kws

15 deg camber would be wild Coming to the design disasters thread soon.

NGL, was rooting for this one when I saw it. Man that brown is gorgeous. And then they ruined it.

I was under the (misguided?) impression that the seals in an R12 system aren't compatible with 134a and will leak, and all need to be replaced with newer ones?

I use it on my Android Auto in the car, mainly to see traffic flow, eta and for things like crashes and speed camera. Its handy, but wouldnt bother if i didnt already have android auto running.

Apart from the odd gentle clean, this thing is going to be pretty hydrophobic and won't be seeing water. Its got a dedicated space in the garage and will only be driven on nice days. It's pretty well rust-proofed around the work I've done, but yes, I'll be doing as much as I can to slow down any creeping cancer it has. I thought the door drain holes were fairly reasonable size, but I'll go back and have another look and see if I can enlarge them.

Like usual, it's been a while between updates, but progress has been progressing. Finally, we're reassembling the interior once and for all. I had been asked about and pondered for a while, on whether I would be sticking some sound deadener under the carpet on the new floor. I wasn't going to, but since I was here I grabbed some cheap no-name butyl stuff and got to work. The main places were the two footwells in the front The front of the tunnel under the heater The front wheel wells (where stones would hit) and finally, the rear footwells I'm not certain it will do anything, but even if it can stop the floors drumming, that's a win. It was reasonably easy to apply, although I did do it in winter so had to use a heat gun to get it and the metal warm so it would stick properly. I also grabbed a small rubber roller from the hardware store to roll it out. With my newly applied sound deadening in place, it was time to lay down some carpet underlay. I also stuck some underlay over the trans tunnel, hopefully to keep some noise and heat down. Now, it was the less fun part. The carpet. The very first part to go in was the rear bulkhead. This has to go in before the rest of the carpet since the main carpet will butt up against it. Thankfully, this was one section of carpet that still existed, even if it was some manky old faded house carpet. I carefully removed them and used them as a template on my new carpet. A little bit of jiggery pokery had the first bits of nice new carpet stuck in place Next, I did a quick test fit of the fitted carpet set. This was made by a local supplier. They had two options, UK or AU spec, but couldn't actually tell me what the difference was. I had hoped it was because the AU spec cars, like mine, have the seat rails welded to the floor, whilst the UK ones don't. The other option was that the later 025 AU spec cars have a bigger trans tunnel, which is more likely the difference, but they couldn't even confirm if that was the reason for the difference. In the end, I decided to take a punt on the UK spec carpet set as my trans tunnel is the small UK size. The test fit was promising. But before I got to work fitting it properly, I wanted to refit the rear seat as I'll need to climb into the car to do so, and would rather not be climbing on the new carpet. Since I was making the interior nice, I couldn't just refit the dirty old rear seat. I've never cleaned it in the years I have had it, and who knows how many decades it's been. With the help and advice of my wife, a bucket of hot water, rags, some Jif cream cleaner and a spinny brush on my drill, here's a quick half and half of the base This was quite satisfying as the vinyl was cleaning up really well. Its not even the same colour as before. Once it was clean, for the first time since I've owned the car I actually screwed the seat in place. The base is a bit of a pain. At the back there are two tabs which get screwed to the body And the front has these annoying hooks that go through holes in the body, and then get secured with nuts After a lot of stuffing around, I found the easiest way to fit the base was to get the hooks in place and loosely secured, by tipping the base forward. Then you tip the base down, and secure the screws at the rear. The back of the seat needed a clean next. This had some old contact adhesive running down the side Which after a lot of work, got a lot better. Not perfect, but its usable Once again, its a completely different colour to what it was There is quite a bit of sun damage to the top of the rear seat, and the vinyl just shatters when you so much as look at it, so I had to take a lot of care there. I need to find an OG tartan woollen blanket to drape over it like my old Marina. I have no idea why, but I have no photo of the rear seat completely installed, but the backrest went in easy enough. It hooks over tabs on the body, and then two screws through tabs on the bottom hold it in place. Now it was finally time to fit the carpet kit. I didn't particular enjoy this as it took something like 14 hours to do, and was not as straightforward as I had hoped for a "kit". The first problem was that there were zero holes in the carpet, which was a pain. I thought they would've pre-cut the shifter hole at least, and maybe the handbrake, but no. So to help get everything centered and aligned, I used some brown paper to make a template, and locate everything using the center bolt