tomble

Following Kelvin's success with his lowering rails, and girlface's "well it's a quality of life improvement, not a performance upgrade" concession, I nabbed some as well. I wanted to get some adequate before and after's but I was on my own so... we'll start with me failing to fit an upright Suica card above my head. I started with the passenger side - also using Kelvin's patented "do it in the back seat" approach (hmm phrasing) - and I had a couple of brain scratchies around the belt buckle that took things later than I wanted but figured it out eventually. A tricky driver's side before and passenger's side after the next day. Riveting On to the driver's side... and well, there's not much more than to show some before and after's. There's more than a whole Suica card's height now! I kept the driver's seat in the same angle while upgrading it to try and keep these two eye-level shots as close as I could. I can actually adjust the wheel down! You can see my hair! As Kelvin said, "it really does feel like you're IN the car now", as opposed to riding on it. It no longer feels like I have a vertical blinder on. I can more easily see under the front-view mirror. My hair doesn't scrape the head liner, regardless of seat incline. I don't have to recline the back slightly past where I'd prefer it to be anymore. And at the other end my butt's position in the car feels more planted and nestled. Overall 10/10 upgrade. I can't wait to drive it again.

While things are apart I wanted to replace some wear components. The clutch was suggested to me but I was already eyeing it up. Firstly I brought the clutch to MP auto parts to see if they could find or build an uprated solution (they were side-eyeing me HARD when I said I wanted it to take up to 90kW), but they weren't able to source anything off the shelf, and joogling the interwebs overloaded my already taxxed noob brain, so I just went with Kelvinator's suggestion and elected to get OEM replacements. They're made by Exedy anyway. Kelvinator also suggested I skim the flywheel - MP auto parts pulled through here (though they destroyed my bearing and charged me for it thanks lol), and actually informed me that clutch manufacturers require a flywheel skim for the warranty to kick in. It's nice to get multiple angles of confirmation. I also wanted to prep some special tools for the reassembly phase, and my clutch alignment tool came out acceptable after a couple of tests to ensure the splines were shaped correctly. I'm getting better at using onshape, I only swear at the screen a few times per hour now. We'd taken the cams off the head to be able to remove it, but it still had the springs and valves in it. Disassembly time! I blindly got a generic spring compressor and uh... no part of it is compatible with this engine. I tried pressing in with pliers, which was okay for a couple of the springs, but a bit too easy to slip off them and I foresaw myself destroying something. So we found an alternative. Then we learned very quickly to ensure limited travel of ejected components... It went pretty well and before we knew it we were all stripped and down to the valves. Finally, the valve stem seals came out with some long nose pliers and some cardboard to protect against grazing the edges of the camshaft seats. I stopped stripping it there, because I didn't see any need to remove/replace the guides and I wanted to get the head tested and cleaned professionally. I dropped it along with all the rotating assembly off at the machinist for inspection and cleaning. He quickly told me it wasn't worth my time to have the conrods weighed and the crankshaft balance checked, saying that the manufacturer is very reliable in this space or else they'd lose a lot of money honouring warranties. He also told me that usually, when the rings are replaced, the block should have its bores honed - so I left that with him too. And finally he told me that it's probably worthwhile for him to perform the rotating assembly installation as he'll do a much better job of checking oil gaps and what have you. With the damage to the bearing guides and my own inexperience, I decided to take him up on that. On Monday the bearings all arrived so I dropped them off and gave him the go-ahead, estimated completion mid next week. Also the head and the valve stems are fine, just some minor pitting on the valve seats which he said will lap right out A lot of stuff relies on the block and head to come back obviously, but I could still crack on with stuff. The chain cover actually doubles as the oil pump casing, and is called as such, and as a separate component I could get that sorted. Along with finding homes for some of the ADHD'd bolts spread everywhere... First, the new front main seal. Easy. Followed by a thorough scrape and clean - order, I know. I thoroughly cleaned all components; some stuff has a stubborn brown oil tinge that I'm not worried about. The main thing is to ensure all possible hidey holes for bearing material are gone. To this end I also disassembled some bits that the manual never specified (I guess because they're totally replaced), such as the oil pump housing. My cleaning process is to use the D20 parts washer that girlface's old work has forgotten we have, followed by a healthy(?) rinse with brake cleaner. Once re-assembled, the oil manifold gets gets attached to the case, ensuring that the spring doohicky is oiled up but the faces are totally clean. I've forgotten what sensor this was but it was next... Then it's new oil pump time. Both sides of the housing appear to be totally fine so I'm re-using them, but the gears were toast, so new gears. Measure all the things to ensure clearances are in spec and fortunately all is well. I should have measured pre-oil but I got there And making sure to have the gears lubed up, but the face clean, the other side of the housing goes on and gets torqued in the specified pattern, and the bolts marked. It's only then that I noticed some unhealthy marks in the crank timing sprocket which drives the oil pump... so a new one of them is on the way. Next up, the water pump gets cleaned and goes back on with a new gasket. One of the bolt holes goes through everything to the block so that remains empty for now. Next up is the rear main seal and its housing. I used a failed ring compressor print and punched the old seal out, then gave it a solid scrape and clean. The manual says that the new seal needs to be 1.5mm below the surface of the housing, and names a special tool to perform this. I measured everything up and printed a solid PETG version of the tool. It's just a 1.5mm deep ring with a lip face to prevent it going further. ... and a larger seal driver as my set ran out... Hit it flush with the face, then drive it another 1.5mm with the special tool. The plastic tool isn't as good as the real one; it flexed slightly with each tap, so i needed to go back around the other side and tidy it up a little bit after going slightly too far. But it did the job and I got it in the end. Meanwhile, girlface got to cleaning the sump. She found sad glitter!

