KwS's Small Car Shenanigans. Making Altos work.

[kws]

2 hours ago, AllTorque said:

Re dash lights, check your alternator and battery. Often when there are codes everywhere it causes by low voltage. A lot of modern cars will turn off the alternator when idling until there is enough electrical load.

Oh yeah, i didnt mention it but i tested the battery and alt and both had good voltages. It is a Japanese battery, so no idea how old it is, but it has no issue starting the car. I do wonder since I was creeping along in traffic if the revs, and voltage, dipped a bit low and caused the CANBUS to throw a wobbly.

The Alt has a normal solid pulley, so fancy clutched pulley here, so no idea if the ECU can control it.

[Goat]

I don't think it controls the pulley. It just controls the regulator.

But no idea if Suzuki does that though.
It was just the/a solution to the problem i would never ever have considered or got to by myself. 
Battery was fine, car started well. Everything was good until it wasnt. Then it would be good again after a day or so.

[jakesae101]

4 hours ago, kws said:

Oh yeah, i didnt mention it but i tested the battery and alt and both had good voltages. It is a Japanese battery, so no idea how old it is, but it has no issue starting the car. I do wonder since I was creeping along in traffic if the revs, and voltage, dipped a bit low and caused the CANBUS to throw a wobbly.

The Alt has a normal solid pulley, so fancy clutched pulley here, so no idea if the ECU can control it.

You can also have pretty wild voltage fluctuations with the ecu regs when they are on the way out. My commodore was all over the show charging voltage wise when the reg was on its way out but didnt throw any codes just noticed because i have a factory voltage gauge. Blairs auto electrical have a massive stock of parts was 120$ and i replaced the reg and rectifier for good measure was relatively simple just need a grunty soldering iron for the rectifier to the windings.

[kws]

Going from my drive this morning, even at almost-stalling rpm the alt is still pushing a min of 13.5v. Normally it didn't drop below 13.8v when driving. 

[mjrstar]

Had a friend's ford territory that did that..one of the main relays was brown inside and occasionally it would only let about 8 volts through.. quite trickey to diagnose, uncool for her when it shuts everything off and every warning on the dash starts scrolling through..

[DB8-TypeR]

When we imported the wifes vitz from Japan it would do weird shit. Turns out the fuse for the Alternator "sense" circuit was missing so ECU wasnt able to tell alternator to output anything

Can only assume another vehicle nearby on the wharf or ship needed a fuse so they grabbed on from the vitz

[kws]

I'm waiting on a battery tester to arrive so I can test the battery, but being it's from 2019 and spent some time on the docks/ships before i pressed it into regular service, it's probably not living its best life. Looks like the alt is ECU controlled and it's acting "normal" currently.

I am not too worried about it, I'm 99% convinced it was my fault for crawling along in second gear with the revs real low. 

[kws]

I've been thinking about these for a while, even before I got an Alto, as they are a common mod in Japan. I finally bit the bullet and lowered the front seats.

One of the biggest criticisms of the Alto in reviews is that instead of sitting IN the Alto, you sit ON the Alto. The two front seats, despite being nice fancy Recaros, are not height adjustable (lower spec Altos, including the RS Turbo, are) and you sit very high in the car.

For example, I'm not particularly tall and my shoulder in the standard seats, is about halfway up the window

The other issue was that on the track I had to slightly slouch in the seat for my helmet to clear the headlining. Not ideal.

Knowing I want to track the car more, and that slouching in the seat wasn't safe, I convinced myself it was a safety upgrade to lower the seats and gain more headroom. Yes. Safety.

So I went on Yahoo Japan and bought a pair of TakeOff Low-Posi Kun seat spacers. These emulate the standard spacers by being one piece with a crossbar between the two legs

There are other brands, some of which offer adjustable spacers so you can change the height or the tilt of the seat to suit you, but the TakeOff ones are the only spacers to have the crossbar. I've seen what can happen to Recaro seats when the two rails aren't braced together, and the seat tries to splay them apart. I'm not a small or light person, certainly not the build of person the Alto was designed for, so strength is important.

The TakeOff spacers have also been strength tested in Japan and each set comes with an individually serialised certificate of strength testing. It won't mean much in NZ, but it gives me some confidence that the product is good.

The TakeOff spacer lowers the seats by 50mm. It doesn't sound like much, but when you put the two spacers side by side it's huge. The top one is the standard spacer, and the black one is the lowered spacer.

When put side by side, it's noticeable, as the example photos from the site show

Standard Lowered

A wad of money, and a few days later, I had a pair of spacers in my hands

They're a nicely made piece of kit. Very solid.

The included strength certificate

It comes with all the fittings needed, if they aren't the standard fittings (it reuses all standard fittings)

The thick brass washers are optional spacers to raise the seat slightly. It also makes the rails smoother to adjust. I'm not bothered either way and wanted to go as low as possible, so I left them out

I had seen a few different ways to fit the spacers. The most common is to just remove the seats from the car completely, but I didn't want to remove the seats from the car and get them dirty in the garage, so I opted to tip the seats back up onto the folded-down back seat and work on them there

The seats are bolted to the car with 4x T40 bolts. You can see the large fabric covered stock spacer here, between the rail and seat.

