kws

No chance of that if it's not going back on the original bike. Better off talking to Kiwiplates to see if it can be made into a personalised plate.

After a little more work to get it ready, it was time for Nuggie to venture out of the garage and onto the road, for the first time since at least 2012. The first job was to torque up the hub nuts and stake them. I jammed the brake pedal down, and then torqued them to the required 200NM-and-a-bit-more (the spec is 150-260NM). I then used a punch to stake the nuts so they can't come loose Whilst there, I also jacked the hubs up and torqued the swaybar end nuts too. Another quick fix was fitting three new wiper blades. One of the front ones was missing, and the rear was perished. I went with 450mm and 350mm for the front, and 350mm for the rear. Moving to the headlights, I wanted to remove and replace the brackets that the light units attach to. The RH side was OK, but the LH side was rusty, and the corner garnish was holding on by hopes and dreams As it turns out, the dreams were dashed, and the bracket came off with the garnish when I removed it The bracket is held in with one bolt on the slam panel, one nut in the engine bay, and two more nuts inside the wheel arch (liner needs to be removed or the front loosened). With it removed, I could wire brush the surface rust and give it a quick shot of black zinc The new bracket was then fitted into place, without the lamp or its mounting hardware. The bracket for the garnish is on the bottom right, sticking forward. I cleaned the bracket up and gave it a coat of black zinc, to hopefully keep the corrosion at bay. I replaced all the headlight adjustment screws and the plastic blocks they go into. I didn't replace the springs, and I probably should've; they're a bit ugly. The garnish was refitted. I had to recover the plastic grommet from the old rusty bracket If the mounting screws are good, the light actually just slips over them and then twists into place. This one on the car was wrong; the washer goes behind the light. There's no way to remove the light unit to change the bulb. This is the correct fitment After replacing the other side too, I gave them a quick setup, but I really need to align them before I try to take it for a WOF, at least to get them in the ballpark. With those replaced, I could refit the bumper, once and for all this time (or for a while, at least) I sourced some of the correct screws for the top edge. These have a step in them, so the head of the screw doesn't crush the plastic This is what happens when someone has replaced them with normal bolts in the past, the plastic splits With that done, I could finally install my new wheels and get the car on the ground for the first time since I got it, way back in October. The new wheels came with some Nankang AR-1 semi-slicks. They're a tad wider than the old 165 width tyres... They'll stay for a bit, just because they're near new and do the job, but longer term I'll get rid of them and fit the correct size Yokohamas. The 175/50R13 has slightly too small a profile, and the width is a tad extreme. Not to mention, an 80 treadwear tyre is madness for on the road. I won't lie, I'm pretty happy to see it off the stands and on its own wheels The Suzuki Sport Type-C wheels are perfect for it. I like the original mesh wheels, but mine are in very poor condition. The car was completely covered in thick dust, and still needs a good clean, but I used some waterless wash and got the worst of it off. The glass all got a thorough clean too It looks better than it is. I really need to clean it and then give it a machine polish. This is also the first time the engine bay has been completely together As a small side note, having looked into what the solenoids on the firewall are, one is something to do with the auto trans (only fitted to autos), and the other is the idle up valve for the AC. Neither of these are fitted anymore, so I tried blocking the pipes off to see what happens I'm not sure if the ECU will throw a code if I actually remove them, but we will see. So far, the car starts, runs and idles better than it did with them connected. It's no longer trying to fight the idle up solenoid, and relying on the cold start valve for the cold start idle up, and then the actual idle screw for warm idle - how it should be. Anyway, I connected the battery, turned the key and away the engine went. Good oil pressure, no noises it shouldn't be making. I jumped in, and for the first time, I drove my C-Chassis Alto Works. Because the engine, brakes and clutch are all minty fresh, I was taking it easy, keeping the revs down and minimal boost (it's hard, it comes on boost at the twitch of the foot), and lots of engine braking to seal the rings. Despite trying to give it an eye-lignment before I left, the alignment is well cooked, so the car was a little wayward to drive, but that is an easy fix. Everything did as it should. The gearbox is a little noisy, but nothing I wouldn't expect for its age, and it might get better as I use it more - No grinding through. The engine responds well, feels nice and strong, the turbo makes boost, and it makes all the right noises. I'm very happy with how the initial shakedown went. Now I need to pull it to bits again, replace the rear arm bushes, give it an alignment, touch up a couple of spots on the body, and then I think we're ready to go for a WOF and see how badly it fails. Of course, we got some shots of the car out of the garage. The last time it was out here, it had no engine and was being pushed into the garage. I'm hoping the reverse rake gets better over time. I'm hopeful that it's because the front springs haven't had any weight on them, probably since about 2012, when it came off the road. The lower profile tyres won't be helping the look either, but I can't do much about that right now. What a cool wee car.

The time has finally come, I need to put on my big boy pants and see if all the blood, sweat, tears and money actually worked. I started with a big milestone - I filled the engine with the startup oil. The temporary filter got binned, and a new, prefilled filter was fitted. I also poured 10 litres of the finest 98 octane fuel into the tank and flushed the lines. The final thing that needed to be assembled was the cooling system. The radiator that came with the car was from when it was auto, and unknown to me until a few weeks ago, the auto and manual radiators differ in one critical area; the lower hose fitting is on the wrong side between them The auto radiator that came with the car And the new Manual radiator The lower hose on the auto goes under the transmission up to the back of the engine, and crosses close to the bellhousing Looking from the front, back. Engine on the left, transmission pan on the right. Coolant pipe indicated. This is the absolutely wild coolant pipe used on the autos The previous owner butchered that pipe on my car to make it work with the manual setup. This meant he could retain the auto radiator. The manual cars have the coolant hose from the radiator go straight up over the gearbox and into the coolant pipe I mentioned in one of my previous updates Anyway, so once I found out that my radiator was wrong for my whole convert-to-OEM-MT parts thing, I frantically scrambled to see if I could source a manual radiator locally. Allegedly, one of the local radiator places could order one in for me, at a reasonable price, but I had this niggling worry at the back of my mind where putting a cheap knockoff radiator into the car was asking for trouble. Was it suitable for a turbo car? Would it cause overheating issues? Would it handle a track day or two? Not something I wanted to deal with. So, I spent a shocking amount of money to import the correct Manual Transmission Turbo spec Koyorad radiator from Japan After a quick clean and test, I transferred the fan to the new radiator Much time was spent wrangling the hoses into place. There is very little room between the radiator fan and the gearbox But finally, the radiator was installed and filled with demineralised water Wanting to be able to monitor the oil pressure in an actual figure and not just the idiot light, I quickly wired up the gauge and mounted it. I tied into the power feed for the 12v socket above it. It's pretty bright. I'm going to need to wire in the illumination, I think. It's one of the reasons I removed it from the BRZ Finally, it was time. I had disconnected the ignition coil and removed the fuel pump relay. I needed to crank the engine to prime the oil system and build oil pressure. I jumped in and turned the key for the very first time. Yes, the oil pressure gauge was useless since it turned off when cranking... but on the third go of cranking, the oil pressure light went out, so we were ready. I was getting a little worried with how long it was taking for the light to go out, but thankfully, the pump primed itself, and it wasn't an issue. Now it was time to connect the coil up and refit the fuel pump relay, and go for real. The first start of this engine after a complete end-to-end rebuild, and the first time I have ever heard an engine run in this car. It started like a champ! I had to cut it off earlier than I wanted as the revs were too high, but after some tweaking, I managed to get that to come down, and it idled fine. There was some lifter tick, which is obvious on the video, but nothing to worry about. Oil pressure was very good when running, dropping to about 20PSI when idling at operating temperature By some miracle, even all the gauges work, including the fuel gauge. I'll need to pull the bulb for the cat temp light, since I removed that wire and don't have a cat anymore. It didn't half smoke though, burning off all the various oils, paints etc After running it up to temp, I drained the engine oil and the water from the cooling system The coolant went brown from dragging old gunk out from the heater core and various other hiding places I filled the engine with proper run-in oil this time, and a 50:50 mix of coolant, which I spent time properly bleeding I checked and set the timing to the required 5 degrees, with advance locked by shorting the B and C terminals on the diagnostic connector After the oil change, the lifter tick got a lot better, and with the other tweaks I made, the engine ran and idled quite nicely There's still some setting up to do with things like the TPS and the weird idle valves, but for now, it'll do enough to get it driving. Speaking off, I need to reassemble the front of the car, get the wheels on, and give it a string alignment, but I'm pretty keen to take it for a closed road drive as soon as I can. I really need to start bedding in those rings. A huge milestone. The engine runs, and runs well. It seems to do everything it should, with no odd noises and no real leaks (only a small weep from the oil drain on the turbo).

