it happens automatically then I won't bother with it. I have enough trouble remembering to start the datalogging before each run :oops:
The evans coolant is not a bad idea, but the amount of water I through around the back yard whi;st getting the pump fitted and bled would have cost a bomb with the evans stuff. I have to take the engine out every 5 events to adjust the clutch, god knows how much coolant i would waste doing that.
Keep the ideas coming.

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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by Lotus-e-Clan »

Yes I have to agree that Evans is far too expensive. A lot more people (including the naysayers) would try it out and properly adapt their system IF it were reasonably priced ..in fact my local Evans Agent said the main barrier to widespread use (and making a profit) IS its cost and not so much its function. Evans is reusable once drained - you just have to make sure you catch it all! A bit of creative thinking with the drainage system (large taps in the right places) and you can recover 99.9 % of the stuff to reinstall.

I've changed the rad on the Lotus (a cheap Chinese Aluminium rad FAILED- so went back to brass and copper! :evil: ) and reused the Evans - once refilled with recovered Evans I needed to top-up about 20 mm of coolant within the small header tank (about 100ml or less) .

My only major disaster was in the development phase when I forgot to tighten the output hose on the Clan's EWP80 - lost 3 or 4 litres all over the engine bay (plus exhaust manifold!) and up the road. I didn't have any spare Evans Powercool at the time so I got home by adding a minimal amount of Evans PREP fluid rather than contaminating the system with water - which worked out OK (you can run the engine on 100% Prep fluid for a limited period).

Needless to say, both Lotus and Clan are properly coolant-tight at the moment - Lotus is fully silicone hosed - Clan is still on old rubber in the main :oops: .

Other benefits include NO system pressure (or corrosion) - so it's very forgiving when using MS wills rings and dodgy outer water gaskets. And when the failed Chinese rad leaked it only lost a dribble of coolant when the rad was cold - .when hot the loss wasn't apparent (alum expansion) and having ZERO system pressure helped here.
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

New Season 2018

As the car was running fine when the season finished last year, I haven’t really done much to it over the winter. I’ve fitted a camera, just a cheap 4k Go-Pro Chinese copy. I have also added 2 pressure sensors on the brake lines, one for the front and one for the rear circuit. I felt I’m data logging all the engine parameters, but nothing else apart from speed. I also found it difficult to know where the brake balance was, as once you have turned the knob a whole revolution you have lost the reference point.
It was a bit of a job to sort out the sensors, as if you look for 100 bar 0-5v pressure sensors they are pretty expensive, but with the aid of google, I managed to find out that an Audi A2 has two fitted to the master cylinder. On to ebay, and a master cylinder was bought for £24 complete with the 2 sensors and their plugs. I made an aluminium block up which allowed me to plumb in the sensors and then wired them up to the ECU. Unfortunately then I found out the Megasquirt MS3X I am using only has 3 off 0-5v inputs, and as I was using 2 of them for oil and fuel pressure, it left me one short. I quick e-mail to Phil at ExtraEfi (who supplied the ECU), and it was discovered that there are others I could use but would require diving into the black box and a bit of soldering and some extra components.
With trepidation I floundered may way into the ecu, carefully soldered in these items on the provided ‘prototype area’ on the main board, and added some internal jumper wires. Once all assembled and connected back up, surprise no.1, the engine still worked and surprise no.2, the pressure sensors worked and I had a display of front and rear brake pressures on my tablet dashboard. – result.

The other job carried out was to fit a new clutch driven plate. The organic plate I use wear quite quickly so I have to shim it regularly to have the correct grip. The one that was in had gone down from 6.8mm to start with, to 5.2mm when removed (with 2 re-shims in between ) so it was time for a new one. I have found a place that re-lines them, and had 2 done ready. These though were 8mm thick so needed a lot of shims to move the clutch cover to the correct position. I should get a lot of use out of these.

Anyway, first event of the year arrived I am competing in the same championship this year as last year, the British Hillclimb Leaders Championship. It’s a bit of a strange championship, but think of it as the British Hillclimb Championship for the Classes. The Main British Hillclimb Championship has no class structure, effectively it for the fastest cars. Mainly up to 4 litre single seaters which are capable of over 160 mph at some venues, these compete to qualify for a top 12 run-off after each round with the top ten gaining points. The Leaders championship (that I compete in) is for all the cars in their various classes, from road legal cars, up to the big single seaters. I compete in the upto 1400cc (998 x 1.4 for turbo = 1397) Modified Series Production Cars.

Event 1 – Prescott 28/29 April

I arrived at the event at 07:30 with it lightly raining and the camping field and trailer field a complete muddy mess. Unloaded the car of the trailer and parked the tow car and trailer in a muddy field knowing I would need to be pulled out.
Track was soaking wet, put the cut slicks on and lined up for first practice. Car running sweetly and all seemed fine. My turn to go, tried spinning the wheels in the warm up area, but I couldn’t. The engine didn’t seem right and I had to rev it and slip the clutch just to get to the start line. Light goes green and off I go, well not really off, more stutter, clutch slip, nearly stall, stutter, clutch slip, nearly stall and eventually pull away. Engine would just not pull any load. Stuttered my way up the hill, in a pathetic time and made it back to the paddock. I then sat in the car trying to work out what was wrong. If I reved the engine it just didn’t like it. After looking at the Tablet with the engine readouts on, I then noticed that the inlet vacuum/boost readout wasn’t changing. That’s not right, so checked the manifold pressure pipe going into the ECU. That was fine. I got out of the car and went round the back where I have a bulkhead connector which connects the Manifold Air Pressure pipe, and the two boost pipes for the boost solenoid fitted inside the car. Those three hoses were not connected – bother. Looks like when I refitted the engine I forgot to connect those. Operator Error. Connected them back up and the engine ran as usual. Not much lost wet first practice doesn’t teach you too much.

On to the second practice, still very wet. Because it was so wet and we were parked on grass, I decided to do a bit of tyre warming before the start line. This is better, engine felt brilliant , wheels spinning with ease. Rolled up to the start line, to see the Start Marshal furiously giving the cut engine signal. I cut the engine, to then see a cloud of smoke roll past me, and engulf me and the clerk of the course appearing through the smoke at my passenger side window. This doesn’t seem good. Anyway I was rolled back out of the way, and eventually got the car back into the Paddock where I could look at it.
There were no external signs of a problem, no oil or water dripping, all the internal engine parts still in there, so I assumed it was my turbo scavenge pump that had failed. Because the turbo is at the same level as the sump, I have an electric pump which scavenges the oil out of the turbo and pumps it back into the engine. If this fails, oil gets in the hot exhaust and lets the smoke out. After checking this out and discovering it was still pumping, I decided to see if I could start the engine. A couple of turns on the starter and you could sense something wasn’t right, and it wasn’t starting. Then I noticed the stream of water coming out of the exhaust pipe – that’s not good. Game over for the day, so I packed up and went home, after extracting the tow car from the quagmire.
On Sunday I unloaded the car and took the engine out to assess the damage. As I was removing the engine I noticed that I had committed Operator Error No.2. When reconnecting the boost pipes, I had accidentally connected one of them, instead of to the bulkhead connector, to the rivnut I had fitted to hold the block on. This meant that the turbo boost was uncontrolled. I checked out the datalog and my fears were confirmed, the boost had hit 23 PSI. Normally in first gear I have about 10 PSI of boost and in other gears about 16 PSI. It looks like this is my boost limit.
Once the engine was stripped down and the head taken off it was quite obvious what had happened. The wills rings, which aren’t in grooves in the head, instead are held in position by a spacer plate, had moved. On cylinder 3, the wills ring had actually bend into the cylinder allowing the water to get into the cylinder. On other cylinders the ring had gone egg shaped where the spacer plate had given way next to the slots for the water to flow between head and block. That’s not too bad, new spacer plate ( I had a few cut ) and wills rings and I should be back in business. Unfortunately on closer inspection I found a crack in number two cylinder liner. New bottom end to be built for the next event then. Luckily over the winter I have been sorting out the parts to put another two bottom-ends together.
Not the best start to the season, but I was sort of expecting it considering how trouble free last year was. The engine has been together since 2011 (as a turbo engine), and before that was my road imps 998 bottom end. The block is still okay just needs new liners.

