1972 Hillman Hunter. Megasquirt, ITB's and wider arches.

/\ the question marks where meant to be emojies

Try boiling the pads to get the fluid out of them, it works with shoes so should work with pads too

Well its been a while, but welcome to the new house! There's tea in the pot and milk in the fridge so make yourself's at home



The garage hasn't been built yet as i am still waiting for the buyers to finish buying my old house but i've been keeping myself busy with the hillman.

I was running out of things to do so I decided that i'd best get it MOT'd so i can drive it again. I dropped it off and when I got there to pick it up the tester was helping himself to a new yellow rusty hole marking crayon and filling the printer with fresh paper, always a good sign
Two sheets of fails later I was on my way home to begin the repairs.

So far i have done 3 of the 4 corners, leaving the NSR till last. That's where the majority of fails were on rust, along with not having an indicator warning light and sidelights (Headlights don't count! ) and a leaky strut.

I started with the strut as i had already bought the parts to convert it to coilovers which are as follows;
- MK4 golf front coilovers
- E46 bmw top mounts
- 2" exhaust couplings

Now here's the good bit, I could have bought fancy dampers, coilover conversion tubes and blue paint to recreate every set of struts on a worked on mk2 escort / capri, but that would be too expensive for me. I also have a MK4 golf on the drive to get measurements off.

The struts on the golf attach at the base by being clamped into the hub, these are a 50mm diameter strut. The hillman struts are also 2" external diameter so by cutting the top off the hillman strut, sliding over the 2" exhaust clamp tube (which was a thicker wall thickness than the struts) then sliding the mk4 golf coilover into it and buzzing it all together with the MIG you have a strut which uses a damper/ spring combo that's not 43 years old. Hurrah!

To compliment this i stuck on some fancy top mounts. I thought i would treat myself (£40 from evilbay), but i'm glad i did as the hillman ones fell apart when i removed them, so no wonder the steering felt a little stiffer than it used too!





I also found all this in the oil after cutting them open. No wonder they didn't do much damping!




Next up was the rust repairs.

I've always liked wide arches, but only on a full on race car. The arches on the hillman, however, go almost straight down and don't let the car go very low at the rear due to rubbage. so the solution:



Mk1 golf arches for a subtle but almost factory flare

So after finding the previously repaired and now rotten arch was held on with bodyfiller(deja-vu anyone) I set about cutting the rust out, which escalated, resulting in the other half of the boot floor coming out (pictures to follow tomorrow), and the end of the sill getting repaired aswell!





It doesn't look too bad in the pictures, but its kept me busy all day, out in the sun


But then the good news came.

I'm going to need bigger wheels!





That's all for tonight folks.



James

Enjoyed looking through this thread,its good to see someone just doing their own thing,pretty cool!

Been watching this for a while it's always an interesting read. Golf arches look good did they need much tweaking?

Just re read the whole lot again. How's it coming along?

Awesome. Lack of ££'s is always the biggest problem. Now I seem to have some reliability In mine. I'm stuck for the reasons to hold off doing any mods on it. Did the poly bushed rear springs make much difference to the ride?

Since i last wrote on here i've fit the new engine along with rewiring the whole car and updating the MS2 before starting to re do the map on it from scratch.

The old engine spun some bearings due to oil starvation on the limiter (doh) so i built up a fresh engine using my 99 head and an 04 block (with 60something and 50someting miles on) to end up with a bone stock motor that has 10.something : 1 compression. Matched up to the bigger throttle bodies and a new exhaust manifold, she breaths very well!

Whilst fitting the new motor, i modified the sub frame so that it sits much lover, putting the engine and gearbox at a better angle which has reduced the propshaft/gearbox vibration it had, but magnified all the engine vibrations as i have hard mounted it ! I havent got many pictures throughout this process as ive been doing it in the rain down the side of my house so heres a short video to enjoy:




The main problem i have is that i currently have no air filters as there's no where to fit them and the bike airbox wont fit! To get around this ive drawn up some velocity stacks that'll bolt onto the front of the 'bodies and allow me to fit my old socks over them for filters These should be done this week, one in ABS and the other in PLA so i'll do an update when they have been fitted and report back!



James

Thanks James88

When the weather gets a bit nicer, or i get my garage built ill do a proper walkround video and show what i've done.