kws

Make sure you change the freight option to Other first, as that triggers the availability check before they process the order

What is it, if it flies, floats or fucks it'll bankrupt you?

After being off the road since at least 2012, the Nugget passed its WOF today. I need to get some rego and sort a couple of advisories, but it's time to properly start the run-in.

What's more interesting is that the manual says both bearings should be open to the center, but both should have seals on the outside. Yet the genuine Suzuki bearing didn't have any seals. The old bearing had open plastic cages and no seals too.

Interesting, so why do you pack wheel bearings? Regardless, the bearings aren't sealed, so I'm sure they will yeet any grease they don't need

This is something I had wanted to do for a while, but only got around to it now. An on-car string rig. I hate paying for wheel alignments. It's expensive, and they always only ever do toe (as most cars only have toe adjustment), and at that it's a "good enough" within spec adjustment, never actually bang on. I've spent hundreds on alignments over the years. Ages ago I checked the alignment of the Marina using string lines, set up on axle stands. It worked, but it was a bit of a pain to work around, and needed to be reset if I made any adjustments. After all the work on the Alto, I wanted to check the alignment. I knew it was out; when I first put it together, it was hugely toed in, so with a quick eye-lignment I got it somewhat OK so it wasn't fighting me down the road now, but the steering wheel was off center. So with my 3D printer in hand, and using these Thingiverse files, I got printing. It did use more filament than expected, so I started to feed it scraps, hence the sweet multicolours. I also pressed in some generic M6 heat inserts, and after using a tap to clear any excess plastic pushed down under them, they worked great. I grabbed a bunch of 19mm square tube from Bunnings, along with a pair of 12mm 2m long tubes. After much cutting and drilling, I assembled it all One crucial thing that is needed is to have notches for the string lines in both of the horizontal tubes. These notches need to be in exactly the same place on both tubes, front and rear, so that the string creates a box and not a parallelogram To cut the notches, I used a pipe cutter, being careful not to actually cut the tube in half... To get the notches in the same place, I did all the notches on one tube first, measuring in from the end in three steps and then making the notches. I then placed the other tube on top of this one and used this to line up the pipe cutter tool. The black tape is only on one end of the tubes; this is so I know which way around they are a matching pair. I used some fishing line, with a loop on one end and weighed down with a nut on the other end. The string must be in the same notches front and rear. Once the string line height is set to run through the center of each wheel, it's time to measure side to side from each center cap to the string line and slide the tube side to side until it's even (The following photos were taken purely for demonstration; they may not be perfect) Once the strings are all even and everything is locked down (this will take a few goes around the car as one adjustment will upset another), then it's time to make the actual measurements from the front and rear edges of the wheels. Get the ruler as close as you can to the line without touching it, keep the ruler flat, and you know the string is straight when it goes through the same number on both edges of the ruler. Take note of these measurements. Do this for each wheel, and then you should have an idea of what's going on. In my case, I had 0.9mm toe-in (rear edge of wheel is closer to the string line than the front edge) on the LH side and 0.3mm toe-in on the RH side. Thankfully, despite the banana for a rear trailing arm before, the rear toe is bang on perfect, so the rear beam isn't bent or anything. As you can see above, I adjusted the front toe so that it's currently set at zero, which is within spec (-1 to +1mm). I'm going to see how it feels; I might go close to the recommended spec of -1mm total toe (0.5mm toe out per side) before trackday. I'm quite lucky with the current ride height in the front that I can adjust the toe with the car on the ground by reaching around the tyre After adjusting it, I can roll the car back and forth, with the string lines still attached, and I'm able to quickly check and adjust further if needed. I took the car for a quick road test after the alignment, and it's bang on now. The steering is straight, and the car tracks down the road nicely. $50-ish spent on filament, $65 on the tubes, some string and screws... to save me $100. It wouldn't make sense normally, but each car I use this on saves me $100, and I have two other cars here that I want to check the alignment on, so that's already $300 total. Plus, any tweaks I want to make for the Alto would be $100 each time. It pays for itself quickly.

