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

[kws]

After a little more work to get it ready, it was time for Nuggie to venture out of the garage and onto the road, for the first time since at least 2012.

The first job was to torque up the hub nuts and stake them. I jammed the brake pedal down, and then torqued them to the required 200NM-and-a-bit-more (the spec is 150-260NM). I then used a punch to stake the nuts so they can't come loose

Whilst there, I also jacked the hubs up and torqued the swaybar end nuts too.

Another quick fix was fitting three new wiper blades. One of the front ones was missing, and the rear was perished. I went with 450mm and 350mm for the front, and 350mm for the rear.

Moving to the headlights, I wanted to remove and replace the brackets that the light units attach to. The RH side was OK, but the LH side was rusty, and the corner garnish was holding on by hopes and dreams

As it turns out, the dreams were dashed, and the bracket came off with the garnish when I removed it

The bracket is held in with one bolt on the slam panel, one nut in the engine bay, and two more nuts inside the wheel arch (liner needs to be removed or the front loosened). With it removed, I could wire brush the surface rust and give it a quick shot of black zinc

The new bracket was then fitted into place, without the lamp or its mounting hardware. The bracket for the garnish is on the bottom right, sticking forward.

I cleaned the bracket up and gave it a coat of black zinc, to hopefully keep the corrosion at bay. I replaced all the headlight adjustment screws and the plastic blocks they go into. I didn't replace the springs, and I probably should've; they're a bit ugly.

The garnish was refitted. I had to recover the plastic grommet from the old rusty bracket

If the mounting screws are good, the light actually just slips over them and then twists into place. This one on the car was wrong; the washer goes behind the light. There's no way to remove the light unit to change the bulb.

This is the correct fitment

After replacing the other side too, I gave them a quick setup, but I really need to align them before I try to take it for a WOF, at least to get them in the ballpark.

With those replaced, I could refit the bumper, once and for all this time (or for a while, at least)

I sourced some of the correct screws for the top edge. These have a step in them, so the head of the screw doesn't crush the plastic

This is what happens when someone has replaced them with normal bolts in the past, the plastic splits

With that done, I could finally install my new wheels and get the car on the ground for the first time since I got it, way back in October.

The new wheels came with some Nankang AR-1 semi-slicks. They're a tad wider than the old 165 width tyres...

They'll stay for a bit, just because they're near new and do the job, but longer term I'll get rid of them and fit the correct size Yokohamas. The 175/50R13 has slightly too small a profile, and the width is a tad extreme. Not to mention, an 80 treadwear tyre is madness for on the road.

I won't lie, I'm pretty happy to see it off the stands and on its own wheels

The Suzuki Sport Type-C wheels are perfect for it. I like the original mesh wheels, but mine are in very poor condition.

The car was completely covered in thick dust, and still needs a good clean, but I used some waterless wash and got the worst of it off. The glass all got a thorough clean too

It looks better than it is. I really need to clean it and then give it a machine polish.

This is also the first time the engine bay has been completely together

As a small side note, having looked into what the solenoids on the firewall are, one is something to do with the auto trans (only fitted to autos), and the other is the idle up valve for the AC. Neither of these are fitted anymore, so I tried blocking the pipes off to see what happens

I'm not sure if the ECU will throw a code if I actually remove them, but we will see. So far, the car starts, runs and idles better than it did with them connected. It's no longer trying to fight the idle up solenoid, and relying on the cold start valve for the cold start idle up, and then the actual idle screw for warm idle - how it should be.

Anyway, I connected the battery, turned the key and away the engine went. Good oil pressure, no noises it shouldn't be making.

I jumped in, and for the first time, I drove my C-Chassis Alto Works.

 

Because the engine, brakes and clutch are all minty fresh, I was taking it easy, keeping the revs down and minimal boost (it's hard, it comes on boost at the twitch of the foot), and lots of engine braking to seal the rings.

Despite trying to give it an eye-lignment before I left, the alignment is well cooked, so the car was a little wayward to drive, but that is an easy fix.

Everything did as it should. The gearbox is a little noisy, but nothing I wouldn't expect for its age, and it might get better as I use it more - No grinding through. The engine responds well, feels nice and strong, the turbo makes boost, and it makes all the right noises.

I'm very happy with how the initial shakedown went.

Now I need to pull it to bits again, replace the rear arm bushes, give it an alignment, touch up a couple of spots on the body, and then I think we're ready to go for a WOF and see how badly it fails.

Of course, we got some shots of the car out of the garage. The last time it was out here, it had no engine and was being pushed into the garage.

I'm hoping the reverse rake gets better over time. I'm hopeful that it's because the front springs haven't had any weight on them, probably since about 2012, when it came off the road. The lower profile tyres won't be helping the look either, but I can't do much about that right now.

What a cool wee car.

[kws]

Immediately after the first drive, in typical fashion, it was time to pull the car to bits again.

This time it was to replace the perished and torn rear trailing arm bushes. These needed to be replaced for the upcoming WOF. I had ordered a set of Monster Sport bushes for just this occasion.

To make my life easier, I lucked out and managed to grab a pair of decent-looking arms from a pretty sad-looking HA11S at Pick A Part,

This allowed me to refurbish the arms without having to remove them from the car first. This, as it turns out, was very fortuitous - More so since I actually intended to swap these stock arms into the car as they are and then refurbish the original ones once removed...

I ended up deciding against that idea and just refurbishing these arms, as the bushes in them weren't looking too hot anyway.

Strangely, I noticed that the forward bush was different between the two arms. Not sure if this means one was replaced in the past

The Monster Sport kit comes with three new bushes per arm

I got sick of pressing bushes in and out using various old bits of scrap, so finally opened my wallet and bought a press tool set, and I'll tell you what, it made this job a doddle.

You pick the right inner and outer cups and out the bush comes

The slightly bigger bushes on the other end of the arm required a different pair

Which left me with a nice empty arm, ready to press some bushes into

The new bushes are meant to be a firmer rubber compound, and they look very similar to the stock bushes. The rear bushes seem to be pretty universal for orientation, but I put the red marking to the top, just as a matter of course.

The front bushes need to be fitted in the same orientation as they are removed

A little CRC on the outside of the bush to help it slip in, and with the new tools, once again, it all went smoothly

Nice new bushes

Once all the bushes were replaced, I wire-brushed the arms and scuffed them up for a quick paint

Once the arms were dry, it was time to remove the old ones on the car and swap them over.

I jacked the back of the car up and supported it on axle stands, making sure to give myself enough space on the front trailing arm mount to actually be able to remove the bolt/arm safely.

