Kelvinator Gets Another Kei - 1990 Suzuki Alto Works RS-X
Kelvinator Gets Another Kei - 1990 Suzuki Alto Works RS-X
Author
Discussion

KelvinatorNZ

Original Poster:

723 posts

88 months

Friday 3rd October
quotequote all
After selling the Alto Works, there was a tiny little nugget shaped hole in my life, so I had no choice but to fill it with another Kei car.

If you were following the previous Alto from the start, you might remember this one from here.

Long story short, there was an auction (maybe an estate sale? Can't recall) a couple of hours north of where I live, and when browsing through the list of what was going to be available, there happened to be a Suzuki Alto Works listed. Weird thing to have in a barn, I thought, but hey I'm keen.

I went up to view and bid on the car, and as soon as I saw it, I fell for the little nugget. Who couldnt love that little face.


It'd been off the road for 11 years at that point, and had been sitting the whole time. The interior was foul


The exterior was also filthy, top to bottom, so it was hard to get a good gauge on the condition. Poking around with my torch though, I found a couple of spots that needed attention

The front of each sill, where the jacking points should be, had some rust, including this hole on the passenger's side.


The boot lip had been trapping moisture under the seal too, and rusted along there (and causing a leak into the boot)


The only real damage to the exterior, other than a couple of small dings, was this dent in the front guard. I suspect since the door hinges are bent, that the door over extended forward, damaging both


But otherwise it appeared fairly solid, and most importantly, mostly complete


No one knew if it had run, when it last ran, or if it was previously a good runner. I found the keys on the keyring in the car next to it, so moved them to the Alto, but otherwise it was all an unknown.

The auction rolled around, I did my best but ultimately got outbid. For me, the risk of the unknowns at that point were just too great, so I kept my top bid reasonable.

Fast-forward almost two years, and I get a message from a friend saying, "I put out looking to buy a Kei car, and got offered a car I read about on your very blog. It's too much of a project for me, but do you want me to put you in touch?" Heck yeah I do!

So he passed my email on and the owner dropped me a line "Hi, I have a Suzuki Alto Works for sale, would you be interested in a project"

Of course, I held back my excitement and asked for more details


He came back with a couple more details, but more importantly a couple of photos


Undeniably the same car, car club sticker and all. Unfortunately, he also mentioned the engine was rust seized, and had been sent off to a rebuilder to be stripped and assessed, which resulted in it being declared completely kaput (and a "$10K" quote to rebuild it).


I replied asking for more information about the engine damage and condition of the car and heard nothing but crickets.


Me, being me, couldnt leave it well enough alone. The damn thing was rattling around rent-free in my head, so 7 months after I heard nothing back, I flicked him a quick email asking how he was getting on with the Alto.

"Good timing, I was just thinking I should do something with the car or get rid of it"


After a lot of back and forth, the stars aligned and on my way to the track in the BRZ the other weekend I detoured an hour or so out of my way and went to look at the little nugget.

It was pretty well as expected; the front of the car was all in bits, the engine was spread across a few shelves, and the car was looking a bit sorry for itself.


On the plus side, he had cleaned the car inside and out, and honestly, the interior clean alone was worth having him win the car in the first place instead of me


The engine was pretty dire, but we'll get back to that later.

Anyway, it all checked out, everything was there, the rego was still on hold, and after going away and doing some more research into what on earth I was doing, I made an offer.

We settled on something in between what both of us were thinking, and a friend of his was roped in to bring the car and multiple tubs of parts down to me.

Yesterday the car arrived.

Here is my latest project, Nuggie, the 1990 Suzuki Alto Works RS-X CN21S


I had been super anxious all morning, but actually seeing the car roll up on the trailer, looking ridiculously small, just wiped all the anxiety away and replaced it with excitement.

Whilst discussing the transport with the transporter beforehand, we had been coming up with plans to get the car off the trailer and down into my garage, since my driveway, although short, is very steep. I think in the end it was going to be a case of using the winch on the van to winch the car down into the garage.

But thankfully that didnt matter. As it turns out, not only does the handbrake work, but so do the service brakes. So with a little push, the Alto was off the trailer and I gently guide it down into the garage using the handbrake to control it.

We unload all the parts, and after bidding farewell, I stand back and see the Alto in its new (temporary) home


Theres a couple more spots of rust than I could see at the auction (one of them is the front edge of the bonnet in the above photo, seems to be a common spot), and the paint is flat as anything, but it will hopefully polish up nicely. I won't do that yet, I want a good before and after in the sun.

