Ongoing project thread of Sirion Rally 2 M101

[Granger]

Bit of a challenge with the Sirion which might become a major challenge.

Driving back from a meetup earlier this year and a stone flicked up and cracked the windscreen which was mildly annoying. I held off bothering to get it replaced, waiting til nearer MOT time (having been burned by needing to get 2 screens replaced inside 12 months before…)

I rang up the insurance people, they put my through to national windscreens who took details and said they’d call back.

today they did call back, but rather than the hoped-for “when do you want us to come and fit it m8” conversation, it was to say that they were having a 'mare of a time getting hold of a replacement screen. They said they had a couple more places to check, and they’d give me an update.

The MOT was due early the next month, and was booked in already. The crack is too big to get repaired I think, but its right in Zone A so no way it can pass as-is.

bumhats. Hopefully they can sort something out but if not then I’m not sure what options I have? I saw on another thread that a polycarbonate screen could be an option but that looks pretty extreme? And I assume the insurance wouldn’t cover that?

I contacted a local indy windscreen company who reckoned that they could get a screen - JUST ONE - but a screen nonetheless, I was quite doubtful and suspected that once the herbert got to the bay in the warehouse they’d realise that it was an inventory error, however

After an anxious wait, today my new windscreen arrived!

Massive thanks to Alternative Windscreens who were able to source and fit the last M100/M101 Sirion windscreen in the UK today. I did have a chat to them about ‘what happens if I break this one?’ and they said that they are happy to fit a 2nd hand one if I could source it so that is an option.

Next job was to tweak the exhaust again, it sits a fraction too low after my most recent modifications and knocks against the rear axle (I think) on left hand turns which is a bit annoying. Its a fine balance because if its too low it hits the subframe, and too high and it chafes on the rear bumper so I needed to fiddle about with it and get it right.

I managed to get out and fix the exhaust, it was hitting the bodyshell in the pinch between the rear beam and the bodyshell - its an awkward spot. I ended up swapping the hangers around so it sits lower in the centre section, and higher in the rearmost section and now clears a lot better. I also enlisted my youngest daughter to do the pre-MOT checks of lights, tyres, horn, screenwash, oil, coolant and brake fluid and it should be OK I hope.

I’ll get it tested then I want to redo one of the joints on the exhaust, its gastight but I’m not 100% happy with it. I had a go at fiddling with it but then decided that its currently fine for the MOT and maybe it’d be best to leave it well alone until after I have a new ticket on it.

Its racked up a fairly unimpressive 1000 miles since the last test (and I fixed the advisory from last time) so hopefully it’ll be OK.

[Granger]

I would like to sincerely apologise to the residents of my local town for what happened on Thursday evening

As I left my Tai Chi class, feeling very relaxed and at one with the universe, the exhaust on the Daihatsu sort of disassembled itself a bit. The centre pipe (with silencer) had wiggled free of the front pipe and fell off. Sadly for the locals, I didn’t have a 16mm spanner on me, and the clamp was done up a bit too tight to be able to wiggle the centre pipe back on. I decided that I could call the breakdown people and wait hours for them to come and then spend 30 seconds with a spanner fixing it, or just YOLO it home. Guess which one I chose?

Yeah, sorry about that. I tried to keep the revs down as much as possible, and drive as slowly as practical, but nothing was going to disguise the fact that there was only 2’ of straight pipe to quieten* down the noise of Daihatsu’s finest. It was OK at idle, and there was a weird spot at approx 1983rpm where it was actually no louder than normal, but anything else was A BIT LOUD. Especially pulling away from junctions and extra especially going up hills.

Happily though I made it home without the rozzers pulling me over, and I’ve been able to loosen the clamp, slide it all back together with some exhaust paste and do the clamp up REALLY TIGHT this time. Now I know its a bit prone to this I can check it more regularly!

mercifully, the centre and rear bit didn’t hang down very far so it didn’t get smacked clean off the car on some of the potholes round here

[Aaron]

Been there.
Years ago with my first cuore i just crossed the border into Belgium and my exhaust broke in 2. Sadly enough for the people on my route i had to drive about 140km one way and 170km back home with just a small straight pipe.
Weirdly enough i didn’t get pulled over.

[Granger]

Time for a wheels update

I wasn’t entirely happy with how bright the copper paint came out on the MX5 Enkei daisy wheels for the Daihatsu and its been at the back of my mind for a while that a darker bronze colour might suit them better. I was going to go for Volks/Rays racing bronze, but a discussion on another forum led me to look at Fiat ‘Marron Volcane’ instead. As luck would have it, WLW paints on ebay were able to make me up a can and send it out for under £14 so I had a trial run to see how it’d work out.

I masking taped off one tyre and aerosol’d over the copper

it was just a quick 2 coats to see how it would come out, its closer to what I had in mind so I tried out fitting it to the car

Fits over the calipers fine, despite being a 14" wheel (the standard ones are 15") but im not convinced. I think the tyres are too low profile and don’t fill the arches properly which makes it look weirdly proportioned. I think it needs to either have tyres with more sidewall, or to be lowered and/or have spacers fitted to allow the wheels & tyres to fill the arches more. I’m also not sure that the colour contrast really works. Maybe the silver on the boadywork is too purpley but it doesn’t seem to work as well in the metal as I was hoping.