for the seatbelt receiver Once I was happy with the template, I transferred it to the carpet Then i started the scary bit, cutting the brand new carpet With the handbrake and bolt aligned, I made the first big I cut for the seat rail. I knew I would need to cut these four slots in the carpet, but it didn't make it any less scary A second seat rail appears I did the same on the other side, and using the same high temp ADOS glue as I used on the TVR, I carefully glued the carpet down. I didn't go too nuts, mainly sticking it down around the edges, not slathering the whole thing in glue. After that, it was time for the front half of the carpet. This was more of the same; cut a hole for the shifter, glue on the pieces that go on the wheel arches and in the footwell, and then slip the front section of the carpet into place. Oh and surprise, its a TC center console! I bought this on Facebook ages ago, the seller took my money then promptly ghosted me, after months, I thought it was lost forever but it turns out he was known to some absolute legends on a local forum, who paid him a visit and recovered the console for me. I know the car wasn't fitted with a console originally, but it wasn't fitted with carpet either, so lets just call it an upspec. The final step to fitting the car was to glue the front down, trim the door jams, and then fit the plates that clamp down the carpet The heal pad is a nice touch The biggest issue with the fitment, that you cant easily fix, is the wrinkles around the trans tunnel. This is caused by the cut and stitched sections designed to help it fit the tunnel, but its almost like my tunnel was too small and the inserts were sitting in the wrong place. No amount of tweaking was going to make it fit any better. In the end though, its 100x better than what was there before (nothing) or the house carpet it previously had, which rotted out from sitting. Its not perfect, but it's good enough for my Marina. What good is new carpet, if you don't have any front seats? I've had both seats in at some point, but for ages the passengers seat has been out of the car, and the drivers seat was only partly bolted in. Now we're going to fit them both, properly. First things first though, seatbelts. The car came with both old crusty belts, I took them out a couple of years ago, and had them rewebbed by an awesome outfit, Autosafe, who rewebbed the belts with new black webbing, cleaned up the hardware, and mixed and matched bits with some spare belts I supplied to make the best pair. Everything is properly tagged and certified, and comes with the relevant paperwork I had also sourced a pair of new old stock plastic covers for the top bolt, which has the integrated belt park. These came from the UK with the help of an awesome fellow Marina enthusiast The car came with one cover, along with a single bolt cap (missing from the new ones) I had considered the usual option of converting to retractable belts, but there is something about static belts in old cars for me. Its a novelty, even if its not practical. I gave the bolts and washers a quick cleanup and then fitted the belts And it clips nicely into the buckle With the belts installed and working nicely, it was time to clean the front seats and bolt them in. The drivers seat got the treatment first. This is in pretty average shape, with a couple of tears in the base which have been stitched together with some red twine. Before cleaning it I flipped the seat upside down and greased all the moving parts They're a very simple rail, but with the added complexity of the tilting mech for getting passengers in the back seat. This little lever is what releases the backrest The lever releases a big hook on each side The lever acts directly on it, with a rod going to the opposite side Everything got some grease on it, and is moving nicely. The actual sliding adjustment is very simple, with two independent rails, a U shaped release lever and two pins. You lift the bar at the front, it disengages the pins and the seat can slide. You release the bar, and it springs back into place, slotting into one of the notches. All of this got greased and then the seat was flipped over for cleaning. Cleaning up well I'm very impressed how well these seats clean up Its like two different seats So the base got the same treatment too. The decades old tape residue doesn't seem to want to budge, but otherwise its looking good After a coating of 303 Aerospace Protectant (all seats got this treatment, it's meant to treat and protect vinyl), it was bolted into the car Moving onto the passengers seat, it had obvious had a life at some point. The seat release bar/adjustment was very bent on one side. The left side pin wasn't even engaging with the rail Some careful percussive persuation, and it was all as it should be again This one wasn't as drastic as the drivers seat, but still changed colour quite well Which could only mean one thing, the final seat got bolted into place I kicked off my shoes, hopped in, belted myself in, and spent some time making vroom vroom noises. We're very close to WOF time now. It'll be a couple of weeks, so I'll have to book a day off work, book it in for a WOF and then I'll have a deadline for the car to be ready. I still need to do an oil change, drain the stale fuel out of the tank, fit the new wiper blades and then see why the engine top end is rattling, but thats a days work at most.