One of the last things I needed to do before I could look at starting the engine was to refresh the axles and refit them. I wanted to clean and regrease the CV joints and replace the boots. The boots were looking a bit sad, and the joints themselves seemed really floppy. Using a small flat-blade screwdriver, I popped the tabs on the metal boot retaining bands and removed them The outer joints appeared to have been serviced at some point, as the grease was different to the inner joint, and the boots were newer and less perished (although both had a few little pinholes in them). The grease on these ends was quite hard and clumpy. On the other end, the inner joints had really old, perished boots, and the grease was horrible, smelly, slimy stuff. Nothing like cracking open a boot and releasing the smell of rancid fish. According to the manual, only the inner joints can be disassembled. The outer joints are not serviceable. I could probably pop the axle out if I hammered on the joint, but without a spare, it wasn't worth the risk. With the boot undone, the joint cup just pops out, and the spider slides out and is free. I wiped as much grease off the joint and out of the cup as I could, and sealed it in the rubbish bin To remove the boots, I needed to remove the spider. This is held onto the shaft with a retaining clip. Annoyingly its one of the ones that just has tapered ends, not holes for circlip pliers. I managed to pop it off (and not lose it) with circlip pliers and a small flat-blade. It didn't once become a "Ping-Fuckit", I'm so proud. The spider just slides off the splines With both boots removed, I thoroughly cleaned out the outer CV joint, using brake cleaner, rags and a screwdriver to carefully scoop the grease out Once cleaned, I dried the joint and then packed it with new Redline CV grease and slipped a new boot on. The cheap Aliexpress CV band tool did the job well. You wind the excess band onto the tool using the handle on the left, and once it's tight, bend the tool up and over to crease the band (so it won't just undo) and the handle on the right cuts the band. Remove the tool and hammer over the little retaining tabs. Done. Rinse and repeat, and you have an axle with nice new boots and new grease. A quick wire bush job gets rid of all the external grease, too. This is the state of the older-looking inner boots. Very hard and perished. Not cracked through yet, though I ended up using almost a whole tub of CV grease between the two axles, after packing all the joints and boots I was sure to clean out the needle bearings on the spiders and run new grease into them That left me with a pair of nice, clean and fresh axles With new hub nuts and washers Fitting them wasn't too bad. I ended up removing the bolts from the struts and letting the hub hang down. Pop the inner joint into the gearbox, wrangle the outer into the hub and bolt the suspension back together I took a couple of minutes to replace the outer tie rod ends, too, as the old ones were a bit floppy I rattled the hub nuts up for now, but I will need to properly torque them to the required 150-260NM (it's a really broad range in the manual) once I can have a helper hold the hub still with the brakes. Now that the axles were in place and the gearbox didn't have gaping holes in the sides, I pumped some nice new GL4 fluid in and capped it off, ready to move onto the next job.

Alongside all the big work I have been doing, there have been a few little jobs that don't really fit into their own post, so I'll throw a few together here Starting with repairing the oxygen sensor wiring. I don't quite know what happened here; maybe it got jammed into the crank pulley at some point? It was badly damaged, though This was a reasonably quick fix. I started by depinning the plugs, so I didn't waste a lot of wire, and then cut and crimped a new weatherproof connector on Next was a similar fix on the coolant fan switch, which had been bodged before (surprise surprise) This is the switch I removed from the housing. At some point, it had soldered on wiring, no plug in sight. Whilst this is the new switch The good news is that after some digging, I found it's a Sumitomo 6189-0033 connector, which was easily available with a tail on Aliexpress This is the butchered wiring, hacked into the original harness to solder onto the switch. The original wiring stops before the green sleeve, the rest is all just... garbage. This is after I removed the insulation tape that the soldered wires were wrapped in I cut the extension off, cleaned the wires up, stripped them and soldered on the new plug A quick wrap in fabric tape, and jobs a goodun Next, the new leads went on. I grabbed some nice NGK performance leads, which fit well, instead of the crappy universal ones that had been fitted Annoyingly, for some reason, despite getting a kit suitable for an Alto with the DOHC F6A, the lead from the coil was too short The original lead had to be patched up for now and will be reused until a genuine replacement lead arrives Moving along, since the driveline was now fitted, I could finally refit the shifter assembly. This is fairly straightforward, although make sure all the slotted bolts on the top and bottom are loose when fitting, otherwise you won't be able to fit the fixed rod onto the gearbox. Bolted in place with the new, correct rubber boot I never had the shift boot, though, as the car was missing it and had some weird rubber thing instead So with calipers in hand, Fusion installed, and a 3D printer, I made a little bracket Which screws into the underside of the console, sandwiching a universal "leather" boot in place I'm not in love with the cheap knob, but I'm pretty happy with how the boot looks and works. Much better than the stock floppy rubber boot that is meant to be fitted, too Next on the hit list was to replace the right front fog/indicator lamp, as a stone had hit it at some point and damaged it It turns out there was actually a chunk of glass floating around inside the light I grabbed a cheap replacement off Yahoo Japan. It was listed cheaply as "damaged" since the park light connector was damaged. The light itself is perfect I swapped the wiring, including my less-damaged connector from the damaged lamp to the new one And fit it to the bumper Finally, in preparation for the first start, I refit the exhaust. I started by removing the old rear muffler, as it was patched multiple times, filled with rust and just not going to cut it. It's a shame, I quite like the twin pipe outlet (there is a nice stainless Suzuki Sport muffler with twin outlets, but they are rare and expensive now) I then moved forward and began fitting the center pipe. Thankfully, the previous owner managed to save this, as when I got the car, it was missing, and turns out it was left with the engine builder who was looking at it, going "wtf does this go to?". I wasn't looking forward to forking out the cash on a new one. It also appears someone has previously cut out the cat, which is a good thing, given it would be nothing but a restriction these days I cleaned up the flanges, fitted a new hanger rubber and hung the pipe from it. Right up the front, I bolted it to the downpipe with a new sealing doughnut and bolts/springs. This was quite fiddly as the genuine bolt was short and hard to get started. I ended up leaving one bolt loose, pulling the pipe to the opposite side, using a jack to hold it there and then installing the other bolt. Finally, I could move to the back and install this glorious piece of stainless steel A Monster Sport Type SP-X muffler. This is one of the few mufflers that doesn't compromise ground clearance and goes over the rear beam, instead of under it. Before fitting, I gave the main muffler and the tip a quick rub down Being a quality JDM product, it bolted up first time, perfectly I really look forward to hearing what it sounds like. I have heard some examples online, but it won't be the same as hearing it in person. I think that's pretty much it for now. I'm waiting on a new radiator to arrive from Japan, and then we'll be going for a first start and run up to temp. Shouldn't be long now. Parts Used Fan Switch Plug - Sumitomo 6189-0033 Ignition Lead Set - NGK RC-SE41 (Coil Lead too short) Ignition Lead Separator - Suzuki 33881-82011 and 09408-00104 Please note these parts are specific to my car and may vary. Please check before ordering.