And as a reminder, this is why I'm doing this

The first step is to support the rear beam and remove the lower shock bolt, as this blocks access to the forward, rear bushing bolt

And then it's just a case of simply removing the three bolts, and the arm comes right out. Not much to see, so here it is after I have done the reverse, and installed the arm and bolts again

Because the bolts go through rubber bushes, it's important to jack the beam up as close to ride height as possible, before torquing the nuts.

So, why was it fortuitous that I didn't reuse the arms off the car? Because the RH side one is a banana

So that's good, I have nice upgraded bushes, and an arm that's actually straight. No wonder the bushes were torn; they were doing their best in a bad situation.

Of course, because it's me, this wasn't the end of it... I made the mistake of noticing that one of my rear drums was sticking. So I decided to have a "quick look".

I wish I didn't (but I'm glad I did)

To be continued.

[kws]

Typically, poking around got me into more trouble than expected. Now I had broken brakes on my plate too.

Of course, ages ago, I rebuilt the front brakes, so they were all flashy and new, but the rears I decided to leave because at the time I didn't have new wheel bearings, and kinda didn't feel like opening that can of worms.

Well, as it turns out, I had no rear brakes at all on my test drive the other day. Oops.

The rear drums on these are a pain as the wheel bearings are pressed into the drum and you need to remove them from the spindle to remove the drum.

I removed the cap, split pin and nut, but the drum was stuck fast

This means the big slidey boy needs to come out again

A couple of good firm tugs and off it came

Revealing a very dirty, slightly damp-looking rear brake assembly.

I gave it a quick hose down with brake cleaner to see what I was working with

Between the dampness and the peeling paint on the backing plate, it led me to believe the cylinder has probably been leaking, although it didn't seem to be now.

This little bit of metal also fell out when the drum came off. I had no idea what it was until later

After taking plenty of reference shots, I removed the backing plate pins and unhooked the shoes from the wheel cylinder

The wheel cylinder wasn't looking that hot once the boots were removed

Unfortunately, the cylinder was completely seized. In my efforts to free it up, I actually broke one of the tabs off the end of the piston that locates the shoes. That's when I knew this was not going well.

I had pre-emptively ordered a rebuild kit for the wheel cylinders anyway, so I wasn't worried if they needed that, but having broken that location tab off, it was back to the drawing board.

I removed the cylinder, and with some bashing on the bench, it came apart

Inside the bore was looking... not great.

So I needed a new cylinder. Before ordering anything, I decided to whip the drum off the other side and check the cylinder there...

This is what a nice dry brake assembly should look like

Nope, no better; this one was completely seized too

So, I had two useless cylinders and one set of shoes that were probably contaminated. Great.

After much searching, I found that you can still order brand-new wheel cylinders and shoe-fitting kits from Europe. I ordered a pair, with some springs, and awaited their arrival.

Whilst waiting for them to arrive, I replaced the wheel bearings in the drums.

There is an inner and outer bearing, with a spacer between the two.

You can see in that last photo that the inner spacer has been knocked out of place. This is needed so that you can actually hammer the bearings out. A couple of gentle taps with a punch generally pushes it aside.

And then it's a case of just bashing on the bearing inner race with a punch. I start with the outer bearing first. When the bearing comes out, the inner sleeve usually will too. Keep track of which way it was fitted, as there is a flange in it.

This gives heaps of space to bash out the inner bearing

These are the inner bearings

They do have a lip seal on both sides, so one side needs to be removed (the inner side). I was also annoyed to note there was almost no grease in it (I’ve since been told this is normal for a sealed bearing; it’s only meant to have about 30% grease in it – Mine aren’t sealed anymore, so should force out any grease they don’t need)

I packed it with wheel bearing grease before fitting

Using my press tools, with a handheld swing press (hammer), I knocked the bearing into place

The outer bearing, a genuine Suzuki part, had no seals and barely any grease in it too

Using the percussive press again, after fitting the spacer (surrounded in grease) and filling the bearing with grease, this bearing was fitted too

I did this for both sides, and by this time, the new cylinders had been flung all the way from Europe to my doorstep, so on we continue.

Because I'm that kind of weirdo, I had already ordered a new brake pipe to replace one I rounded off when I did the brake hoses, so that got fitted

I gave the backing plate a quick tidy up, and fitted a new wheel cylinder

The shoe fitting kit seems to fit similar models around the time

This is what the shoe assembly looks like off the car, less the spring across the bottom. Up top is the auto adjuster, and down the left side is the hand brake lever

These are the new springs needed

Another thing I bought from Japan a while ago was a set of nice new Project µ drum shoes

I started to strip the shoes

The auto adjuster. The quadrant on the right is held against the toothed "wheel" by the spring, but can slide backwards, which allows it to ratchet into place

I cleaned the handbrake lever up, and found where that little disc of metal that fell out of the drum came from

It's meant to be pressed onto the stud to retain the lever. I used a small socket and hammer to tap this into place, leaving enough space for the lever to freely pivot. The new shoes came with a new pair of discs.

I also cleaned up the adjuster and fitted that, with a new spring. I set this to its least expanded setting

This spring fits one way, and they are different left to right. The big hook goes in the adjuster, the small hook in the shoe

Mostly ready to fit. This was pointless though, as it was much easier to assemble the whole thing on the car, not the bench

I started with the shoe that has the handbrake lever on it, and hooked it back on to the cable (with much pain; this part of the job sucks)

And then it was a case of fitting the other shoe, and hooking the springs into place

On the other side, evidence of someone else's bodges were present... Instead of the retaining disc, there were not one, but two E clips fitted

I cleaned the lever up and moved it to the new shoe, with a proper retainer

Which was then all refitted to the other side, along with a new cylinder.

The drums went on next, with the new bearings and torqued to spec. It's a shame this is all you see of the new brakes now.

I bled the system, checked for leaks, and that was the job done. A quick test drive shows the car pulls up straight, and honestly doesn't feel any different, but I guess working rear brakes would be more important at speed, particularly with a track day looming in a couple of months. I'm glad it's done now.

On the plus side, the handbrake holds real well now.

Parts Used

Rear Wheel Bearing Inner - NSK 6205DDUC3 x2
Rear Wheel Bearing Outer - Suzuki 09262-20069 x2
Rear Wheel Cylinder - Delphi LW62099 x2
Rear Wheel Shoe Kit - TRW SFK242
Rear Shoe Set - Project Mu S881

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

[kws]

This is something I had wanted to do for a while, but only got around to it now. An on-car string rig.

I hate paying for wheel alignments. It's expensive, and they always only ever do toe (as most cars only have toe adjustment), and at that it's a "good enough" within spec adjustment, never actually bang on. I've spent hundreds on alignments over the years.

Ages ago I checked the alignment of the Marina using string lines, set up on axle stands. It worked, but it was a bit of a pain to work around, and needed to be reset if I made any adjustments.