I have seen "coach paint" in my travels online, but so far haven't really found any source for it in NZ? The closest I have found is tractor paint, https://www.bareco.co.nz/files-general-g71

Ok, please don't hate on me too much... but here we go. Are there any options available for a reasonably durable single-stage colour finish that I can roll or brush on? I would like to get the Marina in one solid colour, so it doesn't stand out as such a heap of shit that it currently looks like (50 shades of different primers, and old and new yellows). I do eventually want to do a proper panel and paint, but that's a long way down the track, in the meantime I just want a 50 footer in one colour. I have been touching up some bits with paint-matched 1k rattlecans, but it's expensive and doesn't go far. I had considered using my cheap compressor to spray the car panel by panel, but even that is expensive, and I only have my home garage to do it in, which is under the house/bedrooms, so fumes and overspray are a big issue for me (hence wanting to avoid spraying). I can lessen fumes a bit with a brush/roll solution if I do it panel by panel and it's not really airborne. I'll probably need a primer that I can apply in a similar fashion, before the top coat goes on, just to seal everything under it. I'll be going over the existing surface with a DA to level it a bit better (or even remove the old primer).

Whilst the car was in the air for its brake upgrade, I wanted to chase a knock I've had in the front suspension. After spending a lot of money and redoing everything in the front end, I was a little annoyed when there was still a noise when going over bumps. The only thing I hadn't touched was the front swaybar D bushes. I had done the end links, arms, shocks, mounts, everything. Thankfully in one of my previous orders from RHDJapan I added a pair of the Cusco D bushes for my upgraded front swaybar. So while the brakes were off, and the car was in the air, I removed the clamp brackets and bushes. I started on the LH side, which I haven't touched before. Access is a bit limited, so ratcheting spanners are a lifesaver here. I didn't notice at the time, but what I believe is the cause of the noise is visible in that photo. With the two bolts removed, I removed the clamp, spacer under the bar and the bush The bush was visibly deformed compared to the new one The reason for this was obvious once I inspected everything. There was this weird mark on the spacer plate and bush Ah, that's why. The spacer plate wasn't fitted correctly, was twisted, held in by one bolt and not supporting half the bush. You can see the hole the bolt should be through here Instead of twisting as it should, the bar was moving around within the unsupported bush. I don't know how long it's been like this, definitely before it came to NZ though. Thankfully with the new bushes in hand, I was able to reassemble it correctly. The old bushes were also very dry with no signs of any grease in them. I used some Superpro polybush grease I had kicking about to lube the bushes first It's a bit of a fiddle to get everything lined up, and the bush clamps the bar quite tightly, but reassembly wasn't too bad once the bolts were lined up. Using a bar to push down on the clamp helped a lot as the bush wanted to push it up and off. I tightened the clamp at ride height, not that it probably matters since the bar rotates in the bush. I've had the other side apart before, when I did the rear engine mount, so that was just a simple repeat of the other side A test drive whilst bedding the brakes in shows the knocking is completely gone now, and the car feels more planted in the front. I suspect the bar was significantly less effective than it should've been. Hopefully I can get a couple of good fast runs in it this week and see how it's affected the handling. With that done, the last thing while the car was in the air was to remove the front lip and reaffix it, since it was sagging on one side With a bunch of improvised fixings removed, the lip fell off. Apparently none of the tape was actually holding it up Looks weird without it now Removing the old tape sucked. It wasn't stuck to the car at all, but it wouldn't let go of the lip easily. I used a heat gun and my thumbs to roll the tape off New tape was applied And the lip was put back into place, using some old and new fixings to secure it a bit better. To give it the best chance of sticking, I supported each end with a jack and block and gently heated the tape. It's not perfect, but it's better than it was and hopefully won't come loose again