Of course the clutch pedal assembly had been bodged by a previous owner. Why wouldn't it have been? I noticed it a while ago, whilst putting the missing clevis back in the brake pedal, that the clutch pedal was a bit... weird. First, it was missing the correct C clip, instead someone had just hung an incorrectly sized circlip on the shaft, which promptly fell off. It should have a clip like this Second, the pedal had been welded together. From what I have gathered, looking at diagrams, the clutch pedal is from a first-generation mid-late 80s Alto. None of the newer Altos use this style pedal. I don't love bodges, particularly on things like pedals. So, from the same HA11S at Pick A Part I got the coolant pipe from, I also sourced a complete manual pedal box. I had seen on some Japanese sites that the H Chassis pedal box will fit and work, it just needs some processing. What, I wasn't sure of yet. My original plan, since I didn't want to remove the pedal box from the car, was to remove just the pedal and swap them over. The one in the car was easy, since the clip was missing. I just unhooked the clutch cable, popped the spring off and slid the pedal off The pedal was way more butchered than I expected Compared to the replacement pedal I removed Unfortunately, the H chassis (donor) pedal doesn't fit the (butchered) C chassis (my car) pedal box. The pivot for the pedal is longer on the C chassis and doesn't use bushes. It also has different limiters for the pedal travel, using the arm at the top of the C chassis pedal to stop the pedal, whilst the newer H chassis has limiters further down the pedal, with nice little pads. This does mean that I had to remove the pedal box anyway. It's held in place by two vertical bolts and four nuts holding the brake booster in. The column center bearing is also attached to the pedal box with two studs/nuts. Original C Chassis box on the left (with new pedal attached) and newer H Chassis box on the right It's kind of weird, it almost looks like the clutch part of another pedal box has been welded onto this pedal box... The brake pedal switch needed to be swapped between the two, as one switch was 2 pin and the other 4 pin. This is just held in with a lock nut and then the switch is screwed into the pedal box The switch also sets the brake pedal height at rest Getting the pedal box in and out is zero fun. I hate working under dashes, particularly around the column, which just flopped around and got in the way After a few tries of getting the new pedal box into place, finding the insulator pad fouling it, cutting some of that away to clear the box, I then found out what "Processing" the box needs... H chassis on the left, C chassis on the right. The vertical bolt spacing of the newer pedal box is different. After some measuring, I grabbed the Dremel and cut out some metal. In hindsight, it would be neater looking and maybe a bit stronger if I had drilled an oversized hole where it needed to be cut Regardless, I checked it lined up and fit, quickly coated the bare metal in some paint, and fit the pedal box. I used a couple of large washers on the upper bolts to spread the load. Other than those two bolts, it all bolts in place good, everything hooks up fine, and it seems to operate as it should.

One of the big hold-ups with the Alto was that the fuel tank was... less than ideal. I knew it wouldn't be in good shape, since the car had been sitting for years, but I had no idea what I was dealing with, so I needed to drop the tank. I couldn't risk the injectors getting clogged with rust. I could tell there was some fuel in it, and the gauge said it was "full", but could I trust it? Using a hand pump, I fed the hose in until it was in the fuel (which was surprisingly hard to do), and started pumping But I only managed to pump out about 5 litres or so. No matter what I did, the pump was coming up dry The fuel stank. It was old, but not 2012 old, and seemed relatively clear. Given that, I knew the tank wasn't completely empty, but the only option was to drop it anyway. I carefully removed the four bolts holding it in place, cut/removed the fuel hoses, removed the filter, undid the fill hose and breather and then lowered the tank on the jack. Turns out, it was actually pretty heavy.... certainly not empty. I started draining the rest of the tank by pouring it out through the inlet, and when that no longer worked, I removed the pump and sender and used a small hand pump to pump out the rest. Turns out, it was full to the brim with 30L of fuel. Stinky old stale fuel. The fuel pump gave me my first idea of what the inside of the tank was like. A bit crusty. It's also interesting to note that it's an upgraded DW200 pump, albeit it's seized solid. With the tank drained, I took it outside into the sun and had a good look inside it The pickup baffle was coated in surface rust, and the rest of the bottom of the tank was covered in a sticky fuel varnish There was a rusty tide mark about halfway up the tank. I suspect that for the first decade of sitting, it had half a tank in it, and as part of the previous owner's investigations to get the car running, the tank was drained and completely filled with fresh fuel. So that's where I got up to, for a couple of months. I ordered a replacement fuel pump to suit a Nissan S15 Spec S (non-turbo SR20DE) as I had heard this was a plug-and-play upgrade with a little more headroom than stock. I also rang the local radiator place to see if they could give the tank a clean out, but they were very non-committal and didn't seem keen to do it without "seeing it first". In the end, I ordered a KBS tank reconditioning kit to suit a "large" 45L motorcycle tank. I had previously used this kit on my old Yamaha tank, and it seemed to work well and was easy enough to use. It includes a cleaner, a rust killer and the actual liner, along with some gloves and instructions. I took the tank outside, and using duct tape, sealed up all the holes except the one I needed to pour the cleaner into first. Pouring in the required mix of 1:1 solution and hot water, I sealed the tank and alternated between sloshing it around and letting it sit. It was a lot of physical work to slosh the tank around so much. After the required time, I drained the tank and washed it out. I was pretty darn impressed, almost all of the varnish on the bottom of the tank was gone, and the metal was left very clean, albeit the surface rust was now obvious I did two rounds of cleaning to get it as good as I could. Before pouring in the next step, the rust killer, the tank needed to be dried out. I did this by stuffing a heat gun into the filler and got the tank hot Once the tank was dry, I moved onto the next step, pouring in the rust killer and then leaving it to sit, rotating the tank to a different side every 5 mins or so. I did this for about an hour, whilst doing other work on the car. This was then drained out, and the tank was thoroughly rinsed and then dried again The final step is to pour in the liner and slosh the tank around a lot, to make sure it coats all sides and gets in all the gaps. It took an age to start setting, and it seemed almost impossible to get the excess out, so I had to keep it moving around for a few hours. When moving it around, I had to be really careful as it seemed to have a habit of pouring through the holes at the bottom of the pickup baffle, and I couldn't risk them blocking up. In the end, I got the whole tank nicely coated, and the excess settled on the bottom of the tank. As an aside, whilst the tank was hot and soaking, I gave the top half a quick wire brush and blow over to make it more presentable. After a few days of drying, I was ready to refit the pump and sender. First, I needed to replace the pump and refresh the sender. I stripped the pump hanger The old and new pumps and the replacement filter bag (from Toyota, as this is apparently the same as the original Alto one; interestingly, it's the same as the one that came with the new pump). I should mention the reason I didn't use any genuine Suzuki bits for the pump was that none of it is available separately; it's only available as a now obsolete complete assembly. Checking the pump wiring, and it didn't look that hot. The ground screw was pretty crusty and the power feed had been badly crimped I cleaned up the ground screw and threads, and crimped a new terminal on for the feed wire Using the new little star clip thing, I fit the new filter to the pump This isolator is pretty old and crusty, but I couldn't find a replacement. Annoyingly, I had a problem where if I mounted the pump correctly, with the O-Ring in the top seated, the pump wasn't sitting on the isolator. It's the same size as the old pump, but if I pulled it down so it was seated on the isolator, the O-ring was barely engaged. I couldn't risk the o-ring leaking and losing fuel pressure. Looking around at what others have done, the solution was to cut off the O-ring receiver and replace it with a submersible fuel hose instead. So I ordered some hose Took the victim to the dirty bench And using a Dremel cut-off wheel, whizzed it off. Afterwards, I flared the end of the pipe a little by rolling a screwdriver around inside the pipe and putting pressure on the edge, just to give the hose something to bite into, not that it has anywhere to go if it did slip down This allowed me to mount the pump correctly A new seal was slipped over and fitted in place Before fitting it, I also took a look at the fuel sender. Using a multimeter, I checked it and found some wonky readings about halfway through the range. You can also see the tide mark of where the float was sitting all those years. I hosed brake cleaner through the gaps, and after actuating it, it got a bit better, but I really needed to open it up Using a small flatblade, I very carefully levered up the tabs holding the cover on and removed it You can see some buildup on the wires in the middle Using a fibreglass brush, I carefully cleaned up the wires and the face of the arm that contacts them. Testing showed that it was consistent across the range again I refitted the cover, gave everything a good clean and used a new seal and some new screws, I refitted the sender and pump to the tank As both were fitted now, I could refit the new hoses and wiring I then refitted the refurbished tank to the car Including a new fuel filter and new hoses I haven't had a chance to test anything, other than the pump before fitting, but hopefully I will be able to get some fuel into the tank soon, ready for its first start.

