The history of the MSC's best known K10

On the back on Neil's post about his K11 I thought I would create one for my old K10 and with Dan's help can make quite a long, detailed thread about the car and what's happened to it over the years.

Well, the car was purchased when I was 17 by my parents back in 1997 for my first car, at first I wasn't exactly keen and knew absolutely nothing about micra's let alone cars, I'd never really had a keen interest in them at all.

Due to medical reasons the car sat in the garage for nearly 2 years, came out occasionally to be drove and cleaned up to keep the car in reasonable condition, until I was able to pass my test, which I did just after I was 19.

Once I passed my test, I began to take more of an active interest in the car, I searched the net and came across the MMN ( Modded Micra Network) It wasn't long before I was attending my first event and then I was hooked. ( I blame it all on Ed and Neil really! lol)

The car remained standard for a period of a few months until I did my first modification which was a set of TSW 13" cylex alloy wheels, after this came some colour coding of the original LS wing mirrors and bumpers, which I did myself in the garage at home.

I did a few what we would call chav modifications in the form of plastic light covers in blue!!! lol! Max Power stickers lol!, stuck on tailpipe lol!.......... and few more.

The images below show's the colour coding on the bumpers and mirrors, the chav modifications lol! and the one off custom fog lights in place of the original indicators, indicators where relocated in the side lights.

After this was done I left the car for a short while and just added things like an Aiwa tape HU and pioneer front speakers with an addition of an imboliser fitted by Mark of HYDE-FI ( I also hold him responsible for my ICE interests lol!) This is where my relationship with Mark began and over the time I owned the Micra he did several jobs on it and has even worked on the corolla.

Not content with the current look of my car I searched the net again for bodywork companies and found that no one did anything for the K10 as a direct fit. This is where I was noticed by Ed to be very proactive in searching out parts and additions for the K10 and I then began to work with Ed on the MMN and there I also learnt some HTML skills and helped out with the website and created my own section that is still available for people to see now, the latest revision is further down.

Next is where I possibly made by biggest and most regretful mistake in the entire time I owned the car, I went along to Carlton Automotive to get a Delta evo kit adapted to fit my K10.

I had a delta evo front bumper, delta 1 skirts, TC3 roof spoiler, trooper bonnet scoop, all fitted very badly! This kit cost me £700 included spraying and although the spraying was very good the kit was fitted so poorly and the workmanship was terrible.

Below are several shots of the kit fitted in various stages, originally the bumper was very low and hitting everything, so was chopped in the middle and altered, again very badly. I also later added Momo alloys in the form of 15's which improved on the look slightly on the 13" alloys.

Prior to having the kit fitted by Carlton Automotive, I travelled to my local alloy wheel centre and had my powerflow exhaust fitted, -35m PI lowering springs and boge turbo gas shocks fitted and later on the 15" momo wheels. This is Jeff Fowkes in Ibstock and I have since been back for 2 sets of alloys on the corolla.

The car now was beginning to take it's modified shape, although as time went on (believe me, it didn't take long) and the more I looked into carlton auto's and what they had done the more I grew to hate the car and what they had done to it! So I then found out about Melton Firbe Glass through James T (nis) and booked in for massive changes once again. Thanks to James for his help with lifts back and forth and bodykit decision helping

The Delta bumper was removed and sold on, the skirts where probably fitted, the bonnet scoop removed and fitted with a clio 16v variant, the grill cut out and meshed and a new replacement bumper in the form of a nova GTB bumper.

At the same time the tailgate was smoothed.

Images below show pics of the kit fitted, it went through various stages of alterations, including the rear bumper and valance until I was happy with it. The front bumper was finally altered to a wide mouth look which will be shown further on.

The rear bumper, originally a standard LS bumper was smoothed and the fog light recesses removed. Pug 106 rear valance added and smoothed in, side extended and lowered to match how the front bumper was fitted.

