94' Suzuki Cappuccino - Restoration / CT9 turbo conversion

[anonymous-user]

This is my 1994 Suzuki Cappuccino. If you don’t know much about these they are a Japanese Kei car with a 657cc DOHC 3 cylinder turbo engine with about 63bhp in factory trim. (They were awesome in the old Gran Turismo games!)
Bought for cheap in an incredibly sorry state with enough rust to put even the most seasoned welder off but nothing a little bit of TLC couldn’t fix really! My plan was to build a little beast using whatever parts I could get my hands on.

The first 3 months of ownership where spent restoring the bodywork and respraying from the original silver to black. And that was hard graft….
Got it through its first MOT after sitting in storage (rotting) for 4 years. Then onto more serious jobs such as fitting a (relatively speaking) MASSIVE TURBO and injectors from a 1.3l Toyota Starlet GT in addition to various other upgrades. Some parts are specific to the car like the Suzuki Sport N2 Ecu but a lot of parts are from other cars or custom made. For example the wheels are lightweight enkei originally from a Honda Integra Type R and the intercooler came from a Nissan Skyline R33 GTST, small in original spec for that maybe but for the Cappo, it was plenty big enough! I had a custom exhaust manifold and downpipe made up to match the turbo and a 2.5" straight through exhaust fabricated also.

Various parts have made their way into the car since then and it’s now putting out 106hp and weighing around 700kg. Amazing fun to drive and has seen off some pretty serious cars on the backroads! :-) Plans for hill climbing and time attack races in the future!


It started like this:

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As you can see it needed a hell of a lot of work...

It was hard graft but it eventually came back to life.

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Next was the paint job...

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Then came the time to start on the engine...

Removed the old turbo to discover an unhappy wastegate casting..






Thought what the hell, lets stick a bigger turbo on it!!





Got some goodies fabricated..



[url]|http://thumbsnap.com/w07kdDXQ[/url




And started collecting some bits and bobs from other cars..







During the fitment of the turbo, ecu, injectors and FMIC, I decided to pull out the rear subframe and inspect for rust and clean everything up..







Nice new polyurethane bushes...



Petrol tank clean up also..



New wheels are a bit wider than the original cappo rims! Nice new tyres fitted and a freshen up paint job.









And some new springs to tighten the ride up a little..



So after A LOT of work, some teething problems with fuel leaks and boost control she was back on the road! And FAST!!





Fitted a front splitter and got my hands a subtle rear spoiler which yet to be fitted.





Here she is on the dyno.. note the glowing manifold and ridiculously high rev limiter..

http://vid1329.photobucket.com/albums/w549/clemdob...





So thats how she looks now! Off the road over the winter months to keep her away from road salt and frost etc. Also too much of a handful to drive in the wet anyway!

This project has been done over the past 2 years and these pictures are only a tiny glimpse into the mammoth task it was bringing this little car back to life. From tracking down parts, trial and error testing, and a lot of hours spent in the garage, its now sooooo much fun to drive, cheap to run, (easy to store being so small) and also fast enough to take on some substantially higher powered cars through having such a high power to weight ratio.

Edited by anonymous-user on Wednesday 3rd February 13:12

Edited by anonymous-user on Wednesday 3rd February 16:24

[Podie]

Nice work!

[emicen]

Nice! Did you go for EP82 or EP91 spec CT9? Iirc the Glanza spec one had an extra blade on the turbine side which helped it spool faster.

[anonymous-user]

I used a CT9a from the ep82 Starlet GT. I had looked into the differences between that and the CT9b from the Glanza and found that the later version produced slightly higher low end torque but sacrificed high end HP by making changes to fins. Its something i'd like to try in the future though, I wonder if someone has a newer "b" version kicking around I could take off their hands...

Edited by anonymous-user on Wednesday 3rd February 14:46

[gregs656]

Brilliant. I went to view a couple of these in the late 00s and although prices were quite strong then the rot had set in badly - though not as badly as yours!

I bet it is enormous fun. Quite jealous!