Pics - My $850 micra now on the road with G4 coilovers, centrelines, exhaust etc

Well, it seems strange as I've been hanging around these forums for almost 2.5 years and despite owning a micra, I've never had it running nor ridden in it until today.

All I can say is that the micra reminds me of my old Starlet turbo - very chuckable and light. However, going hard through a roundabout reminded me acutely the difference between RWD and FF. ^_^

After a 2 year wait, I finally got the RWC today and drove her for the first time to the Transport Dept for rego and then enjoyed the drive home.

Some pics first:












Now, for those who can be bothered to read on, some specs + useless info:

1995 LX hatchback
13" Gemini centrelines
G4 Coilovers
Whiteline panhard rod
Whiteline anti-lift kit
Whiteline camber bolts
Whiteline strut brace
Whiteline rear sway bar
Custom stainless steel 4-1 headers
2" exhaust + muffler
k&n air filter

I originally bought this car off a forum member (Daniel) about 2 years ago with a broken timing chain for $850. Another member in Melbourne supplied a replacement motor for $200 which came out of an accident wreck.

What took so long was the wait to get headers done - I was going to shell out the $$$ for the IMPUL headers but my mechanic mates decided to undertake the challenge.

I saved big $$$ in the process but as everything was done at mates rates, it was a matter of getting to the micra only when time permits. To date, this has probably cost me around $5k ... crazy how the suspension bits cost more than the car itself.

Thanks goes to the follow people for realising this project:

- Brad Summerville from ATS for the motor swap
- Al Lovett from Pedders Suspension, Browns Plains for the suspension work
- Lindsay for fabricating the custom exhaust headers
- Nick NSM for providing hard to find parts
- LAM666 for the air filter box
and many others along the way.

Of course, during the 2 years of the car sitting around, I was able to stock up on bits. Yet to be fitted are some H4 HID lights, MP3 head unit, 6" bazooka sub, some Jaycar splits, Rhino alarm, Pivot shift light, Pivot Speedmaster X digital speedo, some 2" gauges and other stuff which are all lying on my garage floor.

Also on the cards is a $50 roller paint job - have already done it once to my MX5 so the micra should prove no hurdle. I am yet to decide on the colour but it's looking like it'd be either yellow or more likely orange at this stage. Am likely to keep the bumpers black though as they remind me of the AE86's which I am fond of.

Anyway, it's time to finally enjoy the car! Thanks for reading!

nice what spring rates you go in the g4's and how you like them. I just got some for mine. There on there way.

Keep it white! Please! Looks awesome mate. Looks like you've still got the A/C compressor and lines in there - is that still all working?

Looks tough though with the coilovers and the centrelines.

---dens

NICE!!!! :P i like!

as dens said... keep it white... very nice the way it is now... :)

Nice. In the 4th photo theres a lose wire just above the alt (An earth wire)

I think those Centrelines make it look real tough. Nice clean look.

Your mate did a good job on the headers. Should make up a few for forum members.

pics of the speedo and interior please....

That is a very cool looking Micra, great work! :)

I agree on the keeping it white too, but hey it's your car. Could look very cool in yellow or orange too.

looked up pivot and they have some interesting gauges....especially the fuel meter....... all k11 compatible, ex the obdII stuff :(

That thing looks phat, love the centrelines, needs to be lower :p. should put a lip on the front bumper

I love the alternator standoff pipes.. can I steal that idea? I'd change to some black ag pipe for the intake tho

oh, I should say, it looks gr8.


New pole for the week.

Should dodgy haro keep his car white?

votes yes:4
votes no: 0

looks like any sort of headers could be used cuz of the alternator standoffs? might be a mod for those thinking about hurricanes (instead of modding the headers make the standoffs that haro's done)

So the alternator standoffs aren't factory? Hmm.. could indeed be useful for those wanting to use hurricanes, but how much clearance is there with those custom ones? Looks tight enough as it is..