Pretty much the only way I have been able to own some of the cooler stuff I have. Future owners get all the benefits of my work 😅

I wonder if the shudder in first, down on power and rough idle is a misfire? My last legacy was missing a complete cylinder (bad coil) and other than being down on power and a wobbly idle you could barely tell it was misfiring. it still drove fine and was surprisingly smooth otherwise.

As mentioned in the previous update, the gearbox needed some attention. Nothing is straightforward, though. With the box on the bench, it was quite easy to give it a quick freshen up, ready to go into the car. The first thing that I needed to do was to replace the axle seals. There was a note on the gearbox when I got it that said "driver's axle seal leaky". Interestingly, this one appeared to be rusting under the rubber. Looking at the photo, it looks like it's deformed the sealing lip too. A quick pop with the seal removal tool and out it came. The bearing appeared fine. Some old gear oil varnish on it in places, but spun ok. The new seal tapped nicely into place The other side got the same treatment The main thing I needed to sort was the clutch fork, though. This particular gearbox setup requires a slightly unusual clutch release bearing setup, involving a retainer (#5) for the bearing (#4) and two clips (#7) to hold it onto the fork (#6). This is so when you release the clutch, the bearing is pulled away from the pressure plate and isn't constantly engaged, or just rattling around. Annoyingly, when I received the car, it didn't have any of this. Someone had previously fitted the newer-style bearing, which has an integrated retainer and requires a fork with a little pin (#6) for the bearing to slot over, which pulls the bearing away. Without this pin, the newer style bearing just floats around when not being pressed by the fork. The solution was simple. Mark the bearing's travel when it operates, and drill a small 2.5mm hole in the fork for a genuine pin. Before I could do this, I actually had to remove the fork from the box. It's held in place with a lower bearing and seal, which need to be removed. I have previously done a similar job when I did the clutch on my old Swift Sport, which uses a similar setup. With that, I used a cut-up socket as a driver to knock the bearing out. Of course, I can't find that bit of socket now, so I probably threw it out, thinking I'll never need that again. I removed the lever from the bottom of the fork, marking its location first. And then this time, I used a pin punch to knock the bearing and seal out the bottom. I could only get the bearing knocked down so far with that So out came the old vice grips, and I twisted it back and forth until it came out With the bearing removed, unhook the spring, and the fork can be wiggled out of the top bearing and removed from the gearbox I checked the travel, marked the location and zinged a hole through the fork Which allowed me to carefully knock this pin into the hole Which allows the bearing to do this. The pin is just a retainer to pull the bearing back with the fork; the curved pads on the fork do the actual work for actuating the clutch It was then a case of cleaning the fork and top bearing, greasing the bearing, fitting the fork back in and using a deep socket to knock the new, greased-up, bottom bearing in place. The bearing needs to go deep enough that the seal can also go in on top New seal tapped into place Modified fork refitted, with spring in place With the clutch lever refitted, there was one last thing to do before we were done. Which was to fit the nice new Monster Sport mount, modified in a previous post Moving on to the car itself now, in preparation for fitting the lump back in, I removed the front subframe. I removed the four remaining bolts for the front swaybar (which was previously left disconnected from the lower arms), and removed it. Only six bolts are holding the whole thing in. Two on either side, and two at the rear. Remove these and down comes the subframe. There are only a couple of other small steps, with a few more bolts, and you end up with this. A walk-in engine bay, perfect for sliding an engine up into Of course, there were some things to fix before that happened, here too. One was a general clean with some cleaner and degreaser, the other was to replace the vacuum hoses on the firewall solenoids I removed them, and once on the bench, I realised why the hoses had that weird saggy look The hoses had gone soft, gummy and swollen I cut up some new hoses to replace them With a little tweaking of the length, they look much better. Sadly, the pair of moulded hoses are obsolete, so I will need to reassess what to do with them at a later date. Moving back to the subframe, it was covered in grease and oil With some sneaky rust under the rubber mounts Up on the bench, I wanted to replace the worn-out old bushes The front hardware to the crossmember wasn't looking so hot The rears were a bit better, but not by much. With all the bushes removed, I took both parts outside and gave them a thorough degrease and scrub to get the worst of the grime off. Once they were mostly dry, I fit the new bushes. Working on the front, the bottom halves get pressed into place first Followed by the top halves, which slot over the bottom half And finally, a new crush tube, which was slathered in silicone grease Same deal on the rears, except these are fitted opposite, the press through bush goes in from the top, and the slip over bush goes on the underside. This is because at the front the bolts go downwards, and the rears go upwards. All bushes have large washers that go under the bolt heads. After a quick meeting with the tap and die set, to clean up the threads, of which most were a bit iffy The subframe was reassembled. Since the gearbox and subframe were ready, it was time to get the engine off the stand and reunite it with the gearbox. Not having an engine crane, not wanting to buy one, and being a fan of thinking outside the box, even if it'll make life harder for me, I came up with an option for getting the engine off the stand. A block and tackle. I looped a chain over the convenient beam in the garage and rigged it up. After a few spins of the chain, the engine was in the air, and the stand was removed. It was then carefully lowered onto its sump and some lifting blocks to steady it. With the rear of the engine accessible, the flywheel could finally go on. I had this skimmed when I last had the block in at the machinists, and it came out really well. I cleaned the oil off it and tapped a new bearing into place The new clutch was then removed from its box, and the pressure plate was cleaned Using my high-tech alignment tool that came with one of my past Rovers, I aligned the clutch disc to the pressure plate The flywheel was then bolted to the engine, and the bolts torqued to spec Next was the clutch assembly, which was bolted on and also torqued to spec Thankfully, the gearbox is fairly light, so after some wiggling around, it slipped into place and got bolted down. This only just slipped in under the temp sensors on the thermostat housing. This meant the starter could be cleaned and fitted Someone had painted, badly, the starter black at one point I attacked it with brake clean and a wire brush and got it looking a bit better. This lives in the depths down the back of the engine, completely invisible, so who knows why they did that. Same with painting the gearbox, badly, in silver... too many rattle cans, not enough brain cells. Of course, I'm not a complete idiot, I did bench test the starter to check that it actually functioned before I buried it in the most inaccessible place in the engine bay. It took some real jiggling and twisting to fit it into its home with the sensor adaptor in place. Very little room Starting to look a lot more meaningful This is the elusive manual-specific coolant pipe that a legend on the Old School forums grabbed for me from Pick A Part. Without being the one who removed it, going by what's left in the tubs, the coolant pipes were previously just bodged together with the old cut up auto pipe and some random hoses. New Monster Sport mounts also found their way onto the front and back of the engine. As a side note, don't be like me and forget to install this little brace from the gearbox to the engine mount bracket. It bolts in from the starter side and requires the starter to be unbolted to get the bolt in. That's it all pretty much complete now. So I thought, "Well, I guess I should put it on the subframe", and after some wrangling with chains, onto the subframe it went, and the engine mounts were bolted down. To move it around and get it into the engine bay, I screwed some casters a friend lent me to a reasonable-sized board. This allowed me to lower the assembly onto this and secure it with a ratchet strap. It was balanced on there pretty well, and I would use this to jack up with my floor jack. "Well, I'd better just slide it over under the car so it's ready to be lifted" And that's where the ADHD hyperfocus grabbed me, and suddenly this happened. "I wonder if the jack fits under it" Short answer, yes, it fits. And so did the engine, into the engine bay. Oops. Damn, it looks good in there, though Other than being bolted in place, nothing else is connected. There's still a long way to go, but this is a huge milestone.