After all the work on the Alto, I wanted to check the alignment. I knew it was out; when I first put it together, it was hugely toed in, so with a quick eye-lignment I got it somewhat OK so it wasn't fighting me down the road now, but the steering wheel was off center.

So with my 3D printer in hand, and using these Thingiverse files, I got printing.

It did use more filament than expected, so I started to feed it scraps, hence the sweet multicolours. I also pressed in some generic M6 heat inserts, and after using a tap to clear any excess plastic pushed down under them, they worked great.

I grabbed a bunch of 19mm square tube from Bunnings, along with a pair of 12mm 2m long tubes. After much cutting and drilling, I assembled it all

One crucial thing that is needed is to have notches for the string lines in both of the horizontal tubes. These notches need to be in exactly the same place on both tubes, front and rear, so that the string creates a box and not a parallelogram

To cut the notches, I used a pipe cutter, being careful not to actually cut the tube in half...

To get the notches in the same place, I did all the notches on one tube first, measuring in from the end in three steps and then making the notches. I then placed the other tube on top of this one and used this to line up the pipe cutter tool. The black tape is only on one end of the tubes; this is so I know which way around they are a matching pair.

I used some fishing line, with a loop on one end and weighed down with a nut on the other end. The string must be in the same notches front and rear.

Once the string line height is set to run through the center of each wheel, it's time to measure side to side from each center cap to the string line and slide the tube side to side until it's even

(The following photos were taken purely for demonstration; they may not be perfect)

Once the strings are all even and everything is locked down (this will take a few goes around the car as one adjustment will upset another), then it's time to make the actual measurements from the front and rear edges of the wheels.

Get the ruler as close as you can to the line without touching it, keep the ruler flat, and you know the string is straight when it goes through the same number on both edges of the ruler.

Take note of these measurements. Do this for each wheel, and then you should have an idea of what's going on. In my case, I had 0.9mm toe-in (rear edge of wheel is closer to the string line than the front edge) on the LH side and 0.3mm toe-in on the RH side.

Thankfully, despite the banana for a rear trailing arm before, the rear toe is bang on perfect, so the rear beam isn't bent or anything.

As you can see above, I adjusted the front toe so that it's currently set at zero, which is within spec (-1 to +1mm). I'm going to see how it feels; I might go close to the recommended spec of -1mm total toe (0.5mm toe out per side) before trackday.

I'm quite lucky with the current ride height in the front that I can adjust the toe with the car on the ground by reaching around the tyre

After adjusting it, I can roll the car back and forth, with the string lines still attached, and I'm able to quickly check and adjust further if needed.

I took the car for a quick road test after the alignment, and it's bang on now. The steering is straight, and the car tracks down the road nicely.

$50-ish spent on filament, $65 on the tubes, some string and screws... to save me $100. It wouldn't make sense normally, but each car I use this on saves me $100, and I have two other cars here that I want to check the alignment on, so that's already $300 total. Plus, any tweaks I want to make for the Alto would be $100 each time. It pays for itself quickly.

[Raizer]

45 minutes ago, kws said:

I was also annoyed to note there was almost no grease in it

Only meant to be like 25-30% full if it's going to be turned fast, it's to stop the grease being churned which adds friction and heat leading to early failure.

SKF etc have guides and calculators etc online.

[kws]

Just now, Raizer said:

Only meant to be like 25-30% full if it's going to be turned fast, it's to stop the grease being churned which adds friction and heat leading to early failure.

SKF etc have guides and calculators etc online.

Interesting, so why do you pack wheel bearings? Regardless, the bearings aren't sealed, so I'm sure they will yeet any grease they don't need

[Raizer]

Just now, kws said:

Interesting, so why do you pack wheel bearings? Regardless, the bearings aren't sealed, so I'm sure they will yeet any grease they don't need

That's the deal with taper roller too, they yeet excess grease into the centre of the hub and into the grease cap, if you fully pack the hub and cap you'll likely have a bad time.

It's interesting to me that yours doesn't run the seals in the middle, last few I've done have been fully sealed (Mercedes rear and Polaris UTV)

 

[kws]

2 minutes ago, Raizer said:

That's the deal with taper roller too, they yeet excess grease into the centre of the hub and into the grease cap, if you fully pack the hub and cap you'll likely have a bad time.

It's interesting to me that yours doesn't run the seals in the middle, last few I've done have been fully sealed (Mercedes rear and Polaris UTV)

 

What's more interesting is that the manual says both bearings should be open to the center, but both should have seals on the outside. Yet the genuine Suzuki bearing didn't have any seals. The old bearing had open plastic cages and no seals too.

[Raizer]

Wonder if it's an age thing as Suzuki still fitted a grease cap to them, the later stuff I've worked on just has the bearing seal and the axle nut without any extra covers or anything. 

 

 

Either way, keep the updates coming, it's a sweet little car!

[kws]

After being off the road since at least 2012, the Nugget passed its WOF today. I need to get some rego and sort a couple of advisories, but it's time to properly start the run-in.

[kws]

Some good and bad news this time around

The good news is that Nuggie passed the WOF inspection! For the first time since 2012, Nuggie is actually road legal (for another 6 months, at least)

It's a small thing, but it made a big difference - I replaced the rego label holder, getting rid of the horrible taped-up thing that was trapping mould against the glass

I couldn't help but save the retro AA sticker

Nuggie mostly flew through the inspection, but did have a couple of minor advisories that I need to look into.

The bad news is that week I suffered a couple of pretty serious health issues in a row, and other than picking the car up from the inspection, I have been out of action and not looked at the car, let alone actually been able to drive it. I had hoped to be a significant way towards the 1000km engine run-in by now, but so far I'm at about 15km total.

I am slowly getting better though, so hopefully I'll be able to sort the advisories and get driving the car soon.

In the meantime, during my good days, I managed a couple of little things. One was to fix the interior light.

I noticed when I installed the alarm a while back that it wouldn't arm when the doors were shut, as it should. It kept telling me a door was open, despite them all being closed and the interior light being off. Some digging online showed that the interior light has a dimming circuit, and this can be responsible for doing weird things when it goes bad.

So I popped the lens off, removed the two screws holding the light in and unplugged it. Sure enough, the alarm started working properly and armed as it should. I took the light to my desk and had a look

This circuit board is responsible for the issue.

I had read on a Japanese Minkara page that the faulty board can be unsoldered and removed, and the light will still function, so this is what I did. I don't need a dimming feature, and that would mean I would have to reprogram the alarm to work with it too, so out it goes.

This wrinkling of the coating gives an indication of what's happened

On the other side of that is a capacitor, which appears to have dumped its guts

The rest of the board looks ok, albeit old and basic

Removing the board leaves it pretty basic, which interestingly, is exactly how the lower-spec Alto lamps look for factory.