I have pictures of the damage, but i'm not sure how to post after the Photobucket fun.
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Thanks for the tip on posting Photo's Lotus-e-Clan, I think I have sorted it.

The engine was my first ever Imp engine, did about 50,000 miles as an 875, probably the same again as a 998. It was originally converted to 998 by John Lockwood at Suisse Auto, after a stromberg throttle plate screw came loose and wrecked a bore.

Sorry for the delay I've been busy building an engine.

Anyway damage to wills rings and decompression plate. I use an alloy plate 1.4mm thick with paper gaskets either side making a total thickness of 1.8mm, that supports the wills rings and lowers the compression. There are no grooves in the head or block. This is what the 23 PSI did. You can see the wills ring actually moved inwards. On the other cylinder you can see the alloy plate has bent where the waterway cutout is.

Image

This is the crack in the cylinder liner

Image

So new bottom end needs to be sorted. Over the winter I had sorted out 2 bottom ends, A new one and a used one. The new one consisting of a block sorted about 5 years ago at Rodwell Motorsport, std 998cc wet liner one. I have lightened & balanced a set of rods and bought a set Maynards new pistons. The crank again is a good std used one with new mains, big end bearings and some Corley Conversions rod bolts. I have fitted my own 10mm thick alloy block strengthening plate, my own blocks down to the caps and tapped and fitted M12 studs. Large oil pump, my own baffle system and std sump.
The used one is my old N/a engine from the Clan. This was stripped and the same mods done as to the new one.
I decided to use the used one as it has already run the rings in the bores so it won't need any 'running in' as it won't be getting any.

This weekend I've been building up this engine, fitting the original head and cam and stuffing it all back in the Imp. One improvement is to have some new stronger decompression plates made, this time in Stainless and with holes for water transfer instead of slots. Impressed with the service from Accurate Laser in Tividale who made these in 3 days.

Image

Fitted

Image

Anyway all back together, not run it yet, but hopefully it should be okay.
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Again sorry for the lack of updates, as you will see I’ve been busy. I did type this out once, then lost it when something went wrong with the preview.

After building up the new ‘old’ engine for the car, I went to my next event which was at Harewood, 2 weeks after letting the steam out of the original one. Engine started and ran fine and I lined up for 1st practice, looking forward to abusing the car again. Car ran fine and all seemed good, with my time being what I expected, bearing in mind I haven’t run the car properly since October.
Practice 2 seemed okay as well, but going over the finish line, the oil pressure light came on, and I saw 8 PSI on the digital gauge on my tablet, as I coasted back to my paddock position. That’s not good. The engine seemed to run okay and the water temp was around 90 degrees and the oil temp 100 degrees. Not sure what was going on but everything I could check was looking okay so I decided to have my third practice run. This was a mistake, the engine was definitely not running at 100%, you could feel it straining up the straight, I only just got into 4th gear where before I was well into 4th before the final bend. Looking in the rear view mirror, as I left the last corner, you could see smoke and as I lifted off over the line, the oil pressure dropped to 1 PSI. - bother. I coasted back to my paddock place with the engine knocking and the oil pressure refusing to rise. Oh well, early finish again, I’ll not be here for the second day, time to stick the car on the trailer and drag it home.
Well I had a free Sunday, as I should have been competing, so I took the engine out of the Imp and stripped it down. Once the sump was off, it was quite obvious where the problem lay - spun no.4 big end and not much of the flywheel end main bearing left, most of it was around the oil pump strainer. I’m glad I called it a day when I did; it was only a few revs away from the conrod welding itself to the crank and releasing chunks of metal into the outside world. The conrod bolts on no. 4 were a nice shade of purple. So new conrod and bolts, new crank and new bearings required. Unfortunately with the flywheel end main bearing trashed, the crank was able to flail around and the bore the scroll runs in got very badly scored. This meant it wasn’t a quick fix, definitely repairable but not in a week, so time for engine number 3.

Image

Image

As mentioned in the last instalment, I had a bottom end ready, but in pieces, to build another engine. I wasn’t sure what caused the problems in the previous engine, so I built this exactly the same except this was a fresh block and new pistons. I got it all together and running within a weekend and it fired up and ran perfectly. My next event was Gurston Down, the following weekend. Due to the previous problems I decided to test the car to see if it was all okay. The one big downside of a Mod Prod car is that it is not road legal (slicks, no lights, horn, handbrake etc) so I couldn’t just take it out for a test drive. A couple of years ago at the Autosport Show I noticed a stand run by Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground, an ex RAF and American Air Force airfield with a 2 mile long (ish) runway. This is 4 miles from me and talking to them, they said I could book testing with them for £50 hour. Well I rang up and they were really friendly and helpful, but there were a few problems. If I wanted to use the track, I would need Indemnity Insurance, but If I wanted to use some large hardstanding areas, I didn’t need it as I would be on my own. Great, book me in for the Tuesday, is it still £50 an hour. They said it was, but, minimum 2 hours and + Vat. So I went for it.
I turned up on the Tuesday and was to wait for the airfield car to take me to my area. He arrived but said they had a better area, and told me to follow him. After going past 10000 of ex lease cars parked on every single bit of unused hardstanding we eventually arrived in the middle of the huge runway. This had been split in half, both longways and crossways, to allow two separate tracks to operate, and two leave two other 1 miles straights. I could use one of these which had been marked out like one carriageway of a motorway, used to help train the emergency services. So, for the next 2 hours I had the use of my own empty motorway.
I started out gently driving up and down the motorway for about 15 minutes, until the water and oil temps got too high. The car is designed for short bursts, so it will get too hot if used continuously. I let it cool down for 10 minutes and went out again. I can run the electric water pump and fan off a slave battery without running the engine to cool it down. After a couple of times doing this, I could see at the end of each session, the oil pressure at tickover was dropping gradually, and by my 5th set of running up and down the pressure had dropped to 12 PSI at tickover, well down from the 28 at the start when hot. bother again. Time to pack up, take the car home, cancel the upcoming events, and have a beer. I had entered Gurston, Shelsley Walsh and Loton Park on successive weekends, after which there was a small gap to the next event at Doune. I cancelled all but Doune, hoping to sort it out by then. This gave my just over a month to sort the problem out.
I stripped this engine down at the weekend, to discover similar problems to the previous engine. Not so bad this time but it would have got worse if I carried on. What was going on ?. On this engine you could see score marks in the crank and no.3 main bearing, 1/3 had collapsed but the remaining portion was badly scored. Looks like oil contamination damaging the bearings. After a think, the one thing that linked these two engines, was that both had been Aquablasted. This is a method of cleaning aluminium using glass beads and hot water blasting. I had done one block myself and the other had been done by the machinist. After talking to Andy Jones and a few engine builders, I came to the conclusion that basically I hadn’t cleaned the oil galleries properly and some stray glass beads had made their way to the bearings. Modern high performance bearings have only a very thin layer of white metal to absorb dirt, and these beads would embed themselves in this, but not deep enough, and destroy the crank surface. Okay I had knackered 2 cranks and bearings but at least it wasn’t a fundamental engine problem, just my bad assembly practice. I’ve learnt something.
What do I do now, I had three knackered 998 engines, how best to proceed? I decided to rebuild the third engine, clean all the oil galleries properly and put it back together with new a crank and bearings.
With the flywheel end main bearing trashed, the crank was able to flail around again and the bore the scroll runs in was scored, not as bad as the second engine but not good. I decided to do a bit of an emergency repair. I took the crank that was damaged and filled the scroll grooves with JB weld (metal filled epoxy). When set, I sanded it down to leave a smooth diameter with no grooves. I then carefully wrapped this diameter with a single layer of brown parcel tape. On the block, I cleaned up the scroll area with coarse emery, both on the block and the cap. I then smeared JB weld on the surfaces and assembled it all together with the crank and good bearings, to effectively ‘cast’ a new surface. When set, I removed everything and cleaned up any excess epoxy. This gave me a new surface with a slight running clearance (the thickness of the parcel tape) to which I could use a replacement crank. It was worth a try ,as if it did leak a bit, the engine doesn’t do many miles.
The oil galleries were rodded out about 10 times each, the threads that the gallery bungs are fitted were also cleaned with a tap to ensure no glass beads were caught (top tip from Andy Jones), and the galleries cleaned again. The engine was reassembled with new crank (well, good used unground standard crank) and new bearings. I also fitted a new oil cooler/heater (water cooled one off a VW Golf) to ensure there was no crap in the oil system.
The engine was refitted to the car and it started up instantly and ran beautifully. Fuel injection is sooo good. Right, time to enter an event with, hopefully, a working engine.
The next event in my championship (British Hillclimb Leaders Championship) was at Doune, nr Stirling in Scotland, a mere 6 hour drive away. Do I risk it with an untested engine, of course I do, I’m pretty sure I solved the problem so why not.

