kei KwS Gets Another Kei - 1990 Suzuki Alto Works RS-X

[kws]

After selling the Alto Works, there was a tiny little nugget shaped hole in my life, so I had no choice but to fill it with another Kei car.

If you were following the previous Alto from the start, you might remember this one from here.

Long story short, there was an auction (maybe an estate sale? Can't recall) a couple of hours north of where I live, and when browsing through the list of what was going to be available, there happened to be a Suzuki Alto Works listed. Weird thing to have in a barn, I thought, but hey I'm keen.

I went up to view and bid on the car, and as soon as I saw it, I fell for the little nugget. Who couldnt love that little face.

It'd been off the road for 11 years at that point, and had been sitting the whole time. The interior was foul

The exterior was also filthy, top to bottom, so it was hard to get a good gauge on the condition. Poking around with my torch though, I found a couple of spots that needed attention

The front of each sill, where the jacking points should be, had some rust, including this hole on the passenger's side.

The boot lip had been trapping moisture under the seal too, and rusted along there (and causing a leak into the boot)

The only real damage to the exterior, other than a couple of small dings, was this dent in the front guard. I suspect since the door hinges are bent, that the door over extended forward, damaging both

But otherwise it appeared fairly solid, and most importantly, mostly complete

No one knew if it had run, when it last ran, or if it was previously a good runner. I found the keys on the keyring in the car next to it, so moved them to the Alto, but otherwise it was all an unknown.

The auction rolled around, I did my best but ultimately got outbid. For me, the risk of the unknowns at that point were just too great, so I kept my top bid reasonable.

Fast-forward almost two years, and I get a message from a friend saying, "I put out looking to buy a Kei car, and got offered a car I read about on your very blog. It's too much of a project for me, but do you want me to put you in touch?" Heck yeah I do!

So he passed my email on and the owner dropped me a line "Hi, I have a Suzuki Alto Works for sale, would you be interested in a project"

Of course, I held back my excitement and asked for more details

He came back with a couple more details, but more importantly a couple of photos

Undeniably the same car, car club sticker and all. Unfortunately, he also mentioned the engine was rust seized, and had been sent off to a rebuilder to be stripped and assessed, which resulted in it being declared completely kaput (and a "$10K" quote to rebuild it).

I replied asking for more information about the engine damage and condition of the car and heard nothing but crickets.

Me, being me, couldnt leave it well enough alone. The damn thing was rattling around rent-free in my head, so 7 months after I heard nothing back, I flicked him a quick email asking how he was getting on with the Alto.

"Good timing, I was just thinking I should do something with the car or get rid of it"

After a lot of back and forth, the stars aligned and on my way to the track in the BRZ the other weekend I detoured an hour or so out of my way and went to look at the little nugget.

It was pretty well as expected; the front of the car was all in bits, the engine was spread across a few shelves, and the car was looking a bit sorry for itself.

On the plus side, he had cleaned the car inside and out, and honestly, the interior clean alone was worth having him win the car in the first place instead of me

The engine was pretty dire, but we'll get back to that later.

Anyway, it all checked out, everything was there, the rego was still on hold, and after going away and doing some more research into what on earth I was doing, I made an offer.

We settled on something in between what both of us were thinking, and a friend of his was roped in to bring the car and multiple tubs of parts down to me.

Yesterday the car arrived.

Here is my latest project, Nuggie, the 1990 Suzuki Alto Works RS-X CN21S

I had been super anxious all morning, but actually seeing the car roll up on the trailer, looking ridiculously small, just wiped all the anxiety away and replaced it with excitement.

Whilst discussing the transport with the transporter beforehand, we had been coming up with plans to get the car off the trailer and down into my garage, since my driveway, although short, is very steep. I think in the end it was going to be a case of using the winch on the van to winch the car down into the garage.

But thankfully that didnt matter. As it turns out, not only does the handbrake work, but so do the service brakes. So with a little push, the Alto was off the trailer and I gently guide it down into the garage using the handbrake to control it.

We unload all the parts, and after bidding farewell, I stand back and see the Alto in its new (temporary) home

Theres a couple more spots of rust than I could see at the auction (one of them is the front edge of the bonnet in the above photo, seems to be a common spot), and the paint is flat as anything, but it will hopefully polish up nicely. I won't do that yet, I want a good before and after in the sun.

I couldnt help but check out a couple of the cool little things about the early cars. One of them is visible in the photos above; the vertical door handles. These were only on the early cars, as they later replaced them with normal boring handles when they decided safety was more important than being cool and added side intrusion bars. This even necessitated changing the quarter panels since they have cutouts for your hand on the vertical handle cars.

Cool handles

Boring normal handles and "safe" doors.

The front seats are pretty wild too. Such late 80's vibes

You can actually quickly remove and flip the shoulder support on the backrest, for either higher or lower support

Another early feature I'm a big fan of is the super retro dash and the gauge cluster, both of which got "modernised" in 1991.

Moving on, spread across the tubs were all the engine components, and now that I had time to have a decent look at them, it was grim

The main journals on the crank are very unhappy

There are a couple of less than happy valves too. I suspect even if the engine didnt drink a bunch of water that it wouldnt have run very well with a burnt valve

But the block is the least happy

I'm looking into options currently, and have a potential lead on a complete engine that would be a better base to rebuild, otherwise I could bore this block out and use oversize forged pistons. We'll see.

Either way, I want it running fairly quickly (without compromising too much, I want it done properly), so have a roughly 6-month plan to be back on the road, and I want it out of the garage within a month or two as I'm very limited on garage space.

Parts have already been ordered, and I'll be making a start on the rust soon. Plenty more to come. Keep on moving.

[kws]

So, I've had the car just over a week now, and it's been a busy old time.

The more I dig into the engine that came with the Alto, the more dire it becomes. I'll go into detail as I go, but I'm starting to think the $10k quote the previous owner got for the rebuild might not have actually been that far off, considering almost nothing is reusable.

In a huge turn of luck, I was very fortunate to be offered a Suzuki Cappuccino engine by a friend in the local Kei group. It was a spare for his race Cappo, but had been a good running engine when it came out of the donor. I never thought I would be able to source a donor, let alone it being local.

So of course I jumped in the parts hauling Honda, and loaded it up

I got it home and with the help of my wife we unloaded it, and I managed to rig the engine stand to work on the tiny little engine. It's pretty much at the limits of the stock stand.

It had been stored in a workshop, so is pretty dirty externally, but before I bought it we stuck a borescope down the cylinders and checked them out. We couldn't see much because the cylinders are so small, but they didn't appear rusty.

The timing cover came with it, thankfully, as mine had been cut in half for some reason

The exhaust manifold has cracked and been welded, which is better than my current one which is still badly cracked

Interestingly, the Cappo runs a 90 degree adapter on the oil filter, whilst the Alto runs the filter straight into the block via a cooler

I wasted no time in starting to strip the donor engine down. First was removing the oil filter adapter. Three bolts and it pops off

Next was the exhaust manifold, which has two nuts and two bolts holding it on. One of the bolts is hidden up under the turbo flange

Came off suspiciously easy

Next was the intake manifold. There are a couple of other things to remove first, like this long guy coolant neck

I tried to get the small hose to the intake manifold off without damaging it, but in the end it wouldn't give up, so got chopped

The intake manifold is held on with a series of 9 little nuts. This was made a little easier by the injectors and fuel rail having already been removed by the previous owner

Fairly easy to remove, really

Instead of the massive thermostat block the Alto has, this engine just had a small block off plate with a coolant temp sensor in the middle of it

The engine was looking pretty small with the manifolds removed

Whilst the tub of Cappo parts was filling up. Note the ziplock bags, labelled, with bolts in them... something the engine rebuilder that stripped the Alto engine was lacking.

