I have some easy news regarding the 4x100 and some hard news regarding the 4x100.
Rear brakes with just the drum conversion and I found this out simply by accident.
Just take off the dust cover and take out split pin and undo nut . Slide off the brake and slide the L251 on. replace nut, split pin and dust cover and your good to go.
Now the L251 are not the best upgrade in 4x100 as they have a solid rotor unlike the vented sirion disc’s but it will still be a good upgrade over the mira brakes.
L700 lca’s is good but your biggest issue is going to be your drive shafts. Mainly your driver side one. I have some vids on this but you would have to rifle through my crappy you tubes to find the right info. I have said in one how much longer the driver side one needs to be.
For the passenger side an L7 or copen one should work fine. From memory the inner cv’s fit in the mirs gearbox so a complete shaft would work.
One solution I had for when I did the 4x100 was I bought a jack shaft and changed out the long cv shaft for another L7/copen passenger side shaft and it was all able to bolt on instead of having to get a custom shaft made.
as for the struts/shock the L251 have a really tall base height before the spring. I would drill out or slot the mira bottom strut holes to where they bolt onto the hub or find some L7 ones to go in.
If you want to go through my crappy youtubes then my username there is jimmy gee.
If you can make some do it. I made custom struts from Suzuki Swift Mk1 GTI strut inserts (Koni red) pulling the internals and putting them into a Sirion Leg (wet insert). On these I didn’t do a coil over base but put the oringinal springs sets back on in a lower spot. Also I slid the leg 25mm lower down through the lower bracket (see my build thread for images). The Suzuki strut was the shortest I could find at the time but not short enough. After pulling it down I machined down the chrome shaft blew the thread and machined down the seamless tube. This gave a short enough assembly that it could be lowered and maintian 50plus mm of bump travel. I did start making some Koni sport external adjustable but never finished them. Spring were going to be 1 7/8" from a sprint car. Very close fitment of spring over the adjustable base. BC racing do a coil over that you can get to fit. BC can be a pain to get info out of. I think the front springs they supply are way to stiff. Stick close to the std rate the car came with, about 125-130ft/lb.
arr it must have been your post i came across regarding the l251 rear. Thats a nice and easy one. Thanks for the heads up!
I’ve been looking around on yahoo japan. It looks like I could get coil overs for an l700 or an m100. Which of those two would work best do you think? Since fabrication isnt our strong suit I am tempted to purchase a set of coilovers and whichever bearing and brake either l7 or m100 that is the strongest and get someone who can weld to make it work.
The bit I’m missing is the difference between the l7 and the m100. You mentioned m100 having vented brakes is that true on the l7? Are the bearing/axel the same or different.
What I want from this, is the ability to (slowly) accelerate to top speed and then able to (with confidence nothing will break) brake hard and absolutely throw it hard in to a corner. Now obviously I do not intend to do this all of time but I need the confidence. You only need to glance at the front end to see that this car didn’t have that in mind when it was designed and the extra power and loads through big tyres are going to quickly exasperate the problem.
Looking at the l251 control arm, you can see how Daihatsu technology moved forward. At this point I’m open to looking at all little fwd designs and considering them. I wonder if I could use copen stuff ready for the copen turbo motor in a few years haha. I probably just need to rip all the suspension out of the car (after the the tune) lay it out on a bench and compare and measure everything.
Oh man if I could weld I would have nothing but unfinished ideas everywhere. I’m trying to avoid that kind of tinkering for a couple of reasons. Firstly because neither myself nor my dad who is doing most of the bloody work are skilled in that area. And secondly because I’m going for less tinkering overall. This car might see some events but also needs to be bullet proof reliable so it can be safely driven on the street. I live 50km from dads place for example and I want to be able to take it back and forth. I’m prepared to be very uncomfortable for the drive so long as it’s solid and capable at highway speeds. I’m looking for significant improvements over stock setup at speed and high stress in terms of strength and reliability rather than say, lap times
L700 and M100 both vented. M100 is the way to go for uprights and brakes. L700 control arms are what you want. M100 arms are too long. Can’t help with drive shafts as one car I did had an LSD with a jackshaft and it would have been diff to yours, the other had a L700 gearbox in the L200, again diff to yours. To being throwing hard into a corner won’t be a brake issue (with one caveat) as you should have done your braking before turning. Spring rate and damping will be your friend to get max traction. Begin with std front springs and 400-450ft/lb rear. Do this, don’t think you know better unless you test this suggestion back to back with whatever you think will work. This suggested combination is not my idea but what my suspension guy got me started with and he has forty years of victory doing suspension on winning cars that range from hillcimb, to rally, to targa rally, track and world time attack. Remeber we’ve talked about this before. 140lb front should be okay. With that I’d go 450-500lb rear. The back must be damn stiff so as to transfer weight to the front tires. Just my opinion but the std rack won’t let you do much throwing with near four turns lock to lock, to make it turn you may need to learn to do some braking in corners to help it steer. Left foot braking while accelerating will bring the nose in an induce a neutral feel. For legal reasons I advocate learning this in a area closed off from public roads. There is a lot to this and I feel we are still only touching the tip of the ice berg. What do you know of roll centers? How will you get a bit more castor? Bumpsteer? Steering from accleration and braking when the front sway bar flexes? Torque steer from wind up of the long drive shaft? And more.