Typically, poking around got me into more trouble than expected. Now I had broken brakes on my plate too. Of course, ages ago, I rebuilt the front brakes, so they were all flashy and new, but the rears I decided to leave because at the time I didn't have new wheel bearings, and kinda didn't feel like opening that can of worms. Well, as it turns out, I had no rear brakes at all on my test drive the other day. Oops. The rear drums on these are a pain as the wheel bearings are pressed into the drum and you need to remove them from the spindle to remove the drum. I removed the cap, split pin and nut, but the drum was stuck fast This means the big slidey boy needs to come out again A couple of good firm tugs and off it came Revealing a very dirty, slightly damp-looking rear brake assembly. I gave it a quick hose down with brake cleaner to see what I was working with Between the dampness and the peeling paint on the backing plate, it led me to believe the cylinder has probably been leaking, although it didn't seem to be now. This little bit of metal also fell out when the drum came off. I had no idea what it was until later After taking plenty of reference shots, I removed the backing plate pins and unhooked the shoes from the wheel cylinder The wheel cylinder wasn't looking that hot once the boots were removed Unfortunately, the cylinder was completely seized. In my efforts to free it up, I actually broke one of the tabs off the end of the piston that locates the shoes. That's when I knew this was not going well. I had pre-emptively ordered a rebuild kit for the wheel cylinders anyway, so I wasn't worried if they needed that, but having broken that location tab off, it was back to the drawing board. I removed the cylinder, and with some bashing on the bench, it came apart Inside the bore was looking... not great. So I needed a new cylinder. Before ordering anything, I decided to whip the drum off the other side and check the cylinder there... This is what a nice dry brake assembly should look like Nope, no better; this one was completely seized too So, I had two useless cylinders and one set of shoes that were probably contaminated. Great. After much searching, I found that you can still order brand-new wheel cylinders and shoe-fitting kits from Europe. I ordered a pair, with some springs, and awaited their arrival. Whilst waiting for them to arrive, I replaced the wheel bearings in the drums. There is an inner and outer bearing, with a spacer between the two. You can see in that last photo that the inner spacer has been knocked out of place. This is needed so that you can actually hammer the bearings out. A couple of gentle taps with a punch generally pushes it aside. And then it's a case of just bashing on the bearing inner race with a punch. I start with the outer bearing first. When the bearing comes out, the inner sleeve usually will too. Keep track of which way it was fitted, as there is a flange in it. This gives heaps of space to bash out the inner bearing These are the inner bearings They do have a lip seal on both sides, so one side needs to be removed (the inner side). I was also annoyed to note there was almost no grease in it (I’ve since been told this is normal for a sealed bearing; it’s only meant to have about 30% grease in it – Mine aren’t sealed anymore, so should force out any grease they don’t need) I packed it with wheel bearing grease before fitting Using my press tools, with a handheld swing press (hammer), I knocked the bearing into place The outer bearing, a genuine Suzuki part, had no seals and barely any grease in it too Using the percussive press again, after fitting the spacer (surrounded in grease) and filling the bearing with grease, this bearing was fitted too I did this for both sides, and by this time, the new cylinders had been flung all the way from Europe to my doorstep, so on we continue. Because I'm that kind of weirdo, I had already ordered a new brake pipe to replace one I rounded off when I did the brake hoses, so that got fitted I gave the backing plate a quick tidy up, and fitted a new wheel cylinder The shoe fitting kit seems to fit similar models around the time This is what the shoe assembly looks like off the car, less the spring across the bottom. Up top is the auto adjuster, and down the left side is the hand brake lever These are the new springs needed Another thing I bought from Japan a while ago was a set of nice new Project µ drum shoes I started to strip the shoes The auto adjuster. The quadrant on the right is held against the toothed "wheel" by the spring, but can slide backwards, which allows it to ratchet into place I cleaned the handbrake lever up, and found where that little disc of metal that fell out of the drum came from It's meant to be pressed onto the stud to retain the lever. I used a small socket and hammer to tap this into place, leaving enough space for the lever to freely pivot. The new shoes came with a new pair of discs. I also cleaned up the adjuster and fitted that, with a new spring. I set this to its least expanded setting This spring fits one way, and they are different left to right. The big hook goes in the adjuster, the small hook in the shoe Mostly ready to fit. This was pointless though, as it was much easier to assemble the whole thing on the car, not the bench I started with the shoe that has the handbrake lever on it, and hooked it back on to the cable (with much pain; this part of the job sucks) And then it was a case of fitting the other shoe, and hooking the springs into place On the other side, evidence of someone else's bodges were present... Instead of the retaining disc, there were not one, but two E clips fitted I cleaned the lever up and moved it to the new shoe, with a proper retainer Which was then all refitted to the other side, along with a new cylinder. The drums went on next, with the new bearings and torqued to spec. It's a shame this is all you see of the new brakes now. I bled the system, checked for leaks, and that was the job done. A quick test drive shows the car pulls up straight, and honestly doesn't feel any different, but I guess working rear brakes would be more important at speed, particularly with a track day looming in a couple of months. I'm glad it's done now. On the plus side, the handbrake holds real well now. Parts Used Rear Wheel Bearing Inner - NSK 6205DDUC3 x2 Rear Wheel Bearing Outer - Suzuki 09262-20069 x2 Rear Wheel Cylinder - Delphi LW62099 x2 Rear Wheel Shoe Kit - TRW SFK242 Rear Shoe Set - Project Mu S881 Please note these parts are specific to my car and may vary. Please check before ordering.

