Blyatsu 2 - The Ultimate Daihatsu (L701)

Something similar was carried out, here:

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I’ve seen those swaps, but I was referring to the certification part :sweat_smile:

I’d write to those two Germans, in their video commentary section. They might have a copy of their certification

Hello there!
They won’t answer, because i bought their car.
It was for sale in january 2022.

The chassis is absolut toast, nothing to rescue.
All the wires are absolut mess, but the engine is still strong!

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They haven’t answered any questions whatsoever of which were posted onto their video commentary section

Here comes the sun… (DUDUDUDU)

Spring is approaching, but there’s not a lot going on. But, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to write about!

ROTTEN BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

A few days after writing my last post, I had Tom’s shell picked up to be scrapped. 480kg’s of nothingness, which meant we got a decent amount of stuff out of it. I will miss the little shitbox. Rotten but not forgotten.

Also, this picture might look familiar to you…


DAILY COMMUTE

In that same week, I did a bit of tidying up before my internship started. It’s a great place with nice people, but the location really sucks. It’s about 35km away, which is doable in terms of time spent on the road, but not in terms of money. With gas prices are just depressingly high, and the 3SZ, oddly, being not as economical to drive as the EJ, it’s quite expensive to drive 350km/week. As a student, I can use public transport for free (during the week), but it takes twice as long, and is sensitive to delays, which isn’t great either. Need to figure that out.

But. not all is bad news luckily, because the car (mainly the engine) is behaving wonderfully! Overtaking on the highway (and highway driving in general) has never been easier. I do want to change a few things like the intake, rear suspension and gearbox, to increase comfort (and hopefully fuel economy). Right now, the intake sits right behind the radiator without the OEM ‘cold air intake’ tube, which I’d like to be changed. Also, the gearbox is a bit short for my taste, mainly because of the differential.

The rear suspension is still very rough on my back, so I decided so do a little experiment. I suspected the shockabsorbers were the main culprit, but I wanted to be able to confirm that by testing. I took out the BC shocks (but kept the BC springs), and replaced them with the good ol’ stock shocks. The result was interesting. You could definitely feel the difference, and what kind of difference it made. It was still a little jumpy (like, the frequency was quite high) probably caused by the unchanged springs, but the ride wasn’t as near as harsh as it used to be. To me, this was the perfect way to demonstrate the difference between what shocks and spring do in terms of comfort.
For reference, I did the opposite as well. So, stock springs, BC shocks. Those results were actually even more remarkable. I really tried my best, but there was hardly any difference between this and the full BC setup. The only noticeable difference was when I’d hit a speed bump, because then the rear would actually have a bit more suspension travel. But other than that, the ride was almost just as bumpy and harsh as before.

I’m not sure what I want to do with this, because getting a pair of (custom) springs is way easier than getting a set of shocks. I think I might go with a set of lowering springs on the rear combined with stock shocks, but I want to test that first.


SMALL TWEAKS


The O2 sensor was just hangin’ & chillin’ underneath the gearbox, so I finally made a basic bracket to hold it in place.

CLUTCH PEDAL
Ever since I actually started driving the car, I felt like the whole clutch situation was a bit weird. It hooks up almost instantly when you start depressing the clutch, but I already maxed out on adjustment. Also, the clutch felt lighter than in most stock EJ L7’s I’d driven over the last couple of months, which seemed weird to me.
Last week, I came across the clutch pedal-section on Amayama.com, and noticed that the K3 and EJ both have different pedals. This made me think about how the actual, I don’t know how to name these, clutchlevers (where the clutchcable connects to on the gearbox) and pedalarms (distance between the pivotpoint and the clutchcable on the clutchpedal) might have different lengths and ratio’s, depending on what engine the car is fitted with. Here’s what I found:


Pivot points and foot’rest’ aligned, K3 on top. You can see that the K3 arm is about 10mm longer than the EJ arm. Pivot to clutchcable is around 50mm for the K3, 40mm for the EJ. Also the angle is a bit different.


Other way around, K3 on the bottom.


Bottom part also slightly different.