Using a jump pack, I tested all the functions, and they all worked, including the door setting

Once reinstalled into the car, the door setting no longer works, only the ON setting. Not sure why; don't think I will bother to look into it. The light works for now and doesn't upset the alarm anymore.

The last couple of little things I have managed were to fit the carpet mats I ordered from Japan. I love how the blue checker pattern looks; I'm really happy with how the interior has come together

As a reminder, this is how the interior looked when I first saw the car

I also scored a proper turbo gearbox from a fellow smol car enjoyer, who was sadly parting out a project that just got too overwhelming for him. The history is unknown, but other than being a bit dirty, it seems to be in ok visual condition. I'll give it a clean, replace all the consumable parts (already have axle seals from ordering the wrong ones for my NA box) and then fit it to the car at some point, once the run-in is complete. I would love to add an LSD to it, but options seem to be non-existent these days.

I also got the flywheel to match, which is important as the clutches are different between NA/Turbo, and not interchangeable. The turbo clutch is 10mm bigger in diameter, half a mm thicker, but most importantly, the pressure plate uses bigger screws to hold it to the flywheel, meaning it can handle more clamping force.

This is my old NA clutch plate on the turbo flywheel. The turbo clutch uses fewer, but more beefy splines in the center.

I have some turbo axles to match it coming from Japan, as they're different to the NA ones too.

There were plans to have this car run-in and on track in September, but those plans are up in the air currently for obvious reasons. Hopefully it'll still happen, but we'll see.

[Bearded Baldy]

Hope you are on the mend mate, just a silly thought about the light.

The screws that hold the light to the roof go through the earth wires correct? On my cruiser i put in some new screws, and the coating was somehow able to stop the flow of electrickery, once i gave a everything a quick scuff up the light worked again.

[kws]

7 hours ago, Bearded Baldy said:

Hope you are on the mend mate, just a silly thought about the light.

The screws that hold the light to the roof go through the earth wires correct? On my cruiser i put in some new screws, and the coating was somehow able to stop the flow of electrickery, once i gave a everything a quick scuff up the light worked again.

You're correct about the screw, the ON setting grounds through it. it appears of the two wires going into it, one is the 12v for the ON and the other I believe is the ground through the door switches for the DOOR setting. I need to do more testing, but it's pretty low on the list. 

[kws]

I suspected there was something off about one of my new brake cylinders, so I investigated further.

I noticed when I assembled the rebuilt brakes with the new wheel cylinders that the crossover pipe fitting in the right-hand cylinder just didn't seem right. It leaked from that fitting from the word go, but I thought after I cranked it up hard that it was ok.

The WOF inspector noted some dampness around the fitting. I had hoped it was just residual; it wasn't.

My recovery has had its ups and downs, but last weekend I managed to get a quick drive in the Alto after checking the brake pipes. I wondered if the two pipes had been swapped around, but no, they were around the right way. After undoing the pipes and reseating them, I cleaned everything off and went for a drive.

 

Just as an aside, yes, I am a grown-up, but I couldn't help myself and fitted a Take-Off Pusshun R SS blow-off valve for the mad choo choo noises. I enjoy it.

I got back from the drive and stuck my phone under the back of the car to check the brake wasn't leaking

Well damn, it's hard to deny that. I guess the longer, harder drive did it no favours... oh, and me fiddling with it before the drive probably didn't help #preventativemaintenance

So there was something wrong with the brake cylinder on the car. I planned to use the cylinder rebuild kits I had ordered from Japan, and rebuild the original cylinder that I removed from the car.

I damaged one of the pistons when I removed it, trying to see if I could unseize the cylinder, so I needed to get at least one piston from the cylinder from the other side of the car.

These are the two from the RH cylinder, with the broken piston. Very rusty.

The trick for the other cylinder was to use a punch to hammer in one piston to get it moving, flip the cylinder over and then use the punch to hammer the piston in until it hits the piston you just moved and pushes it out. Reverse it and carefully hammer the remaining piston out from the inside of the cylinder (careful not to touch the bore).

I cut the old, hard seals off the pistons

After a quick buzz with the wire wheel, they were looking pretty flash

The bore of the cylinder was... not great. Thankfully they're an alloy cylinder, so it's mostly just surface grot

I used some scotch pad with a folded ziptie inside it for light pressure, lubed with CRC, to polish the bore

It cleaned up pretty well

What followed was self-inflicted suffering. In hindsight, I wouldn't presume that the part I removed from the car was correct for the car.

I noticed that the seals were a tight fit over the pistons, so I soaked them in some hot water to soften them, and with the piston in the vice, I managed to wrap the seal over the end and into the groove

After wasting a bunch of time and ruining two new seals when pushing the pistons into the bore, I began to question what I was doing wrong. It turns out, nothing. It was never going to work.

The seal kit was for an 11/16" (17.46mm) bore. It turns out the cylinders are a smaller 5/8" (15.8mm) bore. The new cylinders I fitted were also 11/16" bore. Unusually, the bore size isn't cast anywhere on the old cylinders.

Mystery cylinder on the right

I checked the workshop manual, because why would both cylinders be smaller than the seal kit I was sold for this car, and the two new cylinders that I cross-referenced off the OE number?

Well, that's that then; it's meant to have 17.46mm (11/16") cylinders. The non-turbo has bigger 19mm cylinders, so where on earth did the 15.8mm cylinders come from? No idea, but they're wrong.

So, I was suddenly stuck. The cylinder on the car was bad, the cylinders from the car were bad (and I've since found they would suffer the same issue with the pipe as the new ones), and new genuine cylinders were obsolete. Cool.

That's when I remembered I had checked a while back and knew the wheel cylinders on the car at Pick A Part that I got the rear trailing arms from had the same part number as my car (should have). The old girl is useful again.

I quickly threw some tools into the tool bag, roped my wife into coming with me, and we set off to grab a wheel cylinder.

To say this was an epic fight was an understatement. The drums are a similar design to what's on my Alto, with the bearings part of the drum. I knew it wouldn't be fun; even my car took a few good hits with the slide hammer to get the drum off, but someone had previously removed the trailing arms of the PAP car (oops), so the axle was no longer solidly in place.

It also didn't help that the shoes were rusted to the drum on both sides, so they didn't turn, and the wheel nuts I bought with me were M10 from my car, not the M12 I needed for this later car. We had to scrounge a pair of random wheel nuts from the mud around the car, which were the wrong thread pitch, and rattlegun them on.

In the end, after bruising my hands using the slide hammer repeatedly, bashing the drum with a rear shock from the car, and much swearing, the drum finally, gradually, slid off. Within a few seconds, I had the (already disconnected) cylinder out and in my hands.

Ideally, I would've liked a pair of them, but I was drained after fighting with that side. So off home we went.

