660TRBO - Daily driven L2 turbo

[turbo-trebco]

Hey all,

This is the first forum I’ve ever used so forgive me if I do anything stupid

I’ve had my L200 a couple years now and have been doing bits and pieces overtime. With hundreds of photos of what’s been done to the car, I wanted to document the build here instead of in my notes/photos on my phone.

Going back to August 2017, I bought a rig of a charade for $250. Pretty sure it was a g203. Made in 97’, had a 1.5L engine and manual. It was pretty mint and I loved it. Probably my favourite car out of all that I’ve owned, surprisingly good acceleration and handled alright. Sold it in February 2018. Wish I kept it but oh well.

Always loved the idea of turboing the charade but never went further than that. Come August 2018 I was searching the Adelaide Daihatsu page and saw this turbo L200 that had been for sale. Looked ok. I organised to check it out and ended up buying it.

Got it home and pulled bits off to have a better look. Found a lot of things that needed addressing.

First thing, the front bar looked terrible. So I have it a quick rattle can and it looked 10x better, for the meantime.

Ordered some hectic plates

Bought a set of ROH Contessa rims. 12x5 all round, had to enlarge the centrebore, and I painted them in a (very loosely) colour matched paint…

Bought some go fast bits

I was loving the car, had been quite reliable and extremely fun. Always got heaps of thumbs up

First car show - All Japan Day 2019

Bought an original wheel from The Pickers Station. Good Malaysian seller to deal with.

The gearbox had been starting to make funny sounds. Nothing too bad, though.

I went overseas for a month, and had new engine mounts waiting for me when I arrived home. Pulled the motor at the same time as the rear main seal needed replacing

Engine back in with new mounts and new rear main seal

Fitted a rear wiper setup

Fitted central locking

By this point, the gearbox sounded like marbles in a tin can. With a bit of supercharger whine in gears 1,2 and 3 but it still worked. Figured it was time to replace it

U-Pull-It to the rescue. No engine crane required

Figured if I was pulling the motor again, I would order some other parts and drop the front subframe

While the motor was out, I gave it a good clean, and got a bit excited ‘test fitting’ those go fast hits I bought so long ago…

Found that the subframe brace that the rear engine mount bolts to had cracked at the welds. So I welded it up. Gave the subframe a little bit of paint where necessary, cleaned the rack and fitted new bushings and fitted new subframe bushings.

Got the engine, with freshly sealed ‘new’ box back in with the newly bushed subframe.

I’d always wanted AC in the car and managed to find a mira at the wreckers with all the parts. I fitted this all up to my mira at this time too.

Fitted a Walbro 255lph pump

Had the car towed to Oldskool Fab to see the legend fabricator Luke Brandon

After mocking stuff up, the dream of AC disappeared pretty quick haha

Spoke to John Verban and got flanges and gaskets to suit my EF head and GTti RHB5 turbo

Mocked up intercooler, charade throttle body adaptor and manifold made

Intercooler fitted with new front support, dump pipe started

Original battery bracket removed

Cooler pipes done and a old 1jz tt turbo intake pipe used… for the turbo intake pipe

Turbo oil feed made by Autohose in Mclaren Vale, if I was to do it again I would have said a 90° fitting and shorter length. But it works for now

Lots of painted parts, oil filter relocation, and some PHAT tyres from a neighbour to Luke’s shop

Got it running after this, unfortunately I can’t upload the first start video or first drive video (can see first start video on the livetodai Facebook page if you search my name) the current setup is:

EF-JL engine
45mm charade throttle body
295cc turbo starlet injectors
Turbosmart fpr800 (pinched from my soarer)
SARD fmic
RHB5 Vq10 turbo from GTti charade
2.25” turboback exhaust
GFB G-Force II electronic boost controller

Runs 13psi and feels great. AFR is 15 on idle and 10 in boost - pretty rich. Still on stock EF-JL ecu. It’s ok for now, but I’ll look at a standalone down the track I think

Parked up at work

New rocker cover washers and nuts fitted. Also fitted a headlight reminder buzzer from a charade (thanks to an old post I found from Luke on the livetodai Facebook page)

Plastic welded the hole from a previous owners diy vent, and dropped the bar into a body shop for paint

While waiting for the bar, I polished the underside of the bonnet (something I’ve wanted to do since buying the car) pressure washed the wheel wells and tidied up wiring under the fenders

Got the bar back and super happy with it

Added some reflective heat mat behind the bumper repair, and in front of the turbo

Made up a turbo heat shield

Bumper on (Daihatsu badge from a charade fitted )

Cowl panel polished and fitted with new clips (all old clips were either missing or broken and I’m surprised I still have the trims)

And that’s all caught up on my mira so far

[Mr_Gormsby]

Welcome 660T,

Great documentary.

Did the original gearbox have a jackshaft? Or jackshaft lsd?

Looking forward to hearing more.

[turbo-trebco]

Thanks Mr G.

Unfortunately not. I am looking to change to a sirion EJ gearbox, with copen gearset including final drive, D-sport 1.5 way lsd and do the 4x100 conversion too. Though it will be some time as I have a couple other cars that need the time first

[welby]

Good stuff mate and nice write up.

[Ad.Prime]

Welcome @turbo-trebco ! I think I saw this on facebook LivetoDai! Great work on the Mira! Love to see more!

[Mick]

Awesome build!

[evilhighway]

Welcome mate I have seen you floating around the facebook page but am so glad you have documented everything here. Unfortunately Facebook doesnt get the decent builds like this the respect it deserves as they just get lost and you end up not knowing who owns what car etc etc. It is a really nice build and you have taken care and time with it and it is a credit to you in what you have done and the write up too. Thanks for making the effort to coming over here. Always keep a secondary log of your build too just in case but ther is a feature on here where you can dwonload your posts too. I hinestky cant remember how to as I have been slack and not done it myself. But the forum does do regular backups, so we dont lose much data if something unforseen happens.

