1970 Ginetta G15

Yep - available in most RAL colours easy to use, not too expensive - prep is scuff with some 60 grit wipe with acetone and brush it on at the recommended weight per sqm.

Only buy it when you need it, as with any Poly resin based product it does have a shelf life and application is so much better when its "fresh".

Sold for the asking price in less than 48 hours. Sounds very much like the new owner will be sending the car to be restored by DARE the company run by the last remaining Walklett brother. It's a very special car and deserves as much. I am glad it's remaining in the UK with a Ginetta enthusiast.

Need to line up what's next in the cull.

Fortunate enough to find a decisive buyer, with similar thoughts to my own about how special this car actually is, who was not about to let this once in a lifetime opportunity slip through his fingers. Knowledge of the Marque the market and a bit of luck with timing.

Even as it stands, as rough as it is, there is something a bit special about this car.

A bit more welding deja vous today as I started on making another pair of Imp rear trailing arms a bit stronger. These are stock Imp and not the Imp Sport type so I will be adding the triangulation under the hub as well as the other strengthening.


Sport type That was fitted to PHX - see the web under the hub.



Standard type - no web



Stage one - seams stitched



A bit of steel needs to cut for little webs and fillets and then more welding.

Think the strengthening on the 'Sport' trailing arms are an added modification and not a standard item. Having raced and rallied Imp and Imp derivatives for more than 30 years I have never seen'Sport' items modified as standard.

David Vizard

Vizard, D.
CCC look-in on the Imp / by David Vizard. - Cars & Car Conversions 1972, October, p.86-87,89,91
David Vizard tells how to beef up and modify the suspension.


The rear suspension

The first thing one should do with the rear suspension arms or links, if any form of competition is envisaged, is to replace them with stronger items if the ordinary Imp is being used. The Imp Sport and van rear links are stronger than the standard Imp links, so for normal fast driving and the occasional bit of competition, these can be considered satisfactory.
For autocrossing, serious rallying and racing we should use the heavy duty Imp Sport/van link as this is internally reinforced. It is not, however, generally available and nowadays can only be got through Chryslers Competition Dept. Presumably this link was once distributed as a heavy duty export item.

Once one is certain that the rear link is strong enough, there is the small problem of making sure that it stays well and truly attached to the car. To do this one needs to reinforce the rear crossmember in several places. As with many other parts of the Imp suspension, the first thing to do to the crossmember is to seam weld up all joints to make sure that they are as good as possible. The next move is to weld on washers to the outside faces of the lugs, which are the pivot point for the link.

Once these washers are welded on, one can use the longer bolts from the Imp van to secure the link to the crossmember. For very rough work such as autocrossing and rallying the body will need strengthening in the region of the mounting points of the crossmember and an additional sheet of 10 gauge steel should be shaped and welded to the top. Having done this, the crossmember can be considered strong enough to withstand almost anything that the driver can.
In some cases, the crossmember is bolted through to the body to stop flexing in the centre, but this must only be done if reinforcing plates are added to provide greater strength for the body in that area, otherwise it will achieve little.

Lowering the rear end of an Imp is accomplished more or less the same way as the front, ie. we can remove the packing piece from above the suspension and/or use shorter, stiffer springs, or shorten the standard springs. In the case of the rear suspension, the leverage ratio is 1:1.755; that means that if we shorten the spring 1in we will lower the car by 1.755in. Again, as with the front, if we are using spaced out wheels or widened wheels, this leverage ratio will be slightly increased. The selection of springs is, of course, very important. The number of springs available for the rear of an Imp is quite large - see the appropriate chart on page 89.

The rear link or suspension arm can, for a rally or race car, do with a little strengthening. The basic difference between a strengthened link and an unstrengthened link as far as external appearances are concerned, lies in the fact that the strengthened ones are welded up around all the seams and the bearing housing is gusseted to the main part of the arm. However this gusseting, as shown in the relevant photograph, is standard on some links, so you may find that yours has this.
Apart from external appearances, the works competition link, which is based on the export van link, has internal bracing to make it much stiffer. For rally work or autocross work where a terrific pounding has to be taken, the competition link is almost essential. If you are rallying a Group I Imp then it is a wise precaution, since one cannot use a competition link, to check the links after each rally as they can crack up at the points where we have recommended strengthening.


To stop hub flexure the hub must be gusseted as shown below.
Current production items are already done in this way but some early ones weren't, so check.
Note seam welding around entire periphery

:-)

Grabbed a few hours this evening and spent them getting a couple of layers of glass into the sections to be repaired - some chopped strand bridging filler in the small gaps to provide a bit of backing to 2 x 300gm layers of CSM went well enough and will hold the form we need whilst we build up the rest. Once the final shape is all together it will all be scuffed back and a layer of 600gm CSM withh go over the whole area. The underside will be smoothed back and then flowcoated.


A couple of props to push the floor down and clamps to get a decent seal on the packing - there was also a bit of filleting wax used to smooth into the corners to as there were cavities where the backing was not fully against the GF.



Splish splash splosh and we have a couple of layers down.







Next round will be on Wednesday to look at how we build up the rest of bulkhead - I suspect quite a lot of parcel tape will be the order of the day.