The next day I started on the actual tear down. My plan is to completely rebuild this engine from the bottom up, so it's all new, and will last. I probably could've run this engine as is, but I didn't want to risk it (with good reason, as I later found out)

Removing the timing belt was the first thing I needed to do, so using the manual, I set the timing at TDC, making sure the cams weren't 180 out

Next, I removed the spring and bolt from the tensioner. This was a real prick to remove, as the little pin it pivots on was seized in the front cover. I had to tap it with a hammer back and forth to get it to move and then slowly wiggle it out

Once the belt was removed, before progressing further, I set the crank to a certain position as per the manual. As it says, this sets the pistons in a certain height to prevent the pistons hitting the valves.

I could then remove the cam pulleys and rear timing cover

The cams on the F6A engine aren't actually in the head, they are in cam boxes on top of the head. Annoyingly, it means if you have a "valve cover" leak, you have to remove the camshafts (and timing belt) to change the gaskets. After removing all the screws, I carefully lifted off the cam boxes

This gave me clear access to the head, with the rocker arms and hydraulic lash adjusters (lifters)

I carefully removed the rocker arms in their pairs, and placed them in an organiser

The lifters just slide up out of their bore. I started with some needle nose pliers and a rag, but in the end just pulled them out with my bare fingers

Intake side done

A good reminder to limit how much sealant you use. This orange RTV was all over the place, and in the case of this lifter, inside it too

The Alto reconditioner didn't seem that concerned, since they dumped all the rockers and lifters from that engine together into a container with no care

but in my case I'm keeping everything labelled and organised

Next was to remove the head, which caused a slight issue... my hex socket was too big to fit between the valve springs. Nothing a visit to the bench grinder couldn't fix though

Head bolts removed. They always have a very distinctive burnt oil smell

Head removed

Finally, the treasures inside have been revealed. Stock/OEM style head gasket present

The bores looked good, considering the unknown ks

Number two has some slight marking in the walls. Cant pick it up with a fingernail though. Hopefully a hone will clean it up

The pistons were looking good too, quite clean, with no missing bits

As you can see in the photos above though, the coolant passages were a bit crusty... so when I removed the water pump... it was nasty.

I gave it a clean up, and I will have the block cleaned by the reconditioners, so it should be fine.

Flipping the engine over, it was time to remove the sump and gain access to the rotating assembly

Looked pretty good inside. Nice and clean, no real burnt on sludge. I suspect this engine was looked after

I removed the oil pickup

Now it was time to remove the pistons. One by one, I undid the conrod nuts, removed the cap and pushed the piston down and out

The bearings have some wear, but were fine. Most important was that they were consistent

It's bloody hard to show, since it's so shiny, but the crank also looked great

The main bearing caps needed to be removed next. Once again, bearings looked pretty good (darkness on bearings is just old oil)

Crank also showing no signs of damage

And compared to the thrust bearings I removed from my last Alto, which were almost completely worn out, these are great

I got a little stuck here thanks to a rear main seal housing that didn't want to come free, so moved onto testing the head overnight. With the head upside down I poured some coolant into the chamber on the head. It didn't immediately leak through the valves, so that was a good sign

The theory is that if the valves are sealing, as they should, there should be no coolant leaking past them.

Leaving it overnight showed that two valves had a slight seepage

You could trace the line of coolant from which valve it was

I marked the valves for future checking. I'm sure it'll just be some carbon on the valve seat

So, back to the stupid rear main seal housing. It is held in place with a handful of bolts, and two philips head screws. Dumb idea. I managed to round one off by trying to use my rattle gun to shake it free (which I have had success with before), so for the other one, I used the recommended impact screwdriver

After a few good whacks, it came right out

My only option was to drill the head off and hope the rest came out without too much of a fight. I used progressively bigger drill bits until the head popped off

Which meant I could finally remove the crank

The remains of the screw did just wind out easily

The main goal here was to thoroughly clean all the gasket surfaces, and measure the bores and pistons before the block and head have a date with the engine reconditioner this week.

Cleaning the sump flange on the block gave a nice half and half

After much scraping, and some wire brushing, I moved onto checking the bores. There was no point in sending it out for machine work if the bores were over spec

Its not the best way to do it, and certainly not the quickest, but I bought a micrometer and set of T gauges

It was a pretty steep learning curve getting the T gauges to measure properly, centered in the bore and not reading too high or too low.

The manual calls for four measurements per cylinder. Two at 50mm from the top and two more 90mm from the top; two inline with the crank and two perpendicular. I marked the two depths on the T gauge since I was sick of using a ruler each time

The trick was to line the gauge up in the cylinder, and then locking and unlocking it whilst gently wiggling it around to center it first, followed by unlocking it, tipping it so one side goes down into the bore further, locking it and then tilting it up straight again (which pushes the gauge slightly closed, accurately measuring the bore) and lifting it out to be measured

You can see from the sheet I made that it took a few tries before I got repeatable results. I started with cylinder 1, so had to go back and redo it once I had refined my skills a bit

The last measurement I wanted to do was checking the piston skirt. To do this I had to remove the conrod. This is where my first real surprise came about. I began with piston 3, which I had noticed was a little stiff to move when wiggling the conrod back and forth, unlike the others which were smooth.

I used a pick to remove the retaining clip

And then using a short extension bar, I carefully hammered out the pin. Piston 3 took a bit of force to hammer out

This was why. It turns out the gudeon pin is cracked end to end, right through to the center

Unfortunately this has also damaged the little end of the conrod, marking it up

Thankfully all the others came out fine, but I will need to buy a single new conrod, which ain't cheap.

Moving on to measuring them, this was a bit of a pain once again, until my technique got better.

All pistons were within spec

I had a quick idea to use one of the conrods that came with the Alto, so I grabbed the best looking one and stripped it down

I don't know what kinda of horrible pain and suffering this engine went through, but the two good rods both suffered from massive heat in the little end. Both pins were discoloured from heat, as were the top of the conrods.

I decided not to risk running them, so back in their box they went. Speaking of a hard life, check out the skirt wear on the Alto piston vs the Cappo one

Interestingly the bigend bearings in the Alto were non-original, so I'm guessing it was bearing slapped at some point before it all fell to bits

Cappo bearing left, Alto bearing right

With the block stripped, I did a quick comparison against the Alto block. Other than the bolt-ons, they are the same block. The only real difference noticed is that the Cappo block is drilled and tapped for the oil filter adaptor, whilst the Alto one isn't. The Alto oil cooler seal should still be on the outside of the holes.

Alto left, Cappo right

Why I'm not using the Alto block, its badly pitted

The last job I needed to do this weekend was to strip the head so that can also be skimmed. This means valves out, springs out, stem seals out

It was a bit awkward to do with my cheap new spring compressor, but it did the job pretty easily

A small magnet on a stick was used to fish out the collets

Again, the previous rebuilder didn't care

But I do

The last few valves being removed

Job done, I removed the seals with some pliers

I will send it all out to be cleaned and skimmed/honed this week. I'm still a little while off having all the parts I need, but at least I wont be relying on anyone else to do their bit once the parts do arrive.

As a bonus, I wanted to quickly pop the front bumper back on the Alto, just to keep it safe. This required refitting the slam panel and bumper support

It turns out having all the bolts in your slam panel is for chumps, broken off bolts are where the cool kids play. I'm a chump though, and not cool, so I drilled out and tapped the broken bolt

There is shockingly little in the front of an old Kei car. To be fair, I don't believe late model ones are much better, certainly the HA36S Alto wasn't.

With the frame in place, I juggled the bumper a bit and fitted it

It's got its little face again, likely for the first time in a year or two

I know it'll need to come off again to refit the engine, but that's a future me problem.

[kws]

Since the engine was in limbo, waiting on parts and machine work, I started to hunt to find all the rust and fix it.

The first place to start was to get the car in the air and have a good look under it.

I knew there was rust in the LH front sill area, so I started there. This is the hole I poked in the sill at the auction when checking it over. The jacking point has also been flattened.

Moving backwards to another common spot, the rear floor pans were thankfully very solid

As is the "trans" tunnel. This bracket has some paint flaking from it, but otherwise is good

The shifter assembly and rods are pretty manky, but I have new bushes on order for this. A quick paint will make it look spiffy

The boot floor is good

There is a bunch of surface rust on/around the fuel tank. Nothing a wire brush and some rust treatment can't fix. I need to drop the tank and see what state the inside is. I hope it's not rusty.