Anyway, so with the cylinder home, I noticed there was brake fluid in the boots. Great. At least I have a rebuild kit, right.

On the plus side, both pistons moved freely and smoothly.

Nice original NABCO 11/16" cylinder

I slid the pistons out, and there was some grot in the bore of this one too

I gave it a quick polish, and it all came off easily

One piston looked a bit worse for wear

I looked at the pistons and decided I couldn't be bothered fighting with the seals. The plan was to remove the new cylinder from the car and swap the complete pistons and seals into the NABCO body.

I removed the drum; since it was all new, it just needed a quick twist or two of the hub puller, and it slipped off. I had hoped I was done in here.

The new Delphi cylinder, with the correct 11/16" bore

These are the pipes in the back. The top one is the issue; see how rammed into the cylinder it is. The pipe doesn't wiggle, but it's obviously not sealing.

With the two cylinders (and the old one removed from the car) side by side, it is obvious what's going on. Suzuki says the cylinders are handed Left and Right, but the aftermarket supersedes the two numbers to a single part, which is the Delphi one I bought. The reason Suzuki said the two are different is that the RH one has the crossover pipe to the Left side, whilst the LH cylinder has a bleed nipple in that top hole.

Genuine parts, different left and right

The crossover numbers for the Delphi cylinder from Spareto, showing the two OE numbers

This is the correct NABCO cylinder I got from the PAP car

The top fitting has a cone, sticking out towards the outside, which the flare on the end of the brake pipe seals against.

The other cylinders, including the new Delphi ones and the smaller ones from the car originally, don't have that; they have a taper going inwards that would suit the pointy end of the bleed nipple (which makes sense, since both Delphi cylinders came fitted with them when I got them)

So not only is the hole too deep, the sealing surface inside it is the opposite of what it needs to be. Dumb.

I took the pistons out of the new cylinder (which were identical to the NABCO pistons), and slid them into the NABCO cylinder from the donor car, fitted a pair of new boots from the seal kit, and we were ready to refit

As a small note, it's interesting to see the gasket on this cylinder. I noticed it in the parts diagram, but none of my cylinders had it fitted. Must be to keep dust out of the drum. It's kind of a thin rubbery foam.

I wiggled the cylinder into the backing plate and refitted the pipes and screws.

This is how the pipes should fit. The top pipe is no longer rammed hard into the cylinder

I refit the drum, torqued the nut up and bled the system. It all bled up well, and no signs of leaks.

I'm not worried about the left-side cylinder, because the bleed nipple is in the top fitting, and the bottom fitting has the correct sealing surface for the flare; it's working as intended. I'm happy to have the correct-sized matching pair of 11/16" cylinders back there now.

With it all bled and sealed up, finally, it was time to take the Alto for a longer drive and start putting some KS on the car to run the engine in and shake it down ready for more regular use.

We jumped in and took the car out for lunch. It's funny how little space it takes up in the park

and how big the Mini Aceman in front of it was

We then proceeded to head south for a bit, to park up at the beach. This is a place where I've taken a few of my previous projects on their maiden voyage.

A quick stop off on the way home to do some shopping. Almost lost the car amongst all the giants

We've done about 117KM or so now. Only 10% of what I need to do for the run-in, but it's better than nothing. Other than a couple of little niggles I need to look into, the car ran and drove excellently. Seeing the points and smiles as I drove by reminds me that small cars just brighten people's day.

 

Bonk.

[Bearded Baldy]

Good stuff man.

If you come across that issue in the future on another project, there are a couple of options.

First and most drastic is to cut and reflare the end of the pipe so it has the right endshape.

2nd and my prefered option, is to put a screw slightly bigger than the hole size into the cone, and pull it out. Clean up the burrs from the screw, then tap it gently into the new cylinder.

We see this sort of parts issues at least once a year at work. Suppliers have no idea etc and generally just say 'that is all thats listed for it'.

Congrats on starting the run in too!

[kws]

Just a small update this time, as I've actually been out driving it, not just fixing it.

General Update

I've been driving the car to work a couple of days a week for the past couple of weeks, to get the KMs up towards the magical 1000km for running the engine in. So far I'm over 300km on the odometer now. Still a long way to go, but we're getting there.

Driving the car did show up some issues, though. The main ones were the driver's seat, the tyres, and a fuel smell in the cabin.

Recaro Install

I love the original seats; they're so typically late 80s, with their shaped bolsters and reversible "shoulder" support

But after driving to and from work a couple of times, I quickly realised I'm too generously proportioned for them.

You can see how low the "headrest" is in this photo; it's barely at my neck, let alone anywhere near my head, and it's not adjustable. This is a particularly concerning issue if I do manage to track this car.

I found the base quite short under my legs too.

The solution was to replace the seat.

Thankfully, I found some near-new genuine Recaro rails for the CN21S Alto in Japan for a good price, so I grabbed them

A friend was also generous enough to donate a Recaro seat he no longer needed, which was (and still might) destined to end up in the Marina. But since it was just sitting around in my garage doing nothing for now, I bolted the rails onto it and dropped it into the Alto.

It's an old Recaro Idealstiz CS84. I believe it predates the car by a few years, but it also suits the interior nicely. The cool thing about this seat is that the height/angle is adjustable.

The rear height is adjusted by an electric motor under the seat and a control on the LH lower bolster. I don't have this wired up to the car, so I used a jump pack to power the seat and adjust it (I don't intend to change it once I'm happy with its position).

The front is manual. It really confused me at first, but I eventually found a Japanese site that explained how to adjust it. On the underside, there is an orange toggle. It's not really a switch as such, but it moves a locking mechanism to allow adjustment.

In the middle, the adjustment is locked. To adjust the front, reach under the seat with your right hand and slide the toggle towards the middle of the car. With your left hand, either push on or whack the backrest of the seat. This should cause the front to raise up. To lower it, do the same, but whack down on the front of the seat base (not the adjustable thigh rest, though). Release the toggle, and it will lock in place.

One little issue, which seems to be well known in the CS84 community, is that if you have the front adjustment down, you can't lower the back adjustment down far, or the underside of the seat will contact the locking mech on the rails and stop the rails from locking in place. Very not idealsitz indeed. Raising the front up allows it to clear, and the rear can be lowered down. Some have converted the rails to have the locking on the outside to get around this, but it seems a bit extreme.

The Recaro is much more supportive, and the headrest comes up much higher and is adjustable.

I will say, though, whoever thought it was a good idea to put a big plastic switch block right on the lower bolster... well, there is a reason they don't do that anymore.

Tyres

I knew when I fitted the Suzuki Sport wheels that the tyres on them wouldn't be around forever. I kinda wanted to get a track day out of them, but after driving it for a couple of days, I found they were unbearable on the road.

