RENAULT DAUPHINE

Remember them well, and a school mate who was very miffed if anyone raised the issue of instability.

Think it was a myth. As someone says, you had to accustom yourself to the characteristic of the car in those days, and the Dauphine layout was helping to break new ground, particularly in the UK.

Rust? Everything rusted to billy-o then, even R-Rs and cars like the Vauxhall Viva and Hillman Avengers were catastrophies.

Suspect the disparagers of the Dauphine may be displaying a touch of Europhobia....lot of it about.

Martyn in Paris

had a Singer chamois (luxury version of the imp!!!) then soild it to buy a Ginetta G15, got 100mph on the motorway but had to hold on to the dash to stop it vibrating so I could read the speedo.

very disconcerting when a bus pulled up beside you, you got a very close view of the wheelnuts, ones bum was about 4 inches off the ground, ooh! err! missis!

Steering wheel was about 8" in diameter, didn't need much turning to get round a corner.

them were the days eh?

Was that disconcerting bit at 100mph? Speedos were always optimistic. I used my rev counter to check the speed more accurately. Motorway markers ans stopwatch gave a good measure of actual speed if one could keep at a constant speed for, say,10km.

That shouldn't have happened! I helped a chum build one in '72. Triumph based front suspension like an Elan and the trailing link Imp suspension. I admit that the steering was very light but quite stable when flat out. G15s were good on the track too.

We used both Imp and the G15 on car trails. They were ideal with the weight on the rear wheels.

Indeed, them were the days!

This thread brought back some memories. I had several Imps long ago, and have to say I liked the car. I had one special version which had an 'Estate Car' rear end (not the van), and a digital speedo (this was around the mid 1970's). Contrary to some of the opinions here, it handled well. My opinion is that the weight of the all-aluminium engine/gearbox at the rear was fairly well balanced by the fuel tank at the front of the car, and the weight of the driver and front seat passenger.

It was always a fairly easy car to work on. I changed the clutch (first UK car to use a diaphragm clutch!) on one single-handed at the side of the road. Simply support the engine and wheel the car away. The job I always hated was replacing the rubber drive doughnuts, because they had to be compressed using a special tool (actually a big jubilee clip), and it always seemed to be a PITA to get the bolts back in!

Tappet adjustment was a la Jaguar XK, by replacing shims under the tappet buckets - I eventually ended up with a bucketful of the shims collected from scrapyards, because you had to fit a shim, assemble it all, measure the gaps, calculate the actual shim size needed, then take it all apart to fit the correct one - but it was OK once it was done.

The standard 875cc engine went quite well, but I much preferred the twin-carb 998cc - much more go!

At one time I worked on the Rapier missile system. At that time, the generator unit for the system was powered by a variation of the Coventry Climax engine, which was originally developed (I believe) for fire-engine pumps, and was later developed into the Imp engine.

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The Husky ... Me too

Replaced it with a Singer Chamois with well-sorted suspension.

MichaelG.

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https://www.imps4ever.info/family/husky.html

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 04/08/2019 18:39:28

Michael - It wasn't a Husky - it was a special build. The roof line followed the curve of the standard roof, not raised as in the Husky, and the opening rear window was modified and fitted as a 'hatchback' type door at the rear. It was built by someone in Malvern. All the instruments had been removed and replaced with digital versions. The engine was a 998cc, and all the suspension had been uprated, and the interior re-upholstered in real leather.

I ran it for about a year, then sold it, because at that time I needed a bigger car. The guy I sold it to eventually managed to put the front into a ditch, which bent it sufficiently to be beyond repair. It was quite a useful car, despite the fact that the engine bay took up some of the space behind the back seats, there was still a useable boot space there. It used to cause quite a lot of comment, and people used to ask me where I got it from. Surprisingly, the added weight at the rear did not make much difference to the handling, except that it was bit sensitive to high side winds.

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of it now, (it was a long time ago) so I can't show you it.

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Now that sounds nice !!

Apologies for my misunderstanding

MichaelG.

I had the reputation for replacing Imp doughnuts. I simply used a crowbar to slot them into place. Took about 10 minutes to change one, if the nuts were undoable.

Andrew

Michael - I had a Husky as my first car, passed down through the family - loved it, great in snow. Upgraded it with a Sport head and twin Strombergs from the local scrapyard. Just for fun, not sure if it actually made a lot of difference. Also cobbled together a home-made water-injection unit as I'd read somewhere that it improved performance Indeed, those were the days.

There used to be a Stiletto in the Preston area that someone had managed to fit a Rover V8 into the back of, it was regularly seen in the Poly car park in the early '80s, along with a silver Hammerite, brush-painted VW Beetle. Funny the things you remember...

