Okay so a few weeks ago, moog got on his rant
horse, thats what i like to call it
to talk about his subaru forester and all the things he didn't like about it
i am partly to blame for that, being tha encouraged
and organised for the purchase of his Subaru Forester
that you saw in the Forester episode at the end of season 3
but today thats not what i'm talking about, we're not talking about subarus, nissans
we're talking about little cars. One little car in particular is the blue turd
which started its life as a stock daihatsu cuore, bought it from a wrecking yard.
No, bought it from a Dealer (might as well have been a wrecking yard)
called "why walk cars". It seemed okay, the panels
werenn't brilliant, the engine not brilliant, a little bit smokey
a little bit leaky BUT it was the best i could find and the price was right
it was a couple of months before the engine blew and
something had to be done with it, i'd been researching 1.3 litre K3VE swaps
which is what happened. I found a Daihatsu Sirion GTVI
a few months ago and swapped the whole front in, you can see that video
about doing up the Blue Turd.
So Now, the things that make little cars awesome:
anyone who owns a little car already knows this stuff, anyone who doesn't, is probably thinking
wjhy would you waste your time driving around in such a little car... I can touch
the other side of it without even reachign across, there isn't much room to move
there isn't much room to spread out. But they are little sacrifices you make for the fact that you have a car\
that not only uses almost no fuel, its light on everything
not just on fuel, its light on parts, maintenance, tyres
you're not dragging around quite as much weight as you are in a big car, meaning that
you're not going to wear it out as quickly, you're not being as rough on
hubs and CV shafts and all these things
the car just has less impact, that's not to say it has
less impact on the amount of fun you can have while driving it, IF you've
got one with the right kind of setup. Now, a good example of this would be anyone in the UK who's watching
you guys have had smaller cars longer than us, i know thats driven a lot by
registration tax, fuel costs, things like that
you probably undestand, there's a BIG market for hot hatches, we don't really have that as much in Australia
because for a long time it was just
as expensive to run a big car, fuel cheap, parts cheap etc
that's slowly changing, so little cars are coming into thir own and
you know that because the price of Cuores has actually gone UP
in the last few years since we've been playing with them, we used to be able to get them for between 500-1000 dollars
now you'll be lucky to find one for less than 3-3.5 thousand dollars
so that says something about the landscape and fuel etc
specfiically some things about THIS car that make it awesome
firstly, the size: it's nimble, you can get it into any
parking spot that you'll ever find. I'm sure its not going to score highly in crash tests
but, the other thing is,a lot of that comes down to HOW you drive the car
and if you're driving like a crazy person then i dont think ANY size car is
really going to help you much. So you drive a different way, ask anyone whose ever owned a motorbike
about defensive riding and a LOT of that comes into play in a small car like this too.
So, what else makes it awesome?
Okay so we said its easy to park, what else?
Handling wise, the car is really light, that means you dont need a lot of power
to have a lot of fun with it, as you know its all about power to weight ratios
so, if a car is light then you don't need as many killowatts to make it FEEL fast
and with the 1litre that it comes with; doesn't feel fast.
47kw and 100nm of torque
around that number is never going to feel fast
with a 1.3l k3ve swap, it starts to feel fast
still not actually quick - really, i think its got about 50-55kw
at the front wheels on a Dyno
that's still not big power, but in a shell thats around 700kg
thats a pretty good power to weight ratio and that menas that you can actually
get in and out of traffic and do all the things that make a car much more enjoyable
YES you can't go a buy them stock that way, so maybe this car isn't the best example
but there are plenty of other cars around the same size, with the same size engines
starlets, suzuki swift GTI's
are 1.3l so there's many cars out there with similar thing, i know a lot of Honda people are into that
if you get one with a decent engine, not the 1.5L carby piece of
garbage that we had in our civic. Which brings me
so thats engines, what about drivelines?
well, obviously you're gonna have heaps more fun in a manual small car
than you are in something auto, so thats something else to think about. This particular
gearbox is particularly nice, its smooth, it shifts
really easily, its a cable clutch but because its so small, it doesn't take
a lot of effort to operate. The original car was 2002 model
so now the dash is out of a 2005 model car
so that's an update there. Steering wheel, airbags front and drivers passenger
airbag, we also swapped the whole interior, so we've got the GTVI seats front and rear.
The carpet is the cuore carpet with GTVI floor mats
its the original door trims, stuff like that
you've got wind up windows, normally not a fan because you can't reach the other side to wind those up
not a big deal in this car, as i said, you can touch the other side
without leaning over much, so that's not as bigger deal as it would be in a big car.
power mirrors, thats about it - you DO get aircon, it's not connected in this car
but you do have aircon if you're into that kind of thing... comfort.
So this car has been taken ot the track a few times
both in NSW and Victoria, its 1000km
drive down the hightway to get to Calder park to go to forum battle which was
on last year, i've done that drive a LOT of times in fast cars, slow cars
... it was perfectly comfortable, it's a bit noisier
its not gonna have as good ride as a mercedes which might be the idea car for that
kind of trip BUT it made it and it cost about
$60 in petrol, and that is probably the biggest
point to talk about. THIS car in it's current form uses about
half the amount of fuel that my Subuaru's have
an average done up Subaru might be hitting around 12L per 100km
if you're using less than that you're either lucky or you drive like a grandma
but this will get 6L per 100km, with the 1L that came in it
that blew up, that was actually doing about 6.8
now it uses less fuel, and that has a bit to do with the fact that its pulling around a much lighter car than it was intended to
and the engine was designed and built as an economy engine
it was built with Toyota so its a Daiahtsu car
but the engines are very similar to ones found in Toyota Echo's and overseas
they mix and match them.