The front bumper was originally fitted as a normal GTB nova bumper, however I had this smoothed out on fitting, a few weeks after fitting I wasn't happy with how the skirts sat lower then the front bumper and had a valance made for it which didn't look quite right. So I came up with the idea with help from Neil, which in fact he contributed a lot in idea's to the bodystyling. The Nova wide mouth GTB bumper was born and in fact the only one in the UK modified in this way.

The bonnet I was never completely happy with and melton didn't fit it as I intended which was to have it completely blended in so it was more of a bonnet bulge, but was an improvement over the trooper bonnet scoop that carlton auto's fitted so poorly.

After several trips back and forth to Melton the car was taken to a storage unit for a couple of weeks and this is where Mark and I worked on fitting the install.

The rear seats where removed and install began to take shape.

The instal went through various changes, started off with basic equipment and slowly began to upgrade and change bits and pieces. My pride and joy was a clarion flip out screen tft headunit that actually cost x4 times the amount of a standard LS, but hey like that ever stopped me.

Images below shows various WIP stages of the install where I first began with budget Rally Calliber amps, a 10" rockford punch sub, components front and rear ( NO 6X9's ) and a pioneer HU.

Upgrades to the system where eventually Clarion dvd player mentioned above, Infinity components for rears, Infinity perfects for the fronts and replacing both amps and sub with genesis sub amp and a rockford 12" sub.

The install was given a bit of lighting in the amp rack, strobe lighting at the rear and Ed's LEDS in the front, thanks to Ed for fitting these at Donny one year.

Like I mentioned above I hold Ed and Mark fully responsible in giving me the ICE bug, I was once never interested and day I sat by Ed's old blue K10 being absolutely blown away with his setup at Santa Pod, I never seemed to turn back.

The standard LS interior was removed and replaced with the interior from a super S that I picked up for a bargain at the scrap yard for all of £80!!!

I made several alterations to the door cards, re-sprayed the dash black and several other small changes.

I made my own custom white dials to go in. I don't seem to have any images of my clarion dvd, so if anyone has any and could post them, that would be great.

Many standard items where changed with the following:

• Momo Steering Wheel
• Momo Foot pedals
• Momo Gear Knob
• Momo sill plates
• Momo Handbrake sleeve

Images show the interior and also an image of old racer seat covers that covered the nasty brown ls seats for a while!

Over time the car had lots of experimental tasks carried out on it, such as the wider vented brake discs and callipers, twin carb set up that went from bad to worse unfortunately.

The custom 4-1 manifold that was a one off until some other people had one made, the manifold really is a piece of art, welding so superbly and very well put together. A strut brace that was sourced from germany, when slim (howard) found a company that supplied them and we ordered a few over

Big thanks to Andy_b for the countless times he came over to help me out with fitting brakes and generally lending a hand where he could.

James T (Nis) got the engine cover chromed at a TVR chroming plant and we where going to offer these to club members for a small fee, but no one took this up.

This shows the completed kit by melton firbe glass and sprayed by Barwell Bodyworks. Not that you can see it in all but one photo it was sprayed in pearl flip in pearlesant blue, lovely colour and very subtle.

As you can see the bumper is now much wider then the original.

I tinted the windows myself and with some effort managed to get a very good finish. The car was also fitted with many electronic goodies, such as remote locking, remote start and electric windows, boot popper and a few other bits.

Mark also fitted an intermitant wiper system that was he own custom design as well as the remote start module.

I travelled up and down the country with the MSC to many shows and that also brought about a few publicity articles, one in revs, fast car and a local newspaper.

I attended JAE and Donny for many years with the car and in that time the car inspired many to modify k10's, a lot of people in this club even today still talk of the car that got them into modifying and although not to everyone's taste, this is why I think people remember the car as they do.

Yes, it wasn't the quickest car on the road, but not for the lack of trying to put more performance into the car, but it certainly stood out, at times for the wrong reason and at times it looked stunning.