I’ll have a think, but I might just sack the idea off entirely. Maybe I’ll do one more go with some aerosol wheel silver paint and see what they look like then go from there.

On the plus side, the colour is great. Anyone looking for bronze wheels - I can recommend Fiat 750F ‘Marron Volcane’ paint from WLW!

[Granger]

I’ve been really bad at updating this thread, so here is a bit of a recap of the last 9 months!

I ended up binning off the idea with the wheels, and sold them on for what I paid for them. It worked a lot better in my head than in reality but I’m glad I tried at least.

The Sirion got mothballed over winter as there was too much salt on the roads for my liking. I took it out a few times but didn;t do much in the way of miles. After the road salt was washed away in March I began using it more, and I’m please to say its bearing up well.

The exhaust has stayed together much better with the C-Clamp compared to the strap clamp I used before. I did it up really tight, and in retrospect I probably should have used an M10 c-Clamp rather than an M8 one, as you can get more clamping force before the threads strip on the ‘legs’ of the clamp. For now its fine, but definitely a job for the future.

Now that the weather has improved, I have been out a bit more including to a local Japanese car meetup called ‘Daikoku Nights’. The cars there were really diverse but included a few cars in the Daihatsu corner

This chap had recently bought his Copen and it was in lovely condition. It has the JB-DET engine and manual gearbox, thought a lot of the engine bay parts were very familiar from my Sirion. He was meeting up with another guy whose Copen has lost the battle with rust and the two of them spent a solid 2 hours swapping the tonneau cover for the folding hardtop between the bad car and the good.

The other Daihatsu friend was a guy who brought this 1998 Hijet. It had only done 30k miles but was a bit cosmetically worn. He’d done a load of mechanical work to it inlcuding changing the hubs to accept 4x108mm Ford Fiesta mk2 ‘pepperpot’ alloys which I thought looked excellent. He gave my daughter a ride on the back round the field of the venue which she loved.

My Sirion got plenty of positive feedback even amongst some much more impressive machinery which was nice. Most of the cars there were daily drivers rather than show queens so my slightly ‘patinated’ car blended in just fine!

Fast forward to today and the Sirion was in for its MOT. I’m pleased to say it passed with flying colours, getting one single advisory for an oil leak (same as last year). I had a chat with the tester and he said that it wasn’t a leak as such, but just crusted on oiliness on the lower parts of the engine. I may try and clean it up a bit in due course, or just leave it along as a proactive rust prevention system!

I really need to drive it more - I only clocked up about 1000 miles between MOTs in the last year, and about 150 of those miles were a trip to see some other car friends near London in March.

Oh, and my daughter has had a go of driving the Sirion too. She’s only 15 but I have access to a private farm track so took her there to practice driving ahead of her 17th birthday when she can legally begin driving. The Sirion is good for that, as its small and has few mechanical aids so its a ‘simple’ car to begin driving. What’s less good is that the clutch isn’t very forgiving so that was a bit of a baptism of fire for her! She did really well and was able to get the hang of clutch and gearchanging (you can get up to 3rd gear fairly easily along the ~3 mile track) so thats another bonus of the car!

[evilhighway]

Thanks for the update. Those pepper pots do look good on the hijet, Glad MOT went well and well done on teaching your daughter driving. I was really unable to do that with my kids. My wife was great but I was terrible. They kept thinking I was yelling at them, I probably was but more out of fear hahaha. Then they would get angry or upset and it would just end in a terrible situation. I discovered that I really have no patience for driving instructor.
Also Dai’s are great for people to learn in due to as you said little to no aids in driving like with modern cars.

[Granger]

Been a while since I last did an update, life has been pretty busy and the Sirion has just been getting on with things. I tend to take it out for a drive at least once a week but I do need to use it more still.

Ongoing niggles are oil consumption, especially getting on the accelerator after a downhill section off the gas - this results in a comedy blue cloud from the exhaust that is rather hard to hide! For now, I’m just topping the oil up and checking it regularly. The car doesn’t do enough miles for me to lose much sleep over this and the only real fix for it is going to be an engine rebuild with new piston rings which I don’t particularly fancy doing currently!

The other bugbear is selecting first gear from a standstill. Since I replaced the gear linkage bushings, the gearchange has been better, especially on the move. However from a standstill, first gear can be a complete pain to select. It will slot in perfectly as long as the car is moving, even 1mph and it goes into gear without any issue, but as soon as I’m at a standstill, its a complete pig to select. I’ve got to the point of selecting 2nd then trying for first which sometimes helps, but its not right. I think there might be slightly too much left-right (lateral?) play in the linkage possibly.

The other weekend I adjusted up the clutch in case that was the source of my issues but sadly not, the bite point is now much higher on the pedal, but first gear is just as hard to select to I’m now 99% sure its a linkage issue.