Don't forget to unplug the connector under the seat. These seats don't have side airbags, so I didn't bother disconnecting the battery. This is just the seatbelt and passenger occupancy connector.

I unbolted the seat and carefully tipped it back onto the back seat. I turned it so I could work from the back door opening

Disconnect the plug and unhook the wiring from the spacer and rail

The spacer is then bolted to the seat with 4 bolts (orange arrows) and 7 studs with nuts from the rails below them (green arrows, one side of the rail has an extra stud; 3 on one side and 4 on the other). All are 12mm.

I loosened all nuts and bolts before removing any of them. Don't forget to undo the large 14mm securing the seatbelt buckle on the side too.

The rail comes off as one piece

Leaving the spacer

Remove the four bolts holding that on and you have a bare seat. You will need to unhook the fabric from each end of the spacer, I used a trim tool to lever it towards the middle of the seat and unhook it from the metal lip.

I then affixed the TakeOff spacer to the standard rails, using supplied washers and the original nuts. Protip, don't mount the buckle yet, it has to go through the fabric on the seat first, so wait until the rail is mounted.

Then it was a case of mounting the rails to the seats. The holes are slotted, so I put two bolts on one side of the seat and slid the rail onto those to support it while I put the other two in. There is enough space to slip the seatbelt wiring between the spacer and the seat base.

I tightened all the nuts and bolts down and fit the buckle on the side. Once the wiring was clipped and tied in place, the seat was then lowered back down onto the floor, using the locating studs to place it. The bolts were then tightened down.

The visual difference was immediate

It's significantly lower than the stock driver's seat. I couldn't help myself so jumped in and sat on the newly lowered passenger seat, which made me even more keen to get the driver's side done next.

I followed the same procedure, which went quicker this time now that I knew what I was doing, and had the driver's seat installed in no time.

Tons of head space now. No chance of helmet issues next time I take it to the track.

The little fabric flap now just hangs aimlessly down covering everything. It's not attached anymore, but I'm sure if it bothered you you could glue or velcro it to the spacer to hold it in place. I've seen people cut the fabric or jam it between the spacer and seat base, but I'm happy with it as it is.

I've only taken it for a short drive so far, I'm planning on taking it to work tomorrow anyway, but already the differences are pretty big. Obviously, I've had to adjust all my mirrors and steering wheel down (speaking of, the steering wheel is now at its lowest position, so I can see why column spacers exist), but the biggest thing for me is that now I'm looking through the middle of the windscreen, not the top half, and the interior mirror no longer blocks a chunk of my left-hand vision.

In terms of driving, the seats feel more comfortable, maybe due to my leg position now, and the car feels a bit more confident in corners. I guess lowering a significant percentage of the cars weight (me) will help that by lowering the center of gravity. It really does feel like you're IN the car now.

The only downsides so far are that it's harder to do the old arm-out-the-window when driving, as my shoulder is now just above the waist line of the door, and I've hit my elbow on the armrest on the door when turning once or twice since I'm not used to there being something there.

I'm looking forward to my drive to work tomorrow and seeing how it goes around the twisty roads.

[tomble]

Quote

... now I'm looking through the middle of the windscreen, not the top half, and the interior mirror no longer blocks a chunk of my left-hand vision.

[kws]

21 minutes ago, tomble said:

NGL, i honestly think the car was designed to have the seats lowered in the first place and the big spacer was an afterthought, everything falls so nicely to hand now and its much better to drive. It cannot be understated how much better it is to be able to press the HVAC buttons without having to reach down and across. 

I need to take you for a blast at some point

[tomble]

Yes please. I'm getting wistful.

[kws]

Another thing I had been wanting for a while but was hesitant to buy due to cost finally came on sale, so I snapped it up.

Since my car was a track toy in Japan it came with some goodies still attached, one of which was the Cusco front swaybar. This apparently takes the swaybar from the standard 18mm up to 20mm, which Cusco claims is "ratio with standard 138%", whatever that means. Either way, it's stiffer.

The bar is so dirty it's hard to see, but it's definitely thicc and blue.

I suspect this, along with my blown rear shocks and wrong rear springs, worked together to cause the handling at the last track to day just be straight up hostile. The car would not rotate, it was all over the place, and really wanted to push on in corners.

Since I've fixed the shocks and springs now, the one thing left to do to balance the handling was to fit a rear swaybar. The car originally had one when it was in Japan, but it went missing at some point before I got it (likely before it left Japan). The Alto Works apparently has a standard rear swaybar integrated into the rear beam, but I haven't seen how big this is, I suspect tiny.

I've been watching the auctions for ages now trying to catch a bargain on a used bar, since they weren't cheap new. I had no luck, but by chance I was having a nosy over on RHDJapan and noticed the exact bar I was looking for was on sale, so jumped at the chance.

So, here is my new Cusco 16mm rear swaybar.