Through the time I owned the car it went through;
4 sets wheels
3 Head units
3 revisions to the install
2 paint jobs
3 major bodywork changes from standard colour coding - Carlton Auto's kit - Melton Firbe glass kit which included the following:
4 bodywork revisions to the front bumper
3 bodywork revisions to the rear bumper
2 bodywork revisions to the bonnet/scoop
Images below show a pic taken at JAE, one from santa pod and my local newspaper feature. The last 2 show the change from the momo's to the fox alloys that are currently still on the car.

http://www.micra.org.uk/kevsk10/ - link to an old section on a previous MSC website.

http://www.micra.org.uk/kevsk10/images/ - random images

http://www.micra.org.uk/kevsk10/miscimages/ -random images

Shortly after the nightmare with the carbs on the rolling road setup that unfortunately cost me £200 in labour, several hundreds of pounds in getting the manifold made I began to loose heart in my k10 and wanted to move on to something else as I'd done everything I wanted to it and everytime I tried performance modifications it always went wrong.

At one point I was soo very nearly close to changing my mind as Ed offered to fit the 1.6 from the almera and we began to make plans for this, but when working out the costing I could not justify to spend more ££££'s on a 13 year old car, so then;

Dan came forward with an interest of buying the car and we agreed a sum and I sold the car to him in December 2003. While this was happening I had agreed to purchase Ian's 2.0 K11 that was being fitted with the SR20DE from a Primera GT.

This was being put together by a small garage in Leicester that usually worked on Fords and didn't make too good a job of the conversion. I took possession of the car in January 2004 and I knew straight away that this car need ££££'s spending on it to get the conversion right and I wasn't happy with several things such as driveshafts, lack of power steering, brakes, etc.

So I then began to look for a replacement and ended up with 1.6 Corolla si and did pretty much the same thing, but probably just without the amount of revisions I made to the micra, I kind of did things just the once with the Corolla.

The images below show the car from near standard through to the bodykit, re-spray, my old beloved Clarion HU, my new HU and screen setup

So I'll let Dan finish off with current images and major changes in the bodywork and paint finish that is just being completed now.

great reading kev it it wasn't for that car id never love micra as much as i do

nice car mate, wanna tell me how you put thoes vented brakes/calipers on the front?

i always meant to ask, whe i seen the car at the NE meet there was a bit of paper in the hole thing of the sub on the floor - i almost pickled it out an threw it away but i refrained...is it there for a reason???

Very good mate

ohc_turbo said:

nice car mate, wanna tell me how you put thoes vented brakes/calipers on the front?

Click to expand...

very simple mate eitheir get the calipers from www.brakeparts.co.uk or modify the standard calipers by cutting them down to allow the bigger discs.

can you still supply pre modified calipers kev?

btw this is the cheapest place to buy the vented disc's new i garuntee!

so what discs are you using? K11

no mate they are k10 vented disc, k11 brakes can be used but you have to replace the k10 wheel hubs with k11 ones complete with k11 caliper disc and pads

so what k10 came with vented discs? mine are non vented

they never came with vented discs standard mate only the figaro which is really a k10 underneath had them. but the fit direct on the k10

Speedle said:

very simple mate eitheir get the calipers from www.brakeparts.co.uk or modify the standard calipers by cutting them down to allow the bigger discs.

can you still supply pre modified calipers kev?

Click to expand...

The best thing for you to do is use a dremmil and trim a few mm off the inside of your original calliper, this way you can measure up as you go.

No need to purchase the callipers to go with the discs as they are damn expensive for all of a few mm to make the vented discs fit.

Kev

Nice Post.
You must of had a good job when you were 19 to be able to afford to do this to your car!

Big_ben said:

i always meant to ask, whe i seen the car at the NE meet there was a bit of paper in the hole thing of the sub on the floor - i almost pickled it out an threw it away but i refrained...is it there for a reason???

Click to expand...

Well here I am lol, and first of all I will start by answering this. At that meet someone (can't remember who lol) had put a bit of paper in the port to see the air coming from it, but had left it there I think lol.