Gave me/us something to do...

I finally sucked my stomach in and pulled the dashcam sd card. As remembered, there's nothing spicy. Just a car that was already eating bearing material encountering its limit while being pushed hard. Unhappy noises start around 0:21~. I'm really happy I was right before the exit to the pits. The cut at 1:00 is from the car stalling. I didn't have the presence of mind to think to push it the rest of the way, but the track guy thought I'd stopped it intentionally and told me to keep it moving, so he probably wouldn't have let me anyway. Definitely should have pushed it back into the bay once I got there but I was a shaky mess and didn't know what was up so giving myself a pass there. It's funny how dashcams make everything look slow and the cars in front super far away. I mean it is slow but still.

No WOF notes!

Yes please. I'm getting wistful.

Lots of spreadsheets and mulling led to the decision to rebuild it ourselves. The engine the mechanics sourced had no information other than "64kkm"; engines before 2019 models have thrust bearing issues I'd like to avoid. They'd charge a lot of money for something that I'm meant to be learning how to do. The cost of getting an appropriate year replacement engine from Japan is approx $5000 delivered with gst, depending on who I go with. Engine reconditioney man said if it was his block, he'd re-use it. Obviously he's not going to put "it's fine" on paper but it's better than him saying a perfectly reusable block should be tossed to avoid liability. Anyway, The good news The crank and conrod could be saved! The block should be fine! The bad news For the life of us, we couldn't find any undersized bearings for the crank in the "standard 0.25mm" increments. The engine is used in so many cars, I find it hard to believe there's nothing out there, but we just couldn't find the right people. Apparently part numbers are king in Japan and they are super cagey about anything else for liability reasons. After a while of inquiries and searches, I gave up and bought a new crank and conrod. The good news 2: electric boogaloo I'd been plugging part numbers into Amayama and bugging them to update their database because no altos past 2015 are in there. But while inquiring with Jesse Streeter, he mentioned off hand that he could get them for cheaper. I gave it a shot and.... yeah he's right! Amayama: $1.9k Streeter corp: $1.45k Delivered faster, too... That said, I'd already bought a batch from Amayama; still, the bulk of the parts went through streeter so I'm very happy with that turn of events. When Jesse's first batch arrived at his office, I asked him to send a pic of the crank stamps. This let me use the block and conrod stamps to figure out the most likely bearings to use and order them in advance. I forgot to get him to check the new conrod but fortunately it worked out While girlface cleaned the schmoo and old (possibly metallic) oil from the block, I cleaned up the old crowns. I struggled a lot with some old kitchen scourers and toothbrush with acetone before I spot-tested a brass brush and absolutely blasted through the rest of it. I also replaced the new flywheel bearing (don't worry it's clean now), 10mm for scale Cleaned and schmoo'd the transmission clutch housing, ... and the floor, went slightly overkill getting rid of those fuel fumes that we really should have dealt to weeks ago, And sorted out those drive shafts. When we removed the engine, we cut the boots open. I was super dubious about this move, having (somewhat) recently dealt with the Starion's shafts and watched people on youtube reinstall their modern FWD shafts, but since when is DIY engine overhauling smooth? I popped the shaft ends out of the transmission easily with gentle pressure from a crow bar and some light rubber malleting. Then dealt with the other ends which were still in the car. Fortunately I didn't have to remove any suspension bits because there was no engine blocking them, I just had to remove the wheels and hub nut. That's a rusty rotor. It's okay bb soon hush Then I recruited girlface to slam them out in an afternoon. Ew Ugh gross This is the closest I'll ever get to baby poop We struggled for like an hour to get the big end "properly" seated. It just looked like there was a notch waiting for it. We used shims, screwdrivers, pliers, the vice, brute force... I finally had the idea to go confer with Kelvin on how they look assembled on his car, and also hunt for high-res second hand drive shaft shots on the internet, and discovered that nope we'd been all the way on the whole time .... :') So fine, moving on to clips. The suzuki boot clips we got were this design I'd never seen; you bend a piece of metal over and it has the precise correct clamping force for the boot. Cool. Well it was cool until we had to do the two large clips. You see with the small ones, we could just use adjustable pliers to perform a reach around and grip both sides of the shaft. This let us press down easily and evenly. There's a lot of force required to get the metal to bend over, and it needs to be consistent along its length because it'll happily deform. We tried a few things, and just when we thought we had a good thing going with a hammer, we broke it :\ We didn't think the other one would go any better - or inspire confidence if we did get it on - so we decided fuck it, we'll go generic. One clamp installer and generic set later... ... the drive shafts are back at square one. I sure hope the outer boots don't die any time soon because you have to take the inner ones off to service them ... ... We need a final shipment (bearings) to arrive which will take up to a couple weeks probably, but we've got all of the other parts and there's plenty of work to do in the mean time. I've been assembling a (work-in-progress) dependency/workflow diagram to try rein my brain in and have been printing out sections of the manual for stuff that's trickier to do in front of a laptop with greasy hands. And we're caught up. Oh I bought a head stand and it's probably overkill... So um, here some more pics for scale.

