Kicker's Kei Coupe

[kicker]

I picked this little thing up ages ago from Fronte fiend @Goat, good things take time but I just fuck around heaps so I'm only
now making some progress worth posting up. Hopefully some peer pressure will give extra motivation.
 

 

 

 

[kicker]

There was a bit of rust in the plenum that needed sorting so I started poking around.

View from the inside

I cut it all out about 2 years ago and it's still in the same state.

 

 

[kicker]

I got distracted with engine stuff.

Pulling apart the sweet 3 cyl 2 stroke engine I found a blown bigend.

I still intend on rebuilding it but after reading some cool builds on the net I bought one of these to go in first.

 

[kicker]

The engine is a Suzuki GSF1250, so not a big hp R1, Busa type but the price was about a third the cost of a sport bike engine and it has a stacked gearbox which was gonna be useful. It still puts out 110-120hp with some easy mods but its main feature is torque, about 110NM which is all in by 4000rpm.

Space was a big concern as these cars are tiny, 3m front to back, 1.295m side to side. From the rear axle to the back of the car is 50cm or something silly so I needed a compact engine to allow enough room for a diff, that's where the stacked gearbox helps as it makes the engine shorter front to back. I spent a while considering different configurations, putting it in front of the axle would make it easier to sort the drivetrain but there is still minimal room in that direction and I really didn't want to chop up the interior.  

This way around had some benefits but still not enough room.

White tube at the bottom is the axle centre.

Then I noticed the bumper sized space behind the headers.

 

 

[kicker]

So now I had a spot for the engine I had to work out if I could get drive from it to the axles that goes in the right direction. I spent more time thinking, looking at pictures, measuring, reading forums, asking @yoeddynz questions, doing nothing, buying parcel shelf speakers, looking at rims, starting other projects. I started to cad (poorly) up my own diff with countershaft unit when I found an outfit in the UK who do R1 conversions for Minis and they have their engines facing the same way, a quick email confirmed they would sell one of their diffs separately if I wanted one.

This

Or this

So now I had a solution I started to fit the engine.

[kicker]

I have been keeping an eye on the lvvta docs but if you see anything whack let me know.

Crush tubes for the engine subframe mounts

Put the rear ones where the original engine subframe mounted

Bending tube to fit

The subframe isn't finished, I still have another engine mount I want to pick up and maybe tie it into the shock towers but for now it's enough to get it in.

 

[kicker]

Next step is to get the engine hooked up and running, so that means exhaust, fuel, coolant and electrical stuff first.
I did a quick and easy job with the exhaust and used a 180 2" bend to join the headers to a cut down and repacked Yoshimura can I had spare. I'll see how loud it is then decide if I need to do a version 2 but that wouldn't happen till after the diff goes in.

 

 

[kicker]

The fuel system was a bit tricky, using a surge tank was the easiest option rather than mucking about putting a pump in the tiny 20-something litre factory tank.

The tank had some pretty funky gas in it, so I had to seal it up till I could take it to the radiator shop as it would stink out my Leaf whenever I parked it in the garage.

They cleaned it up and chucked in a return line for me

I wanted to keep everything stock as far as the fuel pump was concerned so I bought a universal surge tank and chopped up the bike pump hanger until it fit.
This had to go into...

...this.

Please excuse my temporary shelf rail brackets and $6 lift pump, they helped me work out the fuel hose route, I'll have to swap them out for nicer ones later.

 

 

 

 

 

[kicker]

The cooling system is gonna take a few revisions to get spot on I expect, I'll put it together with what i've got and see what it needs before spending money on new bits. 
Things I don't know, will it need a bigger rad?, will the bike waterpump cope?, will I be able to get all the air out? etc etc

The stock setup has two hoses running through a tunnel in the floor to the radiator up front, the hot side goes through the heater matrix first then a bypass thermostat before the rad, there is also a header tank in the frunk which takes an air bleed from the thermostat on the engine, this runs up the c-pillar through the roof channel, down the a-pillar then into the header tank. Interestingly it has no fan on the radiator, the heater fan performs this duty as all the hot water runs through it anyway.

I'm mostly replicating the stock setup, due to the height of the engine the header tank and overflow will be in the back now so they can still be the highest point in the system. I'll also be adding a radiator fan and after speaking to the radiator shop I'm gonna ditch the heater for now to help with flow and will also cool the oil with air instead of coolant.
 