I left off the last instalment with a head on the block, but no oil pump, so I couldn't finish the assembly. I was pretty pleased when this finally arrived from Japan. A genuine new oil pump assembly. It came with a new, updated metal gasket It's interesting to note that there are some casting differences between the new and old pumps The biggest difference to note is that the new pump doesn't have a threaded boss on the right-hand/exhaust side. I'm not 100% sure, because mine is missing, but I think it's used for the mounting of the AC compressor on the Alto. So if you want to retain AC, you might not be able to use the newer oil pump like this. It's also worth noting that the new oil pump did come with the thicker oil pump gears already fitted. Before fitting, I transferred the studs in the front from the old pump to the new one, using the double nut method. It didn't come with a crank seal, so this was fitted too. It was then just a matter of pouring oil into the pump and rotating it a few times to lubricate it, and then fitting it to the engine. I was careful to make sure the crank seal lip didn't catch on the crank when fitting. I was lucky to find this bolt pattern someone on Minkara has helpfully drawn out So I used that and bolted mine on Nice to see a shiny new pump in place Next was to thoroughly clean the oil pickup from the Alto engine and fit a new o-ring to it. Interestingly, there appeared to be no metal in it, but some chunks of carbon and more horrible orange sealant were present This then got bolted to the oil pump, wrapping up the bottom end assembly, other than the sump Next was to fit the new water pump. I lightly smeared the gasket in Hylomar and slid it onto the studs Followed by the shiny new water pump With the bottom end mostly wrapped up, I could move on to finishing the top end, too. These lifters have been sitting in cups of fresh oil for a while now, since the manuals says you have to keep them upright to stop them from bleeding down. Before reusing them, I had to test, clean and bleed them. I had two sets, one from the Alto engine (the dirty ones in the white bowl, and the cleaner Cappuccino ones in the clear tray). I wanted to use the Cappo ones if I could, but I wanted to make sure I had some good ones from the Alto engine if I needed to swap any out. I started by finding a suitable Allen key that fit in the hole and could compress the ball bearing valve inside. I used this to repeatedly compress the adjuster until all the old oil had come out. I then immersed them in a cleaning fluid (it's meant to be kerosene, but I only had turpentine on hand) and again repeatedly compressed and expanded the adjuster, which flushed the inside of them out. This was repeated on all the adjusters, from both engines. The adjusters were then submerged in fresh oil, and using the Allen key, they were all actuated under the oil until the air stopped coming out It would've been quicker if I had a vacuum pot and could've just vacuumed the air out, but eventually I managed to bleed it all out. According to the manual, the way to test if they are good is to make sure they are bled, and then pressing the top of the lifter, make sure it is firm and does not compress by more than 0.2mm. If it does, bleed it again. If it still doesn't pass, replace it. Thankfully, after a couple of passes of bleeding, all the Cappuccino ones passed the test, and at least six of the Alto ones passed too (my backup crew). It was time to fit them into the head. Lining up the oil hole in the side with the oil passage in the head, I slid them into place one by one The rocker arms could go on next. I gave them all a clean, making sure the oil holes were clear. Unfortunately, I did find that one of the rockers had a damaged cam pad. These are meant to be smooth and shiny. This one had a spot that had worn through the face and was rough. Thankfully, the Alto engine managed to turn up a rocker arm that, although discoloured from a lack of servicing, had a good pad, and I could swap it out. The rocker arms were then fitted The cam boxes were next. I started by replacing the cam seals in the front Of course, though, it wouldn't be this project if there weren't a setback. Like, I'm really glad to have a donor engine, I needed it to overcome the issues the Alto engine had, but I'm starting to think maybe this donor wasn't the deal I thought it was. It turns out one of the cams was also damaged, with heavy wear on one of the cam lobes. Maybe related to the above damaged rocker, who knows. Again, the Alto engine came to the rescue. Although the cams had some surface rust, I managed to polish it out, and the cam could be used in place of the Cappo one. It is a shame, though, this was the cam on the Cappuccino engine that had been modified to add a pin for a cam position sensor, so I can't use that in future. I slid the cams into the boxes and replaced the breather hoses between them. The best length for the hose is 27-28mm. I then fit the new gaskets I rotated the cams to this position as per the manual. This ensures there is no load from the cams on the rocker arms when fitted. I then flipped the boxes over and slid them onto the dowels on the head. The bolts were torqued to 10NM in a crisscross inside-to-outside pattern, one cam box at a time. The new breather gasket was fitted, and the breather box was bolted into place The front cover got a quick refresh, with some new seals, before fitting In hindsight, I should've got some new grommets for the cover too, but the best of the two covers were fitted and will have to do. The cover was then bolted into place Which meant the cam gears could go on too. The blue block is a 3D-printed cam locking tool I found online. It was very handy for locking the cams together so I could torque the bolts up. Once the gears were torqued up to 60NM I carefully rotated everything so the marks lined up The new tensioner, screw and spring were fitted And the belt was wrangled into place. After rotating the engine over a couple of times and setting the tensioner, everything was lined up bang on. Finally, my first-ever timing belt was completed The sump went on next. I spent ages cleaning this out and getting all the old sealant off the flange. A bead of Threebond was squeezed on, and the pan was fitted into place. The bolts were torqued down, and that was done I glued up a crack in the front timing cover and fit a new seal to it Before fitting it to the engine The dipstick and tube got a good clean and were fitted with a new o-ring. Funnily enough, whoever worked on this last decided real o-rings were for the weak, so made one from sealant instead Whilst here, in preparation for the oil pressure/temp gauge that will be fitted, I test-fitted the temp sensor in the new drain plug Flipping the engine right way up and spinning around, the cap on the back of the cam and the distributor mount were refitted Looking much more like an engine now, with the breather hose installed too. Loving the wrinkle black and sanded off detail Since I was here, the thermostat housing studs were fitted Ready for these bits to go on The housing that the thermostat housing mounts to had a very rusty heater pipe I crushed it in a vice, and it pulled free from the housing I happened to have some spare 10mm steel tube, so I cut a section off that, and using some sealant, carefully hammered it into place. To stop the hose coming off, I welded a small bead onto the end (which got ground down a bit later as I added a bit too much metal) This housing goes here But needs new sensors first This one isn't in the books, and I'm pretty sure is something to do with the AC, which is no longer fitted, so it's pretty much just plugging a hole. The thermostat housing got a new fan switch And all fitted up with a new thermostat and ready to go The under intake outlet was fitted too, with a new hose linking the two Also, note the sensor under the outlet. These are the stock oil pressure idiot light sensor and an oil pressure sensor for the gauge, fitted to a brass adaptor There isn't a heck of a lot of room for the gauge wiring, but it just clears it. As you'll see later, the sender has to be upright like this, because on either side of the adaptor are the alternator, and the starter. Another part of the cooling system equation is the oil cooler/heat exchanger. Because this is from the Alto, not available new, and potentially had metal go through it, I cleaned it within an inch of its life. I started with an ultrasonic cleaner of degreaser, and then flushed it with petrol and brake cleaner. Nothing of concern seemed to come out of it, but at least I'm reasonably happy it's clean. That process did strip any remaining