Image

The car behaved itself all day during Saturday practice, the engine running fine, with good oil pressure at the end of my runs. I was looking at the oil pressure readout as I crossed the finish line each time, checking that, before I even looked for my time on the readout in the top paddock. I wasn’t trying particularly hard, I was more interested how the engine performed. The normal ‘launch controlled’ starts didn’t seem to be working well, the engine was bogging down after I released the clutch. I put this down to the new clutch plate I had fitted, maybe it’s a bit more fierce. The engine seemed good, it just didn’t seem to have the grunt coming out of corners as the old one. It seemed fine once it was up and away, just seemed slightly lacking low down. Maybe the cam or ignition wasn’t timed exactly as before. Anyway the car was running and I was starting to get used to the car again.
This event was Doune’s 50th anniversary meeting and the organisers put a Hog Roast on the Saturday evening – which was great to catch up will people and talk rubbish most of the night.
Sunday was another splendid summer’s day and 1st practice went well with my time coming down as I got more used to the grip slicks give. Oil pressure still perfect – looked like I might actually complete my first timed run of the year. Time for my first timed run, and the car wouldn’t run without the slave battery being connected. Great, runs fine until you need it. After plenty of panicking and great help from fellow competitors, I traced the fault to my battery cut-off relay. Instead of the usual big red cut off switch, I had fitted a 100a relay that latched when switched on, and released when either of the cutoff switches were pressed. This has worked perfectly until now. It looks as though the contacts had gone dirty. A quick short across them with a spanner, cleaned them up, and the car fired up and ran fine. Whilst sorting this out, an unfortunate competitor had clouted the barriers, which gave me time to line up in the correct starting order.
First timed run went fine, not as fast as I hoped, but okay, and my second was even better, but still 1.5 seconds off my personal best from last year. I ended up 2nd in class (out of 3) being beaten by Gavin Neate in his 1400cc Pug 106. I actually got a decent start on my last run by disconnecting the launch control (managed to pull the wire off the clutch pedal switch with my foot) on the way to the start line. Anyway a great weekends competition, car running well and really enjoyed getting back driving it again, even if Doune still scares me.

I've got more events to right up - back soon

Eric
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

My season has now started ( a bit late :oops: :oops: )

A fortnight after Doune I had a two events over a weekend, one at Barbon Manor (in Cumbria) on the Saturday and then over the hills to Harewood near Leeds on the Sunday. I competed at Barbon, for the first time, a couple of years ago, and it rained solidly all day. Last year’s event was cancelled because of a waterlogged paddock, so it was great to turn up this time in beautiful sunshine, with a dry weekend forecast.
Barbon is a simple, narrow course, and my first runs seemed pretty good, leading the class (of 2) after the second practice run. Things didn’t go too well on the third, I spun on the first corner. I basically lost the back end as I lifted off too late into the corner. The car spun so quickly, there was no chance of catching it, so I let it spin. Unfortunately the Armco is about a foot away from the outside of the 9 foot wide track, and with a nearly 12 foot car, it was pretty hard to miss it. I did pretty well with the rear of the car gently hitting the Armco whilst spinning, cracking the o.s.r. lower quarter panel, breaking 3 of the rear lights, and then the n,s,f, corner tapping the Armco as the car was going backwards. A drive back down the track past the start was the final embarrassing part. :oops: :oops:
Back in my paddock space, a quick check over of the car and I had pretty much got away with it. A few bits of tape to repair the 2” crack in the rear quarter panel, and removing the last remaining rear light saw me ready to go again.
After lunch, timed runs started and me and my class rival, Gavin Neate in his 1400cc Peugeot 106, both set times below the class hill record. This had been set by Andrew Russell in his 1140cc imp powered Ginetta G15 a few years ago and Gavin lowered it to 28.14 with me setting a 28.61. I was, naturally a bit wary into the first corner so I knew the time could be improved. On the second runs, I managed to get the first corner correct and posted a 28.13 second run and Gavin set a slightly slower run of 28.26. This meant I had won the class, and set the new class record, by a mere 1 hundredth of a second. :shock: 8) A brilliant result, on a superb day of hill climbing. The Barbon Hill, it may be short and only used twice a year, but it great fun to drive and a superb challenge.

A nice evening drive over the hills to Harewood, where I left the car in the paddock and carried on to my friends house near York for the evening. Arrived there and went straight round to his neighbours for a BBQ and a few beers – proper Yorkshire hospitality.
The Sunday at Harewood was slightly disappointing for me. I couldn’t get within a second of my previous best time there, the car not seeming as fast as before. It still can’t use launch control, and it doesn’t seem to have the pull out of the corners it used to have. My speed trap speeds were slightly down as well. At Barbon I had nothing to compare to, but at I have competed at Harewood a few times in the car, and it never feels good to go slower in good conditions. What made it worse was Gavin in the Pug, took my class record off me as well. Ah well you can’t win them all, and I decided that the car could do with a tuning session on the rollers to set this engine up properly.
I managed to get a tuning session booked for the car, unfortunately it would be after my next event, which wasn’t until mid August. This meant I had a bit of a break from competing, which was good, as I was part of the team for this years National at Prestwold Park. This would give me time to organise the Autotest and help out with all the other things that are required to run a national.

More to come
Eric Morrey

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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

End of season update, sorry for the lateness, must try harder. :oops: :oops:

Well the season finished a lot better than it started.

Curborough – RSSOC Sprint (Scimitar Club).

This was a similar event to last year, not in my main championship but one I enjoy. Run on the Figure of 8 course this is a Classic Car biased event with me in a class of 2 with the other car retiring after the first practice with major brake problems. I won my class :D but set a personal best of 63.80 secs, which is only 0.15 secs off my normal class record of 63.65. This being despite the fact that my finishing speeds were down to 88 mph where last year they were 95 – 96 mph. I must be driving the car better as I knocked of 0.8 secs with the engine not going as well. I did set the 3rd fastest time of the day and beat all the Ferraris :-).

Engine Upgrade.