Immediately after the first drive, in typical fashion, it was time to pull the car to bits again. This time it was to replace the perished and torn rear trailing arm bushes. These needed to be replaced for the upcoming WOF. I had ordered a set of Monster Sport bushes for just this occasion. To make my life easier, I lucked out and managed to grab a pair of decent-looking arms from a pretty sad-looking HA11S at Pick A Part, This allowed me to refurbish the arms without having to remove them from the car first. This, as it turns out, was very fortuitous - More so since I actually intended to swap these stock arms into the car as they are and then refurbish the original ones once removed... I ended up deciding against that idea and just refurbishing these arms, as the bushes in them weren't looking too hot anyway. Strangely, I noticed that the forward bush was different between the two arms. Not sure if this means one was replaced in the past The Monster Sport kit comes with three new bushes per arm I got sick of pressing bushes in and out using various old bits of scrap, so finally opened my wallet and bought a press tool set, and I'll tell you what, it made this job a doddle. You pick the right inner and outer cups and out the bush comes The slightly bigger bushes on the other end of the arm required a different pair Which left me with a nice empty arm, ready to press some bushes into The new bushes are meant to be a firmer rubber compound, and they look very similar to the stock bushes. The rear bushes seem to be pretty universal for orientation, but I put the red marking to the top, just as a matter of course. The front bushes need to be fitted in the same orientation as they are removed A little CRC on the outside of the bush to help it slip in, and with the new tools, once again, it all went smoothly Nice new bushes Once all the bushes were replaced, I wire-brushed the arms and scuffed them up for a quick paint Once the arms were dry, it was time to remove the old ones on the car and swap them over. I jacked the back of the car up and supported it on axle stands, making sure to give myself enough space on the front trailing arm mount to actually be able to remove the bolt/arm safely. And as a reminder, this is why I'm doing this The first step is to support the rear beam and remove the lower shock bolt, as this blocks access to the forward, rear bushing bolt And then it's just a case of simply removing the three bolts, and the arm comes right out. Not much to see, so here it is after I have done the reverse, and installed the arm and bolts again Because the bolts go through rubber bushes, it's important to jack the beam up as close to ride height as possible, before torquing the nuts. So, why was it fortuitous that I didn't reuse the arms off the car? Because the RH side one is a banana So that's good, I have nice upgraded bushes, and an arm that's actually straight. No wonder the bushes were torn; they were doing their best in a bad situation. Of course, because it's me, this wasn't the end of it... I made the mistake of noticing that one of my rear drums was sticking. So I decided to have a "quick look". I wish I didn't (but I'm glad I did) To be continued.

While you have the box out of the car, it would be worth separating it from the engine and checking the state of the clutch fork. They are known to both seize and crack around the welds, and a real prick to find this out once you've fitted it.

Engine looks great, I do love a good wrinkle. Now you just need to get a new oil cap to match the new hotness 😛

the disc on the oil filter housing is the oil/coolant heat exchanger. Could probably do away with it. I wonder if a lower spec Swift might have an oil filter housing without it?

There are a few projects others have done to run the stock cluster from an external canbus, but unless you're really wedded to the idea of the stock gauges, it makes little sense in this application. Great project though, I enjoyed my mostly stock BRZ and would love a project like this to iron out the issues they have and make it better.

Expiry details Plate number JP4973 Vehicle details 1980 TOYOTA STARLET Vehicle colour WHITE Inspection details Warrant of fitness expiry date 9 May 2019 Licence (rego) details Licence exemption expiry date 7 March 2027

Checked my old spreadsheet and it was definitely RHD I got them from

I think it was Amayama tbh. Could've also been RHDJapan or Blackhawk though