I didn’t get any pictures of the clutchlevers, but they are (pivot to clutchcable) 125mm long on the EJ trans, and 140mm long for the K3 trans. I’m not sure if this is the right method, but if it is, the ratio’s are like this:

K3: 140/50 = 2.8
EJ: 125/40 = 3.125
My setup (K3 lever + EJ pedal): 140/40 = 3.5
The greater the number, the greater the pedal travel/the less force required.

This would confirm and explain all of my complaints, so I decided to swap pedals! And sure enough, there was plenty of room for adjustment, and the pedal was slightly heavier (which I don’t mind). Fun little experiment, with nice results!

A hypothesis as to why they made both arms longer on the K3: increasing the length on both arms (keeping the ratio the same, unlike they did in this case) means that pedal travel and required force stay the same. However, the stress on the clutch cable is reduced. M = r × F, torque has to be the same, so if the length of the arm (r) increases, the force (F) has to go down. This a very short way of explaining it, but if you’re familiar with physics, you’ll know what i’m trying to say.

That’s all I had to say for now. Until next time!
Enjoy this picture:

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They answered me on instagram though when I had questions about engine-swapping my former Cuore(Rest in Piece).
Even asked them where they got it road legal cause my whole done swap went to shitters cause i couldnt found an inspector that wanted to get it road legal…
And yea, considering their videos how they “worked” on the arches to make them wider i dont doubt that the chassis is toast :sweat_smile:

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APRIL UPDATE

I’ve been quite busy these past few weeks!
My internship is going well, and I’m about halfway there. I’m designing/developing a new suspension for a sportscar based on a Lotus Elise S2, together with a classmate. There’s a lot of interesting theory to learn about the subject!

I’m going to move outside of the city in two weeks, which meant I had to wrap a few small things up. Those two small things being two engines waiting in my garage to get swapped. One being the K3VE2 from Tom the Sirion, which went into… Tom’s Cuore.

There weren’t any setbacks or surprises really. Everything went pretty smoothly, but just took longer than expected. It took an entire weekend and a bit to get it finished, but I was pretty pleased with the result. Less than 12 hours after finishing this car, the next Cuore was parked inside the garage.


This little EJ-DE had done over 226.xxx km’s, and was ready to be retired. James Bond would’ve been jealous of the smokescreen this engine produced.

We swapped it for… my old EJ-VE! I took that engine out with about 132.xxx km’s, and was healthy as an EJ can be. Should be good for at least another 100k. There are quite a lot of differences between the pre-facelift and facelift models (DE vs VE over here), which made it a little less “bolt on”. The wiring, fuseboxes, charcoal filter, exhaust and ECU’s (including the airbag modules and thus the seat belts) all needed to be swapped. But, it now runs like a dream, without using any oil. Massive win!

BLYATSU
As for my own car: I’m still using it as a daily, and it’s still performing well! Annoyingly, it’s more comfortable at 130 km/h than it is at 100 km/h (which is the speed limit during the day). The other day I just floored it to see what it would do, and I managed to do 185 km/h on the speedo, which I think isn’t bad at all. The car felt amazingly stable as well!

In a few months time, the car needs to go through MOT, and as you may have guessed, my car has a ‘spare’ cylinder which still needs to be registered. I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but I need to tidy a few things up either way. I’m currently looking at way to make a decent airfilterbox as it isn’t secured properly. Same goes for the exhaust (which hangs by a few zip ties on the rear).

Other than that, I ordered some Bilstein rear shocks, and will soon order a set of lowering springs as well. I tried out this combination a while ago, and it’s much better in terms of comfort. I’m sure @Mr_Gormsby thinks this is blasphemy ( :wink: ) because I’m using softer springs in the rear (2,1kg/mm vs 4kg/mm in the front), but:

  • it needs to be comfortable enough do be driven daily
  • weight distribution is probably like 70/30 since the rear is completely empty
  • 4k springs with stock shocks makes the rear a bit unpredictable
  • I usually don’t drive “on the edge”, so in terms of grip it should be alright
  • if dookie hits the fan, I still have a rear sway bar to change the load transfer balance

I’m also hoping to get my Copen seats in ASAP, I can’t wait!