When I get an idea in my head, it's very hard to make it go away without giving it a satisfying conclusion. I wasn't happy with how close I was last time, but ultimately failed at upgrading my brakes. Let's recap, the HA36S Alto Works and Turbo RS have dinky little 230mm rotors. These are the same size as the previous model Alto Works back in 1998, when they were smaller and lighter. The Kei Works, about the same size and weight as an HA36S, was gifted the bigger 14V caliper brackets, and 257mm rotors from the Swift/Ignis shopping basket. 230mm is probably fine for stock power, and how you'd normally drive an Alto, but when you add more power and want to drive it hard, particularly on a fast track like my local one, the little standard brakes leave something to be desired. There are a couple of suppliers out of Japan for bolt-on big brake kits, but after shipping we're talking $500+NZD, which is madness. Silkroad makes the cheapest one, with a 255mm rotor and custom-designed bracket with joined bridge. You would also be limited to sourcing the replacement rotors from Silkroad in future. The 14V brackets from a HT51S Swift/Ignis are a bolt on to the Alto, using the existing Alto calipers. These space the caliper out in order to use the bigger rotor. This would all be nice and easy, except the Kei/Swift/Ignis rotors all have a different 49mm hat height, which pushes the rotor backward toward the strut. The causes unhappiness with the clearance for the caliper bracket. You cannot alter the position of the caliper bracket since it's mounted to the front of the knuckle. The solution is to either space the rotor out from the hub, use rotors from some Toyota (Cynos iirc) and machine the center bore out to the required 60mm (thanks to the weird stepped center bore on the hub), or find a pair of rotors that actually fit (an easier job said than done). I hated the spaced-out rotor idea, everything became studcentric, including the rotors. So the Suzuki rotors were a no-go. There was some discussion about centering rings and things, but it all became too complex. The Toyota rotor option was also a no-go, I don't like the idea of having to machine consumable items in order to fit. All I was left with then, other than buying the Silkroad kit from Japan, was to find a rotor that met the criteria. This led to many hours of trawling through every single rotor catalogue and website I could find. Eventually, finally, I had a breakthrough on some random website in Europe. Enter, the Chery J1 from China. By some bizarre miracle, this horrible little shopping box of dubious quality was reported as having the perfect rotors. 257mm diameter, 17mm thickness, 60mm CB, 4x100 PCD and a 44mm hat height. The height is 1mm different from the Alto brakes, but otherwise everything else is perfect. Had I found the secret sauce? For future reference, the OE part number was S21-3501075. Apparently it's also used on some Mercedes, I don't know what though. After some more digging, I found RDA in Aus actually makes rotors for these too, using the P/N RDA8423. I'm sure other suppliers are out there, the EU sites have a few options. Anyway, thanks to the help of a great chap on the Oldschool forum, I managed to get my hands on a pair of front rotors from a Chery J1, from Pick A Part, spiders and all. Half a can of fly spray later, the spiders left me alone They were used, and rusty, but were barely worn, didn't have a lip and still measured the full 17mm thickness. I pulled the Alto in, jacked one side up and got to work fitting the Chery rotor and 14V bracket. Promising. How does the centering look? Perfect. No clearance issues, the rotor is centered, and it's all hubcentric. The next task, now that I knew it fit, was to have the rotors skimmed by a local company. They came back looking very good. The guy did audibly shudder when he asked what they were off and I answered Chery J1... He didn't ask further questions when I said not to worry since they weren't going back on one. Probably already wrote me off as a wrong'un. The surface rust is already returning... Before I could fit them I had to prep and paint the 14V brackets. The Alto comes with red calipers and brackets, because racecar, but the standard shopping basket models were unpainted. The mismatch made my eye twitch. I cleaned them with brake cleaner and then wire brushed the heck out of them before hitting them with a few coats of VHT caliper paint, focusing on the visible areas once fitted. After a couple of days to cure, it was time to fit everything once and for all. The Alto once again returned to the garage, this time both sides were raised The pile of bits was laid out for prep I removed the slider pins, which were all free, and cleaned and regreased them with some ceramic brake grease. One of the pins had a tear in the boot, so I later stole the boot from the standard Alto pin on one side. Interestingly I noticed the Swift pins were all solid, whilst one pin on each side of the Alto has rubber bushings on it to allegedly reduce noise and vibration The pad retaining clips were cleaned up and refitted The wheels were removed, and I began the removal of the standard brakes Remember to hang the caliper securely so it doesn't stress the hose The old rotor was pressed off with a bolt I then cleaned the hub bore up with a wire wheel on the drill and added some copper grease so it won't rust into place. You can see the stupid CB step here The big rotor was then slid into place with a wheel nut to hold it, and the 14V bracket bolted on and torqued to the required 85NM. The Alto pads were then slipped into the 14V brackets, with new grease. I found my calipers were missing whatever this insert is, so I stole it from the Swift calipers The caliper was then fitted and the slider bolts torqued to 26NM The difference in the size of the rotor doesn't look huge there because the caliper is still close to the center hat, but what isn't immediately obvious is that the hat has a larger diameter on the bigger rotors. If the hat had the same diameter as stock the caliper would be a long way from the hat. With my braided lines, the hose is a little tighter to reach the caliper than stock, but it's not stretched or strained, it just takes a little wiggle to get the caliper into place without pulling on the hose. Rinse and repeat for the other side of the car, and the brakes are done. They really do push the caliper out and make a pretty good visible difference. Stock 230mm brakes Now I needed to give them a pounding to bed the pads into the fresh surface and make sure they weren't going to fall to bits the first time I tried to stop. I took the car on a gentle drive out to some open back roads and set on my usual break-in procedure. Turn the wick up to high, and do a series of 100kph-20kph near-stops. I ended up doing 4 or 5 of these, getting the brakes hot enough that I could smell them, and then cruised around for a bit with minimal breaking (and no stopping!) to let them cool off. After a little bit of cooling off, I stopped and checked the wheel nut torque, and grabbed some cheeky photos. As a side note, the Cusco mud flaps have been doing a great job So, how do the new brakes feel? Well, the brake feel on the Alto has never been amazing, it's a bit soft and vague for my liking, even with the braided lines and new fluid, but it is an economy car at the end of the day. The new brakes haven't fixed that, but they have made the pedal feel like it's doing more when you do press it. If you really stomp on it, the car will pitch forward on its nose and shed speed like an anchor was dropped. If you press them hard enough the ABS will kick in and remind you it could lock the wheels if it wanted. Even on the track I had a hard time braking hard enough to hit ABS with the stock brakes. Very happy with the upgrade so far. Was it cheaper than the Silkroad kit? Yes, by a couple of hundred dollars. Would it have been cheaper if I didn't buy used Swift rotors that didn't fit, and used Chery rotors that needed skimming too? Yes. Knowing what I know now, you could grab a couple of 14V caliper brackets from an old Swift or Ignis from Pick A Part, order some new RDA rotors and away you go. I'll be driving the Alto around a bit in the next week or two just to shake it down before the trackday at the end of the month and make sure we're all good. I can't wait, this thing should be a weapon on track now.

