kws

Because kiwis are shit drivers? 

*Slaps boot lid and says in a very Aussie voice* Yeah Luv, it's a DE-LUXE

(this car has never had its badges on it since I've owned it)

Progress on the Marina has been slow. I had hoped it would be on the road by now, but that's not happened.

The good news is that any progress, is still good progress, and some headway has been made.

I have really battled with the heater box and dreaded trying to fix it. In reality, getting it into a usable state wasn't that hard. Negative mindsets can be a real pain like that.

According to my records, I removed the intake plenum box way back in October 2021... that's how long it's taken me to get around to sorting it.

The heater/blower system is completely bespoke to the Aus/Nz spec cars and differs greatly from how the UK ones are set up. This was obviously due to the local content requirements of the time, which meant a percentage of the car had to be made locally and not imported.

This car came with the heater box in the boot, so I've never seen it fitted to the car. The plenum box, which is mounted up under the cowl panel behind the dash, was in place but full of dirt and old leaves. Not a good sign.

I removed the grille and then set about removing the screws that hold the plenum box in place. Once removed, the whole box just drops down.

It was pretty well full. Took a lot of vacuuming to clean it out

But the main reason it needed to come out, was to fix this

The metal has ceased being solid and became a crunchy powder.

Here it sat for a couple of years, until almost 2 years to the day later, and I pulled it out to have a better look. This involved lots of cutting and drilling, to remove the spot welds and remove the rusty remnants.

The gaping hole in the side is obvious, but there were also a lot of other areas that needed attention too, in harder-to-reach places

After cutting all this out and cleaning it up as much as I could, I absolutely saturated it in Brunox to treat the rust and seal it off.

Because my car is a poverty spec Deluxe and doesn't have the face-level fresh air vents in the dash, I opted to just completely remove the tube for that function on this side as it was completely rusted out and the idea of refitting the tube was doing my head in.

I started with some good old CAD

Converted it into metal, and tacked it in place

I didn't fully seam weld it, I just didn't see the point when it was not structural

I seam-sealed the area to seal it and used Newtech body filler to smooth over the welds and fill the holes in the top that I couldn't get to with a welder. Newtech is a fibreglass-infused filler and pretty strong, so should do well enough at keeping the air and water inside the box.

Everything got a coating of black zinc on the outside, and the inside was flooded with epoxy primer and then black zinc.

I remembered to refit the heater resistor

Someone had cut the wires for the heater resistor when removing it, so I crimped on a pair of nice new terminals, so now I can unplug the resistor if I need to

With the plenum box done, it was time to test-fit it with the heater box. Before that though, let's travel back to 2021 when I tested and refurbished the heater box

The heater box was already out of the car, so the first thing to do was see if the fan actually worked. I connected 12v and turned it on. Sure enough, it fired into life with no signs of any issues.

I then set about splitting the box by removing all the nuts and bolts around the perimeter. The whole box is moulded fibreglass.

This gave me access to the fan and heater core. I cleaned out years of detritus and pulled it apart further

The heater core looked ok with no obvious signs of leaking

The direction flap is a little less good

The flap is actually made of two layers of metal that sandwich some sort of felt material that creates the edge seal. After cleaning it wasn't too bad, just missing a bit on one edge. Not the end of the world.

I didn't want to just refit the heater core and cross my fingers, so I bodged up some hose and fittings so I could pressure test it.

I filled it with water and pumped it up to 15psi (just above the rad cap pressure)

I can't remember how long I tested it for now, but I think it was a couple of hours and it didn't drop pressure at all. It could spring a leak once it gets hot, but I hope not.

I rust treated and then black zinc painted everything inside the box

I reassembled it, with some new foam on the diverter flap (to seal it when it's closed), and it's been gathering dust since.

Well, today I pulled it all out and put it together. This is the Aus/NZ spec heater assembly

The air enters the top of the plenum via the vent in the cowl ahead of the windscreen. It then enters the plenum box and gets sent to the heater box via the C shape duct on the side (the other hole is the face-level vent outlet for the higher spec cars. This is blocked off on my car.

The air then passes through the heater core (all air does, the heater valve controls if the core is hot or not), through the fan and down to the ducts at the bottom of the box. The circular outlet would be ducted to the windscreen vents while the large cutouts are the "feet" vents. The heater selector only has three settings, Feet/Windscreen, Windscreen or Off.

There should be a heater valve attached to the box too, but mine was missing and the only spare I have I don't trust. They're very expensive heater valves shared with some classic Aussie Fords (hence the cost), so I will likely just have a manual heater tap in the engine bay to turn the heater on and off. For now, I just have the heater bypassed.

The test assembly was a success, so I contorted myself into the car and started refitting it. The plenum went in easy enough, once I turned it around so it faced the correct direction. I used a ratchet strap to hook into the plenum box just to give me something to lift it up from the floor inside the car while standing outside, as the screws to secure it go through from the outside.