Even better, another rust area I was worried about, the rear spring mounts, were perfect

A loose bolt on the fuel tank. It's OK, not like it needs to be properly secured or anything...

Moving to the driver's side, the floor was a bit on the thin side here too

There were some definite holes, which later got the poky poky screwdriver treatment to see how big they were

Finally, the rear tailgate seal lip is very crusty on the bottom. This has been leaking water into the boot when the car was washed, so thankfully, it's been stored indoors for its recent life.

So in conclusion, the body is surprisingly solid. There is a fair bit of surface rust under the car, which will need to be brushed back, treated and painted/undersealed, but mostly it's actually just covered in mud under there; It needs a darn good clean.

All the troublesome rust I need to fix is in the floors, one of the sills, the boot lip, and there is a small amount in the bonnet.

The next logical course of action was to lift the carpets and see what was to be seen from the inside.

To do this, I unbolted the seats and tipped them back into the boot, on the folded-down rear seat

The carpet has a bit of a smell. The previous owner cleaned things like the seats and steering wheel, but I don't think he cleaned the carpets. I will give it a wet-vac before reassembly. The seats came out easily enough.

With the seats removed, the carpet comes up easily enough. I needed to unbolt the lower seatbelt anchors as they go through the carpet, and there was a surprise screw under the LH side of the rear seat base (which was a pain to access with the front seats on the back seat...). The dead pedal was a pain too; I thought I could just unbolt it, but it turns out it's bolted in a million places under the carpet and not possible to do, so I carefully stretched the carpet around it to get it out.

This gave me the first glimpse of the floors and inner sills

The rear, as suspected from seeing the underside, was solid. Dirty, but solid.

Yes, that is a massive nail...

The fronts were hiding their rust

In the photo below, you can see one of the other common rust spots - the seam sealer where the A pillar meets the inner sill. In this case, it's actually bursting out. I knew about this fairly early on, as I checked it when I got the car after watching the videos of when Garage Kei was pulling his Alto apart.

Also visible in that photo was a reason for my potential death had I not lifted the carpet...

What's that, I hear you ask? Well, it goes here

It's the fricken clevis pin from the brake pedal. Instead of firmly pushing the brakes, the clevis just slid up and down the pedal. This definitely was not on top of the carpet, so I can only presume that when they had the pedal box out, the pin slipped down behind the carpet and wasn't seen again until now.

I quickly grabbed a new split pin and refitted it how it should be.

I also found the circlip on the end of the pivot for the clutch pedal was too big and fell off when I touched it. Needless to say, it is all going to get a thorough going over.

Anyway, back to rust hunting.

The driver's floor doesn't look too bad, just the one hole (for now)

and the rust is doing its best Alien chestburster impression

So, out with the big screwdriver and start poking

Onto the other side. Thankfully, the pillar/sill, although showing some surface rust under the sealer, was solid

There were a couple of holes in the floor here

I got out old mate paint pen, and started marking them out

Moving back under the car, I had a look at the LH front sill

I started by using some big grips, a hammer and dolly, and straightening out the jacking point.

To check how far the rust hole in the sill went, I had to remove the sill cover. Thankfully, with some gentle persuasion with the impact screwdriver, all the screws came out without too much issue.

Other than the obvious rust hole, the sill and bottom of the guard are actually in good shape

I also straightened the driver's side jacking point while I was at it

Around the back, after some investigation, the seal lip was looking pretty substandard

I'm not particularly looking forward to working out how to fix that, but it's gotta be done.

The bonnet didn't escape some poking and paint pen

That was all the excitement for that day, other than quickly whipping up a blanking panel on the 3D printer for the hole in the firewall where the old Auto shifter cable went

I used the old dirty finger on paper method to trace out the hole

I then imported this into Fusion, and traced around it

After extruding it, sending it to my printer and printing it in PETG to withstand heat, this is what I had

I'll get some nicer bolts and sealant to seal it in place, but otherwise it should do nicely.

Moving on to last weekend, it was time to deal with the rust. I dug the welder out from the dungeon under the house, found my trusty grinder, body saw and finger sander, and set to work.

I started on the passenger's side, and of no surprise, the scope crept once the abrasives touched the metal

Until I ended up with a much bigger hole

I cleaned up the edges, and zapped some nice new steel in place

Despite good penetration, I decided to weld the underside too, just to make it nice, strong and tight. As close to seamless as I could

It was hard to get a photo because it was so shiny, but the holes in the sill got the same treatment

It still needs to be seam sealed, but I coated it in epoxy primer to protect it. It's not pretty because I don't like completely grinding down welds if I don't have to, as it can make them weaker or introduce pinholes, but the seam sealer will cover it all anyway.

Moving to the other side, the holes got a lot bigger here

I zinged this patch in with a few plug welds to tie the sill and A pillar sections together, since it's an overlapping intersection of panels. I cut back through just the sill, so there was exposed A pillar metal to weld to.

The holes in the floor were next

Once all the holes were filled with new metal, I epoxy primed them and then hit them with a coat of zinc-rich primer over top. I also sprayed this into the sills wherever I could access

The next day, it was time to finalise all the work. I started by seam sealing everything, making sure there were no gaps or holes.

This side was a little different. On one side of the pinch weld is the floor, the other is the sill. On the floor, I seam sealed it, on the sill I used some body filler to smooth it out

The filler was sanded and then primed. I wasn't aiming for perfection, just to smooth out a couple of low points from grinding the welds back.

Once the seam sealer had cured, it was all covered with an epoxy top coat. This will seal and protect it all. The majority is either under the car, hidden by the carpet, or under the side sill cover. Only a small section will be visible. This is the same basic treatment the Marina got, and I'm happy with how that's holding up.

I still need to tackle the boot lip and the big hole in the bonnet, but I need to get the seats out of the boot before I can work around there.

All this messy work needs to be done and dusted before I can even consider building an engine in the garage, so with parts starting to arrive, I need to sort it soon.

[Goat]

Shit yes. Good score and good save. Can't wait to see this go back together!

[kws]

So uh, things escalated slightly.

[kws]

In my last update, I pulled the seats out, carpet up and fixed the rust in the floor/interior. Now it was time to put the carpet down, reinstall the seats and work on the rear rust.

Before I could reinstall the interior, I really wanted to give it a good clean, so I pulled the Big Green Machine from its hiding place in the basement

This guy is a beast. Heaps of suction and a heated solution sprayer. It's better than my favourite Little Green Machine for cleaning upholstery, but its size and weight mean that it doesn't get used anywhere near as much. It's more for cleaning house carpet than car seats, but it does the job.

I put the carpet back in place and gave it a good vacuum with the shop vac to get the loose stuff off it

And then I got stuck in with the cleaner. So much forbidden coffee was sucked out of the carpet

It's not perfect, but it came up a bit nicer after a few passes. It's a bit more blue.

You can kinda see the difference here, compared to the untouched driver's sid,e which has more of a brown tinge

So, of course that side got some work too, pulling more mystery juice out

A slight difference from how it was before

The carpet is pretty thin and a bit worn on the driver's side, so eventually a set of nice carpet mats will go in, but that'll happen later.

This is the liquid I removed from the carpet

Now that the carpet was clean and smelled better, it was time to pop the seats out of the boot and back where they belong

I didn't do it on the day, because I was stuffed after doing the carpet, but a couple of weeks later I did give the seats a good clean with the Big Green Machine too, and they came up much better (and smell better)

Let's not forget the interior looked like this at the auction

I think the previous owner had wiped the seats down, but not really cleaned them, as they too were full of forbidden coffee juice

I'm pretty happy with how they have come up, including the rear seat. I might give them another going over once the car has been used a few times and the dirt has been shaken around.

Now that the seats were out of the boot, I moved the speaker shelf out of the way, folded the rear seat and moved all the boot lining out of the way

This meant I could safely work on the rusty boot seal lip. I started by wire brushing the area, and boy did it not get any better! No wonder it leaked!