Thanks, thought that'd be the case. It serves me right for not rounding the ks to the nearest whole thousand in the first place, now it's a random number

Real simple question, because I am simple, but having not owned a Deez the leaf is the first RUC I've needed. Getting the first lot was fine but I need to renew now. If I buy it before the km range, does it just add the extra "units" onto whatever I already have (ie add another 3k onto what I have) or does it go from when I "top up" and I might lose some ks? If it top up late, does it go from the original ks, or the ks when I do eventually top up? Ie, could I leave it a couple hundred ks and have it renew at a nice round number this time?

If you're going to get a cheap leaf, get one with the black interior (not tan) as its the newer AZE0 and the batteries are less likely to be completely shite. Can recommend as a cheap daily though, goes hard.

Nope, I'd kill myself real quick.

Badly would be my guess Looks like you'd have a 20kw or so bump in power on a Leaf

So many traffic light drags, even if no one else knows it. The shooting a gap thing is actually a bit of a concern when I jump into my ICE cars as I forget none of them can quite zip like the Leaf does.

I know you need a cert for manual conversions if you change/modify the brake pedal, no way around that. But what if my car happened to have the unmodified auto brake pedal fitted at time of WOF? As long as it doesn't interfere with the clutch pedal, would it pass a WOF?

That look flippin' awesome. Orange stitching would be next level.

