I took on this car for a friend who bought it. it was imported about 30 years ago then parked in a heated building since. lets see how it held up and what failed.
23 thoughts on “1965 Hillman Imp Mini Car, Ran When Parked 30 years ago.”
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Thank you for this great video – love it.
Professionally as a auto mechanic have been using exclusively copper nickel brake line for the last 15 years here in PA, best stuff ever, won't even consider using steel in any way shape or form.
Brings back some memories -had one of those many years ago.Looks like a late model,about 1973.Great little cars and I'm not surprised you got it to fire up so easily.They are prone to overheating though -the radiator is far too small.When you fill up the cooling system it will need venting using the valve just to the left of the rad.Good luck,you have a great example which would sell for good money here in the UK!
to remove the carbi cover either take the back seat down or remove the speaker from the rear shelf. its something like that.
My friend had two of those in the UK and I got to work on both to keep them running back in the 1980's. They made great cars for Rallying in their day.
Take off the water pump !
You are a cow
Yokel
Really you are stupid and crazy with that manner , you should open the water pump
First of our family cars that I can actually remember, so that would make it late 60s early 70s. Fun little car.
Ah wood A yanken' dat' wadda pump off turdie miets eggo. thenn it wood a neva run agen
I had one back in the 70s. Mine was the slightly sportier Caledonian with a slopping back. Sadly very prone to overheating and being driven on salty UK roads for 15 years the floor eventually detached from the body so had to be scrapped. Great fun while it lasted
Tell me you're going to take the engine out of the trunk and put it back up front under the hood where it belongs… hehe
The colour of the car is called Claret Metallic.
It is not a Coventry Climax engine although Coventry Climax shared information with the Rootes design engineers there are very substantial differences.
One of the two engineers who pushed the whole development of the Imp was Mike Parkes later an F1 driver and Development engineer for Ferrari
the entire cooling system is junk bud…probly the block,core and rad
the engine was a fire pump that coventry climax discovered and thought they could turn into something useful . the cars were rushed out as the mini stole there thunder in being a similar size and aimed at the same audiance so the early cars had a number of nigelliy problems that gave the imp a lasting bad name , where after a couple of years the problems were generally sorted . the later cars went down in quality as christler bought the roots group who owned hillman and started to cut costs to try and boost profits
Ah, chug chug chug, the sound of 1970's British suburbia on a frosty winter weekday morning as lower management prepare to leave for work.
My brother had a Yugo that was 3 cylinder and had to drop the motor just to fix simple things
You get some of the neatest stuff bc I like that car and would love to own it
It needs a set of chrome bumpers lol.
We rebuilt a '67 Sunbeam Imp. Those OHC engines were ahead of their time, but they loved sucking valves.
Hillman imp motors were sometimes put in motorbikes.
They were good simple cars and built like a tank. I saw one with smash on front wing from the side. A crowbar and hammer sorted it out.