Green l700 1.3

[Mr_Ybot]

Hey, just thought I’d start a build for my little l700. I haven’t kept a good record of its life since being with me so I’ll try tell the story and update it as I go from here. Got some fun ideas and it’s all stuff I’ve never done before so might be a laugh for the more experienced of you out there.

All started after a little white Cuore came out the back of our workshop, I got talking to the owner and He told me about how nippy the little car was and how fuel efficient it was. I was driving a forester at the time.

I thought that sounds like a bit of fun and I liked that it kind looked jap. So started looking and saw this guy come up.
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I went and looked at it and it was not as tidy as the picture. Old mate posted the pic of when he bought it. It had a shagged clutch, 2 out of 3 engine mounts were snuffed and the engine wasn’t running so smooth. I figured it was just because it was a 3cyl and I’d never driven one before so bargained with old mate and scooped it up for $1400. At the time I though it was a pretty good time.
Aesthetically it was pretty average and drove like a bag of dicks. Hahah ahh daihatsu, you got me.

[Mr_Ybot]

I gee’d my mate up to come down with me to pick it up.
Just my luck it was pissing down raining and horrible out.
Even in the bad weather and the average conditions and running like It was a single cylinder engine, I couldn’t wipe the smile of my dial. l7’s are to much fun.

After stopping for fuel it was back to the workshop to see what we had just bought.

First things first, pull the bar off so we can do the engine mounts and have a good little look at things and give the little guy a much needed service.
I’m not 100% sure it had been serviced in the last 100000km to be honest. But after a good flush and clean out of the throttle body it seemed to run a little better. At least it wasn’t shaking the whole car so bad now that the motor was held in propely.
I got to ordering a clutch for it and working out how to get the motor out.

[Mr_Ybot]

If only I knew then what I know now. I would have had that motor out in half an hour now 4 hours hah.
But I needed to work it out for myself.

So we started pulling it down.
They really are great little cars to work on. Quite simple. A great thing to learn on. I was blessed to be working as a salesman for a workshop who was kind enough to let me use it after hours. So I had a good mate who was a mechanic and all the tools I can use. Was like a free TAFE course.
I will forever be greatful for that.

After the motor was apart, new clutch in, fly wheel sorted… it was time to hit the dyno and see a base figure.

Hahahahah little guy was to short for the dyno. I couldnt close the bed far enough to get the rear wheels in. I got a kick out of that.

Well I guess I didn’t know what to expect but I figure that was a healthy result for a 180 000km stock l700 Cuore.
I liked the car but the interior was very bland and I loved the low down ej torque. It was fun in the wet to spin wheels but I wanted a little more. I wanted to be able to have a little bit of hill climb feel. So set to working out how I was going to do this.

Well I suppose the logical answer is a little boost yeah?
Well I thought so too. There was a lot of turbo junk at the workshop and I thought that it would be easy enough.
So I decide to look around online and see how it was achieved.
Turns out there is already a whole community of dai lovers and I was late to the party.
The logical step wasn’t boost. It was to sacrifice a sirion for the sake of a Mira.

[Mr_Ybot]

I want it known that this picture and park cost me a $200 parking fine. Yea, I know. Who knew parking fines could be that much.
No regrets.

I love this little car. We work on a lot of 4wd’s at work and I always get a kick out of parking next to them.
The comical size is enough alone to own one of these.
I even talked my mechanic at work (who owns v8 commys almost exclusively) to buy a 4 cyl fwd so we could hills bash. Was a lot of fun.
Any excuse for pics of your car on your build thread right.

10 points for any one in adelaide and knows where this frosty car park is.

[Mr_Ybot]

It was time for a tacho dash. The lack of basic features on the series 1 l700 is impressive.
Interior rear boot hatch realease? Nope
Electric mirrors? Nope
Interior fuel flat release? Nope
CD player? Nah
Tacho? Nope
Haha I guess that’s how they get such a low curb weight haha.

Woodworx garage would help me out with a tacho dash and a series 2 bumper. I’m chasing series 2 tail lights to match.
I went and paid a visit to Ke Motorsport at royal park and I got myself a turbo manifold, turbo and dump flange.
At this point I was still thinking boosting a motor was easier than a whole bloody engine swap. So I was just collecting anything that seemed like it could help my conversion.