They had a pretty cool tread pattern, but Nankang AR1 semi-slicks just weren't for me. Nankang themselves market them as "90% track, 10% road"

The worst thing was really their inability to grip in anything resembling dampness, which is a bit of an issue considering it's currently winter. Even when dry, they had no heat in them when commuting, so their grip levels weren't great.

Less risky issues were that they had considerable road noise at pretty much all speeds, and at open-road speeds the balance wasn't great and they vibrated quite badly. Not to mention they're an 80 treadwear tyre, which is mega soft (RE003s are a 220 treadwear).

After much research and digging through manufacturers' resources to see what was available in the size I wanted, I found that anything decent was no longer available, and I had to make the compromise between either having the right size (175/60R13) but in a cheaper round black thing with a name I hadnt heard of before, or go smaller (the same size as the semis - 175/50R13) but get some nice proper Yokohamas instead.

I went with the Yokohama Advan A539 in the smaller profile.

Very cool looking tyres

My wife was roped in to help and had the tyres fitted and balanced to the wheels for me. Even on the ground, they look way more purposeful than the semis.

Once fitted to the car, I was very happy with how they looked. It's a shame they discontinued the 60 profile A539, it would fill the guards just that little bit better

They're technically slightly narrower than the semis; for a 175 width, the AR1s were actually 182mm "section width" and overhung the wheel a bit more than I liked. The Yokohamas are a better fit.

The grip seems to be good from them, both in the dry and damp. I haven't driven in the wet yet, but I expect they will also do well. The vibration and road noise are gone, and the ride compliance is better now too, since the sidewalls aren't like bricks and the tyre absorbs some bumps. Much happier with these, even if they won't be quite as good on the track.

Front Swaybar Bushes

I'm pretty sure these are the only bushes I hadn't replaced in the whole suspension, as I got the wrong ones for my swaybar. I ordered the correct ones and took a few minutes to replace them today.

Pretty easy job on this. Jack the car up, support it, and do one side at a time. Remove the bolts, remove the clamp, remove the bush.

Fit the new bush, refit the clamp, and finger-tighten the bolts (new ones in this case)

Once both sides are done and the car is on the ground, reach under the front and tighten them up. I couldn't find a spec in the manual, so just a gutentight.

The old bushes were a bit flogged.

Hopefully this tightens the front up a little bit more. These are quite important as they control movement of the lower arms forward and backwards.

Fuel Smell

This one was a bit of a concern. Ever since I put fuel in the car, if you left the windows closed overnight, the inside of the car would gain a certain raw fuelly smell. It didn't appear to be leaking anything, but it definitely had a smell.

I removed the back seat and unclipped the inner trim panel today to take a look at the filler neck and associated hoses. They all seemed to be connected, with the clamps in place, and no signs of any leaking or weeping. Until I stuck my arm inside the guard and felt around at what the parts book calls the "liquid vapour separator"...

Excuse the bad photo; it was really hard to get in there, but the orange arrow points at the top fitting on the white separator tank... which has nothing connected to it.

It turns out this orange hose here is meant to be connected to it

I tried to pull it to see if it extended to reach, but it had no intention of doing such a thing. I confirmed this was the right hose by connecting an air pump to the hose off the carbon canister in the engine bay and seeing that air was coming from the hose in the back

I scraped some of the grime off the hose, and sure enough, it was orange

I ended up finding some fuel hose that fit the tank fitting, and then another, bigger fuel hose that fit over both hoses to create a joiner

The way the system should work, in simple terms (because various valves in the system complicate it), is that the fuel tank makes fumes. The fumes go through the separator via the filler neck, any liquid, I guess, drops out of suspension and drains back to the tank, and then, via my bodged hose and the orange hose, the fumes travel all the way to the front of the car, where it goes into the carbon canister to be absorbed. When the engine runs, the canister then releases those fumes, and they enter the intake manifold to be burnt. Nice.

What was happening was that the tank was making fumes, which were going into the separator and then venting into the inner guard. Not nice.

I don't know if there was a section of hose that should join to the orange hose missing. I had a look in the guard to see if I could find something, but nothing was visible.

The car is sitting in the garage overnight with the windows up, so hopefully in the morning it will smell like watermelon goose and nothing else.

Manual Changes - Cluster and ECU

One small change I made a while back, because I was bored, was to disassemble my clusters and swap the auto tacho for the manual one, which has a higher redline.

I had obtained a couple of clusters from Japan. Bottom left is my stock AT cluster (7500rpm redline and 10k rpm scale), the bottom right is CN21S MT (8500rpm redline, 12k rpm scale), and the top one is from an older 550cc MT CM11V Alto Works, with an even higher 9000rpm redline.

CN21S Auto

CN21S Manual

CM11V Manual

Interestingly, the CM11V cluster had a buzzer on the back. The others didn't, but still had the connections and mounting for it

I chose to completely strip one cluster down because I like disassembling things, but really, to swap the gauges you only need to remove the relevant screws

These are the five screws that secure the tacho, and other than removing the lens on the front, the only thing holding it in

The gauges all come out in sections

Because I'm weird, I wanted to keep my odometer, despite having replaced almost the whole car. It was tempting to wind the 99999 one over to all zeros and start fresh, but it didn't feel right.

So I built my cluster back up with the higher RPM MT tacho but left everything else as is (other than removing the bulb for the cat over-temp sensor light, which is long gone).

I plugged it back into the car to test, and it all seemed to be working fine

One small PITA getting the cluster in and out is that the speedo cable needs to be disconnected from the gearbox and pulled into the cabin enough that you can actually fit your hand behind the cluster. I've gotten pretty good at it now after a couple of goes, but it still sucks to do. To help the cable go through the firewall grommet, I sprayed some silicone spray on it.

It looked pretty good, much better than the lame old low RPM gauge

Unfortunately, I had to do this all over again and refit the 9000rpm gauge instead, as there was something wrong with the 8500rpm gauge, where it seemed to stick at anything over about 4000rpm and just didn't respond smoothly. Thankfully, the 9000rpm gauge is working perfectly.

The other change I made from AT to MT was swapping to the stock CN21S manual ECU. I was having some weirdness when driving on the auto ECU, such as bogging down and the engine feeling like it was holding back just before it came on boost, and at low RPM creeping in traffic, the engine seemed to stutter a bit. Swapping to the manual ECU got rid of all these issues, and the engine seems to respond better.

I still have the tuned Suzuki Sport N1 ECU, but that won't go in until after the engine is run in.

Mirrors

Finally, I replaced the exterior mirrors. The driver's one has been driving me nuts when actually driving the car, as it vibrates and shakes a lot and is almost unusable. The lens has also been bodged in place.

