Chris' Clan New dash

[ChrisBenoy]

Right, I said i'd be back with pics so having finished the modifications and sucessfully test driven the clan with a nice hot heater i'll show you all how I did it.

I chose to use the drivers side duct for the heater blower beacuse it was the side that the heater duct went into the bonnet area.



May have to open up the vent area better as it looks like someone has hacked it up a bit at some point.



I mounted the standard imp heater blower onto the wooden panel behind the vent and cut the hole flush with the hole in the heater, sealed around it with some duct tape just in case. I couldn't get the previous switch to work so as a stop gap i've wired it to a spare fuse on my fuse box so it runs with the ignition key which is fine really as its something i'd generally always have on.



To do the duct as I said before I used three pieces of hoover hose to go through the slim area, I sealed all the gaps between them and then wrapped it in duct tape, I tested the blower with it and there isn't any air obviously escaping so while it isn't perfect it seems to have worked well.





The headlight when fully down just touches the top of the imp ducting which is disapointing but the light will go down fully and just bends the duct ever so slightly so its not a diaster but really I should have extended the three hoses slightly further and it wouldnt be an issue at all. Is something i'll look into when I next work on my headlights.

And finally the engine bay, in the top right hand corner you can see the heater valve I have in my bypass circuit that is held shut with a cable tie. To the left I fitted the old race car water pump which had been made redundant when we upgraded to a Davies Craig on that, it has damaged wiring on it so I wouldn't want to use it on something critical to the cooling system so I mounted it here to flow a bit more water around the heater circuit. Not sure if it will have a huge effect on the system but I thought I may as well do it while I was there. Appart from that the photo shows my very shiny stainless rad cap and my not so shiny Irn-bru bottle that catches the water that comes out on the overflow



I may well fit a modern heater blower in the future as while you can feel a nice flow when stationary with the imp heater i'm sure it can be improved upon, might even fit it in series with the imp blower but not knowing much about airflow I don't know how well that would work.

[Lotus-e-Clan]

Chris

I don't know my way around the Irish boot area and it certainly looks very different to the Crusader in there!

So I don't know which area I'm looking at in the second picture...and I don't understand which bit the blower is attached to.

And which blower and heater is fitted to the Irish as std ...can't be the std Imp surely?


BTW My booster pump in the heater circuit does make a difference to flow through the heater BUT I don't run a std thermostat so the temp controller limits main pump speed during warm-up which means a VERY cold heater during warm-up ...hence my circuit set-up means a booster pump needed. The heater circuit output from the head is the std bypass stub (instead of the cambox stub) and the heater return is T'eed into the top hose. A plumbing 22 mm non-return valve is fitted in th top hose down stream of the return T to make sure the boosted heater circuit flow goes into the rear rad and doesn't back-flow into the head.

If you run a thermostat then circulation via the main pump through the heater circuit is pretty good until the stat is fully open and then most of the flow goes out through the top hose and a lot less through the heater with the stat fully open....but that depends on the speed of the pump...if it's flowing @ full 80L/min then quite a lot will still go through the heater circuit even with the stat fully open.

[ChrisBenoy]

Hi Peter, yes the irish bonnet area is a lot different from the crusader as it has two areas of wood that cover the headlight pop up opperation. My modifications leave the heater blower concealed basically under the headlight, which makes it look much tidyier.

The heater blower was an imp one when I bought the car, I assume it was originally. I've looked under the dash and its an imp heater there rather than the mini one you would find in a crusader. So all in a fair bit of difference.

To give you some idea what you are looking at this is how the area looked when I first got the car, there was an area for the blower to bolt into but it wasn't connected. This hole was later cut out to be part of my front rad opening.



And this second picture shows it more recently but better shows the wooden segregated areas, my blower is bolted to a piece of wood inside on of these headlight areas that is parallel to the front of the car.

[ChrisBenoy]

The electric water pump that i've fitted as a booster for the heater circuit is actually perfectly capable of running the entire water system and i'd consider trying it in this role at some point. Might be interesting to compare it to the imp water pump setup. Although if I was going to do this i'd probably also fit a cheap second pump off ebay to run the heater circuit (the one in the car is one of the Johnson style pumps that flows rather a lot more water than the standard car aux water pumps you see on ebay)

[ChrisBenoy]

Well this year has been a pretty good one for me and the clan, over 10k miles completed without a breakdown. In this time it has also had the heater sorted, nice seats fitted and the suspension tuned to be both nice in competition and on the road.

It went to national



And to wicked welsh



Credit to Andy Smiths excellent website for these images.

It made it to washington for the Clan 40th which was a great event.



It enjoyed itself at the national trackday (doing an hours running without fault)



I only managed to take it to 5 autosolos this year but got some pretty good results.

