Irish in Canada EP91 build.

[Yoshimitsu666]

Howdy, been lurking and buying on here for a while now, gathering parts and knowledge and such. I'm from Northern Ireland but moved out to Canada last year for a better life and work opportunities (im a welder). There's not too much of a car scene here, possibly due to the -38c winters, the awful roads or the retarded speed limits (already scored a $316 fine). All the lads are either into sledding, quads or lifted trucks. Having said that though I have seen a few JDM motors of late with the good weather (now around 30c) and there are a few JDM import companies thriving.

I am mainly a VW nut, and have owned a few nice cars (Shrick tuned MK3 Vr6 Golf, 1972 1302 Bug, 1973 1303s and an Eaton Supercharged Polo G40 which some of the Norn irn lads may remember seeing, it was alpine white). The price of VW's here is absolutely ridiculous, you'd pay 10k for a clean Jetta/Bora with 200k on it, so I decided to grab a fresh import JDM car. I was originally looking for a Nissan March SuperTurbo, but was outbid on any of the ones I liked, so went for this Glanza. Must say I've always wanted a Glanza but never driven one, very impressed!

It's a 98 Glanza V, completely standard apart from a very very very badly worn Recaro Speed on a Recaro rail on the drivers side. 113k on the clock.

So far all i've done to the motor is as follows...

Boost return mod (different car now!)

Magnecor 8mm leads

New dizzy cap

New rotor arm

New Iridium plugs

Just this minute changed the oil and filter and threw in a magnetic sump plug from IDworkz (what a pain in the hole changing the filter on a standard Glanza!!)

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Got the following parts to go on waiting in my spare room..

HKS Sports panel filter

Timing belt kit and water pump

Triple core alu rad

Slimline Fan

Low temp thermostat

Decat with OEM gasket

Japspeed stainless system (in the mail)

Free flow stainless manifold and new OEM nuts and OEM gasket

FMIC (still needing pipework as mine came without the short route hot side pipe and it's cheaper just to order a full set of pipework and fittings than pay what lads are looking for that one piece)

Cusco oil catch tank (in the mail)

HKS SSQV (lost in space, last I heard it's now somewhere in Israel after paying for it in March)

Trust Greddy Emanage Blue with 3bar map sensor

Tein Springs (roads are MUCH too bad for coilovers, you could easily lose a full Glanza in some of the pot holes.

Have some brand new wheels and rubber to go on, but i'll keep em under my hat, im guessing there won't be a lot of lads here who will appreciate em, but I couldn't bring myself to put Rota's on. Just don't like em!

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Future stuff i have planned..

Fit all above parts and have the car mapped

Two new front seats from a celica or mr2 or get a clean standard drivers seat posted from uk

Double din headunit

Some way of monitoring boost, unsure at this point

I hate gauges so Ill need some way of engine monitoring, something Android capable would be nice.

I want to get the car finished relatively soon and take it through the rockies. Just back last weekend from driving a 30ft Ford E series RV through Jasper/Banff etc and it's easily the best road i've ever been on.

Anyways here are a few pics! Let me know what you think.

Edited July 15, 2014 by Yoshimitsu666

[Faiyaz.123]

The body looks clean need some oem front splitter from id-workz , I'm sure you will get all the help and info here just as I did. Good start and goodluck!

[templar2007]

Looks clean buddy good base

[ro55ifumi]

Welcome and look forward to progress

John

[Gainzy]

As far as monitoring the engine goes check out J's glanza thread he is using a tablet way for monitoring, Tein lowering springs would seem right up your street, looking forwards to the progress

[5e colin]

nice mate

i would leave exterior like that and invest only in engine and brakes

[Yoshimitsu666]

Thanks lads! You're right, the exterior is extremely clean. Its the cleanest car I've had yet, not a single mark anywhere. That reminds me I'll need to get the underside waxoil'd.

I'm much too old to go down the splitter or bodykit route, I'm more into the clean OEM look so as far as the exterior I've planned on keeping it 100% stock. There must be less than 50 of these in Canada, so it would be nice to have one that's rapid, extremely clean and subtle.

[Yoshimitsu666]

As far as the engine and boost management, I'm almost fully sold on using a trust greddy electronic boost controller to govern the boost (as far as I am aware it negates the need for an adjustable actuator?).

As for the oil temp/pressure, water temp, etc I'm planning on using a kiwi pld system linked via Bluetooth to either a parrot smartdeck or my s4. I like the thought of having a clean dash without the clutter of dials so having a central android powered system that can handle my Google maps, music, engine monitoring etc sounds clean to me.

One shortfall I think these cars suffer from (and all Toyotas in general, I thought my yaris was bad) is the interior. Its extremely bland and drab, so come winter the interior is being completely stripped. I'm having the dash flocked, along with pieces of the door cards, parts will be hydro dipped and maybe the wheel covered in something nice like alacantra. The rear seats I'm unsure, maybe get them recovered to match whatever seats I find for the fronts with a boot friendly OEM rear brace.

I'll have plenty of time to fettle in the winter as it'll be parked up for 7 months while the temperatures fall.

[5e colin]

thats the joice off most ricers the interiors stinks but the models and engins are the best

[BoostJunkie]

pretty clean v mate ;) i'm a fellow immigrant in Canada aswell i'm down in Lethbridge where-abouts are you ?

who did you import through ? Mr William of JDM Connection or B-Pro Auto ?

[Phil]

Whats the wheels

Borbets or the like?

look forward to seeing this project progress in the winter months.