I started by making up the repair panel, using my cutter/folder. This strip was at the limits of what this little machine can do.

Followed by my new toy, a shrinker and stretcher. I should've got these when I was working on the Marina, they make shaping metal so much easier

Which gave me a strip of metal with the basic shape I needed.

A bit more tweaking and it was pretty good.

Next, the cutting wheel and chisel were used to remove the bad metal. Thankfully, the lower lip was in very good shape, so I could just peel the top lip off it and be left with a good flange to work with

I tried to remove the rear bumper, but the fixings are all Philips head screws, super tight, and all seized, so that's a job for another day. I did my best to cover and protect it as I went.

Next, I trimmed the patch down and metal-glued it in place

I trimmed it all up nicely, plugged the holes on the other side of the opening and then primed the whole lot with epoxy primer

Once the primer was cured, I then used seam sealer to seal it all up. It's more than you should probably use, but this is a "wet" area, and I don't want to risk any water ingress through a pinhole in a weld that I missed or anything. The seal covers the majority of this. I also seam sealed the back of the joint, inside the car.

Finally, once the sealer had cured, I painted it with an epoxy topcoat. This is durable and a rust inhibitor. If the exposed boot ledge gets scratched up, I will likely wrap it in carbon vinyl or something.

It looks a bit nicer without all the junk in the trunk, and the seal cleaned and refitted

It could do with a skim of filler over the welds if I were picky and chasing perfection, but for now, it'll do. I also seam sealed the complete boot opening, since some of the old sealer under the boot seal had perished or was just gone, so hopefully that stops any moisture tracking in under the seal.

That's the end of the welding. I have a couple of small areas of cosmetic corrosion to fix up in a couple of places, but since they are in the middle of a panel, and aren't structural, they'll get treated and then touched up with some filler instead of risking warping a panel with weld.

One of the other interior things I hated was the sun-damaged and gross-looking steering column shrouds. You can see them in the photos above, a pale, flaky grey that was scratched to death.

I originally tried to scrape all the dead plastic off, making a mess in the process. The idea was to paint them and hope they would come back, since the genuine ones were obsolete.

It turns out the later C chassis Alto (CR and the likes) have slightly different covers, but are basically the same. The difference is, they are available new, and even better, they are available second-hand in good condition (in Japan), so that's what I did.

There is a slight difference in the shape around the ignition (the bump is longer), but it all still fits together nicely

Makes a nice difference

Progress on the engine has been happening in the background in fits and starts, with many issues in the meantime. That'll be covered in another post soon. The goal to have it running over Christmas is probably not going to happen now, but I have plenty to get on with in the meantime.

 

[kws]

The big rebuild has kicked off, but it's the kind of kicking that also includes screaming.

In the last update of the engine, I bought the Cappo engine, stripped it down and got it ready to be sent for machining.

The basic instructions were for them to skim the head and block for the metal headgasket, and to hone the bore on the block, ready for new piston rings on standard pistons.

I also had them clean both, which resulted in them coming back looking very good.

Unfortunately, that's where the issues with the engine began. I got a call before picking it up to say that they had found corrosion in the bores, which the honing wasn't able to remove.

I was thinking the spots in the circle would be my issue, as I noticed these before it went for machining (it's just staining), but I should've been worried about the line with the arrow instead, which is rust pitting.

I was told by the machinist that if I built the engine like this, I risk it smoking slightly or using some oil. This was totally unacceptable considering the efforts I am going to to rebuild this thing, and my utter hatred for engines that smoke, so I picked it up, brought it home and started looking into my options.

As if by magic, shortly after, my bank account was looking a bit lighter, and these arrived on my doorstep via Japan.

Trust Greddy, by OS Giken, 0.50mm oversized forged pistons

Having the block bored out half a mm oversize will remove the corrosion pitting in the bores, give me a slight bump in cubic capacity to 667cc, and result in stronger pistons that can handle more power in the future.

So, I packed the block up again, with the pistons, and sent the lot to the machine shop again, this time to have the bores resized, and I got them to check and set the ring gaps and install the rings on the pistons for me.

Once again, the block comes back looking great, and this time, other than some light marking from them measuring the ring gaps, the bores are spotless.

I thought, "Heck yeah, I have everything I need to assemble the engine. Let's go!"

The first step in any engine build, once it comes back from the machine shop, is to give it a thorough clean. Doing a ton of research, I ended up with the plan of hosing the engine down with a garden hose, through all the oil and coolant passages, and then quickly blowing all the important surfaces down with an air gun and then either using WD40 on them (to displace water), or in the case of the bores, scrubbing them down by hand with a clean rag and ATF. The oil galleries also got hosed out with brake cleaner, and all the blind threaded holes were blown out.

After flushing out the coolant passages, this was what came out of them. I'm quite impressed how clean it all is after two rounds of machining, no metal chips came out of anywhere, just these old dry flakes that would've ended up in the coolant anyway, which isn't the end of the world.

Once I was satisfied the block was thoroughly cleaned out and dried, I masked it up ready for some paint

and gave it the old "rattlecan rebuild" in satin black. I did about three coats, making sure to get up under the various sticky-outy bits.

The sump got a quick rebuild whilst we were there too. Looks like the guys that stripped (and ruined) the original engine tanked and cleaned the sump as the inside was real clean and not oily.

Once it was dry, the block was taken inside and the tape removed. Gotta say, you should always paint blocks when building an engine, man, it looks nice!

I quickly refit the oil gallery plugs with some Loctite

After chasing the head bolt threads (which were pretty clean after being blown out)

I carefully taped the machined block deck so it didn't get scuffed, and then flipped the block over

The main bearing caps had all been cleaned, too. Fun fact, you can tell it's a Cappuccino engine by the hole in the number 2 cap, as this is what a support for the oil pickup screws into. The Alto cap doesn't have this drilled, as the pickup doesn't have a support, since it's shorter and comes down pretty much under the number 1 cap.

The bearings I chose to use were some aftermarket but OEM Taiho Standard spec bearings. Taiho is the manufacturer of the genuine bearings, and the bearings that came out of the engine, so it should be right, right? I've seen a couple of F6A builds online that also used these bearings, and they are sold by specialists (and Partsouq) as direct replacements for the genuine part number.

I cleaned everything thoroughly and then fitted the shells to the block

Followed by the clean and dry crank

Which meant I could check the bearing clearances with Plastigauge (or the knockoff Flexigauge in this case)

Cut a small section off and place it parallel with the crank, across both halves of the bearing surface (the middle is the oil channel and won't crush the Plastigauge at all)

I carefully fit the caps, torqued to spec, removed them again, and checked that the Plastigauge was squished.

Using the paper that the Plastigauge comes in, check the thickest part of the squished plastic on both ends of the journal.

Unfortunately, despite many attempts, I could not get the squish into spec. It was showing 0.064~0.076mm, which is far too much clearance (not enough squish, the gap between the bearing and crank is too big).

As you can see in the spec below from the Alto manual (and the EA11R Cappuccino manual is the same), the clearance should be 0.020~0.040mm with a limit of 0.065mm. Outside of that limit, Suzuki recommends replacing the crank, as they do not offer oversize bearings.

The lower numbers are the measurements for the crank journal, and what size it should be. I got out the micrometer and measured the crank in as many places as I could. Everywhere measured 43.99mm +/- 0.01mm, well within the spec, so it wasn't the crank that was the issue.

After tearing my hair out (or what's left of it), wondering what was going on, I sent the block, crank and bearings off to the machine shop. In my mind, there was no reason for me to suspect the bearings, as when I measured them with my calipers, they measured the same as the stock bearings that came out of the engine.

As it turns out, everything measures in spec, except the bearings. They are a hairs width undersize, which explains the readings I was getting, and also why my calipers didn't detect a difference; it's literally a fraction of a mm thinner, and my calipers aren't that accurate.

Speaking of bearings not fitting, these don't fit DOHC turbo F6A conrods

You actually need F8A bearings for the conrods, the "F6A" bearings are far too small

I ordered some more OEM ones that were recommended, but since having the news that the OEM main bearings are junk, I will be ordering genuine bearings for the lot. It's a significant cost, about $500nzd for the set (vs about $100 for the set of OEM), but it'll be worth it if they just fit and work.