Great read Kev, read every word and it brought back a few memories of my old days of the MSC. First I will just give a very quick history of my micra experience. I got my first car which was a LS k10 for cheap off my cousin, as it had been in a crash, and he didn't drive it anymore. I fixed it up and drove it around and was also was young and did a few chav mods to it lol. It was just before I passed my test in 2001 that I signed up to this site, and Kev's micra inspired me to do something with mine and until I knew about the shoddy fitting of the delta bumper I actually liked it for a while. Once again young and clueless lol. However I wasn't so keen that it was a 5-door and eventually started to look for a new car. I nearly bought Barry's which was until today G-Mans (he just sold it today by the way ), however I also saw the advert for Kevs at about the same time. I always loved Kev's, especially since he had the rest of the work done to get it how he wanted it. It looked great and I let him know about my interest in the car. After many months of saving and talking with Kev I went down to view the car very excited!!! It looked very different in the pics to how it did in real life, and I loved it from the moment that I saw it. I bought it off Kev the same day and stalled it twice leaving his drive... oops!!! Think he still has this on video somewhere lol!!! Please don't show it Kev. I had a very enjoyable slow drive home with G and my parents, and enjoyed the new sound system hehe, and the sound of the exhaust as we cruised back up the motorway. There was always a few things I didn't like with the car which I planned on changing and putting my own touch on, and I planned on keeping it for a long time so figured that I could make it my own over time.

I drove it for a while and fell in love with the way that it handled. There was hardly any body-roll and it gripped to the road fantastically. I started to add my own touch to the car with new door cards, sprayed dash and other small bits on the interior of the car. Here are some pictures when I got the car home and some of the changes.

Next disaster struck in February through my stupidity really, not checking the oil the engine blew up!!! I was stranded at the side of the dual carriageway and had to ring my dad for him to come and rescue me. However to get the car towed we had to take off the grille and bumper as there was no tow rope and tie it to the frame of the front of the car. It was quite a scary ride home as I couldn't see anything and I was trying to brake to slow us down and stop me from going into the back of him. Not a happy time!!! Eventually we got home safely, and luckily I still had my own car so I got insured on that for a few weeks while me and my dad set about replacing the engine with a rebuilt one that I got off Kev with the car.

We fitted this and within a week I was back on the road in the beast again. I had also learnt my lesson and regularly check my oil now!!! For a while I didn't do much with the car as show season had started, so I took it down to my first year at Donny, and absolutely loved it!!! I also attended JAE that year and attended many local meets and cruises, and loved the reactions to the car that ultimately Kev had created.

However, I felt that there was still alot that could be done to improve the looks of the car, as there were parts that I didn't feel matched the rest of the car, and I also wanted to add my own unique touch to the car. This started with the MA12 transplant, which made an instant difference to the power.

I had now had the car for a year and a half, and after getting rid of the awful brown carpet in the car and replacing it with a black one, adding a new set of blue bucket seats and harnesses, and making a custom centre console and a few other bits, I felt it was time to work on the exterior and add a few bits on and make a few changes. Here are some pics from NE meets and other changes I made. (Will upload these later as aint on the computer at the moment.)

At this time I had become good mates with Wayne who was also modifying a k10, to the same kind of extremities as mine, however his obssession took it a little further and I felt it was time it keep up with him hehe, and also update the look of the car. He was very keen on bodywork and although when I first met him he knew very little he had now picked up alot and the work on his car was great, although he still had alot to learn. However when he finished his job to start up his own business, my car became his guineapig for my crazy plans, and I gave the car to him and started deciding just how I wanted this beast as it was to look like. I originally only planned to update the rear lights as I thought they looked awful as standard anyway, so wanted something to match the lines of the rest of the car, but also became interested in changing the front lights and also adding other bits to it. Many, many photshops were made and I almost decided on k11 front lights for the car, but was swayed by some angel eye denji honda civic lights that I saw on Ebay. They looked great!!!

In the end I went all the way and decided on new front lights, new rear lights, extended badboy bonnet, smoothed all round including door handles, roof liner, smoothed indicators, smoothing the boot right across to house fiat brava rear lights, reapring a cracked skirt, wide arch kit, new mirrors, and what turned out to be alot more!!! I eventually decided on quite and extreme colour but wasn't sure it would work, however I think my mind was put at rest when the car had the work started on it. It was given to Wayne and we planned to have it ready by JAE, however many problems prevented this from happenening and we ended up changing many more thing than originally anticipated. Some images of the car just after I gave it to Wayne.

