Woles

The 1967 Singer Chamois we have owned for over twenty (20) years has been sold and will travel to the North in a month or so, I am busy preparing the car by removal of the upgraded parts and taking it back to standard specification. These include re fitting of the 12"steel rims and higher profile tires, re fitting the front drum brakes over the Ford KA disc brakes now fitted, taking off the Monte Carlo lower competition road springs and re fitting the engine that matches the cars licence papers. There is more also but I can talk about that another day?

So I need another similar car for my next Imp based car restoration project.

The move back to an  'As Standard'   car is interesting, as the 1971 Hillman Imp Deluxe I restored last year went to an owner who wanted an upgraded but otherwise standard car. The special parts on this Singer Chamois will be re used by myself and possibly on the 1967 Hillman Californian coupe I am re building right now?

Does anyone own or know where I can find one in Southern Africa? a bare shell can also be considered as my parts stash includes many body panels, front bonnet and rear engine cover, suspensions and engines etc etc.

Roy

Well I am saying the best until someone shows me one that is better?

We discovered enough original paint of this 1971 Rootes Car Co made car to see that it was a very close match to Fords (samcor) Aquarius metallic blue colour, which just happens to be their current shade right now.


Click on the pictures to make them larger.

For sure we could buy a decent small car for the cost of this Hillman Imps new paint work.

Refurbished and mounted back where it came from, Rootes Car Co, also fitted the Lucas model DR3A wiper motor and Lucas 14W wiper motor to the Hillman Imp

While the car is still outside the work space, decent wind free weather saw me re fitting a number of serviced items.

One was the Lucas drive motor to the windscreen wipers, to access those four x 1/4" hex bolts I found that as long as the large hex nut at the end of the motor was free, you can withdraw the motor back far enough to reach the small hex bolts.

As you can see we have a choice.

The ones at the back are the larger Sunbeam Sport inlets, then the Mk2 versions, the smaller ones being the exhaust valves which are common to the Mk2 and the Sport engines.



The Mk2 and exhaust valves will be fitted with new valve stems to a Mk2 cylinder head later this week.


The new valve seats will be used if required?

Roy

This car is a 1971 Imp Deluxe, a one owner car and Imported by its lady owner many years back.

When I discovered it over sixteen years ago it was in storage and not for sale, then the owner decided he wanted to sell it.

A deal was made and  I moved the car to a friend who had an interest in such cars, he stored it six years, then it came to myself. Work was started by turning the car over to work on the underside surfaces and suspensions before the rest of the car.


The customer wanted the best, so the car was inverted on our special jig for turning Imps over on.


We managed to discover just enough of the cars original Chrysler metallic blue paint colour, then matched that to  a Samcor / Ford shade and used that.

The idea is to make the car as new as we can, the entire car has now been re painted, that is underneath, inside and out.


We will receive the car by a specialist road trailer soon.

With the recent assembly and building of a new 998cc engine, a  cylinder head shim was required to sort out pistons that were proud of the block.


This was done in alloy but we can have them made in steel and copper, or a mix of materials and a composite using some quite exotic fibres.

Postage world wide is easy.

Roy

May 2014 and some two years since the repair shown below was tested in a 1963 Hillman Imp engine. We find the rub strip looked just as it is in the picture below but could be prised free with a screwdriver.

Please do not copy this attempt to re furbish the Imps timing chain tensioner parts, an update will follow once we have the correct grade of glue.

I say new but refurbished would be a better term?

Now we are into year 51 of the Hillman Imp motor car some parts are either hard to find or very expensive, both probably?

The engines timing chain tensioner fits that description exactly.


This is an old tensioner fitted with a South African anti friction pad, I did this in April 2013 for a 1963 Hillman Imp engine I was rebuilding.

Back in 1963 it was very rare for a car magazine to make a new car the main subject of most of the issue.

Sporting Motorist did just that, it was the May 1963 issue and at just three Shillings a good price.

I have that magazine here, as I do the Autocar May 1963 issue.