New Aussie Cappo owner

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New Aussie Cappo owner

Postby Greg Ford » Tue Jun 20, 2017 12:31

Hi

Greg here from Sydney, Australia.

I'd been looking for a Cappo since seeing one in a small country town (Blaney, NSW) about 300k's (200 miles?) west of Sydney, OZ about 12 months ago. A bit of research peaked my curiosity so I trolled the Japanese import car sales places until I found my new love 3 weeks ago.

"Java" (My Cappuccino) originally was imported into New Zealand in January 93 as a new car. The owner then moved to Queensland Australia in 98 and registered it there as a 'Limited Build Import". He drove it on weekends until late 2016 when he passed away, and his daughter inherited it. She drove it, but was not used to a manual trans, and burned the clutch. She advertised it for sale, and a Japanese Car specialist in Sydney bought it and shipped it to Sydney.

I saw it advertised, and went to look at it.

It had spent almost all of it's life in a hot, dry Queensland climate and was fairly original except for a replacement (Mitsubishi Evo) intercooler, and some random futzing with vacuum/boost hoses.

I looked at it, crawled under it looking for rust but found none (yes, NONE..... this is Australia, we don't do rust) and all the usual Cappo issues (none found, including smoooooth 1st to 2nd cold shift).

After spending a couple of hours looking at it, I took it for a test drive, to discover that the clutch was slipping. The dealer offered to fix it (yeah!! right!!), but I asked them for a price if I was willing to fix it myself. We settled on a discount of $1700 OZ, which is probably about 1200 pounds sterling off the asking price.

My local trusted mechanic quoted that he can replace the clutch (pressure plate, clutch plate, throwout bearing, thrust bearing, skim flywheel etc, and labour) for about a quarter of the dealer discount, so I took the deal and bought my new toy.

36,900k's as certified by dealer. Drives like a near new car except for the very light clutch slipping. When I got it, I adjusted the clutch cable and pedal travel and found that the clutch was badly adjusted and moderately worn, but might be survivable, but decided to replace it anyway.

The harsh Queensland sun turned the original white paint into powder, so the owner had resprayed it yellow with a metallic black roof about 10 years ago. The paint was fairly faded when I got it, but some polish and love has brought it back to looking pretty good....

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipM ... Zodk80WFpB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRBABny ... e=youtu.be
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Re: New Aussie Cappo owner

Postby Ian Linden » Sat Jun 24, 2017 17:58

I have to say that yellow is PERFECT with the black interior - what's it look like with the roof on?

Suzuki never realised how good yellow would be - I'd swap my silver for it anyday.
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Re: New Aussie Cappo owner

Postby Murray Betts » Sun Jun 25, 2017 01:09

Looks like it was meant to be, the colour works well. Glad to hear you found a nice example.
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Re: New Aussie Cappo owner

Postby Kevin Sullivan » Sun Jun 25, 2017 05:09

Nice Cappuccino! Looks good with the fresh paint. I went back to the original red with mine, it had been resprayed with a slightly darker red. Not a fan of that horn. :no:

If you are interested in an upgrade path, these are some of the modifications I made to take my cappu beyond conservative stock trim but safely below a hand grenade:

Brakes:
Stainless Steel hoses - 25yr-old rubber replaced, safety first; firmer pedal under braking.

Handling:
-Front tower strut bar - Cusco and cheap enough but a bit questionable if it was really money well spent given my daily driver ambition and not fully pushing the car to limits. I do intend to Autocross/Gymkhana the car in future.
-Tires: easily up to 185 width on original rims, I also have a set of 15" wider rims and a set of original alloys with mounted snow tires for when the weather drops below 8C/45F.

Engine:
--well, aside from swapping to a fresher 30k-mile engine with strong turbo-- :roll:

-Airflow
-Intake - K&N washable element. Followed Murray Bett`s idea and added an extra opening into the airbox ahead of the filter, with hose routed to the right side.
-Exhaust: Stainless 50mm midpipe & dual 50mm muffler. Reasonable burble at low speed but flows well and open at speed, looks nice coming through the bumpers modified mesh and smaller back-up light. I have/had a straight-through motorcycle type mounted in the stock under-bumper location, sounds raspy and racy but a bit too much for the neighbors says my lady driver. ;)

-Adjustable electronic boost control: now that it breathes freely, I upped the boost from .78 bar to 1.0, pretty conservative but I have no desire to compromise head gasket reliability or install a metal head gasket until I need to get in there. Should the head ever need to come off... maybe...)

-N1 ECU reflash kit - keeps the original turbo, injectors, and intercooler; removes electronic speed limiter (138km=~85mph); advances the timing for more power, now takes premium fuel and one step colder plugs to prevent detonation, and increases the fuel map for boost pressures to ? 1.2 bar ?(I don`t go there). Improved torque and pull in the mid-range through 6500rpm then starts to run out of boost, perfect as a street car daily driver putting power where you use it. If you really wanted to go full-bore, the N2 ECU kit provides more fuel map, larger turbo, injectors, intercooler so sustained power up to the ~9000rpm limit and fuel maps for higher boost of 1.2+ ??? when/if it blows up... And frankly there are other/better tunable fuel injection control systems for racing applications than the standard N2 kit for the early MAF-type fuel injection system (so I am told by a cappu racer here in Japan.)