So that's where the engine is currently. The machine shop is looking into genuine bearings for me now, and I'm doing my own enquiries in the background, just in case they come up short and I need to get them out of Japan. There's basically a zero percent chance I will have it running over the Christmas break now. In hindsight, I always should've got the genuine bearings and not skimped on them.

That's not the end of the world, though. I have a ton of other work on the Alto to do, such as building the head, rebuilding the brakes and suspension, and a lot of cleaning.

In slightly different news, other things I have obtained...

We did a 6-hour round trip to pick the front exhaust pipe up, as this was missing from the car when it was delivered. Thankfully it turned up at the other engine builders, so the guy I got the car from managed to save it for me. Saves me a few hundred buying a new stainless one.

Thankfully, someone has already chopped out the restrictive '90s cat

I also obtained a nice Monster Sport Type SP-X rear muffler to replace the very rusty OEM one on the car

Another important piece of the puzzle was to get a replacement turbo. I will eventually upgrade to a bigger one like the HT07A, but for now, I need one that will play nice with the stock ECU and get the car going.

My original little IHI VZ15 (on the right) has a huge amount of lateral play in the shaft, so I bought a spare VZ24 Cappuccino turbo I found online (on the left). They seem to share the same basic frame, and the intake side seems very similar in terms of size

Interestingly, the exhaust wheel on the VZ15 is bigger than the VZ24. I don't know enough about turbos to know if that's a good or bad thing, but it is what it is

This turbo has near enough no play, so hopefully it won't smoke and will make choo choo noises in the meantime.

Speaking of ECUs, I spotted a CN21S Manual ECU on Yahoo Japan, so I grabbed that too. I don't know what the difference is, I'm presuming it'll have a higher rev limit to match the manual cluster with a higher redline. There is no boost control, but it may have ignition and fuelling differences since it doesn't have to account for a slushbox sucking all the fun out of it.

Long term, it's getting a Speeduino ECU anyway, but this will suffice for now.

Heaps to get on with, not enough hours in a day.

[kws]

Moving on from the bodywork and engine for a bit, I thought I would have my first look at the brakes.

I knew from when I first looked at the car that the brakes were in dire need of work, the rotors looked like they had lived under the sea, and the fluid was old and dark. By some miracle, they still worked when the car was delivered, but the RH front locked on soon after.

So I ordered some bits from Japan and set about rebuilding the calipers

The first job was to remove the calipers. These are quite a simple design; the whole caliper is held to the knuckle with two bolts, and that's it. No bracket, so separate slider pins, just the two bolts

Before I could remove the caliper, I had to remove the pads. This is done by pulling out the little spring pin and knocking the locking block out of the side of the caliper

The pads should slide out after that's removed

BTW, the manual is very strict about not touching the "pentagonal bolts" which hold the front of the caliper to the rear. It's the first time I've seen something like this used. I believe these are thread-locked in place too.

Now the brake hose can be disconnected and removed. These little hose blocking clips come in handy again.

The two bolts in the rear of the caliper can be removed now, and the caliper removed from the car. This really highlights the dire state of the rotors. No amount of skimming would save these, so hopefully the replacements I ordered are right.

As a small note, the manual mentions it, but obviously whoever touched these brakes last didn't read it, as this retaining plate on the rear only fits one way. One side was right, but this side had it upside down, which made it interfere with the pin on the rear of the caliper. They just sent it anyway.

The calipers were looking a bit worse for wear.

Being such a simple design meant they were quite easy to strip down. First, I used my tyre pump air compressor to slowly push the pistons out. The RH side, being the sized caliper, took a bit of back and forth to push the piston out, but eventually it came out with a bang.

Always use a block of wood or something to catch the piston, particularly if it's stuck, as it will come out with a lot of force. Also, make sure to use PPE; no one wants to catch a face full of brake fluid (again)

To my surprise, the pistons are aluminium, which means they have some surface oxidation, but no rust.

Using CRC as a lubricant, the oxidation was quickly removed using a scotch pad.

The bore inside the caliper had some gunk built up inside it, as well as some oxidation of its own. A quick clean and gentle scrub had the bores looking good again.

Next was to remove the two slider bushes. Both of these, on both calipers, were seized and required hammering to remove

These slide inside a bore that has a pair of o-rings inside, with grease between them

All the seals were removed next.

Now it was time to clean them up, ready to paint. I soaked the main body of the caliper in the ultrasonic for a bit, and they came up pretty good, but the fronts, which is where I was painting, were too big for my ultrasonic so were wirebrushed and brake-cleaned.

Being an Alto werido, I wanted to spice the calipers up a bit, and give them a bit of a forward homage (if that's such a thing) to the brakes of the later HA36S Alto Works, which come factory red.

My old Alto Works, featuring my big brake upgrade

So out came the rattlecans

First coat

Second coat

Having actually read the instructions for once, I noticed that there was an "IMPORTANT" step, which involved baking them at 93c for an hour to cure the paint, to make it more durable and solvent resistant.

So after three coats, and the required drying time beforehand, out came the BBQ for the first time this season.

After an hour of baking and then cooling off, the calipers were looking pretty good.

Now it was time to build the calipers back up again. I started by cleaning the slider bushes.

The new piston seal was next. Grease it up good, and then slip it into the groove, being careful not to twist it.

The piston comes next. This should be fairly easy to press into place by hand and slide smoothly.

The piston boot takes a bit of wrangling to get into place, but I found careful use of a pick helps a lot to get the lip into place and then using the back of the pick to push the lip into the groove.

Now the o-rings for the slider bushes can be fitted. Once again, grease them up good and slip them into the grooves. I found it easiest to use a finger from one hand to keep the bottom of the o-ring in the groove and then push the top of the o-ring into place with the other hand.

The channel between the o-rings is just a groove to hold grease, so stick a greasy finger in and pack it.

Now the slider bushes can be pressed into place. They take a bit of a push to get through the o-rings, but otherwise should slide pretty freely and smoothly.

Next up are the boots for the slider pins. These are a bit of a pain to fit and very fiddly. It also helps to notice that there are two different-sized boots, as the retaining groove on the calipers is bigger on one side than the other.

Each side has its own boot, one with a narrow lip and the other with a wide one.

After much faffing about, I got all the boots on. Once again, careful use of the pick helps get them in place, along with lots of pulling and squishing by hand. I found it easiest to push the slider bush flush with the body of the caliper on the side I was working on, get the boot in place, and then push the bush through the boot and clip the boot into its groove; otherwise it just gets in the way.

And there we have it, one rebuilt caliper ready to refit

Rinse and repeat with the other caliper, and that's job done. This caliper needed a quick tickle with a file and sandpaper to tidy up some burrs on the piston, which a previous butcher had made for some reason

But otherwise, it was exactly the same deal

Until I replace the rotors, hoses and wheel bearings, the calipers will just chill in the boot, with the rest of the parts I have collected.

As a quick note, I believe, other than the handbrake mech on the Cappuccino rear calipers, these are basically the same thing, and it's the same procedure to rebuild them.

The seal kit I used was from Pitwork, which strangely, is a Nissan brand, and included Toyota rubber grease, to fit a Suzuki.

Parts Used

Brake Caliper Seal Kit - Pitwork AY600-KE009

Please note these parts are specific to my car and may vary. Please check before ordering.

 

[kws]

Following on from making the calipers all nice and shiny, the rest of the front suspension needed to be refreshed to bring it up to the same standard.

The first job to refresh the suspension was to bring out the mighty slide hammer and bash some hubs out.

I don't love the design of having the rotor behind the hub like this. The Marina is the same, but at least it has tapered bearings, instead of roller bearings like this.

Using the wheel studs and nuts, I attached the hub puller fitting

Then the slider hammer was threaded into place

After a few good whacks, the hub came free

Even though I do own a press, the manual says this is the method for pulling the hubs, and I do believe this is easier than trying to press the hub out of the knuckle off the car.

