Choppy, choppy & daja vu.

[porkpie700]

Well just less than two weeks ago my friend and i decided that it might be a good idea, (since we plan on keeping our cars indefinately) to stock up on parts, and stick a new engine in the super s.

So here's what we found; a 91' 1.2 GS Auto, with a towbar which i've never seen before on a micra.

It didn't come like this, i had already half stripped it at this point.


Three days later...

Don't worry we didn't destroy a perfectly good shell, because it was not a perfectly good shell.
The cills were shot from front to back. The back valance was rotten through and the inside had caught some fairly deep rust in many places.


This thing made a hell of a mess...

Yep it may look harmless but if you thought that you could pick one of these up and the torque converter wouldn't cover you in gear oil, then you'd be wrong.
Why couldn't they have put a drain plug on the damn thing like mercs do.

Deja Vu; Making an ma12 look pretty... again.

It's got 135 thousand on the clock and like most people i know, it smells gassy. :laugh:

This will be the new engine for the super s when it's finished and i have been asked to make it into a duplicate of my own ma12

So in about a months time it should look something like this;

But i might just paint the coolant pipe black on this one... well i can't have it exactly like mine now can i... :wasntme:

 

[Guy]

Looks like you've been rather busy :laugh:.

 

[r-reg-sr]

exelent!!

 

[porkpie700]

Hey by the way, does anyone know what that round, black, plastic box on top of the gearbox is for? It has a little breather nipple on it but i can't remember what it plugged into. Is it some sort of overflow for the gear oil?

 

[Guy]

Breather perhaps?

 

[porkpie700]

I think it might be a load sensor, you know, to make the box drop down a gear when going up hill or something. Clever things gearboxes, there's some jiggery-pokery going on inside them

 

[trena]

did you remember to leave a shaft in the gearbox while taking it out they are a t**t for falling to bits :laugh:
and do you just make the outside look pretty or do you do the inside too ???

 

[porkpie700]

did you remember to leave a shaft in the gearbox while taking it out they are a t**t for falling to bits :laugh:
and do you just make the outside look pretty or do you do the inside too ???

Yes i left the shaft in there as it's obviously for a reason.
Now with regards to the inside of the engine, firstly; how could i make the inside pretty? i'm sure painting the cylinder bores and the valve seats would be a sensible thing to do... And secondly since no one sees the inside of an engine whilst it's in the car, what would be the ####ing point. fwn

 

[trena]

i would expect that answer from a man, what i meant is do you strip it down bore the block, oversized pistons new rings , balance crank and cluch assembley, lightem fly wheel etc etc ??? what about inlet manifold do you run the original for the car??? what carbs do you use ????

 

[porkpie700]

i would expect that answer from a man

I will rise above the personal insults as I would expect no less than a comment like that from a woman. But since you ask; if I really needed to do all of that work to an engine I wouldn't buy it to begin with. As for lightening flywheels and such, they do sharpen up the response to a point but there is a down-side to it. The car will accelerate quicker but will also loose speed more easily when climbing a hill.
Micra’s, or more specifically the k10, were not designed to be tuned up; they were designed for economy, so there's only so much you can do with them.

This engine is going into my friend’s super s and will be a straight swap with the one that's in there now, so apart from a 421 exhaust manifold and stainless sport exhaust everything will remain stock. That's how my friend wants it so that's how I’ll set it up for him, since it's his car and his engine etc...

With my engine everything was done on a shoe-string budget with smoothness and efficiency in mind. When I bought my ma12 it was in a k-reg and used the egr/cat, ecc set-up, but the dizzy was missing and so I couldn't have it set-up that way in my own car.
I used my original 1.0L carb (but fitted a dashpot) with 1.0L inlet and exhaust manifolds, but kept the 1.2 fuel pump.
The only modification I made to the manifolds was to polish their internal surfaces to improve air-flow, I did this purely for fuel efficiency but it also improved engine response and reduced the notorious 1.2 growl by a considerable amount.

I removed the silly anti-tamper cap on the mixture screw, the mixture and timing are set to my own preference, as are the valve clearances and choke settings. So my ma12 as it is runs exactly as I wanted it to. When it's going down the road I can't even hear it, unbelievably smooth for a 17 year old engine.
If/when for whatever reason I decide to open it up, it just pushes me back into the seat and goes. I'm not by any means saying it's a racing machine but it is fantastic on the motorway. I honestly couldn't be happier with my ma12, so as far as I’m concerned you can throw as much money as you want at an ma12 but it’s all unnecessary, because you don't need much to have a cracking little engine.
So next time you feel the urge to make derogatory comments about men remember this, for men and women; almost all of our problems can be traced back to ourselves, and are often the result of poor communication.

Have a nice day

 

[trena]

hey there is no need for that im new on here and trying to join in and trying to find out what you all do to your cars thats all :grinning: with mine i have done the engine myself which has cost me about £350 for parts and machining only because i know people i have got both of these for next to nothing i have managed to get my micra to 85bhp with the help of a one off inlet manifold that my friend made for me which takes the restrictions out, sorry if i offended you wasnt meant to

 

[frank]

hey there is no need for that im new on here and trying to join in and trying to find out what you all do to your cars thats all :grinning: with mine i have done the engine myself which has cost me about £350 for parts and machining only because i know people i have got both of these for next to nothing i have managed to get my micra to 85bhp with the help of a one off inlet manifold that my friend made for me which takes the restrictions out, sorry if i offended you wasnt meant to

get some pics up of your handywork trena, or start a blog :grinning:

 

[trena]

i will sort some pics out over the next few days and get them posted up (Y)

 

[r-reg-sr]

waiting patiantly for the photos
interesting story their-custom inlet-

 

[C0llis0n]

Micra’s, or more specifically the k10, were not designed to be tuned up

Think that comments been proved wrong many a time especially on this forum eh Porkie. Good work on the engine though!(Y)

 

[porkpie700]

Think that comments been proved wrong many a time especially on this forum eh Porkie. Good work on the engine though!(Y)

No i don't think so, you see i said that the k10 was not designed to be tuned up i did not say that it couldn't. The origional mini for example was designed as a cheap economical car to cope with the oil crisis of the time. Sir Issigonis (probably not how it's spelt) was quoted as saying that he had designed it more as a run around for the district nurses and had never thought about performance and tuning untill john cooper approached him. So i stand by my comment.

 

[Richard F]

do you still have the tow bar? what would you want for it, and can you post it?

 

[porkpie700]

Still have it, still have the bumper with the cut-out for it. The rest would kinda depend on where you are dude.