Ok this bit is copied and edited from my other post.

We set off planning to change parts of the car which I thought would enhance, and update parts which I felt let the car down and also to add my own touch to it. For those of you who don't know, Wayne is setting up his own business in car modifying. I do have some other pictures of the car before the stages on there but they are on my old hard drive but I will try and upload them sometime.

As the time got nearer to JAE it was apparent that my car would not be ready, partly due to the lovely NE weather and Wayne been ill for a week and also a few other problems which were not forseen. This meant that we had time til the next show to sort out everything, and the list of modifications planned continued to grow. The list as it stood at the moment was:

Denji Honda Civic Angel Eyes front headlights, for these we needed a mechanism to flip the bonnet in the opposite direction to the k10 as standard. We firstly tried mini hinges as the bonnet it curved at the back and uses the same idea that we were after. We found that this didn't work and we used clio ones, which were mounted on either side at the rear of the bonnet, and fibreglassed round them so they looked like a part of the car. This worked a treat and the bonnet now flips 90degrees, and also has two struts which life the bonnet up. This now allowed for the badboy to be fitted. k11 bars were moulded into the bumper which made the lights sit a little higher, and custom brackets were made for the lights themselves. The old indicators had a plate welded over them and were smooth and a nice line was put in to follow the line down the side of the car right to the front.

In the mean time this was left and the D&M saxo arches were fitted. Originally on ebay they were advertised as dimma arches and were therefore different to Wayne's, however when they came it turned out that they were infact D&M, and identical to Wayne's car, which neither of us wanted!!! We decided that we could actually modify the rear arches to look similar to the D&M ones which a little extra added touch. This resulted in the arches that I have now, which is one of the nicest additions to the car in my opinion.

Next came the front arches which on first impression appeared to look good, however when they were fitted up against the car they looked far to big and stuck out too much and didn't follow the lines at all of the rest of the car!!! So this meant that we had very little time to find new arches if the work was to continue. I frantically searched on ebay etc, but didn't want to spend alot after the amount I had spent on the set of arches. (which Neil now has the front ones on the bbq... cough cough ) Luckily one of my mates had a mate who was selling a full set of Mk1 XR2 splitters and arches for a bargain of a price!!! And they looked just right too. However when we got them they were actually rubber and it proved to be quite a challenge to fit them because of this. However we got them fitted and they looked great and followed the lines and style of the rear arches really well!!!

The plan for the car was to go smooth so the handles, indicators were smoothed off and afterwards as an additional plan the roofliner. One of the handles sank slightly but this was fixed and it was looking very smooth. The boot was resmoothed and also added to the look of the car.

Then came the badboy which this was thought was going to be easy, however it turned out to be very complicated. It was hard to get the curve of the bonnet and so the solution was to weld 3 plates on again to make the curve, and this ended up taking much longer than it should have.

Brava rear light - which after inspection appeared that it would be easier and would look better if they were flush and smoothed into the tailgate. The old tailgate was rusted underneath so Wayne used a new boot and smoothed that and welded 2 additional plates on the sides to keep the curve of the boot and allow the lights to be fitted into the boot. Light cages were made behind the lights to allow the lights to sit in cosily. After a while it became apparent that the system we had for this wasn't working as the edges were to thin, and the filler kept cracking. A few days later this was solved and it is now a sturdy solid boot, which follows the line of the boot down nicely.

Another area which was decided we would do but was not originally planned was the relocation of the fuel filler. This was a job that was done just before JAE and it was a rush to find a suitable suel filler, which in the end ended up costing me alot of money for such a little thing!!! The fuel filler was smoothed off and the new fuel filler was located in the B-pillar with fairly little pipe work required to make it work but did cost alot of money for the fuel cap, which is actually used on airplanes lol. This was sorted out eventually though and the mod looked good and added to the smooth look.