There is a funny little myth around EVs, that they "don't need servicing". They need less servicing than an ICE car, but they still need to be serviced. On the Leaf, there are a few items that need to be serviced; Brake fluid, brake pads and rotors, bushes, coolant, washer fluid, the 12v battery and the cabin filter. The same stuff that needs to be done on an ICE car, just without the regular engine oil and filter change. Being that my car has over 110,000km on the clock and no service history, I wanted to give everything a good look over and change the reduction gear (gearbox) oil. Technically the reduction gear oil is "inspect" every 12 months or 24,000km but has no change interval, which is stupid. I started by checking under the bonnet. The coolant level was good, and I had topped the washer fluid up the other day. The brake fluid looked very clean, so I wasn't too worried about it but stuck my tester in to see how it was anyway. After removing the cap, you need to remove the little filter basket so the tester can get to the fluid. A perfect reading, less than 1% moisture content. Next was to check the 12v battery condition. These things can make the Leaf go a bit crazy when they start to degrade. The Leaf uses the big high voltage main traction battery to charge the 12v battery as needed, but it needs the 12v battery to trigger the contactors and allow the HV battery to work. I connected my TOPDON BT tester And passed with no issues. A nice healthy battery Now it was time to get the car in the air and roll around in the rain puddles on the ground. I'm not a big fan of working on cars that have been out in the rain. I removed the front left wheel so I could have a look around at the suspension All looked pretty good to me. The bushes were a bit old, but not torn. The rotors look almost brand new, and the pads are about 1/4 worn. They don't get a lot of use due to the regen braking. The rears are a bit older, but the pads are only about half worn. To get to the reduction gearbox you need to remove the under tray. Half a dozen clips hold it in, along with a bolt in the recess at the back, and a row of bolts along the front edge. All bolts have a 10mm head. With the under tray off, the motor and gearbox are accessible. The reduction gear drain and fill are here. It's a nice simple replacement, much like a manual gearbox. Fill is the orange arrow, make sure to crack this first. Drain is the green arrow. Both use a 10mm hex. Mine were SUPER tight and needed some extra leverage. With the fill plug removed, some fluid may seep out. When removing the drain, be aware the fluid is very thin and will come out with some speed, so expect it to go some distance. I used a clear jug so I could check the colour and level. The level was close, about 1.3L, but the colour was very dark, almost black. No signs of the red it should be. Both the plugs are the same and both are magnetic. Mine had a little coating of sludge on them, but nothing concerning. Give them a wipe, and swap the washer for a nice new one. The fluid spec is Nissan Matic-S. A lot of people use Redline D6 ATF, but locally a few people have used Nulon Full Synthetic Low Viscosity ATF, as this meets Matic-S spec. This was available locally on a Saturday morning, so that's what I'm using. You need 1.4L of fluid. Reinstall the drain plug and torque to spec (34NM, or one elbow click). Now fill the gearbox. These bags are very handy, just pop the hose into the fill hole and squeeze. Access is very good, so a pump would work here, or others have used a hose and funnel from up top down to the filler. I pumped in one full bag, and enough of the second bag until it started to come back out of the filler. I let it run for a bit, reinstalled the fill plug, torqued it to spec and gave the area a clean with brake cleaner. Reinstall the under tray, and you're done. A reduction gear oil change is no harder to do than a manual gearbox fluid change on an FWD ICE vehicle (heck, access is better than a lot of ICE cars I've done). Finally, before I was done, I wanted to grease the axle splines. This is a very common issue with the Leaf, where there will be a clicking you can hear and feel from the front of the car when you come on and off the throttle. Nissan has released a bulletin regarding the issue, and the solution is to undo the nut, push the axle back and grease the axle where it goes into the hub. Nissan recommends replacing the hub nut during this service, and you'll ideally want a new split pin too. Apparently "Clicking could occur" if you reuse the nut, but I can't see what difference it makes. I removed the split pin and the little cap slid off Next, I used a 32mm socket on my rattle gun to ugga dugga the nut off The left one was a bit stiff and took a couple of hits from a soft face hammer to move. You only need to push it through the hub a little bit (as far as it goes) and don't need to completely remove it, or anything around it. I found it easier to turn the wheel so you can see behind it better. Heck, for the RH side I didn't even remove the wheel, I could access the axle from under the front of the car. Excuse the blurry photos, I was shooting blind and the focus got a bit wonky. Both axles were completely dry, with some crumbly remnants of what I presume used to be grease. The spec for grease is Molykote M77, which as far as I could tell doesn't exist new New Zealand. If you can get it, use it. In my case, I'm taking a punt and using some high temp bearing grease. I've greased axle shafts with it before on other cars with no issue, so it should do the job here too. I applied it with an old brush. It's messy, but everywhere it needs to be (the top of the splines and the face of the bearing where the axle sits). I cleaned around the axle once it was refitted, to remove excess grease. With the axle greased, I pushed it back into the hub and tightened the hub nut until it stopped turning, just to seat the axle. I copied this work to the other side of the car too, and then lowered the car to the ground. Once on the ground, I torqued the hub nuts up to the required 121NM, refit the locking cap and new split pin. And that was the service done. A quick test drive shows the car still works, so that's a success. More noticeably though, it appears the clicking I have had from the axles is mostly gone. I'll keep an eye on it when I take the car to work on Monday, but it looks like it's fixed. It'll be interesting to see if I get any improvement in economy from the new reduction gear fluid, some people have reported a noticeable difference. That should be enough servicing to keep the car happy for the duration of my ownership. It's due for a WOF next month, and some more RUC in 600km or so, so unless something fails in the WOF we should be good to keep on zooming for another year or so. I've done almost 3000km in the car since getting it, and it's been pretty great, to be honest. The boot is smaller than the Fit, which isn't a surprise, but the shape of its kinda crappy and the Bose sub gets in the way. Speaking of Bose, the audio system is pretty damn good, combined with not having any intrusive IC noises or vibrations, I'm often having a one-man rave on my way to work in the morning. It's very much an appliance, there is little feeling from anything it does, other than ripping away from the lights. The handling is solid and fairly reassuring, but it never feels sporty. I'm sure the Nismo suspension upgrade is helping in that regard, standard ones must be so wobbly. There's a decent amount of low-down punch, but it lacks anything "up top" at speed. It'll pass other cars, with your foot to the floor, but the Fit would wipe the floor with it at speed. It is a pretty nice way to commute though. Peaceful, easy, comfortable and cheap to run. It'll hang around for a bit longer.