Early on in the year I had talked to Mark Maynard about some new pistons to put in one of the engines I was putting together and they are now in the engine that is fitted. I also talked to him about getting a spare R20 cam to build up a complete spare engine. Mark suggested that their cam supplier (Newman Cams) could do me a special Turbo cam based on the R20 to improve the performance. I went for this (no-brainer as they did it for the same price as an R20) and picked it up from Mark at the National.
After Doune, I had decided to book the car in for a tuning session to try and sort out the lack luster engine. I couldn’t get it booked in at Bailey Performance until late August. This ended up being the Tuesday after Curborough, with me having to drive down to Gurston Down for an event on the Friday.
I took Monday off work and decided to fit the new cam. It seemed sensible to fit it for the tuning session, as I had it and wouldn’t know how it worked until I tried it. I had to modify a used cam carrier to fit it. The Turbo cam has a lift of .380” (inlet only) so a little more than usual needed removing from the sides of the holes on the carrier for it to fit. I also found I good used set of tappets which I carefully lapped flat for the new cam. Fitting went well, got it all shimmed and timed in when I managed to drop one of the screws that locks the two piece sprocket together down the timing case – bother. You could hear it drop in slow-motion, and rattle its way out of sight. After checking one of the remaining screws was magnetic, I started on a 10 minute fishing expedition with a magnet on a stick. Eventually, after bending the end of the stick over at 45 degrees I heard a click from the bowels of the engine and triumphantly withdrew the magnet with a screw on the end – phew. The rest of the assembly went well and after adding a bottle of ZDDP to the oil to help the cam, I started it all up. I ran it at 3000 revs for about 25mins (sorry neighbours) whilst I cleared up. A quick check over and all was ready for the trip to Broseley (nr Telford) for the rolling road session the next day.
I arrived at Bailey Performance the next day and straight away got the car off the trailer and in to Dale’s workshop. The car was driven onto the rollers and strapped down. This was a bit tricky as I have lowered the car since it was originally on the rollers, and the sump was gently sitting on the floor behind the rollers. The tyres were pumped up to 40PSI to help raise the car up and there was clearance, a fag papers worth, but clearance. As usual the engine fired up instantly and warmed up with needing to touch anything. Dale the set about the tuning, first setting the car up as normally aspirated with the turbo waste-gate held open. This immediately showed that it could handle a lot more fuel and timing in the mid-range. After about 2 hour of tuning, with the car being rested a few times to let the oil cool down, the waste-gate was put back under control of the ecu. Again after about 2 hours of hard running the car was set up perfectly with probably about 15 full power runs to fine tune the timing and boost control.
And the end of all this I had less ultimate power than before, we recorded just over 200hp previously, with a peak of 185 hp now. You can hardly call it a peak though, as the power was a virtual flat line from about 5000 rpm up to 8500 rpm. The mid-range was much improved, with power starting earlier and smoother. This is exactly what I wanted, should make the car easier to drive and less chance of being ‘off cam’ coming out of corners. In hill-climbing, it is much better to sacrifice a few top end hp for better low down pull out of the corners.

Gurston Down

I like the hill at Gurston, fast and scary. The Saturday practice day saw me competing with 2 Minis, a Citroen Ax, and Ginetta G15. The day was nice a sunny with me getting very close to the record holders mini times and the car behaving perfectly. The launch control works properly again with starts in the 2.15 secs area, and top speeds over 90 mph into hollow and over 95 over the line. Through the tight Karousel section I could keep the car in second gear (normally use first) and pulling out of the last corner (Ashes), the car pulled superbly with a bit of power oversteer. New cam seems to be working great. I was really happy with the way the car went, and how I was driving, considering I haven’t been here since last April.
Unfortunately the Sunday started off drizzling and the rain just got worse. The morning practice run was damp, and the first timed run was very wet with streams starting to form across the track. After the first timed run I was leading the class by a few tenths, but then the weather got even worse and the meeting was abandoned before everybody had done a timed run. After a very soggy packing up (tow car parked 250 yards from the Imp) the trip home was difficult as well with the narrow lanes in the South Downs being pretty flooded.

Prescott

This event was the next weekend, making 3 weekend in a row. I really like Prescott, a brilliant setting, a technical track with all sorts of different challenges. Practice went well (much better than the first meeting here earlier in the year!!) and was leading the class by over a second and a half. A slightly smaller class this event, with Andrew Russells G15, Gavin Neates Pug 106 and Julian Harbers Mini. Unfortunately Ryan Earmer in his Metro had destroyed his engine competing in France and had to cancel his entry.
On the Sunday, the day dawned with fine dry weather so it looked like it was going to a great day of hillclimbing . We only get two timed runs today with no practice run early on, this meant I took it a bit carefully on my first run but still almost matched my time from Saturday. For my second timed run I really went for it and braked a little bit later, accelerated a bit earlier and it felt like I had really strung a great run together. As I went past the timing clock on the way back down the return road, I saw a 47.17 sec run. This was nearly a second quicker than my first run and a personal best. After the time was confirmed on the timing sheets, I had also broken the record for the class, which was set in 2013 by a 16v Mini, by exactly half a second. This has been a record I’ve been after, I got within 0.1 of a second last year, so it was great to now take it. Again this is a class for any Modified Saloon Car under 1400cc, and to take it in a self-developed 50 year old car, with the engine in the ‘wrong place’ and swing axle suspension feels even better.

Loton Park

The last meeting of the year in the Leaders Championship was a bit of a damp event with our class never really getting a dry run. Loton is a bit of a bogey track for me, love the place but I never seem to go too well here. I’m usually pretty good in the wet but I couldn’t match Gavin in his Pug 106 all weekend. Anyway had fun, didn’t bend it (apart from the front spoiler which I ripped off on a grassy lump in the paddock) and we all had a good drink and meal in the village hall nearby on the Saturday night.
I ended up 3rd (last) in class in the Leaders Championship this year because I didn’t complete enough events. Gavin Neate in his Peugeot 106 won the class with the Imp powered Ginetta G15 of Andrew Russell coming second. Gavin was 4th overall after a superb season and was running second in July, when the top 3 of the championship qualified to compete in the European Hillclimb Masters in Italy. Unfortunately the Masters is held every 2 years and I would have qualified last year, if it was held.

Curborough HSA Sprint (fig 8 Sat, 1 lap Sun)

To finish off the season I competed in the HSA Sprints at Curbs in mid-October. The fig 8 course on the Saturday started off wet and dried out for the afternoon. I was in a class of my own as my fellow competitors (and good friends) in their Turbo Mini broke down again like last year.
The Sunday was the Single lap course, and started off wet and got wetter. I was in a class of 4 this time, up against a Clio, a Porsche 911 and a twin turbo 2.9 Cosworth powered Reliant Scimitar. I managed to lead the class through all runs and emerge the class winner, in the oldest and smallest car, nice finish to the season even though I was soaked through.

After 2 proper years competing with the car I now have or have held the following Class Records for Modified Production Saloon Cars under 1400cc

Prescott – 47.17 secs
Shelsley Walsh – 32.67secs
Barbon Manor - 28.13 secs
Harewood – 64.52 secs
Doune – 50.26 secs

Also the following Personal Best times at the following tracks
Curborough Fig 8 - 63.80 secs (Record 63.65)
Curborough 1 Lap – 33.90 secs (Record 33.15)
Loton Park – 58.64 - secs (Record 57.52)
Gurston Down – 35.92 - secs (Record 35.14)

Cheers
Eric
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

New Season - New problem

I'm doing the same championship again this year - The British Hillclimb Leaders and in the same class. I haven't really done much to the car over the winter, A bit of fiberglass repair to the rear quarter, a legacy from Barbon last year, and a lot of filler in the lip of the spoiler after a few paddock incidents.