As a note, on the Works cars, there is a little spacer in the back of the hub. Make sure not to lose this, and that it's fitted the correct way around, with the taper facing the hub. It normally sits right at the base of the shaft and spaces the hub off the bearings.

Because the wheel bearings were noticeably rumbly and I wanted to replace the bearings while here, I also had to pull the knuckle off the car.

The tierod end ball joint was pressed out

And the bolt securing the lower ball joint was also removed. This left two bolts holding the knuckle to the strut, which were easily removed.

The sad-looking lower arm. The ball joint felt as bad as it looked, so replacements had already been ordered

As it turns out, there are actually heaps of aftermarket options for these arms, as they were used for years on a few different Suzuki models around the world. I grabbed some Meyle ones from Spareto.

They did come with new bushes for the swaybar, but I believe due to a change in design, they need some tweaking to fit, and since I'll be removing the swaybar to fit the engine, I have put them aside for now.

The lower arms are held in place with a single 14mm head bolt through the inner bush

And then the swaybar. I removed both arms together, as it was easier than trying to wrangle the swaybar out of one arm

Replacement was as simple as just sliding the new arm into place in the front mount and sliding the bolt through the bush

As not to stress the bush, I did tighten the inner bolt up at about what I expect the ride height might be, but since I have never seen this car on its wheels with an engine fitted, I had to guess. Worst case, it's pretty easy to access the bolt to redo it once it's on the ground.

Annoyingly, the manual offers no torque spec for the front suspension at all, so everything was just done to the Japanese equivalent of Gutentight - グーテンタイト (blame Google Translate).

The new arms are a bit nicer than the old ones

With the arms fitted, I moved back to the hubs and knuckles. The first task was to knock off the rotors and hope the replacements I ordered were right (they were). Four bolts and a tap with the hammer, and the rotor comes off.

I wirebrushed all the mating surfaces and then installed the shiny new Brembo rotor

I popped that aside and moved on to the bearings. Everything was covered in grease, so I guess I'll need to take a good look at the CVs before I reinstall them.

I couldn't get my seal puller in under the seal, but a small pry bar worked a treat

Which then revealed the inner bearing. There are two bearings, an inner and an outer, which are separated by a sleeve between them

You can see the sleeve here

I started with the inner bearing, as it was easier to hammer out since it didn't sit nearly flush with the front of the knuckle, as the outer bearing does. Carefully using my punch, I tapped the sleeve between the bearings off to the side, giving me access to the inner race of the bearing (the rusty lip visible in the photo)

I then wailed on the bearing with my hammer and punch, taking turns on alternate sides of it, until the bearing came out with the sleeve

The outer bearing was easier to press out on the press. I used an old inner bearing race from a previous job, and a big socket to press it out

Notice that only the outer faces of both bearings have seals; the inner faces are open to the inside of the knuckle, which is why it's packed with grease.

The new bearings I got have seals on both sides, so one seal per bearing needs to be removed. I know some in Japan that do this job, pack the bearings with grease and then seal them up completely, but I didn't like that idea, so I went with the OE style of having them open to the knuckle.

There were two recommendations I came across in my travels. One was to use C3 spec bearings, which have a little extra clearance, and the other was to make sure you replace the grease in the bearings with new, proper wheel bearing grease, as they barely come greased from the factory.

I popped the seals off the bearings, and yes, they barely have any grease in them

Using the old lump-of-grease-in-the-palm method of greasing bearings, I packed the bearings with high-temp wheel bearing grease

And one seal per bearing was then refitted

Next, I cut up one of the old bearings to make the outer race into a pressing tool. This allowed me to hammer a new outer bearing into place without putting pressure on the inner race

But it was more important on the inner bearing, since it's deeply recessed. The cut in the old bearing stops it from getting stuck in the knuckle as the new bearing gets hammered into place. Both bearings will bottom out against ridges inside the knuckle to set the depth. Don't forget to pack the inside of the knuckle with grease and refit the sleeve between the bearings.

I also used the old bearing race to knock the new axle seal into place

The final job was to mount the knuckle in the press and press the hub into the bearings. There was no way to support the inner race of the bearings to do this, but since it took little pressure to press through, they should be fine (and it's better than what the manual recommends; bashing the hub in with a hammer)

Which ended with a nice shiny assembly with a new brake rotor and bearings. I couldn't help but test fit a caliper

Looks good to me. Now to give it something to hang off and then I can reinstall it.

With the knuckle gone, the strut is only held in with two nuts on the top mount and the brake hose. Remove those, and the strut comes right out

These are the shocks listed in the parts book as "RED" and appear to be made by SHOWA, a well-known supplier of genuine accessory/uprated shocks in the JDM market (and motorbike shocks, but they aren't my thing).

I had to scrape years of crud out of the top mount before I could access the top nut

I cleaned that out, stuck some spring compressors on, and zinged the top nut off

I forgot to take a photo, but the top rubber mount was compressed to about 3/4 the height of the new one. Unsurprisingly, the old shocks were completely poked, with little resistance to compression and zero rebound.

I did find it interesting that the top bearing on these is nothing more than a plastic piece that rubs against a metal disc with a loose rubber seal to keep grease in

There is meant to be grease in the grooves to lubricate the lot, but I hadn't cleaned that, and both came out like that, with no grease inside them at all. I probably could've greased them up and reused them, but I ordered new bearings instead.

These are aftermarket, but even the new genuine ones are the same updated style, which is a self-contained version of the same thing.

I popped one apart to see what was inside it. I know the Honda version has metal bearings inside, so I was surprised to see this was nothing but grease and what appears to be a coated (Teflon maybe) plastic disc with grooves in it, like the old bearing.

I did fit the new bearing whilst retaining the metal disc from the old bearing. Without the old metal disc, the new plastic bearing would have all the pressure on just the outer edges where it backs up to this cap

The metal disc mostly covers that recess and gives more surface area to support the bearing.

Moving on from boring bearing things, this is a nice shiny new KYB "New SR Special" shock

Here it is again with all the gubbins reinstalled, including new top mount rubber, new bearing, and new boot/bump stop

Surprise, here it is again, back in the car this time

The hub/knuckle was then refitted. I presume that the unused tab on the right is for cars that have ABS, which mine does not.

As a fun little thing, these camber bolts, which came fitted to my old HA36S Alto Works (and were incorrectly fitted, so got removed when I first got the car)

Fit the CN21S Alto Works perfectly, so they got fitted and set to max negative camber, because race Nugget

With both shocks renewed and both knuckles refitted, I could fit the brakes. Two bolts hold the caliper in place, and the pads are slipped into place, retaining the original shims. I got all new hardware for the pads, and used Endless pads

The front hoses got replaced with nice new Spiegel braided lines

There seems to be a bit of confusion online about what pad hardware works. It seems genuine pad hardware isn't available alone, and only comes with expensive new genuine pads.

I can confirm the TRW PFK75 kit fits perfectly.

My calipers only came with one of four anti-rattle clips

So I was pretty keen to get some replacements. As you can see below, the TRW clips are almost identical to the original one I removed (even if my original one is a bit mangled)

The little retaining pins are also the same. The pad locking block is slightly longer, but fits perfectly

With those in place, I gave the system a quick flush and bleed, and the front end (other than the swaybar) was done

It's pretty colourful in there, but it should look a bit less Fisher Price with the wheels back on.

I still need to replace the rear brake hose and the rear brake shoes, but that's a job for another day.

Parts Used

Front Shock Absorbers - KYB New SR Special - NST8006R & NST8006L - Yahoo Japan
Front Brake Pads - Endless MX72K - EP237-MX72K - Blackhawk Japan
Braided Brake Hoses - Spiegel KBS104-1 - Yahoo Japan
Brake Pad Fitting Kit - TRW PFK75 - Spareto
Front Brake Rotors - Brembo 08.D165.10 - Blackhawk Japan
Front Wheels Bearings - 6007 2RS C3 x4 - Local Supplier
Front Hub Axle Seal - 09283-44011 - Amayama
Strut Top Mount Kit - SNR KB690.06 - Spareto
Strut Bump Stop/Boot - Febest SZSHB-WGR - Spareto
Front Lower Arms - Meyle 29-16 050 0012 - Spareto

Please note these parts are specific to my car and may vary. Please check before ordering.
I have no sponsors; all suppliers shown are for reference only, and where I got mine from.