The vent grille could then be refitted, with some nice new screws

Next, it was a case of fitting the heater box to the underside of the plenum. This turned out to be a bigger pain in the bum than expected. I fitted it all up, nice and easy, no issues, and then realised I couldn't fit the C-shaped duct in afterwards. So out the heater box came. I fitted the duct to the plenum first and then squeezed the heater box into place.

This took an awful lot of wiggling and jiggling to get into place, from both sides of the car. That was the easy bit though, the hard bit was getting the cable for the diverter flap into place. This is in the drivers foot well, so I squeezed myself into there and hooked it up.

Next, I connected the blower fan wires, connected the battery and hit the switch. Nothing. Hmmm. I tried again, flicking the switch a few times and suddenly it sprung to life. I guess sitting around unused for a couple of decades does that to a switch.

But both speeds work correctly now, so I'm very happy

I still need to buy some ducting to duct it up to the windscreen vents, but for now, it'll do.

Following that success, I felt it was time to fit something else the car hadn't seen for many years. For the first time in my ownership, the car has steering column shrouds

 

I did have to relocate the ignition switch though. Turns out it's not meant to point down; the previous owner just didn't clock it to the column properly (and disabled the steering lock in the process) when the switch was replaced. It fits perfectly now, and the steering lock even works too. Makes way more sense having the key where it is, it was always hard to see and use when it was facing down.

We're getting much closer to being able to take it for a WOF check. I need to refit the quarter window, which I'm procrastinating because I haven't done it before and I'm sure it'll suck to do, and then fit some door cards, seatbelts and the other seat.

In the meantime, I scuffed up the new sill and gave it a quick shot of paint

Theres a low spot on the rear quarter that I want to address before I put any more paint on that. Might do that this weekend.

Well, here we go again, another track day. This time, I brought something a bit more interesting than a Jazz.

But first, before doing fun things in slow cars, I had to attend to a couple of things.

I started by giving the headlining a clean, as it was filthy. I don't know why, but both sides had a lot of black on them.

This was after I had already given the area above the pillar a quick clean, there were big areas of dark black

It did seem to come off quite easily with just a rag and some APC

There is still some darkening, which another clean will probably get off, but it's a lot better for now.

The passengers side was bad too, but not as bad

While in the area I fit the three grab handles that were missing

Big improvement there, so I moved on to checking all the fluids and making sure we were ready to go. I couldn't help myself though, and removed the Take-Off vent and gave it a quick hit with some black paint on the mesh. It was a kind of faded pink/silver

The last thing that needed to be done was a last-minute wheel alignment.

When negotiating the car with the previous owner, swapping in the standard suspension was part of the deal, and there was talk of a wheel alignment to go with it. It never occurred to me until now that there wasn't time to get one done before the truck arrived....

I noticed at work the other day when I parked up that I was sure the front RH wheel was pointing slightly inwards when the steering wheel was straight, and the LH wheel was straight. As a friend said, it must be pretty bad if you can see it by eye!

Sure enough, I dropped it down for an alignment and the results were... interesting.

The front wheels were / - \ with a total of almost 10mm toe in, no wonder I could see it by eye! There is still too much toe on the RH rear, but as it's a beam rear end I can't adjust that out without shimming the hub. I'll keep an eye on tire wear there and decide later what I want to do.

The alignment made a world of difference to how it drives though. I'm no longer fighting the diff as much, it's a bit less murder-y in corners, and it feels more stable. A+ should've done it sooner.

So that was it, we were off on a 2 hour drive to Feilding for the weekend. The carpet has made a huge difference in NVH at open road speeds; the noise and drone were easily bearable, and it was quite a nice drive. The 30c ambient temps weren't so nice, but with working AC it wasn't an issue inside the car.

The next day it was track day. I got geared up, and drove to the circuit nice and early so we could get some good pits.

And suddenly an excellent car friend arrived; Tom in his lovely blue Alto

Compared to mine, his is mostly stock, but running KYB "Lowfer" lowering shocks and springs, aftermarket wheels and an axle back exhaust. The blue is a very stunning colour.

We started the day with the usual driver training; cornering line, braking/obstacle avoidance (new this year) and the slalom.

Speaking of the braking/obstacle avoidance, this was new. Last time it was just brake as hard as you could when the flag dropped, this time there were cones in the middle of the track to split it into two lanes, and a light on either side that would light up when you triggered a beam across the track.

I think the idea was that either the left or right light would come on and you would brake and turn to the opposite side of the track to the light. That didn't really happen though, the braking was kinda dropped and you just changed to the other side of the track to the light and kept going. I think I preferred the emergency stop test.