So starting in the front.
I had to buy 7m of 25mm ID hose to replace the 50 year old originals.

Chopped up the heater box as the bottom was rusted out anyway 

The hose now goes straight to the bypass thermostat housing. The benefit of keeping this setup, as I read on an MGF forum discussing headgasket failures, is that it helps stop temperature fluctuations in the engine by warming the system up in stages instead of repeatedly flooding the engine with litres of cold coolant whenever the thermostat opened.

I need to make a trip to supercheap sometime and rummage through hoses for a better upper rad one, one join would be ok but two with different colour hose looks a bit michael mouse.

[kicker]

More little bits of progress.

I needed to block off a few ports in the cooling system, drill, tap, plug, repeat. Gave em a quick clean in the blasting cabinet too.

I cut a couple hose barbs off and had some larger ones welded on.

Next job was replacing the roof air bleed hose. Attached it to the old one and it pulled through easily.

Normally it would run to a header tank that lived on the left but now it will run to the radiator. I'll have a look to see if it can go under the frunk and into the heater compartment somewhere.

[kicker]

In typical fashion I'm working on everything at once so I'm also deep in spaghetti
I thought I would chop out all the unneeded stuff like lights etc, was disappointed that it didn't thin it down much

I'm working from right to left so one side is tidy at least, gonna have to shorten a whole lot of stuff soon.

At this point I realised I'm gonna have to attend to the list of brackets I have to make in order to establish the final positions of various things.
I hate making brackets so onto something else.
The shift lever  (buttplug for reference)

Looks good with the 10" steering wheel

Look at all them snazzy gauges

Now I need to make a bracket for it...fuck

 

 

 

 

[kicker]

More mucking about, this time connecting the stripped down bike loom into the car, it'll be powered through a fused relay off the car ignition switch.
I ended up writing three pages of notes on what each circuit needs to do to run the engine, some more simple than others and a few sneaky ones.

For example the side stand switch is just a simple join the wires whereas bypassing the bike ign switch needs a resistor on a particular wire as the ecu uses it as a rudimentary antitheft device. A sneaky one which doesn't seem to be very well known is the clutch switch, most people seem to just join this one too but apparently there is an ecu feed on it and if you just join them the ecu will only detect the circuit activating once when starting so will think the bike is in neutral and run a fuel map for it. I just happened to have an appropriate switch so I'm just going to hook it up to the pedal and keep it as is.
Having the big rust hole that I am yet to patch has been a godsend for accessing the wiring behind the dash but I still found myself upside down in the tiny footwell.

I had to make a platform next to the car to lie on, then ended up lifting my legs up onto the seat so I wasn't banana-ing my back on the sill, 6/10 would trade again

 

[kicker]

Testing the wiring out, looking good so far.
I split the bike wiring so now everything "key on" comes through the car ignition switch via a fused relay whilst everything else is still direct from the battery.
The FI light goes out which is a good sign, still have a CHEC message but I'm guessing that is caused by either the clutch switch still being disconnected, the kill switch being off (to stop the pump trying to prime with no fuel) or the low fuel alert (due to there being no fuel).
Next I'll wire up the lift pump, its relay will take a signal from the main pump relay and I might add a momentary button to help with priming the surge tank.
It's all still in the testing phase so no tidy wiring pics yet

[kicker]

The not-engine bay is looking tidier, found a better hose combo so the cooling system at the front is ready. Hose clamps are longer than I like but what evs. I got the fan mounted and wired in, I won't bother with a shroud just yet though.

Next up, more ugly temporary bracketry. It took a bit of fiddling to find a good position for the oil cooler in the vent hole, it had to line up with the body so each of its three mounts are different but it can be removed assembled which is handy. 

 

 

[kicker]

I had a few last things to do before attempting to start the engine. First was putting some coolant in the system, got 5.4 litres in to start. After that it was fitting the oil filter sandwich plate/thermostat and plumbing the lines to the oil cooler.

Once that was done I could fill it with oil. Phone makes it easier to check the level.

On the wiring side it's still a mess, good news though is the CHEC message mentioned earlier was due to the kill switch so no problem there. I decided I will keep the start button and mount it near the shifter so I found a momentary one backlit by an LED, the LED is connected to the neutral circuit. The starter won't work if it's not in neutral so it's a good combination.

The other switches in the picture are just for testing purposes, one disconnects power from car and the other switches between using the clutch switch and direct to ground. 