I do recall talking with you on this and frankly I think you’re absolutely spot on. I went with the Hyundai rear shocks and the lowered rear springs where close to the rates you suggested. The front however did increase. And with the standard damping it’s all wrong. You can feel that the front is too hard and pushes back. I think I can conceptualise how the softer front would allow the back to push the front end down to the tyre that should be doing all the work. Any coil over setup I would consider would have to factor in a softer spring rate.
With regards to your other points I feel like that’s exactly the kinds of problems I’m trying to solve. Theexample I used was just one of high stress. There would be all kinds of other ways to load the wheel and I’m wondering how to best to counter all of it.
To extend on my previous reply. I understand that braking is done before turning. I’m not a complete novice at driving fast. My example was contrived to highlight where I lack confidence in this car. There are times when it is desirable to wash speed and stay on a safer line both on the street and a track. There are times when you miss a breaking zone and under steer wildly to the outside of the corner. I’d rather not have something break in that situation and have it survive if it went off the track. Beefed up components are not likely to improve the situation much if they’re not adequately mounted to the car. Why do you talk of brake steer isssues? Is it because the forward load is essentially distributed through the sway bar and the lack of a radius rod? Because that seems to me to be there obvious issue with the stock design. All of the forward and backward vectors are transferred through tensile stress and that’s rather inadequate for significantly increased torque and power and high speed braking followed by hard cornering
Yes, you nailed it with the sway bar doing the job of radius rods too. I reduced the effect by adding extra pick-up points, so four in total. On my RX2 many years ago it had a similar set up and I added a centre stay.
No suggestion that you are a complete novice. No intention to shame or belittle. I repeat a lot of things or tend to state some obvious things over and over. That is perhaps a trait of being a high school teacher where one has to do that.
With the spring rates, are the dampers or shocks you are using adjustable. If so slow down the rear and speed up the front. More tire pressure rear less tire pressure front. What tires, in what size an and on what rim?
So finally after many of my $$$ spent and many hours of hard work thanks to my father, plus a tune from a bit of a legend… I finally have an ej swapped l500 Mira tearing down the highway with no issue at all. Driving to the sound of the engine I hit the freeway at around 130kph and I was a little shocked, I wasn’t trying to go that hard. Then she just cruised at 110km albeit revving quite high.
It time to stop fussing with anything major and just enjoy it. Since I’m only going in to work a few days a week and there are no highways in between I’ll probably daily it to work for a bit of fun. In the meantime, to complete what I want to call stage 2 and stop spending or working on it, I’ve got the following wish list based on budget and somethings that it really needs before it can be fully enjoyed.
Tachometer - fun to watch and required to get a better understanding of what it’s doing and at what engine speeds.
Tyres - would love to go all custom wheels do pcd swaps and carry on but there’s a faster cheaper option which I think is perfect for stage 2. I have a set of l251 rims which are 4x100 4,5j 13. With spacers upfront and the easy l251 pcd change at the rear it should work with no real effort. It means I can get a decent road going tyre for not much. Nankang eco 155/60/13 or Dunlop sp10 155/65/13. This should make a dramatic difference when they replace the 175/75/12 hankook van tyres currently on the car and are obviously all wrong.
Steering rate increase - would love to know if @Mr_Gormsby remembers exactly which parts were used and how hard this job was? The weight and speed currently is just not fun. Not suited to speed and produces almost no feed back. Something like a quick flick through a round a bout is difficult currently.
The downside to this approach is I’m left with stock brakes. For the moment around town it’s fine. Tyres will also really help. Ideally I’ll find a set of pads cheap that would work or could be modified to work with substantially more bite than the Bendix ct currently in use.
It depends how it goes, if anything breaks or what I decide in the future but for me stage 3 looks to be the place to just go big or go home. I’m not going to be happy with just power or just handling. Handling might make it trackable but not exactly at the speeds I had in mind. Stage 3 seems like a very dramatic rework of the front end, a turbo or supercharger, race brakes, r spec tyres, roll cage or other strengthening steel about the place and so on. Perhaps some of the engine lowering things discussed around the place. Maybe I’ll take Yaris gs 3cyl turbo and accompanying bits and weld it up
Haven’t plugged my computer in yet to look at all of the tuning things. I might do some data logs during the week and I’ll definitely post some of the final settings that ended up in the haltech
What are your fabrication skills like? From my experience of the “quick rack” I’d do it differently next time, but using the same donor rack. To do it again I’d fabricate new mounts or cut the ones from the donor car to mount on the Dai K frame. One the one I’ve done there is some adjustment to move the rack up or down to dial out bump steer, but I machined the rack to fit the dai brackets.
maybe possibly a quick rack or an electric assist rack might be a good option for you? I will probably look at electric assist in my other mira (without the mrG special in it) at some point but will definitely be a long time b4 I even get to it.
Might be good to look for a bolt in. The conversion needs a bit of maching, welding and it is your steering (hence why this was one thing I never went into detail on due to risk).
Though I’ve never seen/tested one myself, I have heard of L200 electric assist racks that had faster ratio. Standard is 3.9:1, that one I did was 1.5:1 with more angle (though it would be more like 2.2:1 if I had not put the quaife internals in).
I’m confident I could have a donor rack welded up to work. There’s enough experience and knowledge around to sort that out. Probably best to get a donor that’s the correct ratio and at least somewhat similar in size. Any thoughts on a donor rack with the desired ratio? L251s are fairly easy to come by. I’ve already junked my l251 donor car. That didn’t have power steering iirc