[b_hoves]

This thing is CLEAN. Well done mate, you should be super proud of what you’ve done.

[applegeek897]

Dude this is freaking incredible, thanks for sharing here.

[turbo-trebco]

Thanks all for the kind comments. I’ll try get some more photos up soon.

Current list to do:

• Make brackets for front bar to help keep it more solid
• Sort out -10 catch can setup

Also wanting to get the car on a dyno to make sure everything is running as it should be/see what power the car is making.

Dyno prep:

• Boost leak test
• New plugs
• Check timing
• Adjust TPS (anyone know what a mira one should read?)
• New injector o-rings (Probably going to go back to EF-JL injectors and bump up fuel pressure)
• Maybe wire in a HKS FCD (trying not to do this as I know they’re not ideal)

Any other tips would be great as I’ve never had a car on the dyno

[evilhighway]

mira tps is not a proper tps its an off on off switch. so like off on and wot.

[evilhighway]

oops just re read your thread and saw your tps is not the standard mira/move one.

[turbo-trebco]

Yeah, it’s off a charade (I forgot which model) it uses the same sensor as the original throttle body. Can this style tps not really be adjusted then? The car is very touchy going on and off throttle while cruising

[Mr_Gormsby]

Open it up. If it is the switch type rather than a variable potentiometer check the clicker part (like old points ignition contacts) as they can get dirty or pitted. A tiny file or fine sand paper and clean with thinners

[evilhighway]

they cant really be adjusted to work with an aftermarket ecu and need something that works like a proper potentiometer. For the mve I used one from a vn commodore they are cheap and on ebay I had a rather dodgey setup but it worked. Im sure you could get yours looking much better than what I had and I had an piggy back so I kept the original alsofor the stock ecu.

[turbo-trebco]

[turbo-trebco]

Wow - it’s been a while since I’ve posted.

Next thing on my list was to replace the washer bottle motor, as it died randomly. So I ordered that and a cap for the alternator, as I didn’t have one previously.

5:30am cold starts - 9.9afr, hot coffee and choc chip biscuits

I had been putting off the catch can since getting the mira on the road. The filters I had on the -10 rocker cover fittings finally caused me trouble. I noticed a little smoke coming out the bonnet scoop at the lights. Oil had pushed through the filters and found its way to the exhaust. A bit of degreaser and a rag and it was good again, for now.

The only convenient spot for the catch can was on the drivers side of the engine bay. I had to cut the intake pipe shorter (which has made for some enjoyable turbo flutter) and drill out the original washer bottle bracket.

Unfortunately I was a bit off with the drill, and some sheet metal ripped at two of the holes.

I caught up with Luke at Oldskool Fab again, and he welded up the holes and put a nutsert in to hold the catch can. Thanks to his shop kettle, we also put the Push Lok lines together and the catch can was sorted.

I’ve drained the can once and it seems to be doing its job well. I will probably end up plumbing it into the intake as there is nothing bad being pushed into the can.

Some may have noticed my new leads. I had an issue with my old ones, where they would literally fall apart when I removed them. I put up with this and would fix them each time, until one time I couldn’t. I had to run to u pull it as a last minute save and managed to find these NGK 8mm leads as a perfect fit for my setup. They look almost new and were $9. Pretty stoked!

The mira sitting with a friends Mazda 6 MPS. Such a sick car!

Latest thing - I had a dash globe blow. I’ve always thought the dash was terribly dim (my dash dimmer doesn’t work, but that’s another job) so I figured instead of replacing the one globe, I would replace them all with LED’s. The result was awesome I will inspect closer in future to see if I can possibly remove whatever is tinting it yellow. But for now it’s fantastic.

I did open up the dash dimmer and couldn’t see anything that looked bad (I’m not the smartest with electrics, but there were no obvious burnt out tracks, or bleeding capacitors) if anyone has sorted that before I would love to hear what you did for a fix!

Future things to address - I believe the head gasket is starting to leak. The car drives fine but it creeps up hot if left to idle. I will definitely rebuild the head, with a MLS headgasket and some headstuds. I’m also considering a bigger cam, and a standalone ecu at the same time. I have considered different motors, but decided I will stay with the 660cc. Possibly bore it out to ~740cc, but I think that’s unlikely.

Probably a bit of a boring update. I would love to hear what people have to say about my engine situation, and that pesky little dash dimmer!

[DaleJeffree]

I think if you go to the trouble of boring the engine, you may as well do a freshened EJ bottom end with your head. There is one gallery that will need to be blocked as your head doesn’t utilise it, and the EF head will leave it exposed.

[Mokeman]

with the dash dimmer, they do fail over time and whatever is wrong isn’t always visible

[evilhighway]

you could do the ej bottom end as dale has said and you will get a longer bore and stroke or the other option is to use the 850cc bottom end, While the stroke is the same the bore size reduces to 66.6mm from the 68 you currently have or the 72mm of the ejde. The difference is you wont have to block the exrta gallery of the ejde block. The ed’s love the revs like the ef engine’s I used to rev my combo out to either 9800 or 9200 cant remember which off hand but mainly i would rev out to 7.5-8k most of the time for everyday driving. you can wind up the boost in the ed/ef combo to around 20+ psi and it will take it Mine was around 15psi with a tdo4L turbo from a subaru. The ej doesnt like it as much but are still very capable and my advise would be less boost with the ejde. In saying that at our track days the fastest Daihatsu has been (to this date) and ejde with an ef head in an L500. so you atleast have a couple of options