The engine also gave us major grief, which originally was just going to be to spray it up to match the exterior of the car and make it look clean. However we tested the engine, and there was very little compression on 1 cylinder. We decided that as we were sorting out everything we should get this sorted and rebuild the whole engine. On further inspection, we found that the waterways were blocked with muck somehow, so we cleaned the engine got the head skimmed and put a new head gasket on. It was sprayed up and a few parts replaced and fitted back into the car before the car was sprayed. However, we had a problem with the gearbox so that had to be taken out again!!! gr This was sorted and we got the engine running again.

After a few finishing touches the car was pretty much ready for spraying. I must admit the spraying was a little rushed and the orange reacted, meaning it had to be done again. Spraying in the back yard isn't exactly ideal though until he gets his premises. The whole car needed sanding back down again, and the car was polyestered and finished properly before the spraying.

Our next target was Jap Show Finale, which was nearing ever closer to us. With the final repsray just around the corner, everything was done slowly and taken time over. It all looked good, although we were a little short of time. The laquer was put in the day before but didn't go on quite as well as planned as Wayne had never used the show shine laquer before, which although was shiny had a slight orange peel effect. This could have been sorted and the plan was to take the buffer down there and do an early morning session buffing the car lol. I finished work at 5 and headed up to Wayne's just after, he was still working on the car getting it somewhere near, until we met yet another problem!!! The alarm started playing up, and randomly started arming itself, going off, even going off while the engine was on, windows going up randomly etc lol, it was like the car was possessed. We had had electric problems before but we thought that they would be easily sorted, as when we first got the car it was stripped competely and the wiring of the alarm etc was an absolute mess!!! After all of the work that had gone into the car I didn't fancy taking it down there with no alarm and and engine that hadn't been completely ran in yet. So the decision was made that we would miss yet another show, the last one of the season.

After a problem with the clutch, which we got fixed with a new clutch so shouldn't need replacing for a while now, Wayne worked for days getting the paint up to a shine and damn does it look good now!!! His work has paid off and the shine is amazing. It still needs a few touch-ups which he is working on, however we are having major trouble getting any paint at the moment as the paint shop are swapping theirs tininting machines over, although he has now fractured his leg lol, but should be done very soon I hope. :S

Electrics is now really the only major thing left to sort out. When we stripped the car the electrics were in a very bad state so we basically ripped everything out and started again. The alarm was quite old and gave us many problems, so I bought myself a new one the other day with a night vision camera on and lots of other little features which I like hehe. It arrived today and looks sweet. Also ordered indicators which was the other thing giving us major headaches. They turned up today, however I'm assuming the guy got 2 items mixed up as when I received the item it was actually tent rope!!! :s Should get them in the next few days though, probably Monday. ready to go on next week. Hoping that they will be a straight and easy fit though and give us no problems whatsoever. I will keep you all updated as to how it comes along but surely but slowly it is getting there. It looks great and I will be hitting the shows next year to show off the hard work that both me and Wayne have put into this. Then its back into the garage this time next year for and SR20DE conversion hehe. The story continues...

Also got a few other goodies to go back in the car when it is all completed including 3 7" screens, 800W amp to power the subwoofer and a new H/U, so should be kool. Here are a few pictures of the car as it is now, and from the past few months.

first up - dan your first few pix dont work, apart from that what a top read, really enjoyed that, ta dan and kev...

Hmm, they are been a bit temperemental. Working when they want to then not the next minute lol. :s I will try and sort it out.

kev what happened with the twin carb idea how comes it didnt work for long, im really interested in this idea as it hasnt been done and keep on here if im right,

also like others on here when the car was white it was probably the best micra i had ever seen and it brought me here aswell

Yes, what happened to the twin carb setup, why did it not work?

updates in this thread please. im sick of wading through other peoples crap to see how the car is coming along

excellent car where did u get the body kit and how much was it do u know where i can get 1 from my email is [email protected]

The bodykit is all custom and can no longer be bought. Do a search for k10 bodykits and you will find some info on what will fit.