I managed to score a pair of mirrors off Yahoo Japan, and they were even the same blue as my car. What I didn't know until I had already bought them was that there are two different types of mirrors for the Alto, a low spec and high spec (plus an electric option). The ones fitted to my car are high spec, where the mirror head is meant to be fixed, and the glass is pushed around to adjust the angle.

On the low-spec ones, the whole head of the mirror moves around to adjust the angle, and the glass is fixed in place. There is also a slight size and shape difference between the two.

The top one is the high-spec one off my car, whilst the bottom one is the fixed-glass low-spec one. You can also see the magnification of the glass in my old mirror. I don't know if this is normal, but it created a big blind spot right where I didn't want one and made it really hard to use.

The mirrors are super easy to remove. This cover pops off with one clip down the bottom holding it on

And the three screws are all that hold it in place. The new mirrors look fine; you'd never notice they were smaller. If anything, they look a bit cuter. The paint isn't perfect, but it's no worse than the rest of the car; they're shinier than the rest of the car, so I'll need to address that soon.

The driver's mirror no longer vibrates when the engine is running, and adjusting them is easy enough. It's quite funny being able to adjust the passenger mirror from the driver's seat, just by leaning over.

I did notice that the base on the old driver's mirror was cracked through, so I suspect it was probably hit at some point.

End

That's it for now. Still plenty of things to be done, and plenty of ks to cover. Once I hit 500km I will dump the oil and filter, refill with more of the run-in oil, and that will take me through to the 1000km mark, where it'll get changed out for proper Castrol synthetic.

So far I am very happy with how it's running. The engine revs nicely, boosts nicely and responds sharply. It doesn't smoke, and other than a little tapping from the lifters on a cold start, it's quiet. I think I built a good engine.

I haven't taken it over about 6000rpm or so, and don't hold it in full boost, only short squirts of it, so I'm looking forward to really giving it the beans. It does make some great turbo noises, though!

[kws]

Slowly but steadily, I have been adding KS to the Alto. Halfway to completing the run-in, it was time for a first service.

Planning around the weather so I don't have to drive in the rain, I've been commuting in the Alto a few days a week, just trying to get the KS up and complete running in the engine.

It's quite a laugh parking next to some of the other vehicles in the work carpark. Nuggie looks like a toy. It's a little scary that I'm below the window line of most utes, though.

The plan was always to give the car a decent once-over at 500km, which is halfway through the running-in process. I hit that the other day, so in the garage we went

I had a whiteboard list of jobs to do, and the first thing was to assume the service position. The bumper is really easy to remove. It's two bolts in front of each front wheel, a bolt in the center under the bumper, and then the three along the top. I'm considering doing this at every oil change, instead of using the access hole behind the number plate

I had four main jobs to do here: an oil change, replace the O2 sensor, upgrade the horn and fix the weeping oil from the turbo oil drain.

Turbo Oil Drain Leak Fix

I started by removing the oil filter, as this needed to be removed to get to the turbo oil drain

I should've fixed this before the engine went in (as I noticed the turbo core was wet around the fitting after I primed the turbo with oil), but with a new genuine gasket, I didn't think it would be this that was leaking. It was weeping just enough to get oil on the front crossmember, but not enough to actually drip on the ground (or for the level to drop on the dipstick)

The turbo oil drain is right above the filter. It's the wet, oily pipe.

The front bolt is pretty easy to access, but the rear one is a tight fit, and a 10mm spanner only just fits

Once removed, the gasket was clearly not sealing, as it was covered in oil

I had read about this issue on the Japanese site Minkara when changing from the old-style fibre gasket to the newer metal gasket (the only one available genuine now). The fibre gasket was thicker and crushed more around the bolts than in the center, warping the flange over time.

The newer metal gasket is very thin and obviously doesn't have the ability to take up much warp in the flange.

Putting a straight edge over the flange made it obvious this is what happened

Using a mirror as a flat surface and some sandpaper, a quick scuff shows how bad it is

I kept going until the scratches were fairly even

And then, using the poor man's engineer's blue (Vivid/Sharpie), I covered the flange

and ran it over the paper a couple of times

I was happy with that, so I gave it a touch-up with some finer paper to smooth off the flange. I cleaned the absolute heck out of it to make sure no grit or metal dust was stuck inside it.

Before refitting it, I wanted to replace the O2 sensor, as this is easier without the oil drain in the way

Oxygen Sensor Replacement

I had noticed that the car smelt like it was running a little on the rich side, and the idle was a little rough, so I wanted to replace the oxygen sensor as it's very likely to be the original one.

Annoyingly, it's pretty well encased by the engine mount brackets, so my usual 22mm sensor socket didn't fit, and I was left using a spanner

Thankfully, after heating the area with a heat gun on High for a bit, the sensor cracked off easily. It was slow going undoing it, about 1/8th of a turn each time.

Eventually I removed it

I picked up a NOS Bosch sensor a while back

The body of the new sensor is a lot bigger, but otherwise the same

As per the instructions, I cut the wire from the old sensor and crimped it onto the new sensor's wiring. I believe they do this because there is an issue soldering the O2 sensor wiring.

The provided heat shrink worked well

The sensor comes with pre-applied anti-seize

I found it a lot easier to remove the mid brace in the front of the car to give me more spanner spinning space

You wouldn't want the sensor much bigger, but it fits

That meant I could refit the oil drain

The spring on the hose is millimetres away from the sensor now. Hopefully this won't be an issue. I might get some heat sleeve for it.

Horn Upgrade

Whilst in the service position, it was easiest to access the horn now.

The Alto has the smallest, weakest little "peep peep" horn ever. I tooted at another Kei driver the other day, and since I could barely hear the horn in the car myself, he didn't seem to be aware of it at all.

To fix this, and hopefully scare anyone who tries to crash into me, to just not, I bought a pair of Mitsuba Alpha Horns. I don't have a lot of space to work with, so I tried just the low-tone horn first, and I was not disappointed. It's got a solid, loud horn now. It was a bolt-in, plug-and-play replacement for the stock horn

Oil Change

The final job for the front of the car was to finish the oil change. When I refit the new oil filter, I prefilled it about halfway so it wouldn't be a completely dry start.

I then drained the old oil from the sump, replaced the crush washer, refitted the plug and poured the remaining 2.5L of run-in oil into the engine.

Because this was the first real oil change since the rebuild and first start, I wanted to see what was in the filter. The drain pan had a couple of little bits of glitter, and the oil had a bit of carbon in it, but it looked all normal.

I placed the old filter in the vice and adjusted my filter opening tool to fit

This works kind of like a can opener or pipe cutter. It has a rolling blade on one side and a pair of bearings on the other side. Wind the blade in and spin the tool around. Tighten it some more, and it'll start cutting through the filter

Keep tightening and spinning it until the top comes off

It's pretty good at not getting garbage in the filter, unlike using a saw. It's also quite tidy and spills minimal oil.