[kws]

Not to forget the rear of the car, I moved on to replacing the shocks there, too.

I knew the rear shocks were stuffed the day I had the car delivered. I noticed it sank a lot when I sat in it, and this is what happened when I bounced the rear end

With the car up on stands, I whipped the rear wheels off and had a look around

Still had the original red shocks

The fuel tank just in front of the rear axle

Solid rear beam and a panhard bar to locate it

The other side is much the same, but with the addition of the brake hose and grotty muffler

I did unfortunately notice that the rear trailing arm bushes are split, so I have ordered Monster Sport replacements for them too

I did have plans to whip the drums off and replace the shoes, but I am going to pick my battles for now and wait until I have driven the car and worked the brakes a bit before messing with those.

Otherwise, it all looked pretty good. Lots of light surface rust from sitting, and a bit of dirt, but nothing too major. I'm very happy all the shock and spring mounts are solid with no signs of rust or cracks.

The shocks were very easy to replace, since it's a divorced spring setup, not a coilover.

I jacked the rear beam up a bit to take the tension off the shock bolts and stop the spring from forcing it down once the shock is removed

The shock is held in with two bolts, one on the bottom going into a captive nut

and the top one, which is a long bolt going through the chassis rail and through the shock. Remove the nut, and the bolt can be slid towards the outside of the car to remove the shock. Offset ring spanners really helped due to a lack of access (or just remove/lower the muffler...)

Removing the old shock showed that it was there for decoration only. It had no resistance to compression or rebound

As usual, before fitting the new KYB shocks, I made sure to compress them fully twice, or priming them, as is recommended.

Refitting is just the reverse. Bolt in one end of the shock, compress it slightly and bolt in the other end. Tighten bolts to spec, job done.

The new shocks do look quite nice in there

Finally, I needed to replace the old brake hose with my new braided one

This turned into a real pain. The top fitting came undone easily enough

But the bottom one was stuck fast, and I knew I was in trouble when the flare wrench started to round it off

Sure enough, it rounded completely off without coming loose. Thankfully its a small section of pipe that leads to the RH drum, so I undid it easily from the drum and removed the whole pipe with the hose

It wasn't pretty

I ended up locking it in the vice, and using a big spanner on the metal hose fitting to finally break it free and remove the hose

It turns out the pipe was corroded into the hose fitting

It didn't help that the flare nut was corroded to the pipe too, and resisted turning. I cleaned up the corrosion and freed the flare nut off from the pipe. I did think about making a new pipe, but it turns out that Suzuki will sell you a new little pipe for $15, so I have one on the way.

In the meantime, I refitted the old pipe. There was still enough shape in the flare nut that a standard open-ended spanner could tighten it up firmly. It looks good with the new braided hose and should give the pedal a nice solid feel

I'll need to do it again when I replace the pipe, but I flushed and bled the system. It now has fresh fluid from end to end

I need to drop the fuel tank next and have a look inside that, and work out why I didn't hear a fuel pump running when I turn the ignition to ON, so that should be fun.

The block is still with the engine builders, having the crank machined for the new oversize bearings. Hopefully, I will get that back soon, and I can get on with building the engine.

[kws]

Since I'm still waiting on the block to return from machining (again), I moved on to fixing some other small issues.

One of them was that the shifter looked haggard. Very rusty, floppy and neglected. I ordered a full set of genuine bushes for it and set about stripping and fixing it.

Since the center console is still removed from the car, it was easy to remove the four bolts from the top and drop the shifter out of the bottom of the car

Up close, it didn't look any better

I marked the directions for reassembly and took some reference photos as I stripped it all into bits

After removing the lower rod, the bush on the bottom of the shift lever didn't look terrible, but it was as hard as plastic

The whole assembly is just a sandwich of parts. It all makes sense when you look at it, but together it looks like a mess

I removed the upper rod from the assembly, removed the nuts from the two bolts in the middle, carefully pushed the boot through the plate and then I could wiggle the shift rod through the plate

Next, I used a hammer and a punch to knock out all the old bushes

All the bushes were very hard, perished and had suffered from sitting around.

With all the bushes removed, I hit everything with a wire brush to get the loose stuff off, and then spray bombed them with some black zinc paint. This should protect it a bit better, and it looks 100x better than flaky old rust.

Reassembly is literally the reverse. Before fully assembling, I thoroughly cleaned and greased the pivot ball on the shift lever. The ball rides between two nylon cups. In hindsight, I should've ordered a pair of these and replaced them, as the ones I have are a bit rough, but with new grease they should still do the job.

I then reassembled the main shift assembly and pressed the new bushes into the bottom of the shift lever

It's interesting to note that they are a different style bush to the green ones I removed.

The upper rod has a single-piece rubber bush, and there is a steel sleeve that also goes through it

The transmission end of the lower rod is a bit more unusual. It has a pair of rubber tophat bushes

, and into those press a pair of plastic inserts

I lubed the bushes and pins up with rubber grease and reattached the lower rod

Annoyingly, someone had obviously lost one of those pivot pins, as on the trans end of the lower rod, where it has a cross joint, an ill-fitting bolt had been used instead. I have a new pin on the way to replace it, as that'll be as sloppy as anything with the bolt there.

The last bush actually resides in the gearbox shift rod

Again, this is one of the green bushes, the same as the bottom of the shift lever (same part). Notice how it's slightly recessed around the center hole.

The replacement bushes are a harder compound, and flat on the faces

The original parts guide shows that for each of these bushes there should also be an o-ring. See my expert MSPaint cutaway drawing below, showing one end of the tube the bushes are in.

Orange is the bolt/pin, green is the green bush, black is the o-ring, and the grey on the left is the plate that the pin squishes against the bush.

The new bush does away with the o-ring and the recess and presses the steel right against the faces of the bush. I knew the part number had been superseded, but wasn't sure why, so now I have a set of surplus o-rings. Oh well.

Anyway, the shifter should be all new and fresh now, and hopefully shifts nice and direct. It's currently sitting in the boot of the car, with all the other parts.

Moving along, in a kinda shifter related task, next was to eliminate the inhibitor switch that had just been clicked into Park and tucked up behind the battery to allow the car to start.

I unplugged it and took it to the bench

After reading the workshop manual and checking the wiring diagrams, I knew which wires I didn't need anymore, so I unwrapped the bundle

Cut the switch off and depinned all the wires I don't need from the plug

Leaving me with two wires for the Park position (black/red & black/yellow - which connects the ignition switch to the starter) and two wires for the reverse lights (red & yellow)

I cut the two thick wires, the black/red and black/yellow, shorter and soldered them together. This shorts the Park wires together and will allow the car to start.

I left enough to be able to heat shrink them

Next, I crimped a connector for the reverse light switch on. I would've liked to use an OE connector, but I didn't have one for this end of it, only the one on the reverse light switch

Which also meant cutting the connector off the reverse light switch and crimping a matching connector on that

I then wrapped my little harness in fabric tape

and finished off by plugging the empty holes with a light smear of sealant to help keep moisture out

It looks much better than having a stupid inhibitor switch hanging around

I did, of course, test it

I was pleasantly surprised to hear it also had a cute little reverse beeper in the car, to tell you you're going backwards.

In a typical ADHD flurry of random progress, next on the hit list was to remove the trans mount and replace the bush with an uprated Monster Sport one.

I knew by touching it that the bush was very soft and floppy. I removed the single bolt through it and removed it from the car

Interestingly, it had these "stoppers" on each side of the bush

There isn't a heck of a lot to the bush at the best of times

And when it's cracked and flogged out, it offers almost no resistance to movement

The Monster Sport bush is still rubber, but a harder compound and a far more substantial build

I marked the orientation of the bush so I could get the new bush in a similar place, and then, using a reciprocating saw, cut through the sleeve of the bush until I could use a hammer and punch to knock the bush out

And then it was as easy as finding the right size socket to use to press the new bush into place, making sure to align it as the old bush was

Nice new uprated bush ready to go

Because of the design of the new bush, you cannot fit the stoppers on each end now, but I guess it doesn't need them

I also have the rest of the Monster Sport engine mounts to fit when the engine goes back in.