Loton Park 20/21st April 2019

A great weather forecast and a great hill to drive means I was really looking forward to the first event of the year. Practice day was the Saturday with timed runs on the Sunday. I lined up for my first practice with the car working perfectly. I had a great start (the launch control is working brilliantly) and was all going well until I changed down for Triangle Corner where the gear lever went to the correct place but I had no drive out of the corner. I rolled to a stop with the engine ticking over but no drive at all. I could go between first and second but could not go across the gate to third and fourth. Strange but no horrible noises or escaping oil. I got pushed back to the paddock by the marshals where the car was jacked up to investigate. Everything was in its correct place and the gear-linkage was intact and working properly - there must be something wrong in the gearbox, probably the change mechanism. Well I can't fix that here, so after a quick chat with the Clerk or the Course, I was told that if I could get it fixed for tomorrow I can run. It was loaded onto the trailer whilst the others in my class were having their second practice and I was on the road at about midday.
I arrived home about 2 hours later, had a bite to eat, and got the car off the trailer and into the garage and up onto its stands. I had the engine out by about 4:30, the gearbox out by 5:00 and the gearbox on my workmate soon after. I took off the rear cover to find nothing untoward except the main input selector shaft seemed loose and was not doing anything. So main nuts removed and the next section of gearbox casing removed to then discover the end of the 'hockey stick' input selector shaft missing. This is the bit that moves either the shaft for 1st & 2nd or the one for 3rd & 4th or the reverse one. The broken off end was pretty easy to find and it was a clean break with evidence of a fatigue crack about a third of the cross section. On the Jack Knight dog box, the engaging dog teeth are on the face of the gears and you have to be quit quick and positive with your gear changes for it to work well. The dogs are forced to mesh and the movement stops when the teeth are fully engaged by the teeth hitting the gear, so quite a sudden stop. It looks like the repeated abuse over the last 15 or so years I have had this box has caused this to fail. Not too bad. I have plenty of spare ones from old boxes so one was fitted, the box rebuilt and fitted along with the engine by 9:15.
Engine started 1st time and I could select all gears sitting on the stands, so stop the engine(after it had fully warmed up), top up fluids and stick it back on the trailer and hook it up to the tow car. I was all finished and packed up and in the shower by 10:00. A quick beer and away to bed for an early start.
Up at 5:00 in the morning and on the road by 5:30 and arrived at a sleepy Loton at 7:30. Car unloaded and re-scrutineerd because the car left the venue, and I was ready for my first run. I had a quick run through the gears down to the paddock from where the trailer was parked and I even managed to reverse into my spot - good news. The rest of the day was great with the car behaving perfectly, no missed gears and reasonable times. I didn't push too hard as I haven't really driven the car for 6 months and missed most of practice so I treated it more as a test season. The class on the day was a merged one with Me, Andrew Russell in his G15 and Sarah Bosworth in her Lotus Elise. There was no way I should be able to beat Sarah, she is a good 2 seconds faster than my personal best, but I managed to beat Andrew on both timed runs to get the most points available for my championship.
Just when you think things are going your way, they don't. Before my last run I attempted to put my race suit on without fully unzipping it and managed to wreck the zip, and in putting the car back on the trailer I managed to get one of the ramps jammed between the wheel and arch and let out some fiberglass dust. - bother :oops:

Nothing to do to the car (apart from a bit of tape on the arch) but a new race suit to source by this coming weekend for the next round at Prescott.

Cheers

Eric
Eric Morrey

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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by Turboimp »

Brilliant ! It reminds me of when i was a teenager , the second year of Owning My Imp sport , i was in town one Sunday morning about 11 am and the sun gear assembly broke up I had no drive , I found a phone box and called dad he came and towed me home , I skipped sunday lunch and got the engine and Transaxle out by 1 pm , and stripped the Crown wheel assembly out .. I dismantled a spare unknown Transaxle and swapped my crown wheel onto this spare carrier and re assembled and re fitted , all back on the road by 5 pm , It had to be for my 15 mile journey to work the next day! I Pre-loaded the main bearings by feel and got the backlash right and all was well for a long time after ... ...
When is the next Prescott? Imp009
1967 Imp Sport turbo 328000 Imp Miles , in the same car
1972 Clan Crusader 232000 clan Miles in the same car
must be some kind of record !
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by johnh875 »

Great to read an amazing update, thanks for taking the effort to post it Eric. Inspiration to get my 'race' car ready for the track, although having not followed the story from the start I am sure I will get sidetracked with some reading.

Also it is interesting to see the 64 foot times, it shows what difference track preparation plays in drag racing I suppose.
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Update time – new problems to contend with.

Prescott 27/28 April 2019

The weather was dry but cold at times and this was the first event at the track for the year, the tarmac didn’t seem too grippy. I had trouble in practice, getting my start times down to what I normally do, and not many records were broken. We had a good turnout in the class, 6 of us all in different cars. A Citroen AX, Opel Tigra, Ginetta G15, Alfa-Romeo Alfasud, a Mini and of course my Imp. All Modified under 1400cc. The Mini was driven by Tim Dennis who has held records at a few courses, so it was great to finally compete with him.
The car ran great with no problems all day, which was great. It was nice to have some really good competition, with Tim in the Mini and Brad in the AX. I managed to keep just a head of them all weekend and managed a 47.96 on the first timed run, 0.5 secs ahead of the other two. I needed to do a ‘burn out’ before the start to warm the tyres, I don’t like doing this but I thought it would help. It did help and I got a 2.18 sec start against 2.44 secs the previous run.
For the second runs, I managed to mess up under braking for the Ettories Hairpin where I nearly spun it, luckily Brad had a huge wobble in the Esses and Tim put it in the gravel. A class win for the Imp then and we were all trying hard. (too hard at the end).

Harewood 11/12 May 2019.

One of my favourite hills, long and difficult, but with ample run-off in most areas. It is unusual in that the paddock is at the top of the hill, the start line half way down and you finish back at the top.
We had 3 practice runs on Saturday with the car performing well, only problem was that there were only two of us in the class so maximum points for the championship were unavailable. On the Sunday they managed to squeeze in another three practice runs before lunch, where I got down to a personal best of just under 64 secs.
First timed run, and it all went wrong off the start. It felt like a normal start but just afterwards a sudden bang from the rear and then a very violent continuous banging. It sounded like a driveshaft had broken so I slowed down to a halt, with the noises continuing. I got out the car (once the marshals had arrived) and found the driveshafts, donuts etc all fine, so the only real culprit left was the transmission. The car would roll, but then would jam up, then release after rocking it. This couldn’t be towed back or rolled out of the way so the flatbed truck was summoned. It took 10 minutes to load it up with this locking up, and even longer to get it off once back in the paddock.

Game over for the day.

Once home the engine was whipped out and the transaxle removed during the week and stripped down. It was quickly discovered that the crown wheel and pinion had shed most of their teeth. There were enough teeth left though for them to try and re-mesh as they were rotated, which explains the jamming and locking up. After further examination it was also discovered that the casing was broken, not in the usual places (it has strengthening plates welded on) but where I had modified it to strengthen the pinion bearing seat. I had fitted a strengthening plate behind the pinion bearing, and attached it to another plate on the other side of the bearing area with countersunk screws going the holes drilled through the bearing mounting. Unfortunately the bearing mounting area cracked through one of these holes I had drilled.
A quick phone call to Dennis Alt at Transimp saw me heading down there on the Friday to pick up a new Jack Knight Imp crownwheel and pinion, along with a steel strengthening girdle to fit to another casing I had. I haven’t got access to the Transaxle tools anymore, so Dennis fitted and correctly shimmed the new CWP into the new casing for me (plus supplied a new set of bearings).
The transaxle was rebuilt over the following week, with it fighting me all the way. I made new pinion bearing seat plates, this time a bit bigger in diameter, with the bolts going outside the bearing mounting, in fact only three holes needing drilling through the bulkhead area, the rest of the screw going through oil cutouts.
The steel girdle fitted okay, with a bit of fettling to clear the extra webs on the late casing (I guess this was designed to fit earlier casings). I then tried fitting the output spiders and donuts. The nuts and bolts all clashed with the strengthening plate (mine are all non-standard), so a bit of grinding, a bit of machining and a spacer and they all fitted – just.
The transaxle was fully built up and refitted, engine refitted and started up around 6:00 pm on the Friday night. It was checked I could get all gears, which I could, but it seemed like the clutch was dragging a bit and the change across the gate could be better. Too late to take it all out again so I would have to live with it. Car taken down from the stands, put on the trailer and the tow car packed for a weekend away and I was in the shower for 8:30 pm.