That’s it for now, take care! :hearts:

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nice update mate. I tend to stick with stock springs and suspension for daily driven dais. Mainly for comfort and to me, my daily is to get around and that’s it. I like comfy daily’s also :slight_smile:

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If you want comfort go for low-rate springs. If it understeers (and it will) then soften the front and stiffen the rear. You will never know if what you have is optimal unless you do some testing and compare. Bilsteins are a good thing. My Mazda 4x4 has Toyota TRD Bilsteins on it and the race car has Bilstein PSS9s (which are a good starting point for a club race car). Any, I would not call your spring choice “blasphemy” but I don’t understand the logic of the front spring which are almost double the std rate. The ride in these things is awful, and lowering only makes them worse, esp if the front struts are not shortened units to make up for the reduced bump travel. One quickly ends up on the bump stops, and bump stops have rate so getting into them early in travel ramps things up really quickly (no bump stop is worse)

I bought the BC Racing kit 2.5 years ago which comes with 4kg/mm springs front and rear. That was at the beginning of ‘the build’ (when I knew jack dookie about modifying cars(, and I figured it would be alright since BC has a pretty good reputation. The front is a tad firm, but still doable in terms of comfort. The rear is way to harsh, especially the dampers. To give you an idea of how harsh it actually is: my classmate was driving behind me the other day, and he later texted me “I have to say, your rear suspension really has no travel at all”.

As I mentioned earlier, changing just the dampers isn’t enough because the car would then continue to be bouncy, but on top of that, the springs aren’t seated properly anymore. The lowering springs have better fitment and lower springrate, so that’s why I chose them. When testing, I found that with this rear setup, the front and rear ‘frequencies’ were matched more evenly. My only complaint was that the shocks were a little soft on rebound, but that could also have been caused by the dampers being 20 years old.

Why I chose to keep the front setup, is because (as I said) it’s fine in terms of comfort, I like that it’s adjustable (preload, height, dampers, all separate) and simply because of the costs. It’s my only car, and I use it mainly for daily commute (highways etc), but I like sending it through a corner when I come across one. And it does that well, without understeer, because I usually don’t push it that much. Yes, in theory stiffer springs/ARB’s cause more load transfer on that axle, but as long as I don’t feel a disadvantage in real life, I don’t feel the need to change it. Maybe once I start making some money (instead of spending it on school) and get a daily, I can afford to play around with different shocks and springs. Lastly, because the motion ratio on the rear is pretty much 1, compared to a higher MR on the front, the actual difference in wheel rate won’t be as big

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There is rust everywhere. You cant drive it through rain. Leaks from the windscreen and you will flood your passenger footwell through a little hole…where you can put your fist through. Many acceleration holes in the side skirts. Some mounting points for the bumpers are non-exsistend… all rotted away. Side skirts and floor pan are hold together barely… Welding done by a child. Only half the watercooler was functional. Rear arches extended with a hammer.
I could go on for days. :sweat_smile:

I knew what i was buying, so for me its a shell only.

And a big sorry for spaming the thread. :sweat_smile:

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No worries! I’m just amazed by how shitty that thing was built :sweat_smile:

Hey fellow dai-hards, just wanted to do a quick little update! I’ll keep it short this time!

I got the Billsteins on the rear axle, as well as a pair of lowering springs from Intrax (local company). A second hand set of springs came up for €35, which seemed like a great deal (considering new springs are €100 - €200). I took the rear springs and sent the front springs to @Mmmmmette for him to use on his Cuore.

REAR SUSPENSION

At first I was quite disappointed as the rear felt just as harsh as before, but after a few 100km’s, it felt like the dampers started to ‘settle’. It’s still quite firm, but doable. There will be a bit more weight in the rear in the future as well.

CLEANING

I moved to a village a month ago, and the new house actually came with a driveway, and space to park the car in the backyard. This means that water and power is easy to use near the car. So, I decided to start taking care of car more in terms of cleaning, starting with a good vacuum, since the car was dusty as hell. Here are some B/A’s!