I removed the guts from the filter, and there were some bits in the bottom of the housing. Looked mostly like carbon or similar, not metal.

I cut the ends off the filter and cut out a section to sample. I squeezed the filter section in the vice to get oil out, and then I unfolded it

There was junk in most of the folds, but it seems to be just the black carbon stuff. There are definitely some small pieces of metal, but it didn't look like bearings, and I'm happy to consider it normal.

Considering it's the first change, other than after the first startup, it's looking good.

I'm really happy with how the engine is going in general. At this point, other than keeping the revs down to about 6000rpm max (of 9000), and not holding it on full boost for long periods, I'm mostly driving it like I would a normal car. Giving it some boost, lots of engine braking, and varying the load. There's no smoke, it pulls well, and I'm getting an average of 5.7L/100km currently (Google says about 49 MPG (UK)). It feels quite strong down low, even off boost; must be that extra cylinder capacity from the bigger pistons...

I refit the bumper and was about to call it a day, but I was thrown a big curveball when I was testing the bumper lights to make sure I plugged them in right... the fog lights suddenly didn't work. This was a bummer since I've been relying on them to work, as the headlights have been working less and less recently.

I checked all the wiring behind the bumper, but found it weird that both lights wouldn't be working, so I presumed it wasn't that.

Headlight Switch Shenanigans

Knowing my headlight switch was failing, which is a common thing on the Altos since they don't have headlight relays and all the current goes through the switch contacts, I ordered a good second-hand CR22S combination switch assembly from Japan. The CR22S is newer than my car, but it's the same platform. Other than some differences (up/down wiper stalk instead of twist, and the headlight stalk has been updated), they're visually similar and have the same wiring. Surely it'll work.

I plugged the replacement switches into the harness and tested it; sure enough, everything worked as expected (except the fog lamps, still)

As a side note, to undo the connector, you squeeze these sides of the connector together and then pull the connector apart

To remove the column switches, you have to remove the steering wheel. Because this is the original Works wheel, I removed the rubber pad to expose the screws holding the wheel to the boss

With them removed and the horn button disconnected, the wheel can be removed

I loosened the nut, leaving it on a few threads, refit the wheel, and used that to remove the boss from the splines. With the horn button removed, you could probably leave the wheel on the boss at this point, but I removed it again.

With the shrouds also undone/removed, this gives you access to the combo switches. I had removed the three screws that hold it to the lock assembly already

I removed it and went to fit the replacement. Annoyingly, it didn't fit.

It seems like the CR22S combination block has an insert in it for the indicator cancelling, which reduces the diameter of the hole that the column goes through. The CN21S column is too big and stops the switches from sliding fully on

In comparison, the CN21S switches from my car just have a big gaping hole there

Interestingly, the indicator cancelling is done on the older car by using roll pins that protrude from the back of the steering wheel boss, so even if I did fit it, the steering wheel boss on my car would interfere with it.

I did notice there are a series of clips on the insert in the middle, so I'm going to investigate further and see if the whole insert just unclips and can be removed, since without it I'm pretty sure they would work fine on the older car.

Anyway, now I was forced to look into what was wrong with my headlight switch. It works by sliding some pins in the combo block when you turn the end of the stalk; those pins raise and lower depending on which option you pick. Those pins are beneath the copper contacts. The pins raise and lower, which opens and closes the contacts.

I took the protective cover off and had a nosy.

You can already see how discoloured the low and high beam contacts are from the heat they have generated. This screams dirty contacts.

Here are the stages of turning the knob. Warning: boring nerdy stuff that is irrelevant to most people follows.

All Off. All the pins are up, lifting all the strips off, and none of them are making contact. In this state, pulling the headlight stalk to flash the high beams would drop the furthest-away pin and close that contact to light up the high beams.

Park Lights. The pin for the middle strip drops, and the contact is closed.

Low Beams. The pins on both the front and middle contacts have dropped, and both are connected. This keeps the park lights on with the low beams.

If you try to flash the high beams, like in the next step, it will raise the first pin and actually disconnect the low beam contact whilst dropping the third pin and connecting the high beams.

High Beams (stalk pushed forward). The final stage. The pin for the high beam contact drops and contact is made, but it also raises the first (low beam) contact and disconnects the low beam. Park lights are still connected.

This is likely due to lighting both filaments in the bulb being redundant, but also generating too much heat, which would damage the lamp.

So, we had dirty contacts. No surprise here, really.

I started with some coarse sandpaper, but this didn't work very well

What worked really well was this weird little file that I have had in my toolbox for many years. An ignition points file would probably work well too.

I used it to scrape and file down the contacts on both sides of both high and low beams (park lights looked as new due to the low current being drawn)

I then thoroughly cleaned the area and smeared some dielectric grease in there before refitting the cover. All the contact points were regreased with some white lithium grease, and the actual stalks themselves got a clean with some All Purpose Cleaner to get decades of grime off them.

Everything works perfectly now, and the low beam works every time. I refitted it, along with the shrouds and steering wheel.

The only niggle was that the fog lamps still didn't work. Weird. I decided to check the fuse box under the dash, where I found a fuse that I couldn't pull out by hand. I grabbed some pliers and gave it a yank.

Yeah, that's not ideal. It's melted. Looking at the corrosion on that leg of the fuse, I suspect it went high resistance and instead of blowing, it melted itself to death. Cool.

I whacked another fuse in, and sure enough, we had a full set of lights

When the bumper was off, I wound in the adjustment on the bottom of the lights a bit more (as the lights were pointing high and I only had limited adjustment at the top), and then used the adjusters on the top to bring them back up and align them. Without a beam setter, I think I have them set OK, but who knows. At least they work reliably for now, which is good.

Extras

Because I leave nothing alone, there were a couple of other small tasks I did whilst there. One of them was resealing the breather tower, as this had been leaking oil onto the cam box

To access the breather box screws, I had to remove the intercooler. With that out of the way, I removed the screws

The gasket was very wet on the mating surfaces

I smeared a thin smear of sealant on both sides of the gasket and refitted it. I also flipped the gasket around, so the big hole in the cam box was covered instead of being under the opening. I have no idea if this will make any difference.

I then refit the breather tower

You may also notice that there is a spark plug cover in place now too. I was surprised that you could still buy these new, and since I was missing mine, I bought one with new screws to fit. Sadly, the Suzuki 660 Four Valve decal that usually goes on them is obsolete. It does tidy it up nicely, though.

A nice tidy engine bay, with the only two leaks it had fixed.

And with that, the 500km service was done. I have another 500km to do before the running-in is complete, and I'll do the next oil change, which will be to Castrol Edge 5W40 fully synthetic and then I can finally enjoy the engine, with its full rev range and boost.