Cappuccino - Not only a beverage, but an interesting Japanese Kei Car

[Jeff V.]

That's cool. I used Amiyama to get some oddball Pajero parts.

[ChargerX3]

Ill have to keep them in mind for next time. Finding parts is stupid difficult. Many are obsolete now.

Anyways, excited to tear down upper end and get the car running this weekend.

[tabasco122]

Buyee is helpful as well. You can buy stuff from yahoo Japan auctions, they hold everything at their warehouse and ship to you in one delivery.

[ChargerX3]

That’s actually helpful as a lot of what’s left is only on yahoo auctions.

[ChargerX3]

Update:

With all of my necessary parts in for the valve work to be completed I got to work this weekend tearing off the head.

Valve covers first.



Fun trick. All 12 lifters fit into a spray can lid. Never lay these on their sides.



Heads off. You can see the impact marks on the exhaust vales, but can you see any badly bent ones? The last owner didnt either, so he put it all back together. However if you look close you can see some variation in how they are seated.





Exhaust seat and runner. No damage, but some carbon build up.



Cleaned up the bowl with some wire wheel work as well as some mild porting.





Time to lap in the new valves. Seat must be at least 1.1mm. Check!



All new valves installed, lapped, and new VSS.




Block cleaned up nicely. Pistons looked good and the factory cross hatch was still there. Absolutely no lip from wear. Makes sense as this car only has 82k km (50k miles).




Factory Graphite gasket. Yea not a fan myself, but should be good to just over 1bar.



Time to put the head back on.(with intake manifold, tb, and exhaust manifold already attached.



Head installed with rockers, lifters and spark plugs.




All back together. This was a pain as there is no space and so many wires, hoses, etc.



I didnt get a picture of this, but it started for about 3 seconds and died. Then it wouldnt start for well over a couple hours. It would just crank and no real hint of combustion. It didnt help that my tank was full of 2 year old gasoline either. My buddy came over and I was like "just crank until I say stop, im spraying ether in this b#$%! I unplugged the injectors and he fired away.

With one had on the TB and the other giving small doses of Ether, I got it started and running off the can. I had to yell at my buddy to come back and start plugging back in the injectors before i ran out of can. Luckily he did and she took off idling.

Not sure why she was so hard starting but I feel it was a mixture of the lifters bleeding off and the bad gas.

With everything back together I took her for a ride.





My oldest wanted a ride as well. He loves it.





Oh, and in case you were wondering how bad the valves were bent...

[Chris GTO TT]

Nice! I'm hoping I don't find any bent valves on my WRX heads

[Jeff V.]

I've had good luck with Yahoo Japan by just searching for the chassis code, and ticking the box for 'second hand' (中&#21476 . That weeds out all the generic garbage like brake pads and grounding kits and air fresheners. If you need to read the description for the auction, just drop the text into Google Translate. You can get really far without knowing any Japanese at all.

You can sign up with a service like Buyee.jp to have them bid on your behalf and then ship stuff to you. It can get a little expensive, but sometimes it's your only way to get some rare part.

This looks interesting. Some kind of race ECU?

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/1042254708

[Jeff V.]

This is even cooler. Wireless reprogramming and logging.

https://www.keisport.us/2021/07/18/EA11 ... ction.html

[ChargerX3]

[quote=""Chris GTO TT""]Nice! I'm hoping I don't find any bent valves on my WRX heads [/quote]

I wish you luck. Its not a fun job and i had to pay almost $50 a valve from Japan.

[ChargerX3]

[quote=""Jeff V.""]I've had good luck with Yahoo Japan by just searching for the chassis code, and ticking the box for 'second hand' (中&#21476 . That weeds out all the generic garbage like brake pads and grounding kits and air fresheners. If you need to read the description for the auction, just drop the text into Google Translate. You can get really far without knowing any Japanese at all.

You can sign up with a service like Buyee.jp to have them bid on your behalf and then ship stuff to you. It can get a little expensive, but sometimes it's your only way to get some rare part.

This looks interesting. Some kind of race ECU?

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/1042254708[/quote]

[quote=""Jeff V.""]This is even cooler. Wireless reprogramming and logging.

https://www.keisport.us/2021/07/18/EA11 ... ction.html[/quote]

Yea, some of the guys on FB are saying to hit up Yahoo auctions for rare and random parts.

Thanks for those links. Im still diving into the ecu options. Monster Sport had a couple level 1 and 2 options out there on the stock board, but they were canned programs. I think level 1 got rid of the governor and maybe a richer map. Nothing crazy. Level 2 was turbo, injectors, etc.

KeiSport seems promising for $800 if I start to mod it more. I think for the relative short term I will keep it stock and maybe add a manual boost controller and wideband to see how much boost she can run safely. My boost gauge was reading somewhere around .7 bar, so 10 psi. Pretty sure I can get to 12-14 without blowing the head gasket.

[Jeff V.]

How hard would it be to get a photo of the circuit board for your original ECU? Do you know if anyone has ever tried to do any editing of them? It looks like some of them use EEPROM chips.

[ChargerX3]

[quote=""Jeff V.""]How hard would it be to get a photo of the circuit board for your original ECU? Do you know if anyone has ever tried to do any editing of them? It looks like some of them use EEPROM chips.[/quote]

Its behind the glove box. I could get it out and take some pics later this week.

[vr4]

That's awesome.

If only he would have done the liquid test on that head. You send him pictures of the valves?

[ChargerX3]

[quote=""vr4""]That's awesome.

If only he would have done the liquid test on that head. You send him pictures of the valves?[/quote]

Yea I sent pic to both previous owners. The one who never touched it and the first is owner who broke it. They were like “yup just what I thought”. They are glad to see it up and running.

Even a simple leak down test would have saved a lot of time and parts.

[DCIV]

I have to say I was looking at the head and thinking, I see the marks but looks like it’s seated. I prob would have been one of those previous owners and not changed it. But I would have also done what steve was talking about to see if it leaked.

Good job man!


Coop

[ChargerX3]

[quote=""DCIV""]I have to say I was looking at the head and thinking, I see the marks but looks like it’s seated. I prob would have been one of those previous owners and not changed it. But I would have also done what steve was talking about to see if it leaked.

Good job man!


Coop[/quote]

Yea it’s not as obvious in this scenario. Very easy to overlook. I just don’t know why he didn’t do some sort of test to the head.

Thanks super excited to get this girl back on the road.

[ChargerX3]

Update:

Worked on the Cappo again this week. Spent all of last week in Seattle, so I was itching to get to play with the old girl. Boys were excited to get out and wrench on the car as well.

Car needed an oil change and the rear differential was SOOOO LOUD. It was binding and popping really hard in the turns, so I could only imagine it was the LSD. I reached out to the original owner and he remembers how bad it was popping. He changed the oil a couple of times, but he had no idea about using LSD specific oil. Well I wasn't going to put up with the harshness anymore.

Drove her up on the sidewalk to commence the servicing.




Took her out for a ride after and it was a noticeable improvement within minutes. Chatter and popping stop when fully warmed up. I give it a couple of weeks and it will be entirely gone. Thank goodness!


In case you were wondering how she looks with the roof off, in Targa mode.



Full vert mode.



I think I'm starting to develop an affinity towards silver vehicles. You think?

[Jeff V.]

That's really cool.

[Jeff V.]

This was added in the latest GT7 update.

[ChargerX3]

Nice, the silver one looks a lot like mine, minus the side graphic and rear spoiler.

I don't think i have played GT since the early 2000's. Do you play GT7?