[Mr_Ybot]

I was looking around on gumtree and I saw a gtvi sirion come up.
The sirion was not right. None of the panels lined up right and it had a ejde radiator in it.
I asked if it had been crashed and he told me never. Old lady 1 owner very good car.
The young lad had very average English but I could tell he was full of incorrect infomation.
It had clearly been smashed hard. The motor had been change and so had half the front end. However I didn’t mind, the motor was so healthy and the interior was ok. The car drive well enough and would pull hard from 4K rpm To red line. After a bit of uncomfortable haggling. I welcome to you my very cheap sacrifice to the daihatsu gods.

I felt conflicted, I wanted to stay 3cyl. After all it’s what Mira’s are all about but if I did the gtvi conversion then I would be able upgrade a lot of the features (or lack of) I’ve been complaining about. So the turbo and manifold in to storage for now as I have a bit of work ahead of me.
Now to watch Marty and moog and what would become my instruction manual twice a day for a week before jumping in to this project.

[Mr_Ybot]

My plan for this build was to use as much as possible from the gtvi.
This would end up including the full loom, switches, cluster, airbags, clock spring (and in turn steering wheel and column assembly), electric windows and central locking.
The swap will need the k-frame from the gtvi, obviously we need the motor and Bolt on parts, gearbox and links.
I then used the l7 rack, power steering, lower control arms and shoe horning in the gtvi sway bar.
The space was big enough for me to have both vehicle next to each other and to strip one down then the other and start to swap parts over.

It’s quite intimidating stripping your beloved car back to a shell. I was worried I’d forget where everything went.

Once the big block was out it was time to start to strip off the steering components I won’t be using.
I kept the l7 components to keep the l7 track. You can use the whole sirion front end but you will have savage front camber and I want it to look stealth. I will add camber later using some coil overs from woodworx garage.

Out with the ej-de swap the rack, control arms and power steering across (the power steering lines and pump combination take some problem solving but between both cars the right combination of pipes, power steering bottle, brackets and windscreen wiper bottle mount is supplied to you.
Then drop the body down and your pretty much done…

If only I was done…
the rest of the conversion was a bit more tricky because now I was not working from the MCM how to guide.
I wanted power windows but brackets had to be welded in and I haven’t got the foggiest idea about welding.
I wanted central locking but it was not going to fit in the l700 doors.
I did a whole loom swap but needed the l700 light loom in the rear. So had to repin the rear of the loom to take the l700 loom.
I used all the airbag (yellow cable) system from the sirion too. This just made life easier. In hindsight I didn’t need the body loom swap. It was a big waste of time because if memory serves me correctly there is power mirror plugs in the l7 loom. The mirrors just weren’t there. So I pulled the base from the std l7 mirror and swapped it with the sirion electric mirrors and took the dash control panel across to the l7 dash.
At least I got that much.

[Patrick_Hart]

nice
better final drive and keeping with L7 wheels have it pick up really well
even better if you put a custom sway bar in that doesn’t cram angle into the bottom arms and allows everything to move as it should
awesome conversion for sure. pity it wasn’t how they came out
you’ll have heaps of fun with it!

thanks for taking the time to post

[Mr_Ybot]

Thanks Patrick, it’s been worlds better. If they had come out with a l700 4wd k3vet I think it would have been very popular.

[Mr_Ybot]

So once you get it back to this point you have to do the old headlight chop. Now there is a lot of ways to do this.
I went with what would end up being the most ghetto mod on this vehicle to date. The corner of a nulon 15w40 oil container held in place with grey plumbing silicone…
Nice huh!

The idea here is make way for motor. In the end of the day they end up pretty tight on the drivers side.

Next seats. Now if you have watched the mcm ep above they use the gtvi front seats as a direct bolt on but the rear seats need to be made but they ended up a little flat as the l7 has a smaller foam and the sirion is way to wide. So I used the metal backs from the l700 and cut up the gtvi foam and laid it over the l700 foam then wrapped with the gtvi cloth to trim the back seat.