I thoroughly cleaned the outside as well, starting with a good wash, then used a claybar to get rid of all contaminants and applied some colour wax to seal the deal. Here’s what the claybar looked like after I did the roof:


Pretty filthy

DAVE
I don’t like driving that many km’s with the Blyatsu, because it wasn’t built for that. I hit 140k yesterday, which means around 10k since the swap, half of which is daily commute. So I started looking for a different way to do my daily commute. And I (sorta) found one! Meet Dave:


It says “Harley Davidson” on the bonnet, hence ‘Dave’

Quick speclist:

  • Prefacelift, EJDE
  • Marathon (special edition available in yellow or red)
  • RTi (top spec)
  • Electric sunroof

All second hand cars are expensive because the waiting list for new cars is so freaking long, which results in L7’s being around €1200 for most decent examples (what used to be around €800). I wasn’t going to spend that money, so I got this one for €400 instead. Obviously, that means it’s in need of attention (and an MOT), but I think I can get it done. The CV boots were torn, brakes aren’t much, the alternator bracket was split into two pieces, there was a big hole in the rear frame/beam.

All fixed up by a mate!

I’ll post a bit more about Dave as soon as I got it on the road!

That’s it for now! Have a nice week :slight_smile:

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You haven’t moved to the east of NL by chance do you? Would love to see Blyatsu in all its magnificence :star_struck:

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I did not :upside_down_face: I moved further south, near the Belgian border. The car and I will be attending Japfest Assen though!

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There he is…the cool-dai-dude…

Thanks again for the front shocks. I will check if they fit otherwise will go with the L7 front fork setup…

We will meet!

Nice to see Dave :wink:

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TIME FOR ANOTHER UPDAVE

I’ve had that pun in my head for quite some time now, so I figured I’d actually use it to talk you guys through the last month!

EVERYBODY LOVES RA-… DAVE
After last post, I went to the junkyard to get some stuff and then replaced both driveshafts on Dave. As I said before, the CV joints were torn, but since I had 2 axles laying around and I was too lazy to get new boots, I decided to just swap them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the right axle out of the hub, because it had seized and I didn’t have the proper tools. Luckily for me, I also had some spare knuckles with hubs laying around as well :upside_down_face: . After replacing those, I decided to just send it and go for an MOT. I knew Dave wouldn’t pass, but at least this way I knew what I had to do in order to get MOT. The list I got back wasn’t huge, but also not what I’d hoped for:

  • Wheel bearing LR shot
  • 60% brake difference on the rear axle
  • Indicator RF wasn’t orange
  • Fuel mixture too lean (high O2)
  • Both lower ball joint boots torn
  • 3RD brake light didn’t work (advisory)
  • Slight oil leakage (advisory)
  • Small exhaust leak (advisory)


Picture of the sunroof to keep it interesting

The indicator wasn’t an issue, neither were the wheel bearing and boots, but the brake difference and O2 were making me nervous. I’m no mechanic, so I don’t have a lot of experience in fixing problems (just creating them), but with the help of a few friends I knew I’d get there. I had to decide whether I would continue the project and save Dave (hehe), or abandon the project and make it a parts car. Since there was already quite a lot of time invested in the car, I decided to give it a shot.

I knew the exhaust had a small leak, and since I didn’t know what else it could be, I figured that that was the cause of the O2 being too high. A leak gives the opportunity for the mixture to gain more oxygen than it should have. We took off the exhaust and quickly found out that there was a major hole in the bend that goes over the rear axle. My friend welded it shut, so that was another thing off the list. We also cleaned the rear brakes and wiggled a few bits around, hoping it would fix the problem.


One of the reasons why I bought Dave, is because I’m close friends with the owner of the other yellow L7, and I thought it would be fun if we’d both have one :smiley: This picture was taken right after changing the drive shafts!

