VG has a cute little growler / Swifty Cent

[jessemk2]

Have had a x force stainless exhaust on my land cruiser for 7 years now,3 months in was a slight leak at mid pipe flange,re tightening bolts sorted it.

Welds and quality good especially for price

 

 

 

[Vintage Grumble]

1 hour ago, jessemk2 said:

Have had a x force stainless exhaust on my land cruiser for 7 years now,3 months in was a slight leak at mid pipe flange,re tightening bolts sorted it.

Welds and quality good especially for price

 

 

 

That's good to hear, as I ordered the exhaust yesterday, lols.

I have a trade account with Autobend, so can get SS resonators fairly cheap to add in if needs be. I can also make up some tip inserts for stealth morning departures if I have too I guess, twin 100mm tips will probably be quite rowdy.

[Vintage Grumble]

More overweek parts from Auckland/Australia/China??? (I actually have no idea) arrived last night. The box was sitting under the deck when I got home, and for the first time ever my wife beat me home by like one minute. While she was walking down the road to collect the kids I chucked the box in the shed, and have denied all knowledge of it since. 

Full of shiny tubes and what nots,

But look at this bit, wee doggy its a sexual piece of gear,

*Enhance* The 10 year old Chinese boy that made it sure can weld a lot better than I can,

 Considering I probably wouldn't be able to buy the materials for what it cost, I'm very happy with it so far. I think I will add in the second resonator before I fit it, because there's no way in heck its going to be acceptably loud for a sad old man/7am starts in suburbia.

Regards, V "bright and shiny" G. 

[~Slideways~]

My dad has one of these, he had it reflashed by some mobile tuner guy. I think he used Prestige/Llama facilities when he was in Wellington. Something around $1k from memory.

Everything was stock and apparently a pretty big jump in power, I drove it and really liked it. I can ask for more details if needed.

Main thing I don't get is how its all over by around 5500-6k rpm, really feels like it should be a more rev happy car. Not sure if it's a limitation of the turbo size, or choked by factory intake/exhaust?

[Vintage Grumble]

21 minutes ago, ~Slideways~ said:

My dad has one of these, he had it reflashed by some mobile tuner guy. I think he used Prestige/Llama facilities when he was in Wellington. Something around $1k from memory.

Everything was stock and apparently a pretty big jump in power, I drove it and really liked it. I can ask for more details if needed.

Main thing I don't get is how its all over by around 5500-6k rpm, really feels like it should be a more rev happy car. Not sure if it's a limitation of the turbo size, or choked by factory intake/exhaust?

Yeh I need to start looking into where to get it tuned, I assume dyno tuning is still preferable to generic re-flashing? I really don't know much about diddling with factory ECUs. 

The being torquey really low down and not revving is a bit odd for such a small motor, but the turbos are tiny so assume that's the reason. Its sort of like driving a sporty diesel, pulls harder in higher gears/more load = more boost kinda thing. The factory intake/exhausts on the sport don't seem to be overly restrictive, seem to be quite a few people making 170-180hp with factory gear and just a re-tune. Somehow I didn't discover this until after I had ordered the intake/exhaust, lols.

 

[Vintage Grumble]

So I got another resonator, even more shiny than the rest of the system, lols.

There's a couple of places I should be able to squeeze it in, I would prefer to put it where a slip in joint is to eliminate a join that's not really needed, but I needed to know how that joint would be orientated when the system was on the car before I could add the resonator in, so I had to fit the system. I decided to do it OS styles, which means rather than putting the car on my BILs hoist, I put it up on as many bits of wood as I could find but not actually get it high enough to do the work easily or comfortably.   

While removing the old system I had to LOL at the end of the cat, the outside of this bit of pipe was only around 40mm so the ID must be fucking tiny, which makes the 65mm exhaust behind it with twin 100mm tips even more ridiculous, ha. It would be interesting to get a second hand cat and have a go at cutting off the end of the cat and putting a bigger bit of pipe in there for flow. Not sure why its so tiny from factory? Maybe to help the cat heat up or something?

 

While I had the exhaust off, it made it easier to change the rear engine/box mount. I've never seen one like this before, its inside the cross member. 