I was really happy with it. The rear seats feel a lot more supportive now and fill the cloth really well.

After the seats got done up I needed carpet in the back to replace the awful factory vinyl that was covered in plaster and junk.

At this point she was getting close to being complete, a new fuel pump because I didn’t know if the factory one from the ej de would keep up with a 1.3 and we had a drawer full of oem Holden commodore v8 fuel pumps. It fit and I went with it. I don’t know how long cable ties last in fuel. We will put this down to science.

Now we are ready to road test and hit the dyno.

from the second I drove it I was in love. The power delivery was later in the revrange but with the reduced weight the car felt amazing. But there was a problem. No speedo.

[Mr_Ybot]

So I don’t know if this is common knowledge now but when I did this it took us a few days to work out.
But in the gtvi there is an abs system with a lot of kajiggers attached to it. I wasn’t interested in abs because im Kind of a bad ass like that
So in my haste I left this part here:

Amongst 2 other parts I needed in the sacrifice.
As I waved goodbye and sent the little sirion to the daihatsu gods. I also waved goodbye to the abs unit, rear abs hub sensors and the sirion power steering bottle and bracket.

So in turn had to buy them of another dai member.

See the speedo and odo run through the abs unit and to the dash cluster. Although I don’t want abs, I do want the speedo so plug the unit in and tuck it away in the guard.
Now everything is good to go. We can hit the dyno.

Not a bad improvement at all over stock.
This is running stock exhaust, stock air filter and intake.

Just quietly, this is the same dyno and same workshop as in the pervious pictures. Haha amazing. Little Reno job went a long way.

[Mr_Ybot]

I apologize if this is painful to read. I’ve never done a built thread and I’m not super computer literate.
I just wanted to show my little cars journey

[jakey033]

Great write up so far mate!.. I’m loving where this is going and keen to see whats next

[DaleJeffree]

It’s all good Ybot.

[Mr_Ybot]

Thanks I appreciate that guys. Ha just didn’t wanna be rambling on.

So for now I waned to enjoy the car a bit.
For what was quite a straight forwards swap out the difference was excellent. I had so much fun.
Hills runs are the best. The added power meant the hill climb was exciting and the the handling was nice. The upgraded brakes from the sirion were a huge improvement.
The vehicle still need coil overs and some rims but for now I was happy to just have it done.

I was at the workshop one night having a laugh with one of my coworkers when the concept of the old revers to first skid came up. Now I’d never tried this myself and was of the opinion it would hurt my car. I was assured by my mechanics friend that I had a good knowledge of pulling the motor out now so it wouldn’t even matter if I hurt something…

It won’t for some reason let me upload the video of the clutch coming out but it was pretty much a water fall of clutch plate, springs and screws.
Moral of the story… always put a HD clutch while the motor is out the first time. Hahah

[applegeek897]

Freaking epic stuff man!

[Roffelkut]

Awesome build mate!
You said you swapped the control arms, what did you do with the driveshafts? Did you use the l700 ones or do the m100 still fit?

[Patrick_Hart]

@Roffelkut he would have swapped both …or wont fit

[Mr_Ybot]

hey, i used both l700 cv’s and control arms. if your looking to run big camber on the front you can run sirion cv’s and sirion control arms with the sirion hubs and shocks.
but i wanted to keep with the smaller track. i also stayed with the smaller l700 rims and tyres. they fit over the sirion brakes and hubs well.

[Mr_Ybot]

well the time has come to start to invest money in my little cuore.
being that im not boosting the ej anymore due to the k3 powerhouse, im selling off some of the forced induction parts to fund things…
i need some attractive rims and tyres,
coil overs,
tint,
exhaust
and last but not lease a god damn paint job lol.
if anyone has some nice 13x6 4x100 rims or even 14" rims hit me up. Im in SA but will freight.

Ive started but stripping an l700 for straight panels and interior parts. again another dai must be sacrificed for glory… i felt bad stripping an l700 but it was a must and for the cause. Plus selling the unwanted parts is helping me fund this supersize.

would love to see pics and specs on the tyres and rims you guys are currently running.