---dens

nice.. got spacers? lol...impul use a similar idea.. thou not as extreme :) paint it orange mate. white's plain as. would look fat orange. invest in a new overflow bottle 2 :D

I think the colour won't make that much difference, it's the clean simple look that impresses. It highlights the overall nice design/lines in the K11 shell that went AWOL in the K12. A fresh coat of white would look great. Yellow would be something different though. Could do Focus XR5 metalic orange?

Nice ride mate,are the the guy that brought the rollcage,black crystal headlights and coilovers from Brad? A mate of mine said that he closed up shop aswell?

Hi ppl ... thanks for the comment ...

Tony, I'm not the guy who bought the rollover cage - I was tempted and it was offered to me however I'm keeping the car civil and standard for now. Unfortunately Brad closed his workshop few weeks back but is now working at ATS Geebung. You can catch him over at the Auszoku site (www.auszoku.net) under the username Phatsunny. I take it you must be the silver micra owner who had it at his workshop for a while?

The rate of the G4 coilovers are the normal ones so it's about 5kg front and 3kg rear from memory. For street use, it is just about perfect for normal driving. I have the settings one up from the softest and it's a very compliant ride.

Then again, I am yet to take it to the track or wind up the dampening so I can't really say what it's like when at the limit (I had whiteline springs in my old car before and thought they were good but on the track, they were all over the place).

The rear is as low as it will go however I was told I could lower it a bit more if I started to remove plates and did a few more mods. The front can go lower a bit more.

As for the alternator brackets, they were fabricated to retain the factory aircon. I don't know if they will work with the hurricane extractors. I have a pair of hurricanes too which I am sure was the base for my current set of extractors. Not sure either as to who made the spacers but I know a new longer belt had to be fitted as such.

If you want to find out more, best to give Al Lovett a call at Pedders Suspension Browns Plains on 3800 4288. He's very approachable, knows more about the car's setup and pretty much co-ordinated the final phase of the micra build up. I know that the micra drew a following on his street as he used to drive it up and down for tests each day and lots of ppl would see the car. I'm not sure if it was him or Lindsay that ended up fabricating the alternator brackets. No dyno figures available though re the exhaust unfortunately.

As for colour, I am having some thoughts about keeping it white too as it looks good already. I am playing with ideas but the one that is sticking in my mind if I keep it white is to get it real dirty except for the centrelines which will be polished and go for a 'rat rod' theme. It already reminds me of Shane Bingham's old AE86 as is which was real knocked up but had character.

Apart from the centrelines, I also have these set of 13" mesh rims to throw on - they're from an E21 BMW but made by Performance (think minilites) here in Australia and are only 5.5" wide:



Already started the usual stuff with getting a new car - changed oil, sparkplugs, some cheap seat covers, my old momo wheel ...

Tomorrow, will strip the carpet out and remove all the old stereo wiring plus bit of a clean-up. If I have time, will fit my Pivot Speedmaster digital speedo as my speedo is broken (goes up to 200 kph as soon as it gets above 10km/h).

Just a quite pic of the interior - sorry but it's late at night ATM ...



Then the alarm - once that's in, it'll be either the sound system or HID H4's next. Enough to keep me busy for a while ... :)

Is that a tacho installed there? That's what I'm planning to do too. Do you have any pics of the wiring for it or any hints for installing it? Cheers

cool, keep us up to date... surely there are enuff micras to have a cruise, meet or whatever around southern brisbane/gold coast?

you'd farkin think so...

Hmmm ... weekend update ... unfortunately I didn't get to drive her over Saturday as I planned. Did an oil change late Friday night and was unable to get the oil filter out as it was stuck good from having sat untouched for over 3 years. Used the screwdriver method and only ended up leaving a mess on the floor and ripping the cannister in the process.

Bought the right wrench filter removal tool today and managed to get it out. Then refilled with oil and got onto cleaning up the car etc:



I then proceeded to cleaning up all the loose wiring, both in the engine bay and the cabin. Everything was wired up in an unconventional way (ie. crossovers for splits right behind head unit, 2 sets of speaker cables running through the doors etc). Upon pulling off the front panels, I found the previous owner had left an alarm unit there.



