Daihatsu Sirion 1.3 'Kermit' simple build

[JNups]

It’s been a little over a month since I finally bought my dream first car. I’ve learnt everything I know about cars from youtube video’s so naturally, I missed a lot of things when I first inspected the car. There were a few red flags anyway like misaligned bumpers, limited service history, car was running when i arrived, dealer said the car had 0 faults, It was owned by an old man so was stationary for a while, etc. But the car itself is a big green flag, it was very cheap and ‘only’ 160.000km, so how bad could it be?

Luckily, its not too bad! I wanted a well running car I could learn to work on, so in my case it probably is perfect. My first to do list consisted of the following items:

• Needs alignment
• Replace gear mechanism rubbers and bushings
• Clean the interior & Exterior
• Polish the headlights
• Replace right rear tyre
• Fix door lock

I’m still a student so my goal for the build is to make it look good and drive fun while keeping spending to a minimum and doing as much myself as I can. First task was to do an alignment, one of the tings I wasnt comfortable with trying myself.

I found a cheap place close by and also replaced my 10 year old rear tyre at the same time. Only the one tyre because I may want to change to 15 inch wheels in the future. The other three dont look like they’ve been driven much. The car drove much better after that. Steering felt lighter and fewer vibrations.

I planned a day of cosplaying car mechanics with my friends to tackle the remaining items on the to do list and added some more. The 4 of us all recently bought a cheap fun car to work on and make their own (suzuki wagon r+ not in frame around the corner)

Since none of us really knew what we were doing nothing went acording to plan but we all managed to drive home so we count it as a succesful day!

I ticked off sanding & polishing the headlights, servicing the car with new oil & sparkplugs, fixing the door lock by blasting everything with wd40, cleaning the oil that spilled all over my engine after losing the oil filler cap and spraying some rust spots in the rear arches with rust converter. Sadly there is a bit more rust than i initially saw when I bought the car…

It looks like the rust is limited to this area in front of the right rear wheel arch. The parts around it were still solid. But I know I must do something to prevent it from spreading. I can’t weld (Yet!) so i’m hoping its not too bad?

That’s where the thread ends for now. I was hoping to do the gear mechanism rubbers but my friend took all day to fix the breaks and we only have 1 set of axle stands. I’m also in the proces of buying 2 sets of speakers but the seller doesn’t seem to be interested in selling so hopefully they’ll have arrived by then too.

More updates to come!

[Granger]

Looks super tidy, congrats!

A bit hard to tell, but the rust patch looks superficial to me. Get some rust converter such as Vactan painted onto it, then some underbody wax such as Dynax UB and it shouldn’t get any worse. If you’re feeling brave, lever out that black bung and squirt cavity wax into that as well, but it might open up a world of horrors!

What do the rear chassis rails look like where the rear springs mount to the bodywork? They are a bit of a weak point on a lot of cars so try and keep them looking good by spraying cavity wax inside them (there are factory holes you can use for this) and it should give you a good few years motoring.

Mostly, go out and enjoy it! They;re great little cars and plenty nippy enough

[evilhighway]

damn the paint on it is fantastic

[enshiu]

The rust at rear chassis legs is a common place on Sirion1/move/cuore 501/701/900/251

When they designed it its a 3 plate construction the middle one rust away and rust is there

A lot Daihatsu scrapped because of that

[Butch_Butcher]

@JNups

…suzuki wagon r+ not in frame around the corner)…

May we see it?

[JNups]

Not this exact car but same spec, without the roof rails

[Butch_Butcher]

I’ve only seen these with roof rails. Maybe, they’re extra for the Dutch market. I’ve read that manual windows (or was it power door locks?) were for the Dutch market, on first generation Wagon Rs (That one pictured is the second generation assembled in Hungary). My first generation has both power locks and only both front powered windows standard. Although, I could do without all of that, especially because the front right door’s lock isn’t dependable in winter.

I have temporarilly removed my rails, because they are made of aluminium powder-coated black (some Wagon Rs had plastic roof rails) and I wanted mine to look like aluminium instead. The cast ends are also heavier. Therefore, I’m thinking about trimming weight off of these, once the powder coating is removed.

Those second generation Rs are a definite improvement in both ergonomics and in manual shift mechanisms. The later ones even have variable intake camshaft timing, offsetting the lack of low-end torque of the earlier engines

[JNups]

Yes the shifts are very nice on his wagon r too. I’d love for mine to be like that but we’ll see after i finally get to fixing it on the Sirion.

His wagon r is from 2006 with the opel/Vauxhall ecotec engine so it should be the fastest wagon r available (94hp version has more torque but less power and poor fuel consumption) It doesnt have any extra options sadly. No a/c, no powered Windows, no central locking.

He does have an incredible audio setup since last weekend. Such a fun car, my friend absolutely loved it. Hes going to do exterior upgrades now since everything else is done.

My speakers are finally on the way so thats Next up on my list together with the shifter

[Butch_Butcher]

It’s then an assembled in Poland Opel Agila which shares the same body shell with the Suzuki R. But has the Opel drivetrain, instead of the Suzuki’s Japanese one.

