Tomble's adorable go cart / distraction / Alto Works

[tomble]

Lots of spreadsheets and mulling led to the decision to rebuild it ourselves.

1. The engine the mechanics sourced had no information other than "64kkm"; engines before 2019 models have thrust bearing issues I'd like to avoid.
2. They'd charge a lot of money for something that I'm meant to be learning how to do.
3. 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.

[Alfashark]

Love your work!

Also, outstanding use of Banana for scale...

[Nominal]

Fabulous writeup!

[yoeddynz]

You have a big banana. Nice curve. 

[tomble]

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.

[kws]

Good lord that gets me in the feels, little did I know the horrors happening only a couple of cars behind me. 

Had I known it sounded like that when running I would've recommended just giving up straight away and not trying pulling to bits in the pits like we did.

That engine thought it ugga'd its last dugga that day.

[tomble]

38 minutes ago, kws said:

Good lord that gets me in the feels, little did I know the horrors happening only a couple of cars behind me. 

Had I known it sounded like that when running I would've recommended just giving up straight away and not trying pulling to bits in the pits like we did.

That engine thought it ugga'd its last dugga that day.

Gave me/us something to do...  

[tomble]

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! 

 

[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.

[tomble]

MX5's can fit car engines np! Such a practical car.

[tomble]

I picked up the engine wednesday and got bizzy after work.

 

Mmm shiny

 

Outside not so much - I think I prefer this, because it'd fuck with me if I only had some parts that were super shiny on the outside.

 

They skimmed the head, checked for cracks and heat issues, and only found minor pitting on some valve seats which they lapped out.

 

Forgetting that I hadn't done this ahead of time, I went through a soapy water -> water rinse -> brake cleaner -> fresh oil routine to make sure the engine gets as little extra iron in its diet as possible.

 

The valve stem seals go in with a socket and extension + oil... I uh accidentally put a used one in at once (visible at bottom of image above), because for some reason past tom put an old one next to a fresh one...

 

Special tool 09916–14510

Special tool 09916–14522. If I had to change this I'd make it a little longer. 

The first one went in reasonably easy. I used some shitty aliexpress tweezers (might as well be made of slices of takeaway container plastic) and grease to hold the bingles in place.

It made me think that this would be easy...

Turns out almost all of them gave me a fight. The bingles HATE going into position and the intake side is even more of a bitch as they need to seat deeper. They'd wiggle free, pop each other out, stick to the tweezers or whatever else I put in there, and just generally be a bit of a bitch. The tool I printed left too short a window on a couple of them to keep a piece of material in there to hold the bingles down. I tried a bunch of tricks, including putting foam in the special tool and in a socket, but ultimately the best technique was to just struggle and eventually get there.

 

The next day we aimed to get the head and the block together. We got the shop to do the rotating assembly and I think it was well worth it. 

 

Before we could put the head on there were a couple jobs we wanted to do first.

First, the oil seal housing. Some internet sleuthing tells me that Threebond 1217G is equivalent to Permatex Ultra Grey.

Special tool 09911–95010 helps get the seal onto the crank.

 

Girlface finishes off cleaning the breather plate and we get that back on too.

 

While we waited for the sealant to cure, we got the engine set up on the hoozitchacallit. Then after an hour we came back and torqued to spec.

 

Wiping down all surfaces with brake cleaner, we busted out the dowels and head gasket... and then the engine got marginally larger!

 

The head bolts are next. We got fresh new ones under the assumption that the old ones underwent enough plastic deformation to be unusable, but I haven't actually checked.

20 Nm, then 40Nm, fine.

But then +60 degrees, which introduces unhappy metal sounds and vibrations, which is really disconcerting!

And then another +60 degrees which put us completely in anoos puckering territory. Fuck me I'm glad that's over and nothing broke.

 

Today, I set my sights on the camshafts, sprockets, chain and oil cover. 

I still hadn't disassembled and cleaned the camshaft parts so that was the first job.

 

Gingerly separated the cams from their sprockets in a vice, then cleaned in the parts washer before rinsing thoroughly with brake cleaner and then a further rinse in fresh oil. The exhaust camshaft was a lot simpler to clean

 

 

The intake camshaft has a bearing at the sprocket end, just the one, I guess because there are some complex oil gallery stuffs going on there.

The old bearing felt fine but I grabbed a new one anyway, it's only one size.

