Been keeping quiet lately as not much has been happening really, apart from getting married, buying a house, you know just life things. Next thing you know there will be little kids running around destroying all reminisce of my lifes work!. Cars have been a minor priority as of late but I’m proud to announce they are coming back into the picture!!!
To begin, The white mira has been abit of a troubled child lately to be honest, first spontaneously chipping valves then It started devouring clutch cables. The main goal for this car was to be reliable and this sort of erratic behaviour is not to be tolerated. Luckily I had a spare head to work with, first replacing all seals and gaskets then mating it to its original 130000km block.
Back to her former glory of running siblings to school and doing the grocery runs seem to be all too easy for it, perhaps its time to bolt a spooly boi to the side and make some chu chu sounds.
Next its time for the true Internet sensation to take the stage. Introducing a new and improved daihatsu mira l200.
Bathed in a beautiful red, this masterpiece sits like the beautiful duchess of my wildest dreams, pleasing to the eye, subtle, captivating, seductive, Wait what!? “SUBTLE”?. Yes those who know my cars also know that my attitude to a build is far from “stealth” by any means, That isn’t to say that I don’t admire those stealth builds, I do think they are masterpieces in their own right! ANYWAY, From the exterior not much has really changed to be honest with you. Actually the only real change is deletion of the front fake canards and addition of some more LOWS! S13 coils were baught and modified to fit the l200 front strut towers.
Cutting the original s13 camber tops allowed me to drill and press the studs into the factory position on the new and improved camber tops. These have made a drastic improvement to the handling in my opinion, however the spring rates are abit too stiff. 8kg springs are ok for s13 standards, but for a car that weighs almost half as much? Not too sure on that one. A set of 4kg springs will do the trick I hope.
In the rear I have purchased some Mitsubishi Colt shocks and modified a pair of Commodore King springs to fit, in future I will find some 6kg springs to fit. I have also trimmed a bit of the bump stops to allow for more low. Form>Function right?
Rear camber pulls into about -4 deg while front camber has been tilted to -5deg. I was running -6 but ran into issues of driveshafts bottoming out which caused immense wheel wobble. This camber allows for almost perfect fitment for these 13x7-6 riversides even with rolled, lipped and slightly pumped fenders all round. #stancenation
Next on the “things that make it work better” list, A alloy radiator was purchased. Mainly for the fact that it had a turbo line bunged straight onto the top tank as before I just had a next of coolant hoses coming off the throttle body lines. Dodgy 23 year old me shuns the dodgy 21 year old me.
After this I was planning and researching, then planning then researching some more on what path to take with a new turbo setup. Nothing wrong with the factory TRXX setup but in the quest for more power, something had to change. First I had a great idea about running a big banana manifold with a GT12 hanging off it, so I rushed myself and purchased both of these items. Lost quite a bit of money and made myself look like a complete tool. So if anyone is looking to purchase said items, hit me up. In the end with a bit of persuasion from some Malaysian inspiration, a hybrid Rhf4 with standard TRXX rear housing was purchased. turning out to be twice as cheap as my GT12 turbo price… Silly me…
With abit of inspration from Derku’s build, A front mount intercooler setup was introduced with a custom made stainless 2" dump pipe. This goes all the way to the gear stick location followed but a highflow cat and braided flexi pipe. Even though it is still internally gated, this thing sounds OFF CHOPS. Partly to do with the big 280deg drag cam of which I also rushed and purchased without much guidance many years ago. Dodgy 23 year old me shuns the dodgy 21 year old me.
The dump comes within 5mm off gearbox and Kframe, and thats with a partially scalloped Kframe.
Ran into some cooling issues which I have had for a while where the radiator fan doesn’t come on when hot. To which Dodgy 21 year old me just wired a simple switch to the rad fan main power wire, but since I’m becoming less dodgy I thought I’d dig deeper and resolve this issue. With friends and family driving the car regularly It was inevitable that it would overhead because someone forgot to switch a fan on. Turns out the Issue was the fan relay, which had corroded contacts and when bench tested it wouldn’t to its typical “relay click”. So just a regular relay was placed instead. Temp gauge reads about half way before the fan comes to life which I think is Ok.
An adaptonic e420c Is currently getting wired in and hopefully we will see some steady boost afrs. Not looking for bulk power but more for reliable power. But secretly hoping for upwards of 70hp with around 14psi with the ed10 block. Maybe e85 but still undecided. The back of my mind is telling me that the clutch is not going to hold up. Test will come once it goes onto a dyno to run up some numbers I guess, but its all apart of the learning curve isn’t it… ?
Apart from Mira things, been doing some driving in my 32, Archerfield is a blast! Would be a great little track to do tiny Dai time trials.
Also been building a project car for my brother on his budget. Its kinda great.
Rb20 s13 with most typical drift modications.
I know its not Dai related but its apart of my life just like the Mira.
Sketched this photo into photoshop for a future tattoo design maybe. One day MAYBE. What do you think?
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i live 5 minutes away from archi, used to go down a fair bit.