Interior niceties:
Momo Red/Black leather trim steering wheel; red LED instrument panel inserts; dash boost gauge; netting for cargo shelf behind the seats; interior pocket on passenger side transmission tunnel; Bluetooth stereo and USB chargers and mounts for the iphone; extra power outlets; and a Drive cam recorder.

Next, maybe:
LSD - 1.5 way Limited Slip Differential - for when you lift that inside wheel when cornering, or need a bit of throttle-off oversteer to control both ends of the car...
Baffled Fuel Tank - occasional fuel starvation during cornering when fuel sloshes away from the pump inlet. Infrequent but annoying, may never get around to fixing that one if it is as easy as keeping the tank full.

All in all, very happy with my work so far making the cappu even better for my tastes.
Enjoy, safe motoring! :D
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Re: New Aussie Cappo owner

Postby Greg Ford » Sun Jun 25, 2017 06:00

Hi
Thanks for the comments. The car is reasonably standard at the moment, only mods are a 2.5" exhaust, K&N pod filter in a custom air box, bigger intercooler and a 'Cross' ECU that I believe is the equivalent of an N1. The ECU has a switch on the front of it which appears to be in the 'off' position, (I cant read Japanese) so maybe its running the standard map. Until I find out more about the ECU, I wont touch it.
I'm thinking that I might leave it as is. It's strictly a 'weekend' car, so I don't really want to make too many changes to it in terms of increasing power etc as I want it to be reliable. I checked the boost and it peaks at about 9psi, which I think is about standard. I'll leave the rest of the car cosmetically standard as well, not too many original looking Cappo's floating around these days.
The roof is metallic gunmetal grey but the center section is yellow, prompting my wife to call it 'bumblebee' (I didn't choose the colour scheme, that's the way it came.)

Pics here:
http://www.aussiesky.org/gregpics/100_6211.JPG
http://www.aussiesky.org/gregpics/Cappo_ECU.jpg

Cheers from OZ
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Re: New Aussie Cappo owner

Postby Ian Linden » Sun Jun 25, 2017 08:54

I don't have the N1 and N2 graphs from Suzuki Sport (the website has disappeared), but I have a record that the NI fuel map goes to just below 1.1 bar, and the N2 to 1.2 bar. I also recollect that the N1 is fine on 95RON fuel. The N2 with bigger turbo requires 98 RON.

EDIT: Just remembered the N1 and N2 manuals in our manuals section (it's right at the bottom of the list). The table there implies that the N1 boost limiter for the F6ADOHC applies 1.14kg/cm2, which is 1.12 bar, and the N2 has no boost control.

Also, the N1 on the Cappo is Spec A with original turbo, which specifies a maximum boost of 1.1kg/cm2 (1.08 bar), and the N2 is Spec C with 4JA36-T10 turbo, which specifies 1.2 kg/cm2(1.18 bar).

The conclusion is that the N1 cannot sustain higher than 1.1 bar, and the N2 1.2 bar (given the accuracy limitation in reading the boost gauge).
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Re: New Aussie Cappo owner

Postby Chris da Silva » Sun Sep 24, 2017 09:21

Hi Greg. Glad to know that you're a new Cappo owner. I'm also in Oz, but in Perth where it's been absolutely miserable [weather-wise] for the past few weeks! :(

Yes, the lads in SCORE know me well: I've been a real pain the proverbials when I was looking for a Cappo and this extended to after I bought mine. (Ha! Ha!) :lol: I'm a very contented owner like a dog with two tails!

This coming weekend (Oct 1st) I will be displaying my Cappo at the Rotary Club's Wesley College Car Show; and if you're in this neck of the woods, I would love to meet up with you and swap stories.

Cheers!

Chris
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Re: New Aussie Cappo owner

Postby Greg Ford » Sat Sep 30, 2017 03:11

A bit far away from me unfortunately, but a few pics would be good. I put mine in a local car show last week and discovered how many people have never seen/heard of one. :D
Weather in Sydney is ideal at the moment, so I'm doing a lot of driving (top down, of course!)


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Re: New Aussie Cappo owner

Postby Chris da Silva » Sat Sep 30, 2017 04:37

Hi Greg. You're absolutely right: these are very thin on the ground. To the best of my knowledge, there are only 4 known examples here in WA including mine; so yes, I do get a lot questions about it at car shows! (I'm expecting that tomorrow....)

Tomorrow, incidentally, is going to be sunny and dry - perfect for soft-top motoring. So I'm going to take full advantage of driving topless.... 8)
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