The Alto did quite well in the slalom, whipping around the cones and only once in three goes did I clip a cone when I got a bit cocky. The Alto was nothing compared to the S660 there though, that thing just darted around the cones like it was on rails

Once the driver training was done, we lined up for the actual group runs on the track

And off we went

I chased the other Alto for a bit

And eventually managed to zip on by it

Because I was running standard/low boost (8psi) and pushing maybe 70hp I wasn't the fastest thing on the track, but easily kept up with the slower cars and didn't hold many people up

Sadly Tom had to withdraw the other Alto from our little battle due to technical difficulties. I would've liked to have some more Alto vs Alto fun, but hopefully that'll happen another time.

As the day went on I got more confident with the car. One of the things that I was struggling with was trusting the LSD. I had the grip to get out of corners now, unlike in the Jazz, but I found it hard to trust that all I needed to do was put my foot down and keep it there and rely on the diff to pull me through.

I had a couple of good battles throughout the day. One of them was against a pretty heavily modified classic Mini. I'm not sure what was under the hood but it was caged and it was quick for what it was. I could catch up and sit on his tail in the corners, but he'd just pull slightly on the straights. I would've walked passed him on high boost though...

Unfortunately at one point while chasing him I noticed what I thought was a mist on my windscreen. Thinking nothing of it, I flicked the mist function on the wipers.... and it smeared, bad. I pulled into the pits and found the front end of my car covered in oil spray, which was thankfully not mine (I was worried it had come out of the cowl vents). While I was cleaning my windscreen with brake cleaner my wife popped over and let the Mini owner, who had just pulled into the pits, know he might have an oiling issues and sure enough his breather had failed. He came over and apologised to me, but it is what it is, things happen on the track. No harm, no foul.

Speaking of high boost, I did find that the more power I have, the better the LSD works... I found that out in one of the shorter sessions I joined, where I decided to see what the Alto was like on high (14PSI) boost for a couple of laps.

With the car putting out about 85hp or so the car was suddenly a lot more lively on the track which meant the LSD was working a lot harder and just acted like a slingshot out of corners, if you were brave enough to pedal down and hold on.

Looking at Racechrono we were pulling more speed in the corners, but I was really hustling down the straights (all speeds in KPH)

Alto on high boost (14psi)

Compared to the fastest lap on low boost

Alto on standard/low boost (8psi)

Sadly with high ambient temps (25+c) I was concerned the Intake Air Temp was getting a bit high on the high boost. Standard boost saw about 50-60c, but on high boost was seeing over 70c, which I now know is normal but in the interests of longevity I didn't want to push it too hard.

So, how did we go then? Well, compared to the fastest lap in the Jazz last year

Jazz 1.3

I was similar in speed through the corners, but whipped the Jazz pretty much everywhere except the front straight, where somehow the Jazz pipped me in top speed. I think part of that is down to just going full send in the Jazz and beating it like it owed me money, not so much the Alto being slow.

In saying that, the lap times don't lie;

The fastest in the Jazz was a 1:50
The fastest in the Alto on standard boost was a whopping 1:45, shaving a whole 5 seconds a lap off
Better yet, the fastest in the Alto on high boost... 1:42!

Even the difference between high and low boost is whopping, but shaving 8 seconds off the fastest time I could squeeze out of the Jazz is immense.

I swear next time I can go faster too. One of the biggest things holding me back was the rear suspension. I have a thick 20mm Cusco front swaybar, but no rear swaybar and on top of that the wrong shocks and springs. It appears the seller of the car fitted poverty pack rear shocks and springs to the car, not the correct Works KYB ones. This results in a really soft rear end, which caused me some grief on the track by wobbling about and generally slowing me down in the corners and it just didn't want to rotate like the Jazz did. It also hated having tools in the boot on the drive up and hit the bump stops more than a few times.

I have new genuine Works shocks and springs on the way to fix this. I may also consider getting a Cusco rear swaybar like the car had fitted in Japan, to balance the front out, but the correct shocks and springs should help a lot.

Lower ambient temps should help too, as the lower the IATs the more power I'll make. In saying that, I have plans to move the big Greddy intercooler on and change to an SWK intercooler which although fits the same footprint as the tiny standard one is about 1.5x as thick, though more importantly, allows me to reuse the original shroud and reinstate the waterspray the previous owner was running. Obviously the little turbo is making a fair bit of heat at higher boost.

Can't even complain about the economy; 5.2L/100KM on the run up there, 11L/100KM on the track.

The Android headunit was outstanding, exactly what I wanted it for and it did it perfectly, giving me IAT, Coolant temp and AFRs at a glance all day, and freeing my phone up to focus on Racechrono. On the way there and back, wireless Android Auto kept the tunes going and gave me ETA and road updates.

Overall, after almost 40 laps, the Alto did really well. Plenty of room for improvement before the next trackday in September, where hopefully I'll be able to play with another Alto again and better my laptimes.