If it’s the same set-up as the Suzuki Rs, it would have a cable shift mechanism, consisting of two cables

[JNups]

My friend who owns all the tools (and driveway) is on holiday so i’m still yet to do the gear linkage. I can’t wait till its finally done because first and reverse gear feel more like suggestions at this point.

For now I focused on the outside and audio set-up. I still hadn’t given the car a proper clean since I bought the car so it was way overdue. Luckily, again, I have a friend with all the stuff I need to make the car shine like it deserves.

It doesn’t look that bad on the pictures but there was a lot of dirt all over the car and the wheels were stained brown from the brake dust. My plan for the day was not only to clean the car but polish it too so the colour difference in the bumper and the body would be less noticeable.

First time doing snowfoam and not going to lie, its just as satisfying as it looks on the videos. Iron fall out remover was working hard to remove a rust spot embedded in the paint coming from the door handle. It almost got everything which I didn’t expect. Very pleasantly surprised.

After the clean was done it was on to clay barring the entire car and start polishing. We used a one step polish and medium pad for the majority of the car. The roof was in awful shape. I thought the clear coat was failing but luckily that wasn’t the case. We did need to use a wool pad instead to get it look nice again. Won’t have to tell you whats the before and after for this one, look at the difference!

I sanded the headlights last time I worked on the car but I didn’t do the best job since there are scratches visable still even after using 5000 grit (blaming the cheap aliexpress sandpaper). The headlight polish wasn’t doing much so I went over it again with a heavy cutting compound. It’s not perfect but its much, much better.

I expected, and hoped, the paint would get a little darker green after polishing out the white haze to match the bumpers and side skirts but sadly that didn’t happen. The paint looked alright but after polishing the car you could start to see the imperfections that were hidden before. Also something happened during the cleaning process because the paint has chipped in random places around the car. I think it could be caused by the pressure washer because the paint is very fragile but i’m not sure.

There are still plenty of dents and scratches on the car so I wasn’t looking for a perfect finish anyway. The end result is still breathtaking!

[JNups]

After we finished off the outside it was time to upgrade the speakers. The car was missing it’s rear speakers (apparently they don’t come with rear speakers from factory?) and the fronts were already quite nice pioneer speakers but they didn’t sound great. I got 2 sets of JBL speakers second hand for a bargain of €45!

I thought it would be an easy job to fit them but I’ve rarely been this wrong about something in my life. The doorcards are a massive pain in the ass to remove, the pre drilled holes in the door dont match up with any of the speaker holes. Even the adapter ring that came with the speakers cant bolt straight on without drilling extra holes. Thanks to my friend we did manage to fit the front speakers after a while.

The speakers for the rear doors didnt come with a speaker ring so I had to get a little creative. I also have a friend with a 3D printer (I have very useful friends!) so I looked for a file for a daihatsu/toyota speaker ring. I looked very promising, 3 holes converted to 4 for the speaker to bolt into.

Sadly, again, the holes dont match up at all because daihatsu/toyota made the great decision to drill the holes with random spacing between them. I also think the adapter ring is a little too thick, so I need to find a different file for the print. I’ll probably just drill new holes in the ring and try to use the existing door holes.

But I can end on a positive note. My friends got me a new head unit for my birthday so I can finally listen to spotify without a AUX bluetooth adapter. It was very annoying because the 12V port is directly behind the gear stick.

Next step is installing rear speakers and after that I want to find a nice 10/12 inch subwoofer that I can fit in the back

[JNups]

I havent been able to do much on the car lately but that hasnt kept me from enjoying the car. The new speakers and radio are a massive improvement over the old ones. I did end up having to drill new holes into the door to make them work unfortunately but at least theyre finnaly done

I managed to find a subwoofer but I dont know if I’ll keep it. It matches nicely with the car but its quite large…

I’m waiting for the final bits I need to finally test the full audio set-up and I cant wait! I expect it will be very loud.

By the way, for anyone reading this who wants to install a subwoofer in a sirion M101; its extremely easy! Here are my tips:

• Start by removing the lower dashboard cover and center console. The boot/fuel cap lever needs to come of with a little tab on the side. After that, I highly recommend taking out all the seats, both front and rear. It will save you a lot of time and makes everything a whole lot easier. Trust me!

• In the middle of the firewall there should be a plastic plug with nothing coming out of it. You can pry it off with a flathead and drill a hole for the power cable

• There is plenty of room behind the dashboard for all the wiring. I routed the power wire above the ecu and down the passenger side through the center console

• After taking out all the seats its very easy to route all your cables underneath the carpet. I put my power cable + remote wire down the middle and RCA underneath the passenger side carpet. RCA and power cant be next to each other

[JNups]

Chasis leg on the right side seems to be fine, but left side is starting to get crusty. It is still 100% solid but will definitely do your suggestions before the end of summer to prevent it from getting worse.

Overall the car looks quite clean underneath but i’ll have a better look when I finally get the car on a jack for the shifter mechanism.

[NealinAZ]

So much fun reading your posts about your car and your willingness to work on your car! That is the way to learn “wrench turning,” by doing it! I always felt that doing everything I could do myself would save me the funds to fix something that I couldn’t do myself. Thanks for sharing your journey!