So 6L per 100km, 80kw at the flywheel from factory which ends up being about
50-60 at the front wheels. No Limited Slip Diff so
thats easily fixed, its around $500 to stick a
different centre in it, which gives you plenty of grip. In the dry its not really an issue
in the dry around a sharp corner, you're going to be spinning the inside wheels
in the wet.... lets not talk about the wet.
And probavbly the next most important thing to talk about is modifying
you can add turbos, do exhausts, free up intakes, change the tune do all those kind of things
with an engine like this that's designed for low emissions
sometimes there's a limit to how far you can push them because they are designed to put out
as mimimal amount of pollution
so the 1.3 is probably capable of a bit more power than what this engine comes with.. you CAN get turbocharged
factory engines for these, they come out in the Daihatsu YRV, which
we get in Australia but we don't get them turbocharged. In Japan you can get a YRB
turbo which come auto only, a tiptronic auto
they never came in manual becasue the manual gearbox can't handle the amount of power that they are putting out
which to me, says good things. As far as
getting front cuts for those, that's something we are going to look to do, hopefully to
a cuore weather its this one or another one. But there's a lot of competition
from the guys in Malaysia, so anyone there who is watching this who has a K3VET
the price of the cuts is expensive beacause of you guys, there's just a huge demand
we've been over to Japan a number of times with the show, firstly to
go and buy an S15, then we did our Turbos and Temples film, we've been to Autosalon
we've noticed every time that we've gone
is Kei cars, you probably already know we're a fan of these things, and we're fans
of the setup and the way the registration happens in Japan where the registration and taxes
are less on small cars, there doesn't seem to be a real reason to not do it here
a lot of people will say they don't pass the same safety tests
we've got bigger and faster roads, well anyoen who has been there and particularly who has driven there
would see that they have 10 times as many highways as we do
they have 110 zones the same as Australia and people sit on there in their Kei cars
all day long, we don't have a market for it.. maybe it would take away from the market that
we have, there's probavbly a bunch of reasons they don't do it, BUT it IS a JDM car
you buy it locally, but its full imported, you can stick a JDM sticker
on it and go i'm awesome (if thats you're thing)
but what you can't do is stance it easily.
People who are into sticking heaps of camber on their wheels and parking
in a carpark and starting at it all day... (trollface)
it's not actually that easy to do that and there's a reason for it
its got a solid beam rear axle so you have zero camber adjustment on the back
to put camber in the back you have to cut your rear axle and reweld it
there's a whole bunc hfo safety reasons why thats not usually the done thing
theres a whole bunch of reasons why its illgal, weathers its possible to get engineered i don't know
if you think it is, comment and let us know - i've seen it done
not sure what it does for handling in a car that's this small
but as i said you have to cut and shut your rear axles to get any camber
the fronts a different story, you can get coil overs, you can put camber pins in
do all that kind of stuff. Interestingly enough, when we did the swap in this car, the GTVI
front K frame is actuall wider than the cuore, meaning that we got
a whole bunch of extra camber on the front, which we weren't chasing
but it doesn't do bad things for the handling you end up with about 2-3 degrees
you're going to wear the inside edge of the tyres a bit more, but it actually makes the car
feel a lot more engaging to drive. And as we've proved on the track when we've been a few times
it just grips, it grips handling wise, it just doesn't grip when you try and put power
down, thats something that can be sold with an LSD. Until you own one
and, drive it daily and get used to it, you'll never really
understand the grin you get knowing you burning stuff all fuel
yoiu're making minimal impact on the environment, you're still going as quick as you need to go
you can still have a great, engaging drive without having to have a big car
and as someone who owns a bunch of different cars, HAS owned a bunch of different cars
i can say that cars like THIS are the ones that you'll regret selling
there's just something about them, the combination of all
these things, that make it stick, that make it
really hard to get rid of. Its really hard to go to something else. Its the reaosn i can just own
one thirsty expensive turbo car, i can't stand sitting in traffic
knowing i'm just burning fuel for no good reason
with all that power knowing you can't use it. In a car ike this
you're burning the minimum amount of fuel possible, the fact you're stuck in traffic you can't do anything about
maybe you dont get heated leather seats, but do you really need them? that's the question
if you wanna go fast, you can make them fast without introducing unreliability cause again you can make them fast
when you're only dragging around 700kg worth of weight so
you know, 100kw at the front wheel of a car like this is
like having 200 at the wheels in a skyline or a silvia
which is considered quick
so its no secret that i'm a fan of these small cars, its no secret that MCM started
with a car like this, and we continue to use them whereever we can, continue to own them
to drive them - so small cars. Maybe not as much to rant about as
if i have a subaru forester that cost 30 something thousand. The total spend
on this car was only around $3000 including servicing it, including all the parts to make it
do. There's really just nothing to
complain about...
End.