Gurston Down 25/26 May 2019

I set off at 5:00 the next morning for Gurston Down near Salisbury for another round of the Leaders Championship. A reasonable class this time with 2 Mini’s, Jim White in his very rapid Twin Cam 1380cc Mini (BMW k head on an ‘A’-series with Jenvey TB’s) and David Bean with his more standard 1310cc Mini, also with us was Andrew Russell with his well campaigned 1120cc Imp powered Ginetta G15.
I did a very careful start for my first practice run and basically used it as a gentle test for the car and let the transaxle bed in. No nasty noises and all fine except the dragging clutch which made queuing up and the start annoying, and the notchy 2nd to 3rd change making life awkward. Well I’m stuck with it now so I better get used to it. For the next time practice run I talked to the paddock marshals in the waiting area who were great ( as usual ) in allowing me to wait until the area was clear and drive up to the line without queuing. The start was fun, with me being set up in neutral, then hydraulic handbrake on and when the green light came on to go, I would bang it in to first. I could feel the car straining to go as I press half throttle, wait for the machine gun pop and bangs, slide my foot off the clutch and plant my right foot. Second run felt fine and the time was much more like it.
On my timed runs it all went smoothly apart from messing up a gear change on my last run to end up with a best of 36.48 (even though I did a 36.13 in practice) and won the class with Jim in the Mini on 36.85. This is probably the first time an Imp has beaten a Mini at Gurston for 10 years as it really is a place the Minis seem to like.

Crystal Palace 27 May 2019 (Bank Holiday Monday)

On the way back from Gurston I nipped in to London to take part in the Crystal Palace Sprint (Motorsport at the Palace). I have done this event a few times in the Clan and I took the Imp there 3 years ago for its second event. It is a great event with a fun atmosphere, in the Paddock Field you forget you are in the Middle(ish) of London. The classes are a bit different hear as it more of a Historic festival, the cars are arranged more in Category and age than capacity. I was in Class 15 (Modified Cars before 1970), alongside an original 1964 AC Cobra (5 litre ish), Elva Courier, Volvo Amazon and a Alfa 1750 GTV. The Imp maybe the smallest car in the class, but being small helps here with it being pretty tight and mine was the most modified car.
The car ran perfectly (apart from the known clutch and gearchange problems) and I soon remembered the track layout. I really enjoyed throwing the car around here, the last corner is pretty scary with no real runoff to the Armco. I ended up first in class with a new record time of 37.14, over a second inside the previous one of 38.21 held by an Austin Healy Sprite. The Cobra pushed me with a best of 37.96 but the course is a bit small for it to stretch its legs.
As happened last time, so many spectators came up to me and asked what bike engine is in the back, only for them to be surprised when I showed them the little old Imp engine.
After the event I looked at the final results and was surprised to find was 9th overall, especially when you consider the top 4 are all proper racing cars.
Andy Greenen 2017 Empire Evo 2 Class 23 30.57
Peter Goulding 2012 Mygale FF200 Category H 32.94
David Seaton 1980 Pilbeam MP43 / BMW Class 20 34.02
Jeff Wiltshire 2003 Zeus Challenger Evo II Class 20 35.1
Stephen Moore Mitsubishi Evolution 6 Class 17 35.12
Stephen Moore 1999 Mitsubishi Evolution 6 Class 6 35.7
Clive Stangle 1998 Mitsubishi Evo 5 Class 6 35.87
Peter Ratcliff 2008 Caterham Class 14 36.92
Eric Morrey 1968 Hillman Imp Class 15 37.14
Fyrth Crosse 1972 Ensign LNF3 Class 22 37.2
Laurie Hatchard 1997 Dax Rush Quadra 5 Litre Class 17 37.21
Philip West 1989 Sierra XR4x4 Class 16 37.46

A great long weekend and I got back from London at about 9:30 pm and back to work for a rest the next day. I didn’t take any photos at Crystal Palace but there are a great selection to view at https://www.motorsportatthepalace.co.uk and look in the gallery at the 2019 photographs.
Eric Morrey

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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Well I tried to provide updates more regularly, and failed completely.
Must try harder, anyway this is what I was up to in the summer.

Doune - June
Another long trip up north to Doune which is near Stirling in Scotland. One of my favourite hills. Car ran perfectly all weekend, but unfortunately I was in a class on my own. The weather was changeable with showers at various times during the day on the Sunday (timed runs day). Doune is very fast and narrow and is Armco lined on both sides for the first half. This is also under trees, which means you are never sure how dry it is on a day like this. I ended up really enjoying it, without trying 100%. There was no point in a class on your own to risk it all. Fast enough for fun. I got within a couple of seconds of my record there, so I was happy and the car went back on the trailer without any work to do.

Barbon Manor - July

As in previous years, it was time for the Barbon Manor / Harewood weekend. Barbon is a great little course, the driveway up to the manor being used twice a year. Having travelled up on the Friday and camped in the paddock overnight ( only person in a tent, everybody else in motorhomes) I woke up to a nice sunny day with lovely views over Cumbria.
The paddock is a bit of a free for all and basically it’s a sloping rough grass hillside. Being up early I managed to pack my car in the wrong place, but after a bit of moving around we all got ourselves sorted. I left off the front spoiler of the car as whilst it would be okay on the course, it would be very easy to catch it and remove it in the paddock. Unfortunately again I was on my own in the class, the other entrant being moved into another class.
1st Practice went fine with me remembering the course quite quickly, well it is only 3 corners, Left, Left and then Right. 2nd Practice didn’t go so well, the engine felt a bit flat after the first corner and didn’t accelerate like normal. This meant my time was slower and I was a little confused. Once back in the paddock, I checked out the car. It felt ignition based, the lack of power, so all the plugs were removed and they all looked okay. All ignition leads were unplugged and re-plugged, and lots of wires wobbled and stared at.
1st timed run was not a lot better, although this time the engine started flat, but came back on song after the second corner. Even more confusion. Again things were played with, I checked the ignition timing, which was fine and then remembered I had a spare coil pack in my box of spares I drag around. I couldn’t manage to remove two of the screws for the coil pack (don’t use M5 button heads – the hex is too small), but I managed to tye wrap the new one on top of the old one.
2nd timed run arrived and this time the car behaved itself and I fair shot up the hill recording a new personal best and knocking nearly a second off my own class record. This came as a surprise to me and everyone else, as my previous time had been well off with the problems, so it seemed to come out of nowhere.
Good end to the day, and it also meant the car should be fine for the event at Harwood the next day.

Harewood - July

I had a glorious evening drive over the hills from Barbon to Harewood, even towing a car on a trailer. The morning started out just as nice and the good weather continued throughout the day. I love driving Harewood, a long hill where you can really attack the corners and hopefully I had cured the electrical problems I had the previous day. Both practice runs went fine, with me being comfortably ahead of Andrew Russell in his well campaigned orange Ginetta G15.
Timed runs went a bit differently. 1st timed run started off great, car performing well, and I was improving nicely on my practice runs. Unfortunately, about halfway through the run the engine went off song again and it really didn’t want to accelerate. I made it to the top and recorded at time but it was slower than practice and allowed Andrew to just beat me. Back in the paddock, I wobbled all the leads again but I had run out of ideas on how to fix it.
Second timed run started okay as before, the engine running fine again. I didn’t get to experience the rest of the hill as I spun the car under braking for the second corner. Can’t blame the engine for that, 100% drivers fault. Anyway, I didn’t hit anything and managed to drive back to the top. I even gave it the beans out of the corners, and it ran fine.
One of my favourite hills, Harewood, hasn’t been too kind to me this year. 2 events, 4 timed runs, and not a representative time in any of them. Must do better next year.
Once I got back from the weekend, I decide to replace the whole ignition system on the car. It is distributer-less running wasted spark via the megasquirt3 ECU. I have used second hand Ford coil packs and pick-ups I got off scrap cars 20 years ago. I decided to splash out and buy a brand new MSD high power coil pack (they do a Ford copy), new plugs, new leads and a new pick up. The new leads were from Mr RetroLeads, who made a set to my dimensions, with ford connectors on one end, right angle spark plug connectors on the other with 8mm Lime Green leads for £35. Hopefully this will sort out the problems. I could mess about and replace an item at a time to determine exactly what the problem was, but to save wasted events, I did the lot in one go. I’ll find out if it has worked at the next event, which is in six weeks time.

