Japi´s shirt Micra (Finland)

[Japi]

Hello from snowy Mid-Finland!

I´m a new Club member. I have owned my -95 K11 1.3 now six years. It´s been fun and reliable little thing to drive. I´ve done few mods to it, most of them during this year.

When I bought the car it was dark Green with standard 13" steelies and nothing special done with the looks.
I liked green colour too but when it was time to make some rust repairs, we decided to add a theme to it. So after rust cleaning I sprayed gray paint and added taylor made stickers. Theme is Jussipaita, traditional Finnish shirt. Could be translated Johnny-shirt.

Both front seats are now covered with Jussi-shirt and the Dude has got one also

 

[Capix]

Wellcome! It's a curious paint job

 

[Japi]

Thanks Capix! Actually it´s a first car that i´ve spraygunned. First car I painted was 15 years ago Ford Escort -75. It got satin black spraycan paint with orange Shelby stripes .

Last winter I bought another Micra (-94 1.0) for spareparts, but I didn´t dare to rip it apart so I fixed and sold it.

It ended up like this:

 

[Japi]

Last winter I had a bit slippery tires, so I bought 15" wheels (Opel). I Grinded, primered and sprayd couple layers gray and two layers clear coat.

Wheels would be ok imo, but 185/55R15 winter tires was hard to find and they are expensive. So I have to sell those and get 14":s. 175/65R14 is common size and 100 € cheaper. They are also better to drive in the winter imo.

How can I get these Photobucket pics smaller?

My LHS driving light adjust motor´s been dead two years. Old motor´s insides looked bit rusty.

Found a spare motor, it´s Almera N15´s piece. Almeras motor looks similar to Micras. So I replaced it. Motor started working nice, but when left light went up, right went down lol… found out its RHS.
Then I had an idea to switch couple cables, didn´t work. So I have to keep searching for LHS motor.

Changed temporarily my old winter tires on.

I´ve already got 14” steelies back from sandblaster´s shop. He sandblasted and epoxy primered them. Yesterday I painted them gray and they got a bit lacquer also. 175/65R14:s are waiting in the shop.

 

[cherrytuner]

Looking...hmmm...different

Bit jealous about your towing bar

 

[Japi]

Terve Cherrytuner!

Different is good when you wanna find your car in the parking lot .
I don´t think that towing bar makes car more beautiful, but I need it sometimes...althought like they say in Finland: there can be loaded only greetings on a trailer with this car .

 

[Japi]

I spent another lunch break with the driving light adjuster. Got another motor and it´s finally working right way.

 

[cherrytuner]

Soommoro!


I agree with the difference benefits

Yeah the towing capacity is not that awesome,but i really would like to try the K11 with dolly behind it ....been looking for a slightly bigger almera/sunny like nissan with the towing bar but at the end i don´t really need to tow anything that often at the moment so maybe the micra could manage some assignments.
And i have too many cars anyway , or maybe i don´t just have enough space for them

 

[Japi]

I´ve had crazy dreams of tear drop trailer with Micra, but towing capacity makes it bit difficult. On the other hand if they tow ´drop´ with a car like this why not Micra.

 

[cherrytuner]

I think the micra could tow some small camper nicely ....i´ve seen some bars in 100A datsuns and that is somehow hilarious , in one NCF 100A/Cherry-meet one guy even towed another racelike 100A with a dolly

 

[Japi]

Had to check reg. papers tow capacity: 310kg without brakes, 750kg with brakes. it´s not bad at all, there´s many trailer options especially with brakes.
Checked out tow bar prices from Motonet, 189.90€. Checked also scrapyard list: http://www.autopurkaamot.com/. There was many K11:s but not any tow bars. I think that cars with tow bar don´t crash . Maybe I should ask discount from insurance company

 

[cherrytuner]

Might consider that new bar also, one with a removable knob would be perfect but i´ve not seen them on K11 so it´s a hard to get maybe.

 

[Japi]

Couple more autumn pics. Wheels are Miglia 7x15s, ET 35 iirc, tires 195/50R15. At the moment there´s FK -40mm springs and "greyline"-adjustable panhard rod (diy).