Phil

[Yoshimitsu666]

Yeah man i'm right in Edmonton, I live downtown. I used William Baird to import the car for me, real nice fella and i'm considering using him again soon to get me a winter motor of some sort as this as I say will be in heated underground parking.

Haha, I SHOULD have the wheels on tomorrow, gotta jack up the car and get the springs in before I stick the new wheels on then. You're defo along the right lines with that guess though!

[JonnyEP91]

Mint glanza

[BoostJunkie]

i'm guessing thats William of JDM Connection (edit - just spotted his sticker in your back window lol) he has a good reputation and well known and he is just outside of edmonton when i can afford to i'll be contacting him for a toy

where you working up there ? the mines in fort mac ?

Edited July 23, 2014 by BoostJunkie

[Yoshimitsu666]

Nah mate I was working up until the start of the week in Sherwood park, welding centralizers for a big company. Changing jobs now though in the hope of better money and hours, was on nights in the last place. Heard bad reports about fort Mac (they call it fort smack) , it's full of rich laborers, so a lot of drugs around. Just got engaged in Nov too so woman would kill me being away lol.

Aye Williams a good lad, seems to pass stuff through his hands that's of higher quality than BrianPro, but that's just from looking at pics.

[Yoshimitsu666]

So I got a fair bit more done on the car today. First off I removed the headlights and restored them to new condition using a Simoniz kit. Basically anyone considering this, I would defo say try it out, I am very impressed with the results. Save money by forgetting the kit though, just buy some 800 / 1000 / 2000 grit sandpaper, an abrasive cloth and some buffing compound.

Before... You can't fully see how bad they were, basically they looked like smokers fingernails.

The next pics are along each stage until the final product...

[Yoshimitsu666]

Got the car up on stands, and got the shocks out (easy enough) and fired in some new Tein springs, wheels nuts and spigot rings (more pics in a few days when the rear is done, and the oil and muck cleaned off, claybarred, polished and waxed

Pretty cool, you can rent spring compressors here for free, just typical that the places that do them are the Canadian equivalents to Halfords. Absolutely no idea how a seemingly 14 year old Asian bird is supposed to know where to find spring compressors when she can barely speak the language never mind patch together the rubbish flowing out of my mouth! Ha!

Car is cleaner the deeper I dig, all the nuts and bolts are like new, still lovely and slick and greased, it seems to have been very well looked after. Glad!

They call me the "stylish spec dress up master", haha.

Pics aren't great, as i'm working in the underground parkade in my appt building, much to the horror of the 80 year olds that live there. More to come.

[Yoshimitsu666]

So I got some more done to the Starlet. Managed to get the front springs in myself, was easy enough (never worked on suspension myself before, figured it would be relatively self explanatory). The rears were a different story. The passenger side bolt at the rear beam just would not shift, it was rotating in the hole. I drove around town for a few hours looking for a rental place that had an electric impact wrench, got one along with a 14mm socket and had at it. Same story, just wouldn't move. I ended up starting to damage the bolt head so I decided to throw in the towel (in retrospect a bad decision).

Wish I had just bought a cheap propane torch and tried it again, because now I am out of pocket $600 (talked them down from $700) for fitting rear springs and a 4 wheel alignment. The JDM specialist I took it to charge $150 an hour, which is only marginally more than normal garages believe it or not. Needless to say I will be doing the entirety of the rest of the build myself, or with members of a local forum lending a hand, as those prices just don't sit well with me.

Also got the new wheels on, these defo won't be to the taste of the majority Rota champions on here but as I said i'm a vw nut, and they're a wheel i've wanted for a very long time. I think they suit the car perfectly, i'd ideally like a 5mm spacer in the rear but to be honest the threads coming through the wheel stud holes are maybe a tad on the short side already. Further down the line I can either machine off a portion of the mating face on the rears, or look into extended studs. I like the way the car sits too, it's nice and low in person, and doesn't catch on any of the starlet sized potholes in the city, and no scrubbing or gut wrenching noises. Win!

I also picked up a very cheap audio visual system to go in, it's a Kenwood 7 inch motorised DVD system, apparently this was $1800 new in 2007, well I got it for $80 including an optional Ipod interface board which will be handy. I can't honestly see me using the DVD function, but it has the important RCA input on the back, which is what I wanted. I'm looking to install my Raspberry Pi into the car, this will give me access to my entire music library, my video collection, web browsing (tethered to my 4g S4), and further down the line, engine monitoring. I can also use my phone to control the Rpi by way of XBMC remote, after having set up the phone as a wireless access point.

The wiring loom is immense, and instead of hacking into the cars stereo loom, i've bought one of those el cheapo ebay adapters, it'll connect to the cars loom on one side with the adapter using the plugs, and on the other side i'll trim off the headunit interface plugs from the adapter and hard wire that into the Kenwood unit, creating a sort of 'field harness' should I want to remove it at any stage.

I have also picked up a pair of mint (look to be brand new) Acura Integra GSR seats to go in, reason for this being that some prat in jappyland replaced the drivers seat with an absolutely screwed Recaro SR3 seat. I start my new work on Tuesday, so once i've settled in there, I can bring the seats in and weld them onto the old rails myself, because fuck paying for it! This is just a random google image find by the way, I haven't any pics of the seats yet, but they match the general feel of the standard interior (don't particularly know if thats a good thing though!).

That's all for now folks, obviously the car is in need of a good wash. It'll be getting washed, claybarred etc next weekend. Comment! Cheers.