Then I took it to another friend to help me with the wheel bearing and torn boots. I was convinced the bearing had to be pressed in/out, but a decent tap with a hammer and socket did the trick as well. The new boots are held in place by some sort of window sealer, but it did the job. Remember: I’m turning this car into a challenge to drive it as cheaply as possible.


Very happy to have such helpful and passionate clubmembers!

ATTEMPT 2 AND 3

After paying attention to all the fails and advisory points, I tried getting an MOT again. It failed again, but this time only because of the rear brakes. That was a shame, but on the other hand I felt proud that I was able to fix the rest of it with my friends (who had more experience/tools). My friend spent another day thoroughly cleaning the rear brakes again, but it didn’t make a difference. We then flushed the system because the fluid was looking fairly dark (it had been sitting still for a year), but that didn’t help as well. Since everything on the rear brakes seemed to work fine, there was only one thing left: the distributor. There’s this metal block sitting against the firewall which distributes fluid to the front left (from memory) and rear brakes. There are springs inside the connectors to the rear brake lines, which basically determines the bias between the front and rear brakes. Bad explanation, but you get what I’m saying. These springs can get stuck or brake entirely, and if only one of them does, you will have a difference in brake force. I think that’s what happened because after replacing the distributor, it was almost spot on even in brake force.

I then raced to the MOT station and got it back with a fresh MOT. Happy days!

Dave has served as a daily for 2 weeks now, and he has done an excellent job. He will do 20km/liter, and (so far) doesn’t use any oil. After the MOT I gave Dave a service, so he’s basically good to go for another year. My only complaint so far is that the steering wheel is shaking quite badly above 100km/h. I know that’s probably a matter of balancing the wheels, but I’ve got a few things I want to try before I’ll get to that. The car is actually that good, that I was considering maybe selling it after a year, instead of parting it out. But, there’s a reason why I don’t want to sell it.


yeah…

For those of you that don’t know: that’s the left chassisrail/crashbar, whatever you want to call it. The point is: it’s fucked. I knew it had been in some sort of accident because I already saw a few things that were bent, but I found this one quite shocking. The car performs just fine, it doesn’t ‘drive crooked’ or anything, but I’m just not comfortable with selling a car knowing it has this amount of damage. And even if someone knew and would be okay with it, they’d still probably use it as an excuse to take something off the price. And it may sound childish, but out of principle, I’d rather do a partout than being low balled by someone who probably doesn’t notice anything or is going to fix something he/she does want a price reduction for.

BLYATSU

Ah yes, the main reason why I’m on this forum. Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about the Blyatsu! As a matter of fact, it received a major upgrade:

I got new seats! Now, I found it very hard to take a picture of the seats, because there’s always a pillar or reflective window in your shot, so you’ll have to do with this. I got seats from a Copen, and had a friend help me with installing some mounting points to fit it into the car. The seats are way more supportive, but most of all: a lot lower. I reckon I’m sitting well over 8cm lower, which is nice. Oh and yes, they are partially red, but that’s because the were the only cloth seats I could find at the time. Most Copen seats are bright red leather, so I figured this was the best compromise :joy: .

FUTURE STUFF
My internship ended last week and so my vacation started, and I thought that was a good excuse to buy myself a nice gift:


A standalone ECU!

Why?
Well, obviously this gives me the opportunity to do more serious engine upgrades in the future (no I will still not do a turbo), like, for example, ITB’s and cams.

Why this one?
Simple. My internship was at a tuning shop, and they are the main distributor for the BeNeLux for ECU master as well. So apart from getting a fairly big discount, I think it’s nice to know people who I can trust and know about their professionalism. So yes, I know Haltech or any other brand exists, but I don’t care that they might do something different which you think is nice. I don’t feel like searching and comparing a dozen of ECU when I know this one will do the job. I got this ECU, and I’m happy and proud about it!

I’d like to use my vacation-time to do a few to-do-list-stuff, so hopefully I can show you a lot of new changes by the end of this summer!

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A wise choice for a standalone ecu is knowing you can get good support. Will be good to hear how it goes. Nice work all up on the Dai.

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Nice updave mate! really good read as usual. :slight_smile:

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