Ownership Verified: Roadtrip car/Japanese Open Air

So 0-100 is lowered by 5sec?
 
GTi of the same vintage. Still 1,3, but with 100hp. And stronger gearbox with shorter ratio differential and gears (4th and 5th afaik)

That sounds awesome:thumbup:, I would love to see the car in person again
 
Engine will be swapped after new year's, come and help!
 
Don't know how much help I can be, though, unless I leave K?ln really early in the morning.
 
Needs to be washed first. And engine bay aswell. Also i'm sure some more hp can be extracted from it. :)
 
Of course, but 100hp should be plenty for a 800kg car (for a start of course.. :p ). GTi Swifts that they run in rallies seem to make reliable 150-170hp, with regulated tuning possibilities...
 
Hello.

Some garage action happened at Benis again, this time with the Swift. DrGrip kindly arranged an engine (and half a car with it) purchase for me in Berlin earlier and after new year in Netherlands with some Finalgear people I headed to Berlin to pick up everything with kind help of Beni as well as thomas, for providing us with more economical way of doing a short 1200km roadtrip.. :p

Seems like I was a bit preoccupied with the whole project, so I didn't actually take any pictures of all stuff Grip managed to get. Unfortunately one key thing was still missing, being the wire loom that connects engine electrics with the ECU. The guy selling the engine claimed the original loom would suffice, so I thought I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. Once I got both engines to a same place it was clear that this wasn't going to happen. Even GTis have varying loom depending on model year. So the engine swap was out for now, but we put the GTi gearbox in at least, to shorten the silly gearing it has as stock.


At the "shop", getting ready for some work
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Once again, my picture coverage is rather nonexistent, as I was (surprisingly) busy working on the car. :D GTi gearbox (left) being worked on. The previous owner seemed to think the oil goes outside the gearbox as well..
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Not surprisingly, working on a new car the disassembly took like 4x the time it took to put things together again. Apart from some typical issues, like broken thread on exhaust manifold and lock pin issues with tie rod end.

After some re-threading and new bolts for the exhaust
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And failed attempts to drill out remains of the old lock pin
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We got a nylock nut there, like it should've been from the start. :p
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While tackling this Beni managed to stab himself with the drill, and as we were so busy making the tie rod end work, we might've forgot to tighten the wishbone to the hub on that side.. :| That resulted in a rather interesting first test drive and a minor oil spill as the drive shaft detached from gearbox.. At least everything that has been worked on has been checked like 20 times now.. :mrgreen:

Also did some rust prevention while at it.

Before
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After. Note how well the cleaned new gearbox fits there..
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This is how you fill a gearbox, right? You might be surprised to know that we used a slightly different method, but let's keep the image of doing it like this.. :p
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Official notes of engine&gearbox oil change
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And some extra stuff we couldn't find a place for
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(This might have something to do with the fact we had spare wishbones and hubs we used)

Also, all important standing around, doing nothing -circles from Saturday. There might be a time lapse video of this at some point.
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Some scaffolding locked us in to the garage, so test drive will have to wait still.. But still, big thanks to Joe and Beni. It was fun to work on cars with friends for a change. :cool:
 
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Oh hello. :cool:

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The little thing is back in use again. Did a small run in yesterday to see that everything works still. And they do, even the check engine light. :p
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I doubt no one believes (or agrees with) me, but it's a surprisingly good distance traveller, this. Left Frankfurt in the afternoon, arrived home at midnight yesterday. Didn't feel tiring at any point, no aches anywhere. Not even sore neck, even if I drove top down most of the way. It's loud of course, but some hearing protection in the form of earbuds and I can hear my travel entertainment just fine. :D
 
And is it now officially GTi powered?
 
I've been duped, that's what. While the code on the box gives it to be a -91 GTi box, the final gear ratio at least is the same as it is on the original box. So I guess the seller has taken the insides of the box for his own project.. But it was a sort of extra thing anyway, as I just wanted the engine (slightly worried what surprises that holds now, apart from missing the wire loom). I'll see if there's any cheap 3cyl gearboxes nearby, while it's still in this stock form I could use some shorter gearing as you know.

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And is it now officially GTi powered?

I fear the GTi operation needs to wait for Finnish plates (as well as that damn wire loom). The more we dug around for the stuff needed to make any mods valid in .de, the more clear it became it's just easier and probably cheaper to import and register it here. I might bring it back here in the autumn, but I still don't have the wire loom. And since it seems to be so impossibru to find I'm pondering about going straight for Megasquirt or something similar, if I have to make the loom myself anyway..
 
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I've been playing with the roof a bit, doing small fixes. Seals were a bit poorly since we got the car.
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Tape fixes everything
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My whatever was on hand -bench for letting the resurfaced seals set. :p
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Fin(n)ished
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And since the roof had some bits missing I checked out some GDPO action. Nice quick fixes and obviously it has cracked again. I suspect partly because the other screw had unthreaded itself, so the whole corner was held together with just one screw and it obviously didn't stay in a correct position all the time. Fixed the thread and put it back together with longer screws for now, but it's a minute job to open it again, if I have time to do some welding to it.
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edit:
Oh right, some new shoes arrived as well. Unfortunately after stereotypical treatment from post companies.. There's some scrapes here and there, but nothing too horrible.
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Original 14" GTi wheels btw, with some gunmetal metallic paint added. :) Now if only the soles for these new shoes would make it here in time..
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Those look fancy. I wanted that colour originally. Got it done locally or via Ivan?
 
I find a lot of gearboxes for it here in Norway, but i have no idea if the gears are shorter, how do you tell?
 
The 3-pot 1 litre cars had shorter ratios. Engine code is on the gearbox, so matching the number would be the way to go. Being such a lego car I doubt there's any superficial signs to tell them apart.
 
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