I couldnt help but check out a couple of the cool little things about the early cars. One of them is visible in the photos above; the vertical door handles. These were only on the early cars, as they later replaced them with normal boring handles when they decided safety was more important than being cool and added side intrusion bars. This even necessitated changing the quarter panels since they have cutouts for your hand on the vertical handle cars.

Cool handles Boring normal handles and "safe" doors.
The front seats are pretty wild too. Such late 80's vibes


You can actually quickly remove and flip the shoulder support on the backrest, for either higher or lower support


Another early feature I'm a big fan of is the super retro dash and the gauge cluster, both of which got "modernised" in 1991.


Moving on, spread across the tubs were all the engine components, and now that I had time to have a decent look at them, it was grim


The main journals on the crank are very unhappy


There are a couple of less than happy valves too. I suspect even if the engine didnt drink a bunch of water that it wouldnt have run very well with a burnt valve


But the block is the least happy


I'm looking into options currently, and have a potential lead on a complete engine that would be a better base to rebuild, otherwise I could bore this block out and use oversize forged pistons. We'll see.

Either way, I want it running fairly quickly (without compromising too much, I want it done properly), so have a roughly 6-month plan to be back on the road, and I want it out of the garage within a month or two as I'm very limited on garage space.

Parts have already been ordered, and I'll be making a start on the rust soon. Plenty more to come. Keep on moving.


rednotdead

1,240 posts

244 months

Friday 3rd October
quotequote all
awesome. Followed all your threads so looking forwards to this one too.

Dr G

15,652 posts

260 months

Friday 3rd October
quotequote all
Bookmarked; will be cool to see the little thing come back to life.

Alwayzsidewayz2

110 posts

118 months

Friday 3rd October
quotequote all
I really enjoy your threads, your process of working and descriptions are so readable.
Looking forward to this adventure

Mr Tidy

27,780 posts

145 months

Friday 3rd October
quotequote all
Lovely!

I've enjoyed your other threads so I'm looking forward to following this one.

KelvinatorNZ

Original Poster:

723 posts

88 months

Sunday 12th October
quotequote all
So, I've had the car just over a week now, and it's been a busy old time.


The more I dig into the engine that came with the Alto, the more dire it becomes. I'll go into detail as I go, but I'm starting to think the $10k quote the previous owner got for the rebuild might not have actually been that far off, considering almost nothing is reusable.


In a huge turn of luck, I was very fortunate to be offered a Suzuki Cappuccino engine by a friend in the local Kei group. It was a spare for his race Cappo, but had been a good running engine when it came out of the donor. I never thought I would be able to source a donor, let alone it being local.


So of course I jumped in the parts hauling Honda, and loaded it up


I got it home and with the help of my wife we unloaded it, and I managed to rig the engine stand to work on the tiny little engine. It's pretty much at the limits of the stock stand.


It had been stored in a workshop, so is pretty dirty externally, but before I bought it we stuck a borescope down the cylinders and checked them out. We couldn't see much because the cylinders are so small, but they didn't appear rusty.


The timing cover came with it, thankfully, as mine had been cut in half for some reason


The exhaust manifold has cracked and been welded, which is better than my current one which is still badly cracked


Interestingly, the Cappo runs a 90 degree adapter on the oil filter, whilst the Alto runs the filter straight into the block via a cooler


I wasted no time in starting to strip the donor engine down. First was removing the oil filter adapter. Three bolts and it pops off


Next was the exhaust manifold, which has two nuts and two bolts holding it on. One of the bolts is hidden up under the turbo flange


Came off suspiciously easy


Next was the intake manifold. There are a couple of other things to remove first, like this long guy coolant neck


I tried to get the small hose to the intake manifold off without damaging it, but in the end it wouldn't give up, so got chopped


The intake manifold is held on with a series of 9 little nuts. This was made a little easier by the injectors and fuel rail having already been removed by the previous owner


Fairly easy to remove, really


Instead of the massive thermostat block the Alto has, this engine just had a small block off plate with a coolant temp sensor in the middle of it


The engine was looking pretty small with the manifolds removed


Whilst the tub of Cappo parts was filling up. Note the ziplock bags, labelled, with bolts in them... something the engine rebuilder that stripped the Alto engine was lacking.