Normally special reg. plates cost 900€ (720 pounds) in Finland. These were a bit cheaper. I must admit that I had a little advantage getting them cos i work at the local Mot centre. One day I happened to ask from a lady at the office "do you have good plates?", "actually we have a pair" she said. I had to wait few days until they came next in line, then made papers and switched plates, 27€ thank you (I´m sorry for the bus that was next in plate line )

edit: these are not so called special plates, they came by normal delivery

One day in last summer I was driving from work, slight wreath of smoke came somewhere behind steering wheel. I stopped at a bus stop and everything worked ok, so I kept on driving. Finnish summers are quite bright so I didn´t notice there was few lights missing until my wife went driving, I saw backlights didn´t work at all. All fuses were ok, did find some melted wires under the dashboard. Had to take whole dashboard out and replace many wires from dashboard to all the way to boot. (Did lost: backlights, platelights, front parklights, gaugelights and even gauge bulbs, few wires, daylight relay)

In Finland we have to keep lights on even in daytime, many cars have daylight relays. Common problem with these Nissan relays is that one headlight goes off, but when turning the lights on both headlights work. I opened that relay and found jump cable in it. I think it was the reason why fuses didn´t burn at all. Some pre owner or garage had done one “clever” repair in there, instead of linking jump cable between lights in the front (Asked price for a new Nissan relay, was 400€. Scrap yard´s cost 40€). Found another problem, that was my mistake –plate light wire was in short circuit, was chafed against the boot handle bolt. Handle was out before and I didn´t put it together properly, obviously.
I repaired other lights in summer/fall, but reg.plate lights didn´t get my attention until now.

Didn´t manage to get the cable through C-pillar, so had to do usual “tape-trick” with it. Did cut old cable and taped properly new and old together, then just pulled that package down to boot. Replaced all boot lid wires. Finally all lights are working.

 

[cherrytuner]

I have that other frontlight not working-problem....suprise

Hmm can you give me a hint that where is the daylight relay? i might consider of changing it to working one, but not really bothered of switching the lights "on" when going behind wheel

 

[Japi]

It´s on the left side under the dashboard above fusebox, quite big relay about 10cm wide. One kind of cure is to connect wires between headlights, so the fuse still stays in the system if anything goes wrong like mine did.

 

[cherrytuner]

Ok thanks, yeah i know that fix where you connect the headlights....but i´ll repair them properly if i´ll get into it

 

[Japi]

Got new "spikes" on Almera N15 14" wheels. Added couple stripes on them too.

 

[cherrytuner]

I could use that helping bear sometimes too , seems a hard worker

Nice rims!

We have snow here also now, cannot resist the handbrake

 

[r-reg-sr]

dont encourage this, he is cheating

 

[Japi]

I could use that helping bear sometimes too , seems a hard worker

Nice rims!

We have snow here also now, cannot resist the handbrake

Yeh, bear is tough bloke and didn´t want to go winter sleep yet before installing new wheels

Thanks!

I must calm down and avoid using hand brake, to keep spikes on tires

 

[freeze19]

beautiful rims !

 

[Sunburn]

Beautiful project, mate! grats for you original "Jussipaita look"

p.s. maybe, instead of sleeping, your little helper can spent some winter months here in Italy... bed and breakfast in change of his work!

 

[Japi]

Beautiful project, mate! grats for you original "Jussipaita look"

p.s. maybe, instead of sleeping, your little helper can spent some winter months here in Italy... bed and breakfast in change of his work!

Thank you for your kind words mate!

p.s. Your invitation sounds good, maybe I pack myself into Bear´s suitcase and come visit Italy. Last week we had -25´C here in Mid-Finland, now only -5´C, but snowing.

 

[Sunburn]

Good idea, but be careful to x-ray check on suitcase
Anyway, to be honest, here in northern Italy winter is "cold" too, actually min 0 max 7, next days -4 + 4 predicted... in Sicily instead today was min 10 max 15

 

[Japi]

Good idea, but be careful to x-ray check on suitcase
Anyway, to be honest, here in northern Italy winter is "cold" too, actually min 0 max 7, next days -4 + 4 predicted... in Sicily instead today was min 10 max 15

It´s been a while since I was last time in Italy. In 2001 me and couple mates drove/rode from Macedonia to Greece, came by boat to Venice and "ran" to north along the side of Lake Garda. I think the northern Italy is beautiful (haven´t been in south though).
Pic of me is taken in Austria not so far away from Italy. The bike is year 2000 Yamaha Wild Star 1600. I had it four years, rode it 34000km. I miss its torque

 

[Prostheta]

Terve Porista....
We just bought a 109,000km K11 a couple of weeks ago and could do with fixing it up to daylight running. 40€ sounds a lot for a simple 12v relay so I might modify the lights with some LED strips instead or something. What's the legality of smoked light clusters here? I'm a UK ex-pat so I've still got many gaps in my knowledge of what is illegal and what isn't. Oh, and my language. I think I still know more English swearwords than I know general Finnish words. Not that it is important since 40% of words in Pori are swearwords anyway.

 

[Japi]

Terve Prostheta! Smoked light clusters are legal if there is E-approval (made for Europe). Self-smoked are not "so legal" Finnish is easy to learn, even kids can speak it here, so you'll learn too