While I was undoing the bolts the motor/box was moving heaps, so the mount is definitely underdone. When doing the bolts back up nothing was moving, so the insert looked to make quite a difference.

 

The mount was quite a cunt to get out due to the sway bar juuusssst being in the way, and made it impossible to put it back in. I undid the sway bar links but that made no difference. The saddle bolts were in a real cunt of a place, so I ended up just levering the sway bar up and round house kicking the mount back into its hole.   

So anyways, after a few hours of rolling around on a concrete floor jammed under a car and being unable to get both hands to anything at any time, I got the new system installed. It fits really well, my only complaint is the flanges have overly long slotted bolt holes so its sort of hard to align the flanges. 

Surprisingly the exhaust is not crazy loud, its a bit too loud on cold start and it has a nasty ass sort of rasp/resonance through a certain rev range, but apart from that it actually sounds pretty tough for a 1.4l. On the open road it has no drone at all, and is only very slightly louder than before which is nice. I will still be adding in the extra resonator and then it should be peachy. I did notice the exhaust tips make it waaay louder, but cant really have no tips with giant holes in the bumper, as it would look very strange. I have thought about making slightly smaller tips with the 2" pipe coming all the way out to the end to stop the megaphoning, but I'll see what the second resonator does first.

Vid of just the tip: https://i.imgur.com/zl8exur.mp4

BONUS SHARN: So when I got the car it was coated in some sort of car yard spec silicon or similar to make everything look shiny/better than it really is, and its taken quite a while to clean it all off. But I noticed an oily substance at the base of the drivers side bonnet hinge, and it seemed to be engine oil. I wondered how it got there. I then noticed the sound deadening material on the underside of the bonnet on that same side had an oily feel to it. I added these things together and came out with the motor being run without an oil filler cap, which isn't ideal. While removing the under shields to do the exhaust I found:

   

Case closed. Hopefully it wasn't run for too long with the oil venting to atmosphere.

Regards, V "oil in an engine is overrated" G. 

P.S. The engine/gearbox mount insert has made a huge difference, shifts gear way nicer and when slapping it through gears you can feel much less movement in the powerplant. Excellent.

 

[igor]

38 minutes ago, Vintage Grumble said:

While removing the old system I had to LOL at the end of the cat, the outside of this bit of pipe was only around 40mm so the ID must be fucking tiny, which makes the 65mm exhaust behind it with twin 100mm tips even more ridiculous, ha.

Cat delete time?

[xsspeed]

or if you need cat - https://www.hks-power.co.jp/en/product_db/exhaust/db/20356

edit: ah looks like cat is in downpipe and theres a load of straight downpipes available

Also with all this capacity its obviously time for bigger turbo

[Vintage Grumble]

10 minutes ago, xsspeed said:

or if you need cat - https://www.hks-power.co.jp/en/product_db/exhaust/db/20356

edit: ah looks like cat is in downpipe and theres a load of straight downpipes available

Also with all this capacity its obviously time for bigger turbo

From memory the HKS cat is like $2k, a little too spicy for me. I was thinking about this one at less than half the price, but still a bit spicy: https://www.redlineperformance.co.nz/product/xforce-suzuki-swift-sport-zc33-14l-2017-down-pipe/?srsltid=AfmBOoq1AcVkkw0rUYTPH2Mxq2fLOMMaEKfcJvsMXdikBleyrD1rnp8O

Changing the end of the factory cat wouldn't be overly hard TBH, making the pipe bit after it would probably be harder. 

[Vintage Grumble]

Overnight parts from Avondale arrived today! I decided to go with the HKS intercooler as its meant to be one of the best performing and was also the cheapest. Then when I went to order it, the place was having a "JDM sale" and it was even cheaper still, nice! Whats really blown me away is how fucking chunky it is, 100mm doesn't sound crazy, but for an intercooler its thick AF. It even comes with an HKS stencil!

The other bit that arrived was the Xforce down pipe/cat. The thought of that super restrictive bit at the end of the OEM cat was really harassing my OCD, so bit the bullet and ordered one.