Curborough Fig 8 - August

This is, like last year, not a championship event, just a fun event I do to support the RSSOC (Reliant Scimitar and Sabre Owners Club). I’ve had a Scimitar GTE (SE5a) since I was 19, started hillclimbing in it, and still have it (on sorn at the moment). I was Secretary of the Meeting for 10 years and managed to pass on the running 4 years ago, and it is now organised by the Hagley & District Light Car Club, who run all Loton Park events.
I ended up in a class on my own again, this time for modified cars under 2 litre. The class structure mainly had special classes for invited championships, so I was basically one of the others. I like Curborough, as it is a sprint rather than a hillclimb that I can compete on as it is not too fast. Most sprints are on large circuits like Castle Coombe, Goodwood etc. My car is only geared to 98 mph at 9000 rpm in fourth, so I would be on the rev limiter for most of the lap an anything with bigger straights than Curbs. As it is I hit 92+ over the line at Curborough. I also know the place very well so I can attack it and it shows up any handling problems.
First practice and great news, the engine worked absolutely fine. Bad news the gear linkage fell apart once I changed in to third. I carried on in third and was very impressed how the car went whilst stuck in one gear. Not the fastest way, but not too bad. Back in the paddock, I found that the lower spherical ball I used, the one that the main carbon gear-linkage shaft slides in, had popped out of its housing. This was because a build-up of dirt had stopped it sliding, so eventually it had come out of its seating. A quick strip down and some borrowed Wd40 later it was all back together and working again.
The rest of my runs went very well, the engine performing consistently and well all day, and the gear linkage back to its usual great action. I managed a personal best, a 63.65, so things are going well again.

More updates to follow, to finish off the season, shouldn't be too long.
Eric Morrey

Rawlson Imp Turbo
'Irish' Clan
Rover 75 waft-mobile
Hillclimb Clan - Resting
Reliant Scimitar GTE se5a - Resting
User avatar
pimpdriver
Posts: 135
Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2004 10:03 am
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Car Model: Irish Clan, Luff Hillclimb Clan.
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

End of Season Update.

Gurston Down - August

The August Bank Holiday saw me heading down to Gurston Down, near Salisbury, early on the Saturday morning. I used to travel on the Friday afternoon, but have got fed up with the traffic, so now set off at 5:00 on Saturday and travel down in half the time, and a quarter of the hassle. Turned out to be a fine weekend with good weather on both days. My class had the usual suspects for this hill, 3 Minis, the G15 and the AX.
Car ran perfectly, I drove well, set PB on my last practice run on the Saturday and came away with second in class to Neil Turner in his 16v injected 1380 mini. I pushed Neil hard all weekend, and in the end I couldn’t get down to his times, and Neil ended up breaking his own class record with a 35.01, tantalisingly close to a 34 second run. Neil was slightly faster everywhere, It is his local hill and a very well developed car, running his own designed and manufactured ‘Polestar’ engine ECU. I’m happy to be reasonably close to him, but it will need more work and much better driving to beat him, but I’m always hopeful.

Prescott - September

Back to Prescott for the second time this year, and another fine weekend at one of my favourite venues. In my class this time was a slightly smaller entry than normal with 2 minis, the G15 and myself. Andy Jones had entered in his Imp but unfortunately had to pull out before driving down as his clutch refused to release. In other classes, the Imp engine was well represented. Alex & Jenny Howells in their 1020cc Hillman Super Imp, Nigel Moss in his 1200cc Imp and Christopher Jones in his Ginetta G15 were all competing in the Classic Car Classes and Jim Scott in his Vixen Vb1 formula 4 single seater was going well in the historic racing car class.
I started well, first practice going fine, until I returned to the paddock. We were using the top paddock and it is a bit bumpy and tight for space, so I drove past my spot and reversed back. As I did, I noticed a bit of smoke/steam pass my window, was that mine, After I parked people commented that it was smoking/steaming and a few said it smelt more of water than oil. A quick check in the header tank and I was met with water overflowing once I removed the rad cap – bother. I left it to settle for a bit and then restarted it. The water level quickly rose, and air could be seen bubbling out through the water, looks like head gasket (well wills rings). After toying with the idea of just bother off home, I decided to see if I could live with it. I drained the header tank to the lowest level and fitted a piece of plastic to stop the rad cap sealing. This should stop the system pressurising, but I needed somewhere to catch any water expelled. A fellow competitor (not actually competing today) kindly drank a litre of milkshake to donate the bottle to use as a catch tank (and felt ill for most of the day!!). This was tie wrapped to the inner wing and a hose fitted to the header tank and fed into it. For my second practice I ran the engine as little as possible and started the run at 65 degrees water temp instead of my usual 80 degrees. This seemed to work, the engine didn’t go above 80 degrees, no steam and it only expelled 100ml of water or so into my milkshake bottle. I didn’t set too good a time as I was busy looking at the temp gauge and the rear view mirror for steam, but not too bad.
For the Sunday, I decide to skip the morning practice run and just do the timed runs. It was actually very good to go and watch my class runs from a vantage point further up the hill and see where they are best and worst. You don’t get to see your own class compete normally so it was very informative.
For my first timed runs I couldn’t afford to hang around as the 1400 Mini of Tim Dennis was pushing me close and I needed good points for the championship. The run went fine with me setting the fastest time in the class with a 47.59 against Tim’s 48.18. Great stuff. As I started to roll down the return road, I turned the engine off to save it getting any hotter, and when I reached the paddock I dropped the clutch to restart it. The car just rolled to stop, bother, I had forgotten to switch the ignition back on. In most cars this wouldn’t matter, but on mine, it releases copious clouds of smoke that even the steam train in valley below would have been proud of. This is because the low mounted turbo doesn’t self-drain and has a scavenge pump to return the oil to the sump. This pump is only switched on when the ignition is on, and with the engine turning over as I released the clutch, oil is pumped into the turbo and with no scavenge pump it overflows and goes into the red hot exhaust = instant smoke. Of course I was now in a dip, so I flicked the ignition back on and started the engine. It started instantly and after checking the amount of smoke in the rear view mirror was surprised to see 2 foot flames coming up over the boot lid. That is not good, so I killed the engine and got out of the car. The flames were just the excess oil igniting in the exhaust so there wasn’t actually anything on fire and I turned it off and got out quick enough to stop any body wasting fire extinguishers on it. I pushed it back to my paddock space helped by a few fellow competitors, waited half an hour for everything to cool down, restarted it and smoked off the remaining oil.
So far I had l let steam, smoke and flames out of the exhaust, what next? Engine parts!!
My final run was quite boring, apart from I tried to keep as far right on the first long left hand bend, overcooked it, got a rear wheel on the grass, thought if I let off now I’ll spin, so kept my foot in and drifted back onto the track and set my quickest trap speed of the weekend, phew, that could have gone wrong. Kept it together for the rest of the run, and won the class with a 47.32 with Tim going slightly slower than his first run. I was very happy with that, being only 0.15 secs off my own class record with all the fun with the engine going on.
Once back from the weekend I took the head off, I couldn’t find anything obvious wrong, so I replaced the Will’s Rings and put it all back together again. We will see if that works.