I need to get it up of the lift again and see what I can do to adjust out the lateral play a tiny fraction, as I’m concerned being too heavy-handed getting it into gear will have long term consequences.

Its a bit annoying, because its super-slick changing gear otherwise, especially if you’re giving it some beans, it just effortlessly changes ratio, but at a set of traffic lights its just very, very recalcitrant. As its such a ‘cammy’ engine, starting in 2nd isn’t really an option either.

[b_hoves]

I’ve had a similar issue with reverse in my old Sirion and my current L251. It takes a few goes and if I can get the car rolling it helps. Not sure the cause though.

[Butch_Butcher]

[quote=“Granger, post:287, topic:3337”]…oil consumption, especially getting on the accelerator after a downhill section off the gas - this results in a comedy blue cloud from the exhaust…[/quote] This sounds like brittle valve stem seals. Engine overheating is usually the cause. Varnished piston rings would cause smoke while driving uphill also

[Granger]

The engine has done 120k miles/190k kilometers so its probably just generally a bit tired. What would a valve stem seal replacement job be like? Can they be done in situ, without the cylinder head coming off?

If the head needs to come off then I might as well replace the piston rings too but thats a major bit of work!

[Butch_Butcher]

It shouldn’t be tired, at only 120k. They can be replaced, through rotating the crankshaft until the cylinder to get done’s at top dead center. Thereafter, hooking the cylinder to get done onto a compressed air supply will keep the valves intact, so that its valve keepers can get removed, before the seal is to get swapped

[Granger]

The Sirion has been parked up in the garage for a few weeks - I’ve been focuses on living frugally for a couple of months so engine oil for the 3rd car has been a low priority. I went out to check a few things and plugged the battery into my trickly charger and was surprised when it threw an error as voltage was too low. I bit of fiddling later and I got it to start accepting charge and left it overnight.

I was somewhat puzzled when the following morning, after about 14h on charge, it was still only reading about 50% full and 12.2v on the trickly charger. I unplugged it and connected my multimeter to the terminals and watched as the voltage dropped - 12.2 - 12.1 - 12.0 - 11.9 - 11.8 over a matter of seconds.

That’ll be a b0rked battery then!

I took it off the car and put it on charge on the bench in case there was some sort of terrible parasitic drain, but after 2h of charging it did exactly the same so its definitely kippered.

I’m mildly annoyed, the battery is only about 5 years old, and although its only a little 054 battery I expected more from a fairly good name like Varta.

Anyway, I’ll bite the bullet and order some oil and a battery and get the car back up and running. So much for frugality!

[evilhighway]

I’m not sure on battery brands etc but 5 years out of a battery is pretty good.

[Butch_Butcher]

Leaving a battery dead for a long time shortens its life. Anti-theft circuits pose a constant drain on a battery. That’s why its best to disconnect a battery cable, before storage

[Granger]

I’ve clearly been spoiled! I’ve had many cars where the battery is still going strong after 12+ years! grumble grumble grumble, not made they used to be grumble grumble grumble

AHEM.

The car tends to be on trickle charge when unused, I think this time it sat for about 2 weeks in a warm garage so I’m surprised the battery died, but there.

Got a new 054 battery for £38 delivered which should be here tomorrow so I’ll bench charge it then get it fitted at the weekend. I had to go to the scrap metals yard this morning anyway so got a whopping £1.66 ca$$$hback for the old battery so milkybars are on me today!

[marc0tjevp]

We pulled a car from a lot that had a dead Varta in it which had been sitting in the car for ~12 years. Reverse charged it once and boom, back to life. Still going strong 1,5 years later. It holds a charge just fine…

[Granger]

Now the weather in the UK has improved a bit and the roads aren’t salted I’ve been using the Sirion a bit more. I’ve done depressingly few miles in it since its last MOT in summer 2025 which is something I intend to remedy this year.

So far I’ve mostly been using it once or twice a week to go to work and run errands, usually it gets fed E5 fuel only - there are two reasons for this. Firstly, it can sit for a few weeks at a time (often 4+ weeks in winter) and I know that E10 is hydroscopic which will do it no favours; secondly, it doesn’t seem to like E10 very much.

I’ve been using it the last few days - due to some miscalculations I’m broke til payday this month and so it made sense to use the Sirion (which had fuel in it still) rather than spend money filling up one of the other cars. Also, driven sensibly the Sirion is very parsimonious on fuel. To help eke a tiny bit more range out of what I had left, I tipped about 1.5 litres of E10 that I have in a can for the lawnmower into the tank to top off the ~10l of E5 that was in there. This looks to have been a mistake, as the car threw the EML on while I drove to work this morning.

I shall code scan it tonight but I suspect the error will be a misfire detected on at least one cylinder. TBH it ran fine and the code can likely be ignored but its still annoying.

I get paid tomorrow, so will make sure I slosh in some fresh E5 and keep an eye on it.

Does anyone else running a K3-VE2 engine have issues with E10 at all?