paint off it, though, so I finished it off and repainted it After a couple of coats of paint had dried, I removed the tape and fitted a new seal This was then attached to the block using the fitting I would recommend attaching it as far anti-clockwise as you can. There is a locating lug that goes on the block, but there is some play. If you have it clocked too far clockwise, the coolant pipes will clash with the turbo later. A temporary filter to seal it up And that's the block more or less done, but quickly, before I move onto the bolt-ons, I replaced the mismatched cam box and breather bolts with new matching black ones. I'm just that kinda weirdo. Moving on, I started with the turbo and exhaust manifold. I feel like the coolant hoses on the stock turbo weren't original... Since my stock VZ15 turbo was stuffed (heaps of play in the turbine), I had a Cappuccino VZ24 to replace it with. I need to swap the coolant pipe over Surprise, the wastegate actuator mount is different and clashes with the pipes The easiest fix, instead of bending the pipes, was to swap the actuators. I unbolted them from the turbos Fitted the pipes with a new gasket and bolts And fit the VZ15 actuator to the VZ24 I had two downpipes, as I bought one from Japan specifically so I could get this bracket that bolts the downpipe to the block, as mine was missing it And whilst going through all the threaded holes with a tap to clean them up (I did a lot of this), I found something curious on the flange where the exhaust mounts to the downpipe. Good thread WTF, where's my thread gone? I believe someone has drilled out a broken bolt at some point, as the hole was smaller than it should be. I don't know how long it's been like this; it didn't look fresh enough that it was done by the engine rebuilder when they stripped the Alto. So out comes the drill and trusty tap set. It drilled OK, but didn't love being tapped. Took a lot of time and effort to do, with lots of cutting lube. But now it has threads again Which means the new bolts fit (ignore the mismatch, I couldn't get a matching pair) Moving back to the turbo, pro tip, don't bolt it together off the car (as it's been mentioned, no, the orange isn't more shitty RTV, its high temp copper exhaust sealant to help seal a slightly iffy manifold flange) You can't get to the manifold bolts underneath with the turbo mounted. I had to remove it and bolt the manifold on first. Being able to rotate the engine makes life so much easier when fitting this. The turbo oil feed pipe was a real prick to get into place. They always seem so unwilling to bolt up. And right over we go for the oil drain I wish I had known about this before fitting the manifold and turbo. A broken off bolt in the manifold for the heat shield Nothing another quick drill and tap can't fix The cambelt cover coolant crossover pipes also got fitted, but before they could, I found one of the pipes was completely blocked solid. I ended up running some wire in a drill down the pipe until it cleared it This is why you need to clock the cooler properly; the pipes are too close to the turbo I clocked the cooler a bit better and then ran all new coolant hoses to the various pipes And the intake snout was fitted to the turbo (and the corrugated sleeve was moved to the other hose). It's very snug in there The turbo outlet pipe went on next Now the downpipe can be bolted on with a new gasket Bugger all room here too. I'm just glad I don't have a cat to trap heat there anymore This is the bracket I was missing that bolts the downpipe to the block. You can't really see it in the photos, but part of the engine mount bracket is also bolted in there With the exhaust done, I moved to the other side, the intake. This absolute mess The first job was to remove the EGR valve. I will delete this as I don't care about emissions on this car, and it will just clog the manifold with carbon. You can see how much carbon is blocking the passages already. I then completely stripped the manifold down. I wanted to test and clean the injectors while I was here. This gave me a chance to compare with the Cappuccino injector rail Cappuccino Rail Alto Rail I think they are close enough that with some tweaks, the Cappo one could work on an Alto, but I'm happy with the Alto one for now, so I'm using that. The main difference seems to be that on the Cappo you can replace the damper on the fuel inlet, but the Alto one is part of the rail. I removed the Alto injectors and gave them a session in the ultrasonic cleaner, before fitting them to my new injector testing tool The injectors press into this adaptor, which you stick on the top of a can of brake cleaner. It takes about five hands to do, so no photos of it in action, but as you push down on the blue adaptor onto the top of the brake cleaner, it pressurises the adaptor and injector. The two wires go to the tool and trigger the injector, letting pressurised fluid through it It worked pretty well. All the Alto injectors have a decent spray (for the ancient type of single-hole injector they are). Interestingly, all the Cappo injectors were actually jammed closed, and required a bit of percussive persuasion to get them to open. As part of the fuel rail, I removed and tested the pressure regulator to make sure it held a vacuum, which it did Another part of the intake that got a thorough cleaning was the throttle body. This spent some time in the ultrasonic before a final clean Cleaning the intake and attached components was hours of work; it was so grotty. The first part to be reassembled on the manifold was the EGR blanking plate and gasket The injectors were next. I fit new seals in the manifold and new seals to the injectors (strangely, not shown, are the top seals, which I did fit) The injectors were then fitted to the rail, and the lot bolted onto the manifold A Toyota part is a direct fit for the vacuum filter on the end of the manifold, so that was fitted I cleaned the wiring harness and fitted that next All the vacuum hoses on top of the manifold were replaced I have no idea what the deal with this hose that comes off the tee is. Its factory, and just dangles down the back of the manifold and is blocked with what appears to be a brake pedal clevis All the hoses were cracking in this area, so it's good to replace them With a new gasket, the throttle body could be bolted back on Which allowed me to bolt the vacuum pipes back on On the underside, the coolant hoses were replaced This vacuum Eff (the Tees weird cousin) connects the filter on the manifold to the MAP sensor and the fuel pressure regulator. It's worth noting that for whatever reason, the hose that goes to the FPR has a restrictor in it I put a new restrictor in the new Eff when I made it Which goes here This whole little cluster is for the EGR and the BOV, so I have deleted it for now. The BOV will connect right to the vacuum fitting on the manifold instead of being solenoid-controlled. Which means the manifold can be bolted to the engine again, and the coolant and wiring hooked back up I should've fixed this on the bench, but oh well. The coolant temp sender for the dash had been "modified" in the past So I cut the spade terminal off the harness, and added some new wire Which I terminated with a new bullet connector for the sender I also fitted the rear engine mount bracket at this point. The front one can't go on ye,t as half of it bolts to the gearbox, which is still absent Next was the alternator and its associated wiring. Now you get an idea of how little room there will be around the oil sensors. The starter motor still has to fit in there, on the left, too This will be spun by a lovely new Vee belt. I love the simplicity. One belt drives one device. No AC, no PS pump, and the water pump is off the cambelt. The final piece of the puzzle on the engine for now was the distributor. It turns out the old cap and rotor are well beyond their best, which is fine, I have new ones, but the old rotor was rusted to the shaft. It ended up snapping before letting go I cleaned the shaft up, greased it and fit a new rotor And with a new o-ring on the base, the distributor was slotted into place on the engine. The engagement dog can only go one way as its offset. I've refitted the old cap for now, until the engine is in the car, as I don't want to risk breaking the new cap during that work. So that's it. The engine is built. It's ready to go in the car and be started. Hours of work, thousands of dollars. It better work. Now I'm prepping the gearbox for its reunion party, and then I'll drop the subframe and see about getting it all together and then up into the car. In the mean time, as a little teaser, I will leave you with this photo.