Loton Park - September

A damp weekend at the Shrewsbury/Welsh Border venue. Whilst I had the engine out I had removed another shim from the clutch to allow for wear, but it seems I shouldn’t have as now the clutch was dragging. Luckily, our class managed organise ourselves in the paddock to drive in and park without needing reverse, which made life a bit easier.
Every run was different, soaking wet first practice, damp second practice and dry third practice on the Saturday. With the forecast for more wet stuff tomorrow I decided to ‘go for it’ on the third practice as I might be my only dry run of the weekend. I was very pleased to lead the class with a new personal best time of 58.59 secs. I had a very competitive class with Gavin in his Peugeot 106, Brad in his Citroen AX and Andrew in his Ginetta G15. I like driving Loton Park but it is one of those tracks I struggle with, so to be top in practice felt good – but meaningless.
On the Sunday we only get the two timed runs, a system I’m not a great fan off, but that I how it is. Again wet to damp track and it being only 9:30 in the morning and I was a bit too cautious and ended up 3rd in class for my first timed run, me with 65.07, Gavin on 63.29 and Brad beating both of us with a 62.78. It started to dry out before lunch but a rain shower over lunch wet the track again. We were on quite soon after lunch so we all decided to stay on our wet tyres for the 2nd Timed run. I was a lot more competitive on this run and ended up 2nd in class, Brad on 61.16, me on 61.34 and Gavin on 61.62. Great Hillclimbing, with us all pushing hard and ending up all within ½ a second.
This was the last round of the British Hillclimb Leaders Championship and with these last points I ended up winning the C(i) class ( Modified series production cars up to 1400cc ) and ended up 10th overall.
I removed the engine between events again and re-shimmed the clutch, hopefully it should be okay for the next event. Unfortunately the water system pressurising continued, looks like I have more of a problem. Any way just 2 more one day events on the same weekend to go, hopefully it will last to the end of the season.

Curborough Weekend (2 lap Saturday & Figure 8 Sunday) - October

To finish off the season I competed in the HSA Sprints at Curbs in mid-October. This year they ran the 2 lap course on Saturday & the Figure 8 Course on the Sunday. I haven’t done the 2 lap course for ages so it was interesting to try it again and it was damp start but dried out very quickly. Just two of us in the class but good fun anyway. Car was going really well and I set a PB, but then it was my first go at the 2 lap in the Imp. Won the class, but the other car was having his own problems. The engine was blowing out more water each time, and by the end of the day was filling the catch bottle and steaming/smoking a bit. It also wasn’t pulling off the start line properly, not sure what that was all about.
On the Sunday, It was raining when I arrived (left the car there overnight but went home), so fitted the wets. Tried to start the engine, but I didn’t want to go. I ended up connecting up a slave battery and turning it over for what felt like minutes, until it fired on a couple of cylinders. I managed to clear it and get it running on all 4 but it didn’t seem happy. Drive up to line up for my first practice, and it was steaming/smoking quite heavily, much to the annoyance of whoever I was parked alongside. It was not running happily and with all the steam/smoke, coupled with the amount of water it was throwing out, I decided to scratch my entry and retire the car. It was the last event of the year, not a championship round and all the bits were still inside the engine, so let’s put it away. Bit of a disappointing end but it will live to run another day.

So at the end of the year my Personal Best’s stand at:-

Barbon Manor 27.34 secs (July 2019 - Current Class Record)
Curborough 1 lap 33.90 secs (Oct 2017) (record 33.15)
Curborough fiq 8 63.66 secs (Aug 2019) (record 62.31).
Curborough 2 Lap 62.03 secs (Oct 2019) (record 60.11).
Doune 50.26 secs (Sept 2017 - Current Class Record)
Crystal Palace 37.14 secs (May 2019 - Current Class 15 Record)
Gurston Down 35.79 secs (Aug 2019) (record 35.01)
Harewood 63.90 secs (May 2019) (record 63.54)
Loton Park 58.59 secs (Sept 2019) (record 57.52)
Prescott 47.17 secs (April 2019 - Current Class Record)
Shelsley Walsh 32.67 secs (Aug 2017 - Current Class Record)

Things to do over the winter
Sort out what is wrong with the engine, I suspect a cracked head.
New charge cooler - I've not been happy with the one fitted. I have bought some Laminova cores from the USA to fit into a new inlet plenum I have to make.
Turbo Rebuild - I have noticed some damage on the inlet impellor and I might look into a Hybrid Turbo to release some more power.

Cheers

Eric
Eric Morrey

Rawlson Imp Turbo
'Irish' Clan
Rover 75 waft-mobile
Hillclimb Clan - Resting
Reliant Scimitar GTE se5a - Resting
User avatar
pimpdriver
Posts: 135
Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2004 10:03 am
Club Member: Yes
Car Model: Irish Clan, Luff Hillclimb Clan.
Location: Leicester
Been thanked: 8 times

Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

A few piccies of the car

The paddock at Gurston, early saturday morning minis everywhere. The two red ones and the orange one were in my class, the red one under the gazebo is Neil Turners class winner and class record holder. The other two are actually sports libre cars, the silver one has a fireblade engine in the front, and the white one is not really a mini, its basically Mitsubishi Evo running gear with a (squint at 50 paces) fiberglass mini shell on top. I have cropped out the AX and G15 to the right for effect.

Image

In action at Gurston

Image
Eric Morrey

Rawlson Imp Turbo
'Irish' Clan
Rover 75 waft-mobile
Hillclimb Clan - Resting
Reliant Scimitar GTE se5a - Resting
Teddie2003
Posts: 120
Joined: Sun Feb 20, 2005 10:06 am
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Car Model: Clan Crusader & Davrian Mk6
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by Teddie2003 »

Great write up of the last part of the season, plus this is a pic that a mate took of your car exiting Ashes at Gurston.
Eric at Gurston.jpg
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User avatar
pimpdriver
Posts: 135
Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2004 10:03 am
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Car Model: Irish Clan, Luff Hillclimb Clan.
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Re: Pimp2 - the rebuild starts

Post by pimpdriver »

Quick Update time

I actually got my act together before the new year and took the head off the car and sent it Stuart Brownsea for a pressure test. Unfortunately it is fine, well, good that it is fine, but bad that I don't know what the problem is. The Cylinder number one was down on compression compared to the others and there was evidence of water in there. The liner seems fine, so it was probably a will's ring problem. Anyway whilst I was sorting this out with Stuart, he had finished my spare head I asked him to sort out a few years ago with the immortal words "no hurry - fit it in when you have time", so he posted both back. This means I can actually build up three engines for next year. Stick the new head on the block in the car at the moment, Rebuild the 'spare engine' I had self-induced oil pressure problems with previously, with the old head on and rebuild the original engine I damaged a couple of years ago. This had a cracked liner, so i have fitted new liners,but this time they are ones I machined approx 2mm taller to lower the compression ratio, and so I can use a nice wills ring grooved head I have off the old N/A engine out of the Clan.
On dismantling the engine I found the Turbo was not too healthy, the inlet turbine blades are a bit damaged.
Old Turbo.jpg
This gave me the opportunity to have a Hybrid turbo done with a nice shiny billet compressor wheel,seems a shame to hide it under the engine.
this should release a few more ponies, but might be costly in low rev lag, we'll see.
HybridTurbo.jpg
Also I've been starting to sort out my new inlet plenum with Laminova intercooler elements fitted. I have made the carbon inlet trumpets, and made some carbon flanges. These have turned out superb, molded my own 2mm thick carbon sheet . and then had them machined to shape with my new toy - a CNC Router.
intercooler flanges.jpg
Plenty more to do before my first event - in a months time - must get back in the garage.

Eric
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Eric Morrey

Rawlson Imp Turbo
'Irish' Clan
Rover 75 waft-mobile
Hillclimb Clan - Resting
Reliant Scimitar GTE se5a - Resting
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