It's both easy to fit and a real pain. The bolts that hold the end plates to the rear beam have to go under the lower spring pads. Trying to lever the pad up with a trim tool with one hand, whilst using the other hand to push the bolt through, is not my idea of fun

It also makes it hard to get the hex key into the bolt to stop it from turning as you tighten the nut. In hindsight, I would probably drop the rear shocks off and lower the rear beam until there is no pressure on the spring and just lift the pads up.

I got there in the end though, and the bar fits nicely.

As soon as I started the car I noticed a rather large issue; the pipe before the rear muffler was knocking on the swaybar end plate, badly.

Doing some research, it seems this is a common thing and the first thing to try is flipping the exhaust hanger.

I pushed the car up a ramp on one side to give me some extra clearance

Mine started on the stock side, albeit it had been raised up above the normal height (possibly for clearance when the car was lowered)

Zero clearance

I undid the bolt holding the hanger in place and moved the hanger to the other side of the bracket. I then reinstalled the bolt down into the stock hole, which has the captive nut (the visible nut is just a locking nut the previous owner used to secure it to the upper hole, which doesn't have a captive nut)

This gave me ample clearance

As a bonus, the exhaust is no longer obscured behind the rear bumper

As opposed to

A quick drive shows that the exhaust is no longer rattling its little head off, so that's a success. I haven't had a decent chance on the twisty roads to test the new swaybar, but already the car seems to corner flatter and feels more confident in corners. I'll take it to work later in the week and hit some twisties and see how it feels.

Since the car was already in the garage I took the chance to do a couple of other changes.

One was to replace the rear engine mount with a newer genuine part, and a Silkroad insert. The standard Type 1 mounts are known to be softer than the later mounts, so the new part alone should help tighten it up and fitting the inserts should improve it further, without the harshness of solid mounts.

New genuine mount, and inserts

The inserts fill these gaps

Like so. I slathered them in rubber grease and used a mallet to hammer them into the mount. The inserts are a flexible polyurethane.

Interestingly the inserts stick out on both sides of the mount

Here's the old mount in place.

I first tried to remove the bolt that goes through the small end of the mount and soon realised that no, it doesn't fit

The solution was to take the bracket off the gearbox

There's a little plastic cover over the hole in the subframe the big end of the mount lives in. This is held in place with a clip on each end, obscured by the swaybar

I don't know if it's because of the bigger swaybar, or if it's an issue with the stock one too, but there was no way the mount would slip out passed the bar. I ended up having to undo both swaybar links, and unbolt one end of the D bushes that mount the bar to the subframe, so I could lift the bar up high enough to slip the mount out

It turns out the previous owner had given stiffening the stock mount a go at some point. He had slipped some rubber sheets into the gaps and then slathered the whole thing in.. something. Glue maybe?

It didn't really help, there was heaps of movement in the mount

I slipped the new improved mount in, bolted it all back into place and reinstalled the swaybar.

Since the links were off, and I had new ones (because I had previously noticed that the old ones were stuffed), I replaced those too.

Unfortunately the nut on one of them was stuck and someone had stripped out the hex in the balljoint (not me)

So out came the spinny death wheel, which made quick work of it.

And the new links went in with no issue. I did have to source a new nut from my stash though, as genuine links don't come with new nuts (!).

With everything tightened up, and the wheels back on, it was test drive time.

Immediately you could notice the mount was stiffer. At startup and idle there is a noticeable vibration in the cabin. Not horrible (like my Integra with solid mounts), but it's there and causes a couple of small rattles. Once the revs are above idle though, the vibration is gone, and boy does the mount make a difference. There is no backlash in the engine coming off throttle, and gear changes are even more direct (they were already bliss). Everything just feels more solid.

I'll live with the vibration, it's just part of having a road going little track toy, but A+ definitely worth doing so far.

Finally, one last small change. I finally got the courage to add a third stage to the boost controller. I know from information about what the previous owner did, that the car used to have three settings programmed by CADCARS on the boost controller before it was exported, "comfort mode" - 14.5psi, "circuit mode" - 18psi and "mountain pass mode" - 21psi. Stock boost is 8psi, and that could be achieved by turning the boost controller "off".

I've had it set so A is stock 8psi, B is 14.5psi and C wasn't set. Since I was confident the car was happy on 14.5psi, and knowing it previously ran up to 21psi without issue (I'm not going to push it that far), I finally set C to 18psi and holy moly, I thought 14psi was fun!

Accelerating through the gears to 100kph is pretty rapid, but the real fun is around town, where you can just rip around like a madman, whilst still under the speed limit. Coming out of corners, second gear, 18psi, with the LSD gripping like crazy, whilst doing 45kph, leaves you with a massive grin.

AFRs seem happy, although intake temp does climb pretty quickly, indicating the little spooly boi is getting pretty close to its limits for not just making heat. Thankfully the massive Greddy intercooler recovers quickly and the temps drop back as soon as you're off boost.

Right, I think that's about it for now... *opens Yahoo Auctions Japan*