Show me hillman imps

there was a thread like this a while ago, but as always the search function throws a wobbly if you ask it for anything over 2 hours ago!

I think they are super fun, reliable (if looked after), good handling, and can be made to really hustle. They arnt too expensive at the moment, altough they are going up in price you can still have a minter for under a grand if you look hard.

Ill put some photos up in a bit once photobucket comes back online

J

Has a mid-mounted Alfa flat four. And it looks awesome.

That's all I know.

A few pictures of mine















MMMmmm spaceframe







Right got photo*uckit working, so pics it is

Although the imp is only blessed with four gears, the box is smooth and one of the best stock 'boxes i have ever used. Top isnt exactly and overdrive but motorway crusing can be taken at 70mph easy, as the engine loves to rev.

The handling as stock is pretty good but as some of the cars were blessed with positive camber, the front wheels can tuck under when cornering hard, easliy solved with lowering . The funny stock camber was beause the car was designed put into production and then considered from the american market, at this point the lights were too high so they put long springs in it!
Early cars had high pivot suspension and this combined with the long springs gave the positive camber, it was sorted on the later cars with a different pivot point.

Parts arnt bad, lowering springs are about £100 for a full set new, nearly everything is available new. Even a 930cc engine from a talbot is availble, it needs minor modifications to fit but is stronger and better designed, its what i have in my car.

Tuning wise the main thing to concentrate on is head work, to stop the engine producing power from its F1 heratige they closed all the ports up. Bigger valves a monster cam and some head work can see some serious power increases. The bottom end is made from i think EN8 or EN40b steel, forged, so its mega strong and when polished and combined with a block strengthening kit will see the engine past 10krpm (with some proper rod bolts etc).

Janspeed do a selection of exhaust manifolds the big bore being 2" final pipe size and large primaries, the small bore with 1.5" final pipe and slightly larger than sport spec primaries. I actually have a medium bore, which i and everyone else didnt know existed untill i recieved it direct from them! Its 1.75" final bore.

As for turbocharging, go bannanas! I have kept a high compression ratio (around 10.5:1) as i think that the engine being all aluminium will be able to fend off detonation, i am also going to controll the detonation by altering the timing lowering the dynamic compression significantly.

Anything else? Happy to help

J

I think the California was just Singer's version of the Coupe Bodyshell.
It was just another rebadge for the Rootes group brands.
Just like the various Austin/Morris/MG/VandenPlas/Wolseley 1100 and 1300 models. Same family of body shells, different badges or grilles and interior trim.

My mistake the orginal imp crank was E9T which is a carbon steel, the talbot was EN16U which is an alloyed steel with a tensile strength of around 1100Mpa.

J

This turbo manifold is available aswell, so turbocharging can be easy

www.theimpclub.co.uk/modules/mx_smartor/album.php?smartor_mode=album_showpage&pic_id=1167

J

Oooohhh!!!!!!!!! ;D

This is getting more and more tempting

Think Imps are slow? Think again...

videos.streetfire.net/video/98e1e0d7-14a3-4bd1-9c05-98420102bbbd.htm

I'm

That green one is on air ride too