Oh. Forgot...
Jonathan and I have picked up the last three Imps that have come up for sale on Ebay. All need a little work. I also convinced my friend Dave to grab a local Imp for cheap, but he was dissapointed in it as it turned out to have no floors left in it! (sorry dave... still worth 200 just for the parts alone).
One of Jonathans Imps is coming out of AZ and was a previous electric conversion that was never completed. Another was a NY car that was parked in a garage in 1975 when the lady when to college, and stayed there all this time till her father died and the house was sold. A real gem of a time capsule!

I've been realy slack keeping this updated, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything going on in the PacNW Imp world.

Unfortunatly, Jonathan has been relocated to CT by his company, so now I've been handed the race car to drive. Scarry considering that my last racer, when loaned, was rolled by the guy I loaned it to! I have no intention of doing the same!



Dave Guenthers Imp is finally out of the body shop after having a whole new front end grafted on. Looks good. He went with a spoiler on the front to help channel some of the air into the front radiator... and it looks cool.
His car is due out on May 13/14 if I can get it all back together on time. I'm struggling to get all his parts together for his new 998. I'm green as he gets to use his before I can install one in Jonathans car to use!


Other things going on... John Rankins Beach is now running with Imp power. Sounds really nice! More on that soon.

Been quiet on the Imp scene here of late.
I have been putzing around in the garage working on different projects.

I have stripped downa hood adn repaired it and brought it back up to primer in order to use it as a plug for a mold to make fiberglass bonnets. My first test patch of resin on the prepped and waxed primer melted though the paint, so it looks like I'll have to put a gel coat down first.

Another project I have been meaning to work on is a manifold for the Imps. I built a test one to see whats involved in it, and went a little crazy. It probably weighs more than the engine!
A smaller one will be made next time.

Lastly, I have goe back to working on the green Imps restore. I made some body panels to replace the ones that had rust in them. Now I just need to install them.

Another day at the races. Not a very good one though. Although the weather was perfect, the oil pressure issues persisted, and we decided to avoid engine destruction and skipped the last race of the day. The times were dropping as well, so something wasn't working proper.
I'll have to redesign the oil pickup to see if it'll fix the issue.
One of the nice cars at the event was the first production tiger (shown here in white). Immaculate, and totally original.

After the dismal oil pressure problem, I fab'd up a adjustable relief valve and have been abel to get the press up to 65psi from the 50 I was getting at 4K rpm cold. I still would like more pressure, and maybe a change in oil vicocity will help.
None the less, it's ready to race this weekend, so I hope to get some nice shots of it out at the track.

I also was able to finish up on the install of the new engine into his red Imp. So he's got wheels again to drive in town, other than the boreing Honda....

Next is onto the black Imp of his. We need to get it running so he can sell it or something... It may be the one he starts drivign as it is almost cleaner than the other one.

Al

I fiished Jonathans new engine yesterday and installed it. After filling it with oil I realised I left a plug out and dumped all the fresh oil on the floor. Better than the dirty stuff at least.

Afterwards I worked on replacing the engine in his red dialy driver. The engine siezed up one day in a parking lot, adn nothing would break it loose. We drug it behind a truck and popped the clutch to no avail. Even prior to pulling the engine, I tried to get it to turn over, and no luck.
After removing it, it was able to be spun by hand! I couldn't find anything externally jamming it, and the transaxle was free as well. I guess it just rejected it's heart!

Impfected Racing in Seattle

I thought I'd start to document some of the work and racing that's going on here in the NW. First off, an indroduction; I'm Alan Petersen from Seattle WA. I have three of these little cars, but unfortunatly my racer was rolled when lent to a friend for an event. Jonathan Audette is another member of the team. He has a nice little Imp racer that we are doing OK with. Dave Guenter is the last member of the team. His car is still being worked on and we hope to have him on the track this next season.

Here's a pic from the workshop. Yes, it's a total mess, but then I don't have much room adn there is a lot of crap stashed in there. Here's the short block of Jonathans racer. You can see the engine he was runnig in the background on the bench. We had issues with a liner leaking at a low spot, so it needed to come out and get decked. No time for that, so a new one was built.
I'll get it installed back into his racer today and get to testing it.