looks like its the trans mount for a 100 series Hi-Ace. A quick google shows a 200 series hi-ace mount might work? https://cartune.co.jp/notes/5TcC2wXkxG I believe its this one, but double check before ordering anything https://www.amayama.com/en/part/toyota/1238030030

Im still amazed the bores cleaned up so well, they looked worse than my Alto ones. Couple of pro-tips - If you have a flatbed scanner, you can chuck a flat thing like that throttlebody on it and scan the flange to get a perfect copy of the gasket. Print it out, cut it out of gasket paper, job done. Second, one of the reasons you might've been struggling with the Phillips screws, is they probably werent Phillips but JIS instead. They will usually have a little dot on the head to indicate they are. JIS drivers are worth their weight in gold for old JDM stuff.

With the rods all balanced and ready to fit, it was time to begin further assembling the engine. Since I had the engine machine shop fit the crank for me, I checked the torque on the main caps and before fitting the block to the engine stand, fitted the rear main seal (as it's hard to access after fitting the bracket for the stand). I started by knocking the old seal out of the retainer and giving it a clean The new seal then got tapped into place To protect the seal from catching on the crank during fitting, I cut up an old water bottle and used it as a sleeve to slide the seal onto the crank, not forgetting the new gasket, of course I then refitted the bolts and a pair of new screws, torquing the bolts to the required 10NM. Once the excess gasket was trimmed off the bottom, the engine stand bracket was attached and onto the stand the block went This allowed me to flip the block around when needed, like fitting the pistons, which was next. The machine shop also measured, gapped and fitted the rings to the pistons, so all I needed to do was spin the rings around and align them correctly. Its more or less the same thing as the Suzuki manual, but I chose to go with the Greddy instructions to align the rings. What you're trying to achieve is having no two rings with the gap in the same place, otherwise oil and compression can slip on by the ring. I carefully spun the rings around to the required places, and then fit my ring compressor To protect the crank, I used some rubber hose slipped over the studs on the big end The piston and rod then got carefully lowered into the block, making sure the arrow on the top was pointing towards the front. Once the ring compressor was touching the top of the deck I pressed down on it, so that all the layers of the compressor were touching and there were no gaps (or a ring could pop out before it goes in the block). Using the plastic handle of my soft face hammer, I slowly tapped the piston down into the block until the compressor popped off. The rubber hoses guide the rod onto the crank, but it helps to guide it by hand too I did a quick check with Plastigauge to make sure the new rod clearance was fine, which it was The rod was then carefully pushed back up and lubricated with engine assembly lube, before sliding it back down and fitting the cap, torqued to 35NM Mmm shiny The rest of the rods were lubed up, and fitted into the block With the rotating assembly finally reassembled, and rotating nice and smooth, I could give the oil pump a quick check and fit the new gears I ordered, to replace the damaged ones found in my last post This is what I started with. I suspect the donor Cappo engine had a leak or two Using a mix of the ultrasonic cleaner, brake cleaner and a tooth brush, it got a bit better I pressed the new crank seal in I had the new gears, and a pressure relief valve kit to go into the housing The relief valve is held in place with a circlip. There is spring pressure behind it, so take care when removing the clip Nice shiny new gears I oiled everything up, and fit the new gears You can't really see from the photo, but this is where I suddenly found that unknown to me, there was a supersession to the oil pump in about 1994, which obviously changed the width of the internal gears, as they were thicker than the stock ones and had no chance of fitting. They stick out well proud of the back of the pump. The old gears were 6.5mm thick, whilst the new ones are 8mm Old gears on the left. 16130-70B01 does not fit early oil pump housings. Hopefully that stops someone else from making the same mistake. So that sucks. I have managed to source a new complete oil pump, of the newer updated number, from Japan, and I'm currently waiting on that to ship to NZ. There are some differences with the pump, which I will go into when it arrives, but they have been used on Cappo engines to replace the older pump. With that disappointment behind me for now, it was time to build the head. I 3D printed this pretty cool parametric head component holder I found online, after some tweaking to suit my needs All the valves were pretty clean over all, just some carbon which cleaned up with upper cylinder cleaner and a wire brush I spun the valves in my drill to help clean them with the wire brush The head was looking very nice after the machine shop gave it a skim and clean Speaking of cleaning, I was disappointed to find that like the block, they didnt remove the oil gallery plugs. I flipped the head over at one point and a sizeable chunk of swarf from the skimming dropped out. I removed all the gallery plugs and found a concerning amount of metal in the oil galleries I hosed all the galleries out with brake cleaner until everything came out clean. There was still a surprising amount of sludge buildup in the feed for the hydraulic lifters too. The plugs all got refitted with some loctite to seal them. It's a good reminder that even if you pay someone to clean a component, make sure you go through and give it a good final clean yourself. That metal in the oil galleries could've swiftly killed this freshly rebuilt engine. With the head flushed I set about lapping in the valves. The kit comes with both coarse and fine grinding paste Basically, the idea is that you put this grinding compound, which is paste with grit in it, on the valve, and use it to grind the valve face into the valve seat, for a better sealing. I had two valves that failed my test before disassembly, so this gives me the chance to fix that. Grinding paste on the head of the valve. Make sure no grinding paste gets on the stem of the valve, or it'll be grinding into things you dont want ground. I started with the coarse compound before moving onto the fine. There are plenty of videos online of how to lap valves by hand, so I won't go too far into it, but I will say that when you think you're done, you probably arent. In saying that, you can actually lap valves too far and end up needing them to be reground. What you're looking for is a nice uniform band of grey around the valve, like the one on the right (left is untouched). The F6A spec is 1.1-1.3mm width for that band. I had some trouble with the supplied sticks, since the smallest suction cup only just fit the valves. The ones in the kit were also straight with no shape, whilst digging around in my roll cab I found some that had more of a shape like this, which was much nicer to use This is the sort of finish you're aiming for when lapped in I thought I was done on this one, but testing showed it leaked. The dark grey spots are all very fine pitting in the seat, which allows it to leak. Thats what we're trying to remove. A little more work and the spots were mostly gone, and the valve was sealing Once all the valves were lapped, I cleaned the head thoroughly to remove any excess grit To test the valve sealing, I flipped the head back over, installed all the valves without springs or seals, and filled the chambers up with WD40, as this is a very thin oil, so if it was going to leak anything, this should find a way. I left it for just over 24 hours like that, and it passed with no leakage. Keep in mind last time I tested it before disassembly, with thicker coolant, and springs fitted, I had two valves that leaked. I cleaned all the WD40 out, removed the valves and cleaned everything again. Now it was time to flip the head over and assemble it The lower spring seats must go on first, as they do not fit over the stem seals Next was fitting the stem seals I've seen people improvise tools to fit these, and damage them, but I couldnt afford to damage any (I had a couple of spares just in case anyway), so bought a tool for the job I used the smallest fitting, oiled it up and slipped the seal in until the shoulder is supported And gently pressed it into the head. Two clicks and it will be correctly seated Very quick and easy to do, and perfect results each time Lots of plastic waste though, since each seal is individually packaged All seals fitted Before going any further, I wanted to quickly swap out the exhaust manifold studs with the new ones I purchased. A combo of vice grips and double nuts removed them Because the holes the studs go into arent blind, and are open to the inside of the head, the new studs come with thread sealant on them. One went in fine, but one of them actually stripped all the sealant off as it went in, so I removed it and used liquid sealant when refitting. Nice shiny new studs Back to the valves. The springs were next. As per the manual, each spring has a top and bottom end, with the bottom end against the head having tighter wound coils I made sure they were the right way around, and dropped the spring into the head, over the valve which had been oiled up and slipped into place The top retainer was placed on And then the spring compressor was fitted and wound down, so the collets could be slipped into place The collets are fiddly little buggers, but I got all of them locked in place eventually With the head assembled, there was only one thing for it. I cleaned the deck of the block up, tapped the dowels into place and dropped the new Monster Sport head gasket into place, checking all the oil holes line up correctly The head was then placed on, along with new head bolts. The bolts were torqued up to the required 60NM, in the required pattern (inside to outside, crisscross) and in steps of 20NM (do them all to 20, and then 40 and finally 60NM), And there we go, finally looking more like an engine again I couldnt help but try out my refreshed cam boxes Love the retro look of them, they should look awesome in the engine bay. Unfortunately until the oil pump arrives I'm at a little bit of a standstill with the engine. I don't want to assemble the cams until the bottom end is buttoned up, so it'll have to wait. There is plenty more going on in the background for the rest of the car, but motivation is lacking, so progress is a bit of a grind at the moment. Parts Used Conrod Nuts - 09159-08033 x6 Head Bolts - 11117-52E10 x8 Block Dowels - 04211-13189 x2 Valve Stem Seals - 09289-05012 x12 Valve Collets - 12932-24400 x24 Rear Main Seal - 092836-0009 Rear Main Screws - 02122-0625A x2 Rear Main Housing Gasket - 11349-73010 Exhaust Manifold Studs - 14118-81400 x2 Oil Pump Gears - 16130-70B01 - DO NOT USE ON EARLY PUMP Oil Pump Cover Screws - 02122-06167 x5 Oil Pressure Relief Valve Kit - 16150-60A20 Please note these parts are specific to my car and may vary. Please check before ordering.

