No joy. I found out the other day the head on the motor in the blue car is a Mk1 head, which is not good, and a long way from the Sport head it should have. Seems the whole motor may be non original, which means the internals are all probably vanilla items too. Yet to get the cam cover off to see whats inside. The distributor is not a GT item either. At least the carbs and oil cooler are there, though I hope to replace them with better parts anyhow.

Oh well it looks like I will be rebuilding the motor anyhow.

Hope to pull it all out tomorrow. Drained the water from the radiator today, and then the oil from the sump, which came out in a nice splat all over the axle stand holding the car up, causing me to rush for the hose and Mel to come running with a box of salt. We got most of it up, but the wet floor meant an end to the days play.

The spare wheel I removed from the red Imp GT ended out having a blown tube in it. As soon as I put air in it, it spat it out at me, along with some nasty brown water. So Saturday arvo I headed over to the lockup to pinch one of the front wheels off the car. Poor thing is now sitting on three very flat tyres. The red Imp has been fitted with a gas strut for the rear window, which I tried to remove for the blue Imp GT but some of the screws did not want to budge. Will have to come back with better tools. A lack of tools also prevented me from removing the gear shifter as well.

I am thinking this car might get a space frame rear chassis made up and a mid-mounted rotary, on a VW gearbox.

Maybe…

I got home with the spare wheel and proceeded to change the rear tyre on the blue car. These cars sit very low to the ground, and it doesn’t help when you have a flat tyre. The car would not roll so I had to jack it up with the right hand side (the side with the flat…) on the damp ground which made for fun as the trolley jack started to sink into the moist soil. As the back was sitting so low I had to jack the front of the car up, stick an axle stand under the nose, then come around in front of the rear wheel and slide the trolley jack down to the rear suspension point. With the car precariously sitting on axle stand and trolley jack on soft ground, I quickly swapped the wheels over.

At last, it will easily roll!

The car was soon pushed up onto the driveway, where I removed the front seats and the bulk of the carpet. I decided I wanted it in the garage facing the other direction which would require pushing it into the street to turn around, so I got Dave to fire up his air compressor so we could get a decent tyre pressure in all the wheels before we pushed it up to the garage.

While the car was in the street one of the neighbours was dropped off home, and he came and had a look at the car. This guy would be in his late 50s or 60s and should have known what the car was. He had no idea, and asked if it was Russian!

Richard arrived shortly after and we soon had the car up and in the garage.

Today I spent some time cleaning the garage out. I also removed the engine cover, rear window, the remainder of the carpet and the bonnet pins. Without the bonnet pins in place, the bonnet actually closes properly and locks down, the release cable from the dashboard works perfectly. The old carpet was more a thick felt and was full of dust and dirt, so I went over the inside of the car and under the bonnet with the vacuum cleaner. I got all the leaves out from under the bonnet and engine cover, and blew all the crap out of the engine bay with my air compressor.

All that remains inside the car now is the rear seat, the dodgy door and side trims, seat belts and dash.

Next thing will be to pull more bits off it ready for body repair, I have to get the parts the motor needs so I can try and start it up, and I also need to get the car up on stands with all the wheels off so I can inspect the brakes and suspension. I have a feeling the car has already been lowered as it does sit quite nicely especially at the front. Hopefully the previous to previous owner did more work than just spraypaint the suspension components, and if he did, the repairs have not gone bad sitting for so many years… fingers crossed for that one.

Many thanks to fellow Jensen owner (lucky bugger has an FF too) Paul Kumnick who has recently moved back to Adelaide from Pommyland. Paul also has Imps and has translated the above paint/trim plate and identified the color of the car in this thread on The Imp Club forum…

Balm is the paint manufacturer, like Taubmans or Berger, 438-1249 is their paint code (in acrylic enamel), MF is the CAL (Chrysler Australia Ltd) code for that particular colour, and I can’t tell you what 366 is about, perhaps a paint batch number? A number is given also for Balm’s acrylic laquer, 562-1249. The colour by the way is Medium Blue Metallic. Only two other metallics are listed, Spice Tan Metallic as per the GT on the single page brochure, and Bronze Red Metallic as per your ‘first’ Imp I’d say. That information may be totally useless to a panel shop these days, but a paint manufacturer should, with patience, make some sense of it. Don’t know where Caribbean Turquoise came from, the only turquoises listed are Tijuana and Medium turquoise. …. Bit more digging. I’ve found a photo of a VE Regal at a dealer in Sydney. Amongst the photos was one of the paint tag, BALM 1249 MF 379, so it’s in Medium Blue Metallic. It looks close enough to how that colour appears in the light of day. Well, that’s on my monitor anyway, so for what it’s worth, your car looks a lot darker than the Valiant. If that’s the case, then you are probably best getting your paint matched from a chip rather than mixing up to that code. A body shop would most likely then have a paint chip, given that code, and you could offer it up to your car and see how close it goes to matching.

The colours supplied by Balm for the GT were Alpine White, Alabaster (that uninspiring beige), Medium Blue Metallic (as per the VE in the photo) and Medium Turquoise. The red was supplied by Taubmans so the tag would have a completely different format, Balm wouldn’t even rate a mention. Replace it with TAUB I’d say. The MF code would be replaced by MJ as that was Chrylser’s code for the red colour. The tag on your car is for the blue on the Valiant and the number 1249 is the important one. The pre-fix 438 tells that it was painted in enamel, 562 if it were in laquer. That’s important to a body shop doing repairs as enamel can be painted over acrylic, but paint a car that was originally in enamel with acrylic and the solvent in the acrylic will react with, and lift the enamel underneath.