The next day I started on the actual tear down. My plan is to completely rebuild this engine from the bottom up, so it's all new, and will last. I probably could've run this engine as is, but I didn't want to risk it (with good reason, as I later found out)


Removing the timing belt was the first thing I needed to do, so using the manual, I set the timing at TDC, making sure the cams weren't 180 out


Next, I removed the spring and bolt from the tensioner. This was a real prick to remove, as the little pin it pivots on was seized in the front cover. I had to tap it with a hammer back and forth to get it to move and then slowly wiggle it out


Once the belt was removed, before progressing further, I set the crank to a certain position as per the manual. As it says, this sets the pistons in a certain height to prevent the pistons hitting the valves.


I could then remove the cam pulleys and rear timing cover


The cams on the F6A engine aren't actually in the head, they are in cam boxes on top of the head. Annoyingly, it means if you have a "valve cover" leak, you have to remove the camshafts (and timing belt) to change the gaskets. After removing all the screws, I carefully lifted off the cam boxes


This gave me clear access to the head, with the rocker arms and hydraulic lash adjusters (lifters)


I carefully removed the rocker arms in their pairs, and placed them in an organiser


The lifters just slide up out of their bore. I started with some needle nose pliers and a rag, but in the end just pulled them out with my bare fingers


Intake side done


A good reminder to limit how much sealant you use. This orange RTV was all over the place, and in the case of this lifter, inside it too


The Alto reconditioner didn't seem that concerned, since they dumped all the rockers and lifters from that engine together into a container with no care


but in my case I'm keeping everything labelled and organised


Next was to remove the head, which caused a slight issue... my hex socket was too big to fit between the valve springs. Nothing a visit to the bench grinder couldn't fix though


Head bolts removed. They always have a very distinctive burnt oil smell


Head removed


Finally, the treasures inside have been revealed. Stock/OEM style head gasket present


The bores looked good, considering the unknown ks


Number two has some slight marking in the walls. Cant pick it up with a fingernail though. Hopefully a hone will clean it up


The pistons were looking good too, quite clean, with no missing bits


As you can see in the photos above though, the coolant passages were a bit crusty... so when I removed the water pump... it was nasty.


I gave it a clean up, and I will have the block cleaned by the reconditioners, so it should be fine.


Flipping the engine over, it was time to remove the sump and gain access to the rotating assembly


Looked pretty good inside. Nice and clean, no real burnt on sludge. I suspect this engine was looked after


I removed the oil pickup


Now it was time to remove the pistons. One by one, I undid the conrod nuts, removed the cap and pushed the piston down and out


The bearings have some wear, but were fine. Most important was that they were consistent


It's bloody hard to show, since it's so shiny, but the crank also looked great


The main bearing caps needed to be removed next. Once again, bearings looked pretty good (darkness on bearings is just old oil)


Crank also showing no signs of damage


And compared to the thrust bearings I removed from my last Alto, which were almost completely worn out, these are great


I got a little stuck here thanks to a rear main seal housing that didn't want to come free, so moved onto testing the head overnight. With the head upside down I poured some coolant into the chamber on the head. It didn't immediately leak through the valves, so that was a good sign


The theory is that if the valves are sealing, as they should, there should be no coolant leaking past them.


Leaving it overnight showed that two valves had a slight seepage


You could trace the line of coolant from which valve it was


I marked the valves for future checking. I'm sure it'll just be some carbon on the valve seat


So, back to the stupid rear main seal housing. It is held in place with a handful of bolts, and two philips head screws. Dumb idea. I managed to round one off by trying to use my rattle gun to shake it free (which I have had success with before), so for the other one, I used the recommended impact screwdriver


After a few good whacks, it came right out


My only option was to drill the head off and hope the rest came out without too much of a fight. I used progressively bigger drill bits until the head popped off


Which meant I could finally remove the crank


The remains of the screw did just wind out easily


The main goal here was to thoroughly clean all the gasket surfaces, and measure the bores and pistons before the block and head have a date with the engine reconditioner this week.


Cleaning the sump flange on the block gave a nice half and half


After much scraping, and some wire brushing, I moved onto checking the bores. There was no point in sending it out for machine work if the bores were over spec


Its not the best way to do it, and certainly not the quickest, but I bought a micrometer and set of T gauges


It was a pretty steep learning curve getting the T gauges to measure properly, centered in the bore and not reading too high or too low.


The manual calls for four measurements per cylinder. Two at 50mm from the top and two more 90mm from the top; two inline with the crank and two perpendicular. I marked the two depths on the T gauge since I was sick of using a ruler each time


The trick was to line the gauge up in the cylinder, and then locking and unlocking it whilst gently wiggling it around to center it first, followed by unlocking it, tipping it so one side goes down into the bore further, locking it and then tilting it up straight again (which pushes the gauge slightly closed, accurately measuring the bore) and lifting it out to be measured


You can see from the sheet I made that it took a few tries before I got repeatable results. I started with cylinder 1, so had to go back and redo it once I had refined my skills a bit


The last measurement I wanted to do was checking the piston skirt. To do this I had to remove the conrod. This is where my first real surprise came about. I began with piston 3, which I had noticed was a little stiff to move when wiggling the conrod back and forth, unlike the others which were smooth.