I also whipped the middle section of the exhaust back off the car, and made up a couple of mounts and welded them to my work bench to create a jig so I can cut out a section and fit the new resonator in. By golly it was tight, but I managed to sqeeeeze it in there.

Just tacked in place here, I borrowed a twin reg and have set it up for a purge weld, which I've never done before, what could go wrong? Also, this counts as fabrication, just to keep @sheepers happy.

Also also, got some over week parts from the southern isle, a second hand set of H&R lowering springs. They are meant to be the ducks, with around a 35mm lowering. The back springs in these things are hilariously small BTW, so cute. 

So yeh, lots of things to slap on and further enhance/ruin the vehicle.

Regards, V "ahhh i'm too old for lowered springs, my fucken back!" G

[xsspeed]

Get some juddies g 

[Vintage Grumble]

On 13/03/2026 at 22:56, xsspeed said:

Get some juddies g 

wot?

[xsspeed]

https://www.hks-power.co.jp/en/product_db/hipermax/db/31782

[Vintage Grumble]

Got a bit of time to fit parts.

Ripped the front off,

HKS CHONK VS OEM intercooler,

CHONK in place,

Trim this thing to fit the CHONK,

Reason for weirdly shaped CHONK, my car has the "safety" package, and the radar mount rudely intrudes on intercooler room. HKS using every available MM,

All ready for the bumper to go back on,

The sales blurb said "some processing of the bumper is required" and the instructions are quite vague, but what they meant is cut fucken heaps out of the bottom of the bumper until it fits. Its very tight in a couple of spots.

 

I couldn't help myself, and went full homo, and used the stencil. I even raised the number plate up 25mm to get full air flow through the CHONK, lolololols.

Then I got stuck into the CAT/down pipe install. The CAT part is much smaller, but has way bigger holes in the CAT stuff, so probably does less CAT'ing, but must flow better. The inlet and outlet looks like it should flow way better.

I gave the inlet a bit of a match port, the OEM one is actually larger than the flange on the turbo, but the new one was slightly smaller, so matched that up.

I did my first ever purge weld to finish off adding in the extra resonator, also if I'm honest it was the first time I've ever actually used filler rod, ha. Came out OK, learned a lot.

Now the new CAT/down pipe makes the car even louder (I had read online that this happens so was expecting it) but the extra resonator must have brought it back to about where it was pre CAT install which is a bit too loud still, so I will add in another resonator in the first section of straight pipe (in the pic above, its the bit after the cross member and before the first flange) and see how it sounds then.

I went for a hoon with the 4" tips taken off and it made no noticeable difference to loudness.

On my 3rd hoon after changing everything, I got an engine check light and a big flashing warning saying the cruise control system needs checking (probably because I had taken the sensor off to cut the cross brace) so I slapped a china OBD2 dongle on the car, strangely it had no code for the cruise sensor, but did have a couple for oxy sensors which I was expecting due to cat change. I cleared the codes and it fixed all the lights and warning, so I'll see how that goes. 

I've been sending the intake air temp to my phone, and its never been more than 3 deg over ambient, so the CHONK seems to be working well.

Time to start looking for a tuner I guess.

Regards, VG. 

 

 

[Vintage Grumble]

30 minutes ago, xsspeed said:

https://www.hks-power.co.jp/en/product_db/hipermax/db/31782

I don't even want to know what they cost, lols.

[johnnyfive]

I need to come check this thing out some time. 

What is this cruise sensor?

[Vintage Grumble]

17 minutes ago, johnnyfive said:

I need to come check this thing out some time. 

What is this cruise sensor?

The little box in the bumper is called a "millimeter wave radar" or something silly and helps with the auto brake and adaptive cruse control, but it also has a few cameras or some such up in the windscreen that do something similar, it also has auto high beams so guess the cameras help with that. It loves to beep at me when I zoom up behind cars turning off roundabouts, but hasn't put the brakes on by itself yet.

[johnnyfive]

Ah gotcha gotcha. 

What was the ECUs complaints about O2 sensors?

 

[xsspeed]

https://www.redlineperformance.co.nz/product/hks-hipermax-r-suzuki-swift-sport-14t-zc33s-full-kit/

[xsspeed]

next box for VG to hide from misso