April 17th 2011 - CSMA Bovingdon - Clan 'E' 875 ............. 5/35 1st in class award
May 2011 - Boscardo, silverstone - Clan 'E' 875 .............. 30/54 1st in class award
July 10th 2011 - FMDC summer solo - Clan 'E' 875 ........... 9/39
July 24th 2011 - North weald, sevenoaks - Clan 'E' 998. ..... 19/62
Oct 2nd 2011 - Bovingdon, CT solo - Clan 'E' 998 ............ 4/62 2nd in class Award


As for next year, it will continue to be my sole everyday car, while also being used for autosolos and a few trackdays. Modifications involve tidying up the front of the car (with the headlight pop up modifications finished.) I'm considering a full respray in a brighter shade of yellow, which may or may not happen as I dont want it too nice as it takes the odd knock in everyday use. Appart from that just small modifications to make it a nicer everyday car and a bit of an improvement to the interior is in order I think.

[ChrisBenoy]

Thanks Paul, should be at the area centre meet later if your going to be there.

Hope you and the maniacimp make good progress next year.

[ChrisBenoy]

The Clan passed its MOT today, no problems or advisories. Not a great surprise as I've done a lot of pre-emptive servicing this year on the brakes, suspension and steering.

I haven't had much to report recently as its been running pretty nicely, had to take the 998 out to sort a low oil pressure issue but I caught it before it did any significant damage so that is being sorted right now. I needed to test the engine I've built up for my sisters Californian anyway so that's in it at the moment, a nice fresh 875 sport that is perhaps the smoothest engine I've ever had in the car. Very nice to drive with.

When my tatty Lucas alternator began making some iffy noises I fitted a Delco model from a Vauxhall corsa that has been reconditioned and rewound for 105A which is far more than i'll ever need (Upgraded the wiring to cover all eventualities although I suspect if It ever drew 105 amps it would probably stall the engine!) Its not the lightest in the world and is slightly bigger than a Lucas alternator but its a solid looking thing that should last a very long time. Very simple wiring as well with just the battery wire and an excitation wire from the warning light so fits with the standard setup. The prototype bracketry is somewhat crude but now I know what shape it needs to be I can fabricate something nicer, although whats there holds it in place very solidly.



So i've got most of the major jobs out the way I can start sorting the little details out. I'm currently designing a crankcase breathing solution that should work better than what I have and I'm going to be doing some engine baffle mods to my 998 before that goes back in. Also on the list is getting my popup headlights to operate which i'm at the advanced stage of doing at the moment with one side nearly fully operational with just some small adjustments needed. Hopefully I can recreate the same setup for the other side and that will be nice.

[19James]

Good to hear chris
Cheers for the name change aswell.
Cheers, James

[ImpManiac]

Well done on the MOT, Chris. The latest mods and repairs sound excellent too.

IM

[ChrisBenoy]

Not much to report on the Clan really, its been running nicely for a while now, coped with the small amount of snow we got well.

Just been doing the basic service tasks like greasing kingpins and giving it the occasional oil change. Gradually moving through my list of intended modifications. When I had to replace my door handles after mine were vandalised I was only able to get ones that were blue, I painted these black at the time but these had started to chip and look a little nasty. I considered buying some chrome door handles for it but it wouldn't really suit my car which has very little chrome on it and is predominately a yellow and black colour scheme. So I made some little carbon fibre caps for them instead and glued them on. Fairly pointless as mods go but it improves the look of the car slightly.

Please excuse the rather bad photo, my camera is somewhere short of top notch. Still, you get the gist of it. Needs a polish already, i've never been much of a polisher

[ChrisBenoy]

Just a test of some new forum photo settings with an old photo.

[ChrisBenoy]

Had a good day today, having spent the last few weeks tidying up the clan and trying to prepare it for national I took it out for an Autosolo organised by Club Triumph at Bovingdon airfield.

Having not driven the clan for several months and having not done an autosolo for 8 months I wasn't expecting too much. Felt very rusty on my early runs and was a little dismayed to find out I was a good 4 seconds a run behind the Austin Healey Sprite of Keith Petit that I had previously been quite close to before my break. At that point I decided to push on a bit and got my speed up without losing my usual consistency.

The sprite broke down with a blown headgasket (Imp gods intervening on my behalf? ) leaving me third behind two people driving a very highly modified Triumph Herald. I did the 6 afternoon runs without looking at the results and was pleasantly surprised at the end to find that I had gotten ahead of both of those to end up first overall. Club Triumph are very generous and allow non Triumphs to win their event, so I went home with the first place trophy.

It is a great event every year with an entirely classic line up of cars, I would strongly recommend it to any Impers who felt like having a go. If there is any interest then i'll look into getting the Imp Club invited for next year.

One happy looking victorious clan.

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[ChrisBenoy]

Just finished making a dash for the clan, possibly a bit of a marmite option but I like it I always thought the fiesta dash and gauges were awful so I've been looking to change the dash.

The Koso gauges are very nice, the one on the bottom right is a fuel gauge that can calibrate to any gauge so that seems good.

Still got a couple of warning lights to fit but it is nearly done.

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