Once I had pulled all the amp wiring, speaker wiring, alarm wiring etc I was left with this mess at the end of the day:



The great thing though after going through this mess was to clean up all the wiring and at least determine what wires were what.



Re the tacho - it wasn't working at first but I managed to find out that it was wired to the head unit wiring so when the previous owner removed the head unit, the power to the tacho was cut. I finally got it working - was quite simple as it was previously wired to have its internal light on at all times.

Basically it's just 3 wires - one for ground, one for ignition (only works when the key is turned) and the last one was spliced into the following wire in the engine bay hanging off the motor (circled pink):



Good news is I also resolved my broken speedo which always read 200 kph as soon as the car started moving. I had a Pivot speedmaster which is like a LED version of the Apexi RSM. It's a bit cheaper and it is compatible with the K11 March.

Once I located the ECU, I spliced a couple of wiring and managed to hook this unit up with the tacho at the same time:



It's a bad pic taken at night but I finally mounted the unit just above the steering wheel. At least it works now along with the tacho so I have full readings again.



Just sucks as I am sure when I install the air/fuel ratio gauge later on, I will be doing the whole process again to get to the ECU.

Anyway, that's all I got done today - back to the usual grind but it'd be interesting driving to work in the micra tomorrow.

Probably leave it till next weekend until I install either the alarm unit or sound system. Head says alarm but heart says stereo.

4300k H4 Bi-Xenon HID's could maybe be done on a weeknight too but I need to leave space for the alarm speaker in the engine bay somewhere. But that's it for me today!

nice work mate! good photo diary you got going

You must know you electrical wiring well since I would be standing there scratching my head wondering where to start

Thanks heaps for the info mate. I'll have to give the tacho install a shot once I've got some spare cash for one.

Electrical wiring is not hard - all self taught ... start with wiring up a head unit and once you figure out how things go, it's common sense. Re hooking up the speed meter, was fortunate it was compatible with the micra so had full diagrams of where to splice into the ECU.

Well, this will probably be my last update for a while - not much else to do but fit both alarm and stereo which I'll get around to this weekend. Only other thing is perhaps a $50 roller paint job down the line however I am toying with the idea of a rat rod / hoodride theme like the infamous 'bucket' which is the ultimate rat rod IMHO:

http://www.eurowerks.org/showthread.php?p=89433

Apart from that, will just enjoy driving the car as it is.

Oh yeah, and lastly some pics from earlier tonight. I installed my cheap Ebay HID H4 bi-xenon kit from China:



It came with some complimentary white/blue LED intermediate lights so I swapped them out of boredom - the difference:



Then trial testing the circuit to see if everything fires up and works. I swapped the headlight fuses for 20A ones:



The final result after some adjustment to the headlights - they are damn bright being 4300k ones ... no doubt it'd blind oncoming cars but I rather they hate me than not be aware of my small car's presence at night ... ^_^




And these are only the low beams - the high beams are even brighter! >:)

were the headlights for Left Hand Drive or right hand drive, the ones I have seen on Ebay have tended to be for LHD cars and the beam angles are different.

HIDs on cars without projectors or reflectors in the headlight to cut them off are so feakin annoying to drive past

that said, you'll be able to see pretty well

he's got standard headlights mate.. just a hid bulb kit.. been wanting to get a set for ages.. only thing stopping me is the friggin wiring.. so messy, boxes, resistors etc all over the joint (the ones i've seen atleast anyway.. and i've spent ages getting rid of most of my wiring out of the engine bays.. can't go past how they light up the night thou.. tis tops!

If you want a set Turbo let me know.
My friend is selling these HID kits around the $200 mark.

4500K 6000K and 8000K

there not exactly the same as the ones in the pics.

nah, i'm good.. hate the messy setup. there's hi/lo kits on ebay for under $100 delivered.