Then the cams go in! It was ambiguous in the manual whether to use oil on the bolts but I thought yes and the internet backed me up so that's what I did. Kelv later told me his gut said no. So Kelv, if something fucks up here, you were right.

 

It was at this point I tore the garage up trying to find the crankshaft key. It gone . I remember seeing it at some stage so I can't imagine it has gone far but ugghh what a bummer, let me keep assembling god damn it!

I kept going anyway and got the chain, guides and tensioner set up per the manual. Before I torqued the tensioner down I tested that everything can be removed with it in place for if I find the key / need to disassemble the head later, so that gets the ol' paint marks on the bolts treatment.

 

The other annoying thing: the machinist said to check the valve clearances due to the lapping.

I slightly fucked it up (measured at parallel instead of perpendicular because the above image didn't load first time and I'm a numpty) but I got a 0.2mm in (good) but not a 0.25mm in (bad). I also wanted to get the chain properly set up so I could start rotating the lobes into the correct positions for measuring so that annoyingly threw me off today.

I'll find some way to measure those little bastards tomorrow though. I really hope I don't have to wait for new tappets and/or key from Japan...

But anyway progress is progress!

[shrike]

Hey I really hope I've mis read but did you lap the valves to the seats before you reassembled or did they do that at the shop and had the valves labelled to fit the head?

If it came back a bare head I'd be worried about valves sealing to the seats

And did you leak test the valves before you put the head on the block? 

If the machine shop/engine reconditioner lapped the valve seats to remove pitting then just putting the valves back into the head may not seal as well as it should 

Happy to he corrected  and I hope that makes sense

Great to see progress and I hope it all goes vaxk together well

[mjrstar]

Is it safe to assume you fixed this before the cams went in?

 

 

[tomble]

5 hours ago, shrike said:

Hey I really hope I've mis read but did you lap the valves to the seats before you reassembled or did they do that at the shop and had the valves labelled to fit the head?

If it came back a bare head I'd be worried about valves sealing to the seats

And did you leak test the valves before you put the head on the block? 

If the machine shop/engine reconditioner lapped the valve seats to remove pitting then just putting the valves back into the head may not seal as well as it should 

Yeah the machinist lapped the valves in the head and did leak tests on each one  Thanks for checking.

 

  

4 hours ago, mjrstar said:

Is it safe to assume you fixed this before the cams went in?

Crap... I think that's an action shot, but god damn it now I have to go back and check lol. Fortunately I have photographic evidence.

Yep it's an action shot. Phew

[Raizer]

6 hours ago, tomble said:

20 Nm, then 40Nm, fine.

But then +60 degrees, which introduces unhappy metal sounds and vibrations, which is really disconcerting!

And then another +60 degrees which put us completely in anoos puckering territory. Fuck me I'm glad that's over and nothing broke.

Wait till you try a diesel!

20 Nm, 40 Nm, 105° then 105° was a bit of a nerve wracking process haha

[tomble]

We found a piece of plastic that was approximately the right size to serve as a temporary (and safe on the metal) shaft key to allow us to turn the crank and cams at the same time.

Then, we measured the valve clearances - properly this time, when the lobes are perpendicular to the tappets.

And I don't really know what I was stressing out about because fortunately everything measured in spec. The worst one is exhaust #6 which is still well within spec.

Phew! 

Still can't find that fucking shaft key (PN 09421-04005) though

[Doug Hill]

You can make a new woodruff key yourself with a little bit of key stock. If you send me the width/length I may have a bit here I can send 

[Willdat?]

1 hour ago, tomble said:

We found a piece of plastic that was approximately the right size to serve as a temporary (and safe on the metal) shaft key to allow us to turn the crank and cams at the same time.

Then, we measured the valve clearances - properly this time, when the lobes are perpendicular to the tappets.

And I don't really know what I was stressing out about because fortunately everything measured in spec. The worst one is exhaust #6 which is still well within spec.

Phew! 

Still can't find that fucking shaft key (PN 09421-04005) though

https://www.partzilla.com/product/suzuki/09421-04005 I love that this is a quad bike part...

[tomble]

4 hours ago, Doug Hill said:

You can make a new woodruff key yourself with a little bit of key stock. If you send me the width/length I may have a bit here I can send 

<3 I'll get some measurements in the morning. I'll also call around on Monday to see if any motorcycle shops or ATV wreckers or whatever have one available. In the mean time I've pushed the button to get one from Japan (right as we enter their holiday week...)