I like turbo cars a lot. You open the intake up, and they make great noises. I wanted more noise from the Alto, but didn't want to pay much. So what does one do if they want to try a cheap intake, and not import a brand name one from Japan? Hello Supercheap. The stock intake setup is surprisingly open, with a duct taking air from under the bonnet lip, feeding it through a (currently duct tape) pipe to the top of the airbox, where I have a Greddy panel filter. It goes through this filter, through a pipe and down into the intake of the turbo. Nothing in the way, no real restrictions. But I wanted more noise. Since removing the leaking BOV, I'm back to a quiet little chooo when changing gears and almost no intake noise. In contrast, I have a friend with an S660 fitted with an HKS intake and that thing makes all the good noises. So, I went out and bought some bits. A pod filter on clearance, a 76mm 45 degree alloy pipe, and a 51mm-76mm reducer hose. I started by removing the airbox. This is pretty straightforward by disconnecting the intake pipe and breather, and removing the two bolts Then with some fiddling, I jammed the new contraption into place The filter is massive. Not even kidding, it's almost as big as the engine itself. It took a lot of stuffing around, and a couple of different revisions of the mounting bracket, to get to this point, where the filter had some clearance from the strut brace This was not enough clearance though... What I hadn't really accounted for was just how much the engine moves under load. Normal driving was fine, but under boost or high loads the engine must tip back a bit more and suddenly the filter was banging its life out on the strut brace, sounding like the car was coming to pieces. So, other than that, was it worth it? No. I swear the car felt less responsive down low, and the noises were disappointing. The turbo discharge noise on gear changes was excellent, almost as loud as the BOV was, but the actual intake sucking noises really didn't... suck. Under boost, or load, when you think it would be sucking the most air and real loud, it made no noise. When you were at a steady speed, around 100kph, with minimal throttle, the damn thing would emit a loud sucking noise. You could induce it with certain throttle positions, but it never really made noises when I wanted it to. I got fairly sick of the noise on the open road at cruise. So, back to the stock intake I went, glad I didn't waste money importing an intake from Japan. I'll find another use for this filter at some point.

