Salt eater l701

[samlam]

Hello there

This is my ‘98 Cuore Fun 5-speed with 82kkm on the clock, which I picked up last December. It previously served a single family and it looks like they had fun playing bumper cars with it. But no, for real, pretty astonishing how they managed to scrape such a small car along stuff this much. Anyway, it’s not very pretty cosmetic-wise, from the faded paint to the very neglectful “repaired” sills and dents etc. Haha, but I like it either way, especially the fog lights and rpm gauge.

The Dai now serves as my November–May winter car. The first thing I did to it was throwing a KO HKS filter at it, roars really nice. I also installed Alpine SXE-1725S, an AliExpress active sub and the 2-din head unit from my MX-5. The sound is okay, not more, not less. Noriyaro being a big influence for me getting this chassis, I of course planned to PVC drift it, so a tire sprayer system was mounted. I also changed the oil, which was very much needed. This stuff happened in the time period of me waiting on registration and the car sitting in the backyard.

After some days out there driving the Dai, it gradually turned into a 2-cylinder. Turns out ignition coil connector 3 has a broken-off lock and wiggles itself loose. That needed some fixing.

After a lot of research I picked up ~2m of big pipe from a Kleinanzeigen seller, nice guy and nice price. I went with a DN500 KG2000 drainage pipe, it’s a little different from the grey PVC pipes you usually see being used in Japan or USA. But I figured this will be fine, and we don’t have these grey pipes in Germany to my knowledge. Cutting it into even rings was quite the mess..

I spent a lot of time figuring out a fitting wheel and tire combination, and after many failed attempts and not finding 4x12” 4x100 wheels for a long time, I finally have a working setup. Unfortunately the winter kicked in and doing PVC drifting on ice doesn’t work. So this project is on pause until my skid pad place thaws out.

Driving the Daihatsu around spirited actually isn’t that bad on the stock suspension, it does not have as much body roll as I expected. But I couldn’t stand looking at this large fender gap anymore. This being a low-budget car and me being in Germany, I put it on 30mm/30mm TA Technix lowering springs. It looks very much normal now, not low at all. So I think the cops won’t ever bother to pull me over for it. I can’t recall the comfort being different than before, but it understeers a bit more now. That sucks. I’m currently still in the process of shortening a Sirion rear sway bar to combat that. And yes, I know you shouldn’t weld spring steel. (there was no Copen at the junkyard)

In the spirit of making the engine bay a little nicer, I polished the valve cover. Looks out of place for now, but I hope I can get everything less crusty and rusty soon. One problem is that the two lower bolts of the heat shield were already completely rounded off and rusted. Cleaning up the heat shield without undoing the front bumper to drill out those bolts will be impossible, I guess.

Btw, it looked scary under that valve cover lol, this thing has seen 4 oil changes at max.

[Matiz]

Hello there

Nice write up, following!

Thanks for lowering photo

Did you bought this 989 at license plates? Great touch!

[samlam]

thank you! yea that’s my plate

[samlam]

I got around to cutting and welding the Sirion sway bar. It fitted without issues on the Cuore. Time will tell how long this weld holds.

First impressions were good, the rear followed along better and it took some stress off the front tires. But overall handling still felt a bit numb to me. I then tweaked the tire pressures from 1.8 bar square to 1.9 bar front and 2.2 bar rear, as well as adding one rotation of toe-out on the left tie rod. The steering wheel wasn’t straight to begin with, it was slightly tilted to the left and now it’s slightly tilted to the right. But wow it feels much better on turn-in and overall now. The car rotates on lift-off, and the 155 tires aren’t overwhelmed as quickly. It actually offers a pretty reasonable amount of grip before it understeers.

It might be the current weather, but it also doesn’t one tire fire under acceleration while turning as much anymore. This obviously is subjective, but these tweaks really woke the car up for me.

[samlam]

The registration for this car is coming to a break till november. I’ve had some more fun with it since February.

To start off, the exhaust was falling apart in multiple spots and was therefore pretty annoying and droney. It was also banging against the chassis in corners. Turned out the rear muffler was empty too. And i didnt need that much noise, the intake is plenty enough. That’s why I stole the intact exhaust from my spare L701 and chucked it under the main car. Not without complications though, the EJ-VE pipe is noticeably smaller in diameter and has a bad bottleneck from the O2-sensor hole. There can be no losing HP in this Car so I cut & welded the EJ-DE Pipe on to that. While doing that i threw little style at it hehe.

With a trip to Spreewaldring coming up i decided to give my hot air intake a little bit more un-hot air. The heatshield was also freshened up as part of the same step.

Said Spreewaldring trip was very fun. Car did a good job on free Yokohama A539’s and was only 14sec slower than my Miata lol. Having no oil temp gauge is bliss. Great budget track time 10€/15min

Ah yes, camber was added in the front after the first track day. Powerflex camber bolts on max adjustment, pretty easy install. I had to do it twice though because I was too tired for thinking logical. Worth the 30€ all day, it’s a notable handling improvement. And doing a string/stick alignment afterwards is also not hard on these cars, because its just the front, and if its not 100% true who cares about the wear on these trash tires. I like to have some toe out for fun-ness.

A few weeks ago I tackled PVC drifting again. First on a small parking lot to get the hang of it and then at an open drift day at Lausitzring. It works, it builds skill, it’s fun, it’s great.

A ring lasts about 60min on wet surface. And it takes me at least 20min to change both by myself and drive off again, with not so optimized workflow. Having a second set of wheels would be good.

So yeah that will be it for me and this car for now.

video footage of me driving it can be seen on my IG @car.aznable

[Matiz]

Haha, some kind of telepathy heh! An week ago I aquired M300 sirion swaybar and also have huge thinkering!

That was my first idea, just like yours, to cut it half in the middle , shorten, put an collar, re-weld the bar, slide the collar and weld it too. But swaybar main feature is to be torsion spring, so I’ll rather try to convert the ”legs” to solid by making this collar twice at both kinks, and leave center section somewhat elastic. Similar to racing swaybars, but with welding instead splined bar.

Great tread, “subscribed” ! These EJ 989 license plates rocks!