Before I purchased my l200 I drove an r32 gts. I spent most of my p plater years hooning around pretending I’m in tokyo drift. As I started doing more and more mods to it I knew that I’d have to get something to daily around. I knew I wanted a cheap little daihatsu so i baught a smashed up l200 for $25 and set about fixing it. Some major damage to the drivers side as it had been Tboned.
After rego it didn’t take long for me to start modifying it so I started with some garden edging bodykits. Driving around I got alot of attention from general public and people asking “what is it” and such. I realized that nobody actually knew what it was as I live in a small coastal town. So i decided to go all out with styling to really blow people away.
My mate had some old broken supra side skirts laying around so I ended up taking them, a lot of cutting and fibreglassing later and they fit!. Next was some sort of a front and rear lip. Went and picked up a $10 plastic lancer bar from the tip and cut it up and moulded it around the front and rear bars to suit. I then got a drift vent off ebay for $80, almost had to cut it in half cause thats all the mira bonnet needed. cut, filled and painted and ended up with a nice bonnet. I always wanted a takeoff wing but they are so hard to comeby, so I took an old piece of alloy sheet, cut it and bent it into shape and then i had my own diy takeoff wing. I had been looking at all different paint jobs and artworks on the web and I was drawn to the Brock racing stripes. Red is my favourite colour so I Kept the factory red, rubbed it back, sprayed the white then cleared over the whole lot with magenta, red & purple fleck in the clear. Sun really makes it pop.
Some more attention and alot of people trying to race, I knew that it was embarrassingly slow. Baught a $25 2” magna exhaust, cut and welded it together so it fit the mira. Then I got a full trxx turbo kit and bolted it straight to the Na engine with nothing but a FPR controlling fuel. Drove around for about a year before the engine got old and tired.
Decided that engine was no good anymore. Built another engine with 280deg pipercam, adj camgear, 1.5mm metal headgasket and set about controlling fuel with a greddy emanage blue. The cam was creating less then .5psi of vacuum and wouldn’t let it idle, thus the charging system always failed making it almost impossible to daily. I ended up drilling holes in the throttle body to get more airflow at idle which fixed everything!. Then the greddy emanage allowed me to adjust fuel +or- 20% at every 1krpms up to 6krpm.
Although i have a daily able streetcar again I still want to push and mod more!.. Plans are completely built motor, pistons, manifolds, bigger turbo, fuel system then hopefully figure out a standalone ecu option and get it tuned properly. then make up some proper suspension so I can enter hillclimb events!. But all in time…
Oh I am so glad you did this I up until now I have only seen your car in its more completed stages and love seeing where it came from. How difficult was the greddy emanage blue. I’ve looked at them before but heard a few years back of alot of people have trouble with them so I avoided them even though they seemed like they may do the job?
Greddy emanage isnt what I’d say a permanent ecu unless i can figure it out fully. as its piggy back it cant pick up any maps so i cant adjust them. The only settings i can change is injector correction and +or- 20% fuel every 1k rpm. Im running rb20 injectors with a rrfpr which is good enough for now. One day ill probably work it out after playing around with it heeps!
oh ok well I think I will leave the greddy blue there is a map cut out trick you can use with a 4.7ohm resistor. I cant remember the details but there is a write up about it on autospeed speed website. When I get to it again I will do a link to it. I ran just stock camry (2.2l) injectors on my N/A frankenstien years ago and that worked but it ran very rich. Stock mira injectors would idle but just die as soon as I went to accelerate. I didnt have a rrfr at the time. A 3 bar map can be bought very cheaply these days so might be worth a shot for one of those.
I would still be interested how you go if you work more out with the greddy blue though.
Update on the greddy emanage blue!. I have figure out basic tunability, that is fuel trimming and adding at exact rpms spots. Problems are that the tps is an ON/OFF type switch and the table measures tps against rpms so its impossible to do it properly. Another issue is changing fuel (airflow) readings also has the spin out of changing timing. I can get the car running mint on above 20psi but only when flat to the floor and its no faster then how I have been driving it at 10psi. Slow speeds tents to jerk and sputter I suspect cause of timing changes. I have no idea how it is changing the timing but i will learn as I go I guess. A good idea for me would be to buy the innovatve afr gauge and do some data logging. Also figure someway of adapting a different tps while still retaining the factory one for the stock ecu.
on another note i have started to modify the other mira.
Its funny you said about that with the tps I was just reading about that on zero to onehundred forums last night. Seems some malaysians have the same issue’s
205/50/15 on a 6.5" fits. But there is a bit of work. Will run 195/50/15 oversize on a 7". Did try some 225.50/15 on a 8" but the rims were 3kg each heavier than the 7". There is a heap of work to get this low and still have good suspension travel. In the pic there is still 70mm before hitting the bump stop. Tubs, unpicking body work and making room for the trailing arm did the job. Raising the axle would give a bit more travel again as the trailing arms hit before ties rub in the tubs
That’s awesome man… Good to see you started with something that needed lots of work but it’s come so far already… I’m just starting my L200 build so I’m undoubtedly gonna need to send you some msgs… Hope that’s cool…
Started mucking around with some cardboard the other day.
Decided this was going to be a thing…
Went to bunnings and grabbed some poly carbonate sheet and got cracking into cutting and bending…
Pretty happy with how they turned out…
let me know if you like them or not. The skirt additions really dont stand out much compared to the snow ploughs on the front. Ignore how filthy the car is
Ok, aero additions means a “time attack” theme. Solid wheels are way way wrong and I am sorry to say it’s all a contradiction now. Visually it’s starting to loose its way (but that’s only my opinion and I’m not here to stop your fun but rather to add some balance of opinion from an older fart). Seems this car is all about how it looks and image, so yes “ricer” look more or less acheived. At least it’s not slammed, strecthed tires and no stupid camber - so it can be driven.