Many months ago, back in January, I upgraded the small stock intercooler to a big Greddy one. I'm changing this again. The Greddy intercooler was good. It has a massive core and low restriction After changing from the tiny standard intercooler I could almost immediately feel an increase in low-end power, particularly when climbing hills. Clearly the Greddy IC flows more air than the stock IC. On the track in Jan, it did its best to keep intake temps down. 25c+ ambient temps meant that I was seeing 50-60c IAT on 8psi and over 70c on 15psi boost. The temps would drop quickly off boost as the Greddy IC could shed that heat easily, but it seemed to struggle a bit to keep the temps in check when on boost. I suspect this is because I'm working the little turbo quite hard and since the IC flows so well it doesn't have time to grab that heat from the air. I believe either running stock boost, or a higher flow turbo that's making less heat would work better with this IC. The other thing that could help would be reinstalling the IC water spray the previous owner had in Japan... So that's where I decided to move the Greddy IC onto a new owner, who is running a stock setup that would benefit more from how well it flows, and get a particular new IC that is a different design. In the meantime, I decided to remove the Greddy IC and swap back to the stock one for now, and start to reinstall the water spray. I didn't want to install the water spray on the Greddy IC because I would have to drill into the shroud to install jets, which I wasn't going to do, and the stock shroud had jets fitted already. The Greddy core is a monster, with huge tubes In contrast, the stock IC is a tiny wee thing You'll note there that I had temporarily installed a catch can too. I wanted to see how the blowby was, so threw this in. I was pleasantly surprised to note that the hoses and catch can were completely dry of any oil after a couple of hundred ks, so ended up removing it and reverting to stock. This gave me a little more room to play with in terms of the IC water spray hoses. I tidied up the hoses that came with the car and reinstalled them. The black hose currently runs through the firewall grommet and is looped in the glovebox. This will eventually be run to the boot of the car, where a 5l tank and washer pump are located. This bottle fits almost perfectly, except the cap was a few mm too tall, so I used some heat to squish the top of the bottle down and lower the cap. It'll lower the capacity too, but there should be plenty still, and I can top up between sessions. It was interesting to note that as soon as I refit the stock IC again the car felt slower, so it wasn't a placebo, the Greddy IC is good. After a few weeks of running the stock intercooler, my nice new one arrived. Meet the Suzuki Works Kurume Sports Intercooler. It's a really nice bit of kit. The Greddy IC was all welded sheets of Alu, which was nicely made, but this SWK is next level with cast aluminium end tanks. Compared to the stock IC the overall dimensions are basically the same, except the core is slightly taller The difference is the thickness. This thing is a thicc boi. Alto for scale The protective cardboard shows how much taller the SWK core is Being legit JDM gear, it bolted right in with no fitment issues. Now I just needed a shroud. The SWK intercooler comes with adhesive foam strips to stick to the shroud and close up the stock gaps And with the shroud fitted You can barely tell from the top, just the little silver end tank gives it away. From the side though, it is a beast The main thing here for me is that it means I can run the stock shroud, including the water spray jets. It should also drop temps over the stock IC due to the taller and thicker core. I haven't really logged temps since fitting it, and the big test will be the next track day which will hopefully be next month. I want to be running 15psi all day and keeping temps under control. It's hard at this point to say if it's had the same boost in power that the Greddy IC did since I've done some tweaking to the boost controller at the same time. I've had an "issue" where when on 15psi the turbo just makes boost too easily, and it can lead to some surging when driving as it comes on and off boost at the slightest twitch of my foot. To counter this, I finally set up the RPM and TPS settings on the HKS EVC This allowed me to set an offset map. It may need tweaking as I drive it more, but at the moment this is what I have (this is page 1 of 4, the other pages are 60-100% TPS, and 5000rpm-9000rpm). Long story short, the vertical axis is the throttle position, and the horizontal is the engine RPM. At low throttle position or low RPM, it makes less boost, increasing as the RPM and/or throttle position increases. This is a percentage of the total target boost, so at 0%/2000rpm it makes 35% of the 15psi target. The hope is that when I'm cruising at high rpm (ie 4000rpm on the open road) but have a lower throttle position, it won't be so eager to make 15psi with a twitch of the throttle now. It should also be a bit nicer on my engine at low RPM, where it probably doesn't love life having 15psi shoved into it when it's barely spinning. So far my testing shows it's pretty effective. The car feels a bit less frantic to drive but is far more manageable to drive smoothly when you aren't trying to beat everything from the lights. I've only set this up for the 15psi setting, as it's not been an issue on 8psi. 18psi may get a map, but I don't tend to use that as 15psi is plenty fast. This car is pretty much where it needs to be now. I need to finish the IC spray, but otherwise it's ready to hit the track again and see if I can demolish my previous times now that it can go around corners.

IMO having dealt with trying to import a car that was flagged at the Japanese border as rusty, unless you need to have that one or its some amazing deal where you can afford to jump through many expensive hoops for the repair cert, i'd probably look for another. Does it have any of the import paperwork? If you don't have the compliance paperwork from the first owner, and none of the import paperwork, i feel like that might become a world of pain come your turn to comply it.

Great diagnosing. As you've seen with the "specialists" you visited, these skills are quickly fading away as it becomes more common to just "plug it in" and read codes instead. Those ecus are quite similar to the SD1 ones, and they suffer from old and cracking solder joints, so I'd second the recommendations to check for them and resolder any.

Have you checked that the ethernet connection isn't the limiting factor? I don't use truenas, but there should be a way to see what connection it has (10/100, 1000mbps etc). If it is, then it could either be the cable, the switch its connected to, or the ethernet on the machine.

That's a real sharp price for what you get. Almost not worth buying and making the kit unless you want to do it for fun.