I haven't posted much recently, but things have been happening in the background, namely a slow but steady engine rebuild. To start us off, I got the block back from the machine shop. This time I had the crank machined, so the main bearings were within tolerance, and the new +0.25mm oversize (undersize?) bearings fitted. They also checked the crank thrust run out, which was well within spec with the new standard bearings. This meant I could finally move onto the rebuild proper. Unfortunately, like everything on this car, I got quickly stopped in my tracks. I thought, hey, it'd be cool to check the weights of the rods and see if they need any work to balance them and get them close to the same weight. I'm glad I did. So I grabbed the kitchen scales, and placed the rods on one by one. Cylinder 1 rod Cylinder 2 rod and the new genuine rod for Cylinder 3 Ideally, if you're balancing the rods and matching them, you want them within around 1 gram of each other. The two stock rods were already 2g apart, but the brand-new rod was a further 7g heavier. That made it 9g heavier than the lightest rod and that is way too different for an engine that will be turning to 9000RPM regularly. For reference, this is the old Cylinder 3 rod that has damaged by the cracked piston pin and had to be replaced Basically the same as Cylinder 2. Interestingly, despite being the same part number, and looking visually identical, this is one of the rods from the original Alto engine All of these were way too gone to reuse, but it's interesting to note regardless. As a side note, the Greddy pistons were all identical at 182g each Moving along, so what's the deal with the new rod? It turns out Suzuki superseded the conrod to the later K6A rods, which have a couple of pretty major differences. The first is that the oil squirter is no longer just a hole in the side that vaguely shoots oil somewhere it's now a bigger, raised area at the base of the rod which points the oil jet upwards The second major area is in the middle of the rod, where the text is. Its now on raised platforms. So what do I do? I could replace the other two rods, at nearly $300 a piece, but since they're heavier I would then need to have the crank balanced to match. Or, I could go full caveman with tools, and make it match. I chose option 2. Make it work. Now, I didn't realise it until I went deep into the rabbit hole, but you can't just take material off anywhere on the rod until the total weight matches, you need to know which end the weight is on, and take it from there. This is because the top of the rod only really goes up and down, whilst the bottom of the rod has rotation inertia. The weight at the bottom of the rod is the most important, but it all matters. To do this, you need a tool that hangs the rod and lets you precisely measure the weight of each end, without the other end affecting it. Normally, you'd pay hundreds for a tool to do this, but because of the advancements in technology, I have a perfectly capably 3D printer sitting at home, and for a small fee I could buy the plans for a tried and tested jig to use. These guys made a great video on how to use it, and sell the files you need to print it. https://2trackmind.com/products/connecting-rod-balancer-jig-3d-print (not sponsored, it's just good) After some tweaking because my rods were too small for the adaptors, and about 7 hours of printing, I had a tool I set the jig up and hung a rod off it There are a lot of variables, and every little thing can change the results, so later on I actually taped both the jig and the scales to the table so I could get repeatable results. I also replaced the kitchen scales with much more accurate scales (for illicit items, according to the guy at the brewing shop, who totally believed me when I said they were for weighing car parts) that can measure a fraction of a gram. This is the big end of rod 1 and rod 2 They're pretty darn close. Close enough I won't bother to change them. The new rod 3 though... It certainly ate all the pies. I then flipped the rig around and tested the little end of the rods Cylinder 1 and 2 and rod 3 5 grams heavier than the other rods. That's a lot of weight to take out of the little end. With a bastard file, a power file and a Dremel with a grinding stone, I got to work cutting the weight out. Now, there are rules about how and where to take off the weight. It must be smooth, and ideally either in dead weight like casting lines, or places that won't impact the strength of the rod. In my case I started by shaving down the sides of the big end/bearing cap, where there was some extra material, but it wasn't until I started to shave down the casting marks down the sides that I really got the gains. This is what I ended up with I also carefully smoothed down the text in the middle of the rod. I didn't want to go too deep as that could impact the strength The bearing cap got a slight tickle too After a ton of measuring and going back and forth from the messy area I got the new Cylinder 3 rod identical to the Cylinder 2 rod The little end was still about 2.6g heavier than the other rods, but I was out of material that I was comfortably to remove from there, so I opted to take it from elsewhere on the rod. So the new rod now matches both the current Cylinder 2 rod, and the old Cylinder 3 rod, which is good enough for me. After a real thorough clean, it was time to install the fancy Greddy forged pistons These little retaining clips for the pistons pins were a pain to install I have no idea if It's what It's for, but the cutout in side left side and the slight notch on the right side of the hole made installing the clip easier I placed the clip in the notches, and then using my fingers pushed the open end of the clip down, which got it mostly into place A gentle poke with a pick and it would pop into the groove. As per the workshop manual, the opening in the clip needs to either be at the bottom, or top, not the side. After lubing up the piston pin, and installing it and the piston on the rod, the other clip gets installed. I then installed the new big end bearings. I used a genuine set ordered from Japan for these. Make sure the area the bearing sits in is clean and free from any oil and then the bearing just snaps in place. The cap then got placed back on, ready to be installed on the crank. Take note to install the cap the right way around, it should match the piston. In most cases, the cap and rod bearing tangs will be on the same side too, which is an easy way to remember. I now had a full set of pistons and rods ready to go I install these shortly, but unfortunately the rebuild kinda stalled a little after that thanks to the next curveball thrown my way. I stripped the two oil pumps I have, one from the Alto, and one from this Cappuccino engine The Alto one was trashed, despite being suspiciously clean on the outside So much scoring. It must've had a lot of metal go through it It really does go to show, there are no good parts on the old Alto short block, and it was a good idea to get a donor. Sadly the Cappuccino oil pump didn't completely avoid damage either It's significantly better, with no damage to the housing, but I noticed this on the gears. Minor indents where something has gone through the pump The good news is that you can still buy new genuine pump gears, so I have a set of those, and a rebuild kit for the relief valve on their way from Japan. It shipped about 20 mins ago, so should be here after the weekend. Once that arrives, I can push forward and really make up some time on building the engine. Parts Used Greddy Piston Set 65.5mm (+0.50mm) - 13596605 Taiho Main Bearing Set +0.25mm - M658A025 Suzuki Big End Bearings STD - 12181-54A50-0A0 x6 Suzuki Thrust Bearings STD - 12300-60840 Please note these parts are specific to my car and may vary. Please check before ordering.