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.

 

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

 

 

 

 

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.