I used a pick to remove the retaining clip


And then using a short extension bar, I carefully hammered out the pin. Piston 3 took a bit of force to hammer out


This was why. It turns out the gudeon pin is cracked end to end, right through to the center


Unfortunately this has also damaged the little end of the conrod, marking it up


Thankfully all the others came out fine, but I will need to buy a single new conrod, which ain't cheap.


Moving on to measuring them, this was a bit of a pain once again, until my technique got better.


All pistons were within spec


I had a quick idea to use one of the conrods that came with the Alto, so I grabbed the best looking one and stripped it down


I don't know what kinda of horrible pain and suffering this engine went through, but the two good rods both suffered from massive heat in the little end. Both pins were discoloured from heat, as were the top of the conrods.


I decided not to risk running them, so back in their box they went. Speaking of a hard life, check out the skirt wear on the Alto piston vs the Cappo one


Interestingly the bigend bearings in the Alto were non-original, so I'm guessing it was bearing slapped at some point before it all fell to bits

Cappo bearing left, Alto bearing right
With the block stripped, I did a quick comparison against the Alto block. Other than the bolt-ons, they are the same block. The only real difference noticed is that the Cappo block is drilled and tapped for the oil filter adaptor, whilst the Alto one isn't. The Alto oil cooler seal should still be on the outside of the holes.

Alto left, Cappo right
Why I'm not using the Alto block, its badly pitted


The last job I needed to do this weekend was to strip the head so that can also be skimmed. This means valves out, springs out, stem seals out


It was a bit awkward to do with my cheap new spring compressor, but it did the job pretty easily


A small magnet on a stick was used to fish out the collets


Again, the previous rebuilder didn't care


But I do


The last few valves being removed


Job done, I removed the seals with some pliers


I will send it all out to be cleaned and skimmed/honed this week. I'm still a little while off having all the parts I need, but at least I wont be relying on anyone else to do their bit once the parts do arrive.


As a bonus, I wanted to quickly pop the front bumper back on the Alto, just to keep it safe. This required refitting the slam panel and bumper support


It turns out having all the bolts in your slam panel is for chumps, broken off bolts are where the cool kids play. I'm a chump though, and not cool, so I drilled out and tapped the broken bolt


There is shockingly little in the front of an old Kei car. To be fair, I don't believe late model ones are much better, certainly the HA36S Alto wasn't.


With the frame in place, I juggled the bumper a bit and fitted it


It's got its little face again, likely for the first time in a year or two


I know it'll need to come off again to refit the engine, but that's a future me problem.

dom9

8,454 posts

227 months

Fantastically detailed thread - following with interest!

Cambs_Stuart

3,358 posts

102 months

Always a joy to find you've started another thread, doubly so when it's such a fantastic nugget. Look forward to all the updates!

Tango13

9,687 posts

194 months

Another interesting thread to follow smile

With regards that gudgeon pin, I watch an American guy on YouTube 'I do cars' who strips down old high mileage or blown up engines some of which are little more than a sump full of engine based shrapnel but in all the grenaded engines the gudgeon pins seem to survive intact. I have never seen or heard of a gudgeon pin split length ways like that!

KelvinatorNZ

Original Poster:

723 posts

88 months

Tuesday
quotequote all
Tango13 said:
Another interesting thread to follow smile

With regards that gudgeon pin, I watch an American guy on YouTube 'I do cars' who strips down old high mileage or blown up engines some of which are little more than a sump full of engine based shrapnel but in all the grenaded engines the gudgeon pins seem to survive intact. I have never seen or heard of a gudgeon pin split length ways like that!
No one I have spoken to has seen it before either, particularly considering the rest of the engine is in great shape. I do note that on that rod with the cracked pin, the little end is too tight to get another pin into. Whether thats a cause or effect, im not sure. New rod has been ordered though.

SJfW

271 posts

101 months

Tuesday
quotequote all
Slightly cheeky, but do you have any info on the racing Cappuccino?

BrettMRC

5,193 posts

178 months

Tuesday
quotequote all
Nice thread and a great car, I lusted after one for years - and thought I had got over it until I saw this thread! biggrin