I'm glad, it's funny posting "I put a thing in a thing" stuff alongside custom engines and fabs

So it turns out when... your daily/operational fun car breaks down and you decide to take on a huge DIY job to fix it that you know eff all about you specifically lay out your mortgage repayment strategy in front of you and truly understand the ramifications of paying off even tiny amounts of principle early in the loan and decide to restructure to get every little spare cent going into it that you can scrounge up you pick up a second job the remaining work on your project car kind of hinges on either a stupid amount of unappealing and tricky skilled labour, or collar-tuggingly large amounts of money to pay for said tricky skilled labour ...things on your project car tend to slow down. But I figured I should post something because otherwise I'll totally forget everything that I've done and I don't want this project to fade away. Before I put all the fuel tank stuff back, I was messing with panels. One of the pre-reqs for the panel work is obviously that it needs to be all stripped back, and I decided (with panelboi's blessing) to do it myself rather than mess around with the local acid dipper or with transport to a more reputable one hours away. The idea is to just pick some reasonable panels, strip them, fit them, and then I've got a clean no-surprises job I can show around and get some better quotes and info on. I test-fit the rear bumper from the original black car and it didn't quite sit right - the panel gap was inconsistent no matter how I fudged the fastenings - no pix unfortunately, so I went with the red's bumper. It fits a whole lot better! Next up is all the front panellage. The two bonnets have their issues so it's really a toss-up, but I opted for the red one as it seemed to be a bit more contained in its damage. Both nose panels are totally fucked so... not sure what I'm doing there just yet. But fitting the nose panel reveals some fun. Uh-oh. Fitting the bonnet and popups makes the problem a bit more obvious. The black ones are just as bad - no pix soz - so it's not just a "different donor car" thing. The frame repairs were done with the fenders and bonnet available, though not the other panels. I need to get in contact with the panelbois to sort out a warranty claim, but the last couple times I tried they didn't pick up or reply. Hopefully this doesn't become a struggle :\ Anyway, forging on. Key and clean. Apply stripper and keep wet with plastic. Create murder scene. Scrape. I probably should have applied more stripper here but newb. The fenders are all pretty crap. The one I've already lightly beaten into shape and stripped and durepox'd is the one that had a minor collision, so you'd think it'd be the worst, but it's actually probably the best one. There's no rust and it's otherwise totally straight. All other fenders... well... So I decided to just keep the fender I've already epoxied, because it's probably easier to bang it into shape than any of the others. The red driver's side fender seemed marginally better than the black one so I went forward with stripping that. I busted out the paint stripping wheel for the grinder to finish it up. I'm not really sure this was a good move - it's nice and shiny, but possibly a bit tricky to spot the imperfections in the panel now? Then the nose panel and popups.. Everything back on. You can see here what I mean about the swirlies making it hard to gauge if things are okay. I'd already taken a sanding block to the driver's side fender in this pic to try and make the flat bits even. As you might be able to tell, there's a fair bit of damage to it... there was quite a bit of bog at the front and the rear of the fender. I think it worked, so I did the rest as well. As you can see, there's a few low spots and dents, but I think they'll hammer flatter without any major headaches, and even if they weren't, they could probably just be straight filler'd without failing. The chunky spot is the part I already knew about - the front corner which had a giant slab of filler applied and has subsequently received a lot of pitting. There's also a spot on the front edge of the bonnet that has numerous rust holes, hidden under a small but deep patch of bog. Honestly, it seems saveable - though I'm also far from an expert here! The pop-ups are fine, no dents. As expected, the nose panel is worse than the surface of the moon. It's probably not worth trying to save and I should just find another one. It's also super easy to dent these to begin with; they're the most natural place to push the car from, and there's almost no structure to them. If I do get a new one I'll try mod some gussets into the back of it. Side quest to put the very first thing I restored on this car back onto it: the fuel pump access panel, which a few years ago was extremely rusty. The CRC black zinc has held up strong . Spot the fasteners and grommets stolen from the red car... Speaking of the red car. It's door time. On both cars, passenger sides have a couple of dings but nothing crazy. Also on both cars, the driver's side is absolute dent and bog city. I have pix but they suck so just hold on till the strippy bit to see what I mean. All the doors also fucking suck at the bottom. So I just went with the black doors since they're both right there, already half-stripped, and the red car is currently sealed from the elements. There's a few holes at the top as well. Annoying, but the rust seems fixable. I completely stripped the doors - which was a massive PITA when it came to the door latch, only removable via black magic / the completely wrong method. The mirror blanking was just gooped in place to fix a broken bracket. Also there was a little protective metal edging strip along the open edge of... just one of the doors? The red doesn't have these. Japanese mod + replaced door? Anyway, it's strippytime. This time I put it on thicker, and did several passes. It made the job a bit easier. The starion makes for a decent workbench... <.< I haven't finished these yet, there's still some bog to remove and then get it all nice and flat. And that's where I'm at. If the panelbois are kind with their warrantying, and the lack of surprises makes the price right, then I might be able to eek something out in this space before we pay off the mortgage :P. If not, I'm buying a welder and the scope of the project shrinks from "like new" to "guy in a garage job but the engine bay looks sweet"...