Rob

Love to have seen the Hammerite Beetle. Just after I was married, and had even less money than the government leaves me nowadays, I bought an old Ford Anglia. It badly needed paint, and I had no idea. Orange cars were the thing in those days, so I bought a tin of orange paint at the local hardware store, and went home to start work. When I opened the tin, the paint seemed very thick, but it seemed to spread OK with a brush, so I pressed on.

I had almost finished, when I looked at the tin and realised I had bought thixotropic paint. I had no choice but to leave it to dry, until eventually it looked like the skin on a tangerine! It had one good effect - I didn't dare do anything remotely illegal in the car, because it was so distinctive, I was going to get nicked for sure!

Hi, Andrew - good to see you are still around - been pretty rough myself.

Edited By An Other on 05/08/2019 17:53:31

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You may join me in drooling over this antipodean beastie, Rob

**LINK**

https://www.imps4ever.info/specials/v8/feck.html

MichaelG.

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This broadly fits your description:

**LINK**

https://www.imps4ever.info/specials/whitehead-haste/index.html

... am I getting close ?

MichaelG.

[ enjoying some Imp-nostalgia ]

"You may join me in drooling over this antipodean beastie, Rob "

Thanks Michael, very nice. A friend of mine who was into rallying told me about one Imp which left the road next to a Scottish loch, and skated over the surface for about thirty yards before sinking slowly, rear end first into the water - the advantages of a fairly flat bottom and rearward weight distribution.

Rob

(also enjoying Imp nostalgia and apologising to the Renault Dauphine whose thread we appear to have hijacked)

Hi, Michael - its beginning to look as though you want to build one

Sorry, your link is not at all like it. Basically, apart from the suspension upgrades, which as I understand it came from some company uprating Imps for racing (Stiffer shorter springs, stiffer shocks, changes to the various suspension arms to give better camber angles, etc), the car body was modified by entirely removing the rear window panel and window, then extending it back following the line of the roof. I think this was done with a piece from another Imp roof, because the new rear window posts looked identical to the original rear window posts, but now came down to the back of the car. (I hope that makes sense). The roof addition was welded across and blended in to make a single smooth curved line from front to rear. The original rear cross member of the car was still used, and a panel added above it which was welded to the rear floor of the car, and the new window posts. This still allowed the engine to be removed as per the original. The panel which had been removed from the original upper rear of the car (supporting the opening window) was refitted into the new rear window posts/roof, and welded in place with a rollbar immediately under the inside edge of the roof (under the interior roof lining), presumably to add strength, and the original opening rear window fitted. The new rear side windows were fitted between the original rear window posts and the new ones (darkened perspex - very chic in those days!)

The interior was completely gutted, and recarpeted with new heavy carpet, and all the old original synthetic plastic 'leather' replaced with real hide. The instruments were replaced with electronic digital types (speedo, petrol and temperature gauges, and a digital rev-counter and oil-pressure gauge added) mounted on a polished wooden dash (a la Jag). The electronics for all these used TTL logic in a metal box fitted under the dash, (no processors then!) with a plug-in lead connecting to the digital displays on the dash - in those days, they were all 7-segment red LED types. I understand that basically the original sensors for various functions were used - for example, the petrol gauge sensor was effectively a variable resistor operated by a float, so a varying voltage from this was converted anolog-to-digital, then used for the display, so not particularly complex. It all seemed to work OK, I never had problems with them, and the garage had no problems accepting it for MOT. I gather the guy who built them used to work at the RRE, so it should have been a doddle for him!

As I noted earlier, the engine was the larger 998cc version, originally fitted with dual Stombergs as per the Stiletto version, but I later changed these for dual SU's, which seemed to be much better. I had some issues with the Strombergs very quickly becoming unbalanced, resulting in a (mostly) weak mixture to two cylinders, and a (mostly) rich mixture to the other two, and also an irritating 'hunting' effect when the engine was running at slow speed. I happened to have the SU's, (think they came from an old Jaguar 2.4 Mk2) so I stuck them on, and they seemed fine.

It didn't seem to involve a vast amount of rebuilding, and the resulting car looked quite neat - it certainly caused comment. I suspect that without the suspension upgrade, it may have been a bit of pig to drive, but as it was, it was fine.

As I said, I eventually sold it because I needed a larger car, and the guy who bought it crashed it, which was a pity.

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Oh well ... it was the nearest I could find

Thanks for the extra details about yours.

No, not even contemplating building one ... but finding that website did bring back some fond memories ... always fancied a Ginetta G15 and/or one of the Hydroplanes that we used to watch at Holme Pierrepont when it first opened.

MichaelG.