As you can see in the above photo, I also replaced the stock rubber bush on the clutch cable with a Cusco one from an HA36S Alto Works. It was a straight fit, other than having to remove the rubber boot to fit it, as I couldn't get the bush over the metal collars that retain the boot. The outboard collar slipped off with the boot and could be reused, but I had to cut the inner collar off and replace it with a small ziptie.

What else. Oh, yeah, the ground cable. I recall from viewing the car at the auction that something was funky with the battery ground cable

There wasn't one. It was a bare stub of a cable bolted to the inner guard. Cool.

So I raided Pick A Part and, after digging around some different cars, found this from a Daihatsu Sirion

Which turned out to be perfect

It's nice not have to use jumper cables to ground the battery whenever I want to liven the car up.

So that's all for now. I will hopefully have the block back this week, but I'm still sans genuine conrod bearings as the supplier in Japan is being... slow.

In the meantime, enjoy this sneak peek of the future

Parts Used

Monster Sport Engine Mount Set - 647500-2000M
Shifter Bushes - 2823160B10 x4, 0930514006 x1, 0930612009 x2, 0932014018 x2 (and o-ring 0928012014 x4 not used)

Please note these parts are specific to my car and may vary. Please check before ordering.

[kws]

I haven't posted much recently, but things have been happening in the background, namely a slow but steady engine rebuild.

To start us off, I got the block back from the machine shop. This time I had the crank machined, so the main bearings were within tolerance, and the new +0.25mm oversize (undersize?) bearings fitted. They also checked the crank thrust run out, which was well within spec with the new standard bearings.

This meant I could finally move onto the rebuild proper. Unfortunately, like everything on this car, I got quickly stopped in my tracks.

I thought, hey, it'd be cool to check the weights of the rods and see if they need any work to balance them and get them close to the same weight. I'm glad I did.

So I grabbed the kitchen scales, and placed the rods on one by one.

Cylinder 1 rod

Cylinder 2 rod

and the new genuine rod for Cylinder 3

Ideally, if you're balancing the rods and matching them, you want them within around 1 gram of each other. The two stock rods were already 2g apart, but the brand-new rod was a further 7g heavier. That made it 9g heavier than the lightest rod and that is way too different for an engine that will be turning to 9000RPM regularly.

For reference, this is the old Cylinder 3 rod that has damaged by the cracked piston pin and had to be replaced

Basically the same as Cylinder 2. Interestingly, despite being the same part number, and looking visually identical, this is one of the rods from the original Alto engine

All of these were way too gone to reuse, but it's interesting to note regardless.

As a side note, the Greddy pistons were all identical at 182g each

Moving along, so what's the deal with the new rod?

It turns out Suzuki superseded the conrod to the later K6A rods, which have a couple of pretty major differences. The first is that the oil squirter is no longer just a hole in the side that vaguely shoots oil somewhere

it's now a bigger, raised area at the base of the rod which points the oil jet upwards

The second major area is in the middle of the rod, where the text is. Its now on raised platforms.

So what do I do? I could replace the other two rods, at nearly $300 a piece, but since they're heavier I would then need to have the crank balanced to match.

Or, I could go full caveman with tools, and make it match.

I chose option 2. Make it work.

Now, I didn't realise it until I went deep into the rabbit hole, but you can't just take material off anywhere on the rod until the total weight matches, you need to know which end the weight is on, and take it from there. This is because the top of the rod only really goes up and down, whilst the bottom of the rod has rotation inertia. The weight at the bottom of the rod is the most important, but it all matters.

To do this, you need a tool that hangs the rod and lets you precisely measure the weight of each end, without the other end affecting it. Normally, you'd pay hundreds for a tool to do this, but because of the advancements in technology, I have a perfectly capably 3D printer sitting at home, and for a small fee I could buy the plans for a tried and tested jig to use. These guys made a great video on how to use it, and sell the files you need to print it. https://2trackmind.com/products/connecting-rod-balancer-jig-3d-print (not sponsored, it's just good)

After some tweaking because my rods were too small for the adaptors, and about 7 hours of printing, I had a tool

I set the jig up and hung a rod off it

There are a lot of variables, and every little thing can change the results, so later on I actually taped both the jig and the scales to the table so I could get repeatable results. I also replaced the kitchen scales with much more accurate scales (for illicit items, according to the guy at the brewing shop, who totally believed me when I said they were for weighing car parts) that can measure a fraction of a gram.

This is the big end of rod 1

and rod 2

They're pretty darn close. Close enough I won't bother to change them.

The new rod 3 though...

It certainly ate all the pies.

I then flipped the rig around and tested the little end of the rods

Cylinder 1 and 2

and rod 3

5 grams heavier than the other rods. That's a lot of weight to take out of the little end.

With a bastard file, a power file and a Dremel with a grinding stone, I got to work cutting the weight out. Now, there are rules about how and where to take off the weight. It must be smooth, and ideally either in dead weight like casting lines, or places that won't impact the strength of the rod.

In my case I started by shaving down the sides of the big end/bearing cap, where there was some extra material, but it wasn't until I started to shave down the casting marks down the sides that I really got the gains. This is what I ended up with

I also carefully smoothed down the text in the middle of the rod. I didn't want to go too deep as that could impact the strength

The bearing cap got a slight tickle too

After a ton of measuring and going back and forth from the messy area

I got the new Cylinder 3 rod identical to the Cylinder 2 rod

The little end was still about 2.6g heavier than the other rods, but I was out of material that I was comfortably to remove from there, so I opted to take it from elsewhere on the rod.

So the new rod now matches both the current Cylinder 2 rod, and the old Cylinder 3 rod, which is good enough for me.

After a real thorough clean, it was time to install the fancy Greddy forged pistons

These little retaining clips for the pistons pins were a pain to install

I have no idea if It's what It's for, but the cutout in side left side and the slight notch on the right side of the hole made installing the clip easier

I placed the clip in the notches, and then using my fingers pushed the open end of the clip down, which got it mostly into place

A gentle poke with a pick and it would pop into the groove. As per the workshop manual, the opening in the clip needs to either be at the bottom, or top, not the side. After lubing up the piston pin, and installing it and the piston on the rod, the other clip gets installed.

I then installed the new big end bearings. I used a genuine set ordered from Japan for these. Make sure the area the bearing sits in is clean and free from any oil and then the bearing just snaps in place.

The cap then got placed back on, ready to be installed on the crank. Take note to install the cap the right way around, it should match the piston. In most cases, the cap and rod bearing tangs will be on the same side too, which is an easy way to remember.

I now had a full set of pistons and rods ready to go

I install these shortly, but unfortunately the rebuild kinda stalled a little after that thanks to the next curveball thrown my way.

I stripped the two oil pumps I have, one from the Alto, and one from this Cappuccino engine

The Alto one was trashed, despite being suspiciously clean on the outside

So much scoring. It must've had a lot of metal go through it

It really does go to show, there are no good parts on the old Alto short block, and it was a good idea to get a donor.

Sadly the Cappuccino oil pump didn't completely avoid damage either

It's significantly better, with no damage to the housing, but I noticed this on the gears. Minor indents where something has gone through the pump

The good news is that you can still buy new genuine pump gears, so I have a set of those, and a rebuild kit for the relief valve on their way from Japan. It shipped about 20 mins ago, so should be here after the weekend. Once that arrives, I can push forward and really make up some time on building the engine.

Parts Used

Greddy Piston Set 65.5mm (+0.50mm) - 13596605
Taiho Main Bearing Set +0.25mm - M658A025
Suzuki Big End Bearings STD - 12181-54A50-0A0 x6
Suzuki Thrust Bearings STD - 12300-60840

Please note these parts are specific to my car and may vary. Please check before ordering.