There is one electrical module I still need to remove, I have ditched the narrowband 02 sensor already. Most seem to use a resistor to trick the ecu but I found that the factory have an easier way where a particular ground from the ecu can be snipped to disable it. Still to be removed is the PAIR system which adds air to the exhaust port for emissions reasons, removing it improves low rpm running, I will just use a resistor for that one.

I'm close to finalising it all and will move onto lengthening/shortening/tidying it soon.

The horror

A final check over of the fuel system was made. I had to test the thermistor was working as I want to use it to tell me if the surge tank has fuel. My modified pump hanger only just fits in and out of the tank.

Time to add some gas

Using a manual switch the lift pump primed the tank with no problems, then flicking off the kill switch I could hear the efi pump prime the system. 

Only one thing for it now

Very happy with how it ran, the exhaust isn't too loud and has a nice low sound not captured in the vid.

[kicker]

On 03/05/2022 at 02:30, kicker said:

The cooling system is gonna take a few revisions to get spot on I expect, I'll put it together with what i've got and see what it needs before spending money on new bits. 
Things I don't know, will it need a bigger rad?, will the bike waterpump cope?, will I be able to get all the air out? etc etc

After running the engine a few times I now know a thing: will the bike waterpump cope? No, not at idle at least. Not surprising though, it's a tiny thing trying to push water a long way. So the first revision is to ditch the mechanical pump for one of these.

The controller adjusts flow based on temp so I can remove my thermostats and therefore some complexity from my setup.

I still need to remove the mechanical pump and plumb the new one in once I find a good spot for it.

As for the other unknowns, the new pump will help test the radiator and assist the air bleeding which looked promising i.e. roof hose was warm.

On to other important issues, how to listen to 'NZ Hiphop Bangers Only' when parked (it will probably be too noisy to hear the intro to Deceptikonz Fallen Angels when driving). I am keeping the factory radio but wanted something with modern connectivity, basically an amp, speakers and a bluetooth connection. I bought this little Alpine 3516 amp, swapped the din plug for some rca inputs on the side, picked up some Pioneer TS-X5 speakers as they were the only ones that I could see that would fit on the tiny parcel shelf and finally a Fusion marine BT unit.

Goes ok for what it is.

[kicker]

The water pump got pulled out in preparation for the electric one. It's a bit teeny understandably, impellor was about 50mm dia.

Nice block off plate

Don't worry, I got a new output shaft seal to put in.

Then got a larger boss welded to the thermostat housing for the temp sensor.

I got the electric water pump wired in but the screen was dead out of the box so now I'm following it up under warranty, boo.

With that on hold I thought I'd have a play with some other shit.

Fuck yeah accessories, got some fog lights and air horns hooked up.

I got the horns tucked in nicely behind the plate.

Then I was reminded how small this car is, the damn plate sticks out over the lights. Need a plate narrower than 320mm to miss them or find another spot for the lights to go.

[kicker]

9New direction, I was taking the fog lights off when I remembered I had a box of lights that might work.

So now I have DRL's instead, dekatora running lamps.

I have some spare if anyone is keen.

[kicker]

My new water pump controller arrived Saturday, props to Davies Craig for sorting it quickly.

I plugged it in and everything looked good. I gave it a test today and ran it for about 30 mins. Temp limit was set to 85 degrees so when it hit 88 the fan came on and within 30 seconds the temp had come down to 85 again, pretty happy with that. I let it do this a few times and it seems to be working well.

Only issue remaining is the time it takes to warmup, I suspect they'll recommend a thermostat with some extra bleed holes in it but I'll run it past the manufacturer and see what they recommend.

 

[kicker]

It was getting to the point where I really needed to sort some brackets for various things in order to progress.

I normally don't like making them, they are like workshop admin but this time I used Fusion 360 and it made for a much more satisfying experience.

First up was the ecu, a smooth thin box with no mounting features so it needed something to hold it securely. I'd heard a local library does 3d printing for the cost of the filament used so thought I'd give it a go. $10.90 later and I have this, black would be better but this is a good start.

I just need to cut an ally strip to hold the ecu in place.

This will attach to a larger bracket, still in the works, which will also hold the surge tank and oil cooler bracket.

Next up were some brackets to hold the starter solenoid and bike fuse box, cad'd up then a template printed to scale and cut out of some mild steel sheet.

 

Lastly is the gear lever bracket, rough cardboard templates first then drawn up in CAD then printed scale templates and test fitted then sent for laser cutting.

Brackets