De Sirion
Well I think it’s time to finally open a “project” topic of my car De Sirion (The Sirion). Great name isn’t it? I never give my vehicles a name it’s just simply The Sirion, The Cuore, etc etc
This won’t be a project in the typical way, more a dairy of what I did to it. Don’t expect groundbreaking stuff like some other projects on this forum. I’m hopeful that someday I will be able to turn a Sirion into a proper project but that won’t be anytime soon.
Be aware that my memory is not all that great so the things mentioned below might not be in chronological order. Also please excuse my poor writing. As the great Michael Scott once said: “Sometimes I’ll start a sentence and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way”
With that out of the way, let me introduce myself. I’m not a mechanic of any kind. Never took lessons in any kind of mechanic stuff. I’ve studied forensic science so I’m learning by making mistakes. Off which I’ve made (and still make) many.
I always liked anything that had an engine. Doesn’t matter what kind of engine, as long as I don’t have to put in any manual labour to get to places I’m happy. The first vehicle I bought was a scooter. A Piaggio zip type 3 with a top speed of 35kmh. This thing broke more times than I can remember and at that age (and even to this day) money was tight. So the only thing I could was to try and fix it myself. Which went exactly how you would expect, horrible. So I sold the little Piaggio (because I was sure that it wasn’t my fault it kept breaking) and bought some more scooters (which all broke down). But after a couple of years of fixing my own scooters I was able to buy my first car.
De Cuore:
Well this wasn’t my first car, that honour goes to a purple Cuore which lasted a whopping 6 months before breaking down during holiday in Croatia. Something to do with a sparkplug melting (still don’t know how a sparkplug could melt). I brought the car home on 2 cylinders so if you thought a Cuore was slow…. believe me it can go allot slower. This also revealed a gift I possess to break anything I lay my hands on.
The second car I owned was the white Cuore. After transferring all the “luxury” of the purple Cuore (swapped the interior, added some fog lights etc) it was ready to go. I wasn’t going to do anything further to that car and after a couple of years I sold that one for a blue Suzuki Alto. Which was wrecked by my brother in law. He was planning on taking it to the wreckers so I was able to buy it for 150 euro’s. After fixing the Alto I sold it and bought the Sirion.
It started its live as a worn out and neglected car, and to be fair it probably still is. No service history, it already had at least 1 accident and there were already some problems with it. I’m the type of person who likes a car and then decides to buy the cheapest one available.
After some minor fixes like some ball joints etc it was time for the first “mod”. A 3cm lowering kit.
After I lowered it I started to look for some wheels. I found some nice sets and bought some tires to put on them (Kumho Ecsta PS31). Only problem was that the rims were more elliptical of shape than a circle. So after not that long of a time I got rid of them and bought some more. Remember, these wheels are not new but probably already had 10 previous horrible owners. This is what happened when you cheap out 
But finally happy with the wheels I just started to drive. I didn’t have any time to change much and I also didn’t want to change much since it was my daily. In the summertime I’m more prone to riding my bikes than the car but I still drove around 40k a year with this car.
40k a year means allot of time staring at the ugly steering wheel so when I found a MOMO one I couldn’t resist myself and bought it. I still love it. While I’m messing with the interieur I also decided to paint the plastic housing of the speedo and rpm counter black and instal an android radio.
Since then I changed jobs, so now I’m working from home. Which means that the car is more stationary than being driven. This gave me the opportunity to fix something that should have been fixed a long time ago.
First thing on the list was fixing the aircon:
It went horrible. I bought a second hand radiator which already had a small leak. So after a couple of weeks I was back at the beginning. So I bought a new radiator and after regassing (again……) it finally produced some relative cold air. (okay so recently it broke again so fuck it. This time the pump is leaking and I’m not spending another couple of hundreds of euro’s to get some halfassed aircon to break again)
A year ago I did put in a subwoofer I bought for a crate of beer. I’ve made sure to do it myself for optimum performance (you can already see where this is going don’t you?). It kind of worked out okay but every time I took a sharp turn the cables would get dislodged and the sub would fly through the car. Which obviously isn’t great for when you like to take corners way to fast.
So time to fix that. I got a subwoofer (a Polk Momo) from a good friend and made my own box for it. I ran way to thick wires to the back but the car still hasn’t burned down so I guess that means is did it right. At least its way better than the old one. This time I made sure that it is secured but still able to get it out of the car if needed. Velcro is the answer.
After that I decided to get some decals and to paint the taillights and the blinkers black. I never really liked the black on black look but I must admit that I think it looks good on this one.
In the meantime I finally found a second hand key fob which after allot of swearing (thanks Granger) finally decided to pair! Fun fact, you can get one remote to work on 2 cars simultaneously! It makes for some interesting moments.
Next step was trying to get the suspension working better. The 3cm lowering kit did exactly what it said on the box. The only downside was that I couldn’t take anyone else except me and the girlfriend with me without the car bottoming out at every opportunity it could. So after talking to Mr_Gormsby (thank you again for your knowledge!) I found some springs from a Suzuki Alto from 97 (I believe) that seem to fit and are twice as stiff. Problem was that they were way to tall so the car had a bit of a “oh look! A penny” vibe around it.
So I cut the springs like any professional would do. The springs even fit better than before (due to the last coil narrowing down) and the car was now back at its original height at the rear but still lowered at the front. But I quite like the look now + I can use the car now for more than just transporting me. Still need to get new dampers but those will come. Just need to find them. I don’t know if it’s the placebo effect but especially during low speed corners the car seems to have more grip in the front than before.
And last but not least (for now at least) is a “cold” air intake. The original one heats the air up quite a bit but still I don’t expect any benefits to come from this contraption. But the sound is better than original. It was difficult to find a filter that would fit but I’ve found one with a 51mm opening.
The future
I plan on making a heatshield for the intake and I’ll try different lengths to finetune the sound hopefully. Also sometimes I’m looking for some lighter wheels, the current weigh way too much and I’m not really happy about the tires so when they are due for replacement I might buy some new wheels.
That’s it for now. Now you are all up to speed on The Sirion. If you would like to have more info on something don’t be shy and just ask. If anyone has some suggestions I can do next please let me know! I’m always looking for small projects.