To the OG N360E engine I mean

You know, a R06AT would be over twice the horses and is more likely to fit

What an intro!

Oops. I was just going to post a li'l update since things have slowed down while I wait for stuff, but I now realise I forgot to share some stuff. We disassembled the engine. It's otherwise fine really. The oil pump housing halves look fine fortunately, no scoring or anything. The pump gears themselves are impregnated with bearing material, they still turn inside each other without much resistance but without a reference I don't know if they're meant to be smoother ;). The block's journals aren't happy. You can feel the scoring on two of them, one is particularly gougey and definitely would need a grind, if it can be saved at all. At the time we were unsure if we could just use as-is but since then I've been learning some stuff from HP Academy and uh yeah that wouldn't fly I've dropped the block off to some reconditioners in welly. They asked for the rest of the rotating assembly so I slapped the caps on in 5 minutes in what I hoped was the right order (it wasn't) and went over there with Andrew. One of the first things Engineman asked was "want us to try save the crank?" We just assumed it was toast because of the overheating discolouration. I mean maybe it is, but if these guys can save the crank then that pays for the cost of saving the block! It's great to have "good news" dangled in front of me for once! That said it could easily just go in the other direction if the block can't be saved. Engineman didn't seem too bothered about the damage, but said it might be a PITA due to one side being aluminium and the other side (caps) being steel. We'll see what he says, this is a blocker for plans going forward because if we have to buy a block then it's probably cheaper to buy a whole new engine (which isn't cheap!). A brief diversion into engine swaps. A swift turbo engine swap would be nice, but honestly one of the fun characteristics of this car is its little 0.6 litre engine which somehow manages to make this little thing hurtle around faster than it should be able to. I wouldn't hate a K6A or something in there (if it could fit...), but it's a lot of fun to have this little angry thing make its noises and confuse people when the bonnet is up. ANYWAY. Here's all the bits strewn about. Consolation prize: expensive aftermarket coils. I have since sorted out the mess a bit. Andrew cut open the oil filter I'd put on the car after it had arrived from Japan, the one attached to the engine when it started quacking, and yeah, sparklies. No surprises there. It looked like a pain in the arse but in the absence of anything to do I picked up the saw afterwards and sent it on the old filter that was on the car when it arrived in NZ. Here's @kws's hands modelling for us. Oh my. Okay Heckies So uh yeah I bought a lemon. Kelv cheekily admitted that he was glad that I'd won the car. Fair. That said, I'm strangely not mad. Nor am I put off the car. I just want to fix it and get back in it. That's got to be worth something to find out about your relationship with your daily driver. More importantly it tells me two things 1. I didn't break my car. 2. The question of "how did I break my car?" is no longer present. On the surface this seems like a shrug of a point to make, but it's much deeper than that. If I didn't find this out I'd probably never be comfortable driving this car hard again - or possibly any car. Maybe that's why I'm not mad.

Real "Weekend at Bernie's" vibes here