Hi! thought I’d do a overall of my L5 build. Not finished overall though never is a project car truely finished.
I initially started with a base model L5 Mira that had a EF-EL engine, was fun to drive because of the overly high limiter at 8700 though never was able to drive it very long with the 660cc engine. I consistently had issues with the head cracking in the exhaust valve seat and spark plug port, I ended up going through 3 engines and 6 different cylinder heads all with the same issue. I also upgraded the seat to a YRV seat as I picked one of those up to daily while I had engine issues with my main daily. Not very worthwhile as I sat about 5mm off the roof and am only 5’6".
So I decided to go for the popular option which is 989cc EJDE swapping it, I wired it in myself with a standard manual ECU from a L700 handi with no immobiliser. ( I actually have a post on doing that If you need help )
I drove it like that for nearly a year before I had 3rd gear become a second neutral and my clutch destroy itself by shattering apart. My only real option was to go for a stronger gearbox as that’d been my second EF series gearbox and they’re fairly hard to find in good nick in South Aus. The real pain of a job was sorting the front axles, as I was converting to 4x100 PCD at the same time. I ended up making some myself which are still holding up quite fine today even with not easy driving and about 3000km so far.
During this time I picked up a L512s front bar and bonnet.
So I went through converting it to 4x100, started with the rear as it was the easiest at the time, since L700 drums have the exact same rear wheel bearing as L2 through L6 and also share the same brake shoe size, just different PCD.
Then I went through doing the front, though unfortunately didn’t end up grabbing many photos of this during the time.
Ever since doing 4x100 I’ve been daily driving it. Slowly changing things overtime, I initally started with stock 14x5+45 steelies from a M100 sirion with 165/65R14. They were ok, but very heavy and you could feel the weight. I then found some no name 14x6+45 ROH wheels that were painted white and came with okay tires for 50$ on marketplace, so on they went.
They were alright, but still fairly heavy and poked quite far out of the guards aswell as scrubbed quite bad under compression. So I eventually found some OEM Enkei wheels in pretty bad condition but they were cheap.
So quite some time later and all four were looking like this.
I also made some coilovers work for the front so I could tune the handling a bit nicer. Cheap ones from a AE111, worked okay but had very stiff front springs at 9kg. So driving it over Adelaide roads hurt as every bump went straight into your back.
Just recently I’ve swapped the springs on them to 5kg ones with 7kg rear and it handles very well, I’m happy with it for now, though I do need to find better tires. I also recently upgraded both front seats to that of a MA70 Mk3 Supra and redid the door cards. These seats hold me in quite nicely and are still very comfortable.