366 vs. 379. I’ll hedge my bet that they are batch numbers so both Chrylser and Balm can keep track of supplies for warranty and any other issues that may arise. The Imp would have been assembled in Port Melbourne, the VE in Adelaide, so different batches of the same paint are being sent to different factories in different states. Dare say those records aren’t around anymore

I think the color is probably the same. Light can make a huge difference to how colors look in photographs, not to mention different cameras, different processing etc. I have a slight increase in saturation and vibrance on the Imp photos seen here, plus the car was out in the sun. When in the garage tonight, the paint under the floor looks similar to the Valiant. A bit more funky though, which is good. I will see if I can get a color chip of the original color otherwise just get it matched to whats there now.

Just had a poke around with the car at lunch, pulled off the driving lights as they were mounted in the holes that the GT dummy grille mounts in. Stuck the grille on the car and it looks a heap better.

This is meant to be the paint and trim code, but it matches exactly the code given here so I am not sure…

This should be the chassis number, 293, so it should be the 293rd Imp GT built. As for WHEN it was built… no idea!

Lifted some of the carpet up, things were looking nice under there.

Spotted some stress tears in the doors, which will need welding at some point.

Took my neighbor Dave to see the red car tonight. We had to move it further into the garage, as it was blocking the entrance. We decided it best to push the car back out of the garage and push it back in forwards, which worked a treat, though we had to make a few alterations to the trajectory to save the door mirror and handle. The other reason for the visit was to pinch a wheel from the front of it so I can move the blue car to the garage back at home. We made the journey to the red car armed with trolley jack, axle stand and wheel braces. However it was all unnecessary when we opened the front of the car to find a serviceable spare wheel and tyre. Both the rears on the red car were flat as a tack, and the blue cars drivers side rear is falling to pieces, delaminated and split very badly.

Since we did not have to jack the car up and remove a wheel, we got to looking for something else to do, so we tried to remove the passenger side engine cover latch, which was missing from the blue car. One of the screws didn’t want to budge so I went poking around elsewhere. Dave decided to keep going at it and eventually got the screw out and cleaned the mechanism up nicely, so its ready to go on the blue car now. I pulled the dummy GT grille from the front of the car, as well as the Hillman gear shift knob, steering wheel centre piece and the rubber button that pumps the windscreen washer.

We gave the car a bit of an inspection (I didn’t have my camera with me unfortunately) and I have definitely made the right decision choosing the blue car as the one to fix first. The red car has a lot more dents, some nasty rust and is generally worse off. I will pull whatever parts I need off it, but only what I really need because its missing or broken on the blue car. I think the glass is in very good condition, though the frame for the rear window is quite rusted. Incidentally, there was a gas strut on the rear window of this car. A modification I had planned for the blue one. Thats one job saved, I just need to transfer the mountings over.

Some very dodgy wiring in this car too. I do wonder why the previous owner felt it needed two pairs of driving lights PLUS a pair of yellow foglights… The windscreen washer bladder has been replaced with a drink bottle. And there is an old fire extinguisher cable tied to the underside of the dash top, passenger side. I couldn’t pull it out, fat load of good it would have been in a fire.

It is interesting to note the differences between the cars. I have no idea what the build dates are for the cars. The red one has the Chrysler pentagon badge on the bottom of the front guards. The blue one hasn’t, but thats not to say it never had them. I discovered a bonnet release cable on the passenger side of the dash that seems missing from the blue car. They both have a purple wire going into the air intake for the ventilation system, not sure what that is, as I thought they didnt have a blower? Maybe they do? Maybe thats what the other toggle switch on the dash is for? The red car has a choke lever on the floor directly in front of the gear shifter. The blue car does not have this, I can’t even see any provision for it there. Unless it is an automatic choke model? Again, I have no idea if there is such a thing…

Anyhow, we got what we needed. Though I walked away a little saddened. I knew the car was not as good as the blue one, but the closer I looked tonight the more I found, and it is sad since it was the car that originally got me interested in Imps. Oh well. Maybe one day I might properly strip it to bare minimum, fit some fibreglass panels and a spaceframe and fit a motorbike engine or something to it and make a hillclimb or drag special out of it.

The blue car continues to amaze me with how good it actually is. Yesterday we had very heavy rain and it only sprang a small leak from the rear window/hatch. I emailed off today asking about wheels and tyres, and also about rubber seals and window seal kits. Looking forward to getting a fresh coat of paint on it and all. Really keen to see if the motor will start, just need a few small parts before I can try: a battery, a coil, an ignition key(!), a carby linkage bracket and a rubber seal for the radiator fan should just about do it. The radiator seems to have straight water in there so I hope it has not corroded too badly. The oil seems quite clean, though should be changed. The air filter element is AWOL and I am yet to check the spark plugs. Inside the distributor looks clean and good. Brakes will need fluid, there is a lot of air in them. Otherwise they to are an unknown quantity.

Seems most of the interior panels have been made out of beer cartons or signs. Boags mostly. In both cars. But thats OK, they will serve as a template and we will cut new ones out of some thin MDF and cover them, either in a black vinyl or I might go plush and use alcantra. Probably going to get the Cobra Classic seats though they have no headrest. There is a version with headrests but they are around $200 dearer each… hmm. I think they only come in black vinyl. But even still the alcantra would look trick on the door trims, and I would probably get the whole dash done in it too.

Hopefully tomorrow I can get this wheel on the car and borrow some mates to help push it up into the garage.

Picked up an Imp workshop manual off ebay yesterday, hope it doesn’t take too long to arrive. Should come in handy.