Friday, November 16, 2012
Introducting: A new contributor to TSM
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Suzuki Swift GTi: Burning the Four-Wheeled Suzuki Torch
Suzuki’s North American operations just rang their death knell. The maker of many a widow-making sportbike never could quite get its four-wheeled vehicles to gain as much recognition in the broader American market. Its last significant effort was the stylish, mid-size Kizashi sedan. There hasn’t been much in the brand for enthusiasts to latch onto.
We’d say it’s not for lack of trying, but really, it is. While the Samurai has its own cult following in the off-road community, Suzuki only brought one pavement performer to the U.S. in recent memory—something small enough that maybe it didn’t seem too foreign to its sportbike people. It was the Suzuki Swift GTi, sold from 1989 to 1994.
You’ve seen its sibling around, usually in the hands of a hypermiler or merely being neglected. The Swift GT—known as the GTi for only the first year, thanks to VW’s trademark lawyers—is the Geo Metro’s faster brother. That’s a low bar to leap, but that doesn’t make the GTi a poor performer.
The Swift is swift because it’s light. A cool hundred horsepower come out of its high-revving 1.3 liter engine, and has just under 1800 lbs. to move around. Unassisted steering means more power to the ground.
It’s one of the champions of the drive-a-slow-car-fast ethos (but it can make tons of power—see the tips on the next page). It’s tiny. It’ll squeeze anywhere in traffic, revs to the skies and is a hoot to wail on, even if all that wailing means you’re still side-by-side with that minivan you just drag-raced from the stoplight. Keep the revs up; this engine has a sportbike’s spirit and a 7500 rpm rev limit. Stiffer springs and four-wheel disc brakes round out the chassis package.
It’s unique from the Metro in cosmetic ways, too: flush aero headlights and different bumpers gives it a sporty look. Suzuki tried to make this a significantly nicer car than the Metro, so it has better—and heavier—interior materials, and racier bucket seats.
If you’re looking for the nicest one in the States, $5000 is about the top of the market. Decent runners can go for $1000 or less, but the sweet spot appears to be about $2000-$3000.
Buy the nicest one you care to afford, and put a little effort into keeping it looking good. The community will thank you for not letting another one of these little toys descend into disrepair, and maybe you’ll earn a little good karma for keeping the four-wheeled Suzuki torch burning after the brand departs our shores.
Mike Cove is a long-time Swift enthusiast and the owner of 3Tech, a company that specializes in the Swift and its rev-happy engine. Jen Imai won first place in the Performance Stock class in the 2011 California Rally Series with a Suzuki Swift GT. We mined their minds for these tips.
The Swift community is small, but active and resourceful. Look to the TeamSwift message board to answer your questions and help you find high-performance parts. Group-buys come around regularly for custom-made bits.
The engine is remarkably robust, and can make a lot of power on stock internals; It has a forged, nitrided crank, flat-top pistons, robust connecting rods and great head flow. A set of camshafts—available through 3Tech—will let it rev to 9000 rpm without problems. The intake manifold, header and pistons from the overseas Suzuki Cultus GTi are the hot commodities for naturally-aspirated horsepower, but the easy upgrades are a larger throttle body and a cone air filter.
Ready to blow your mind? Add a turbo. These little 1.3-liters can handle lots of boost, and can push 200 to 250 horsepower. Using pistons from the ’98-2001 Swift/Metro 1.3-liter drops compression to a boost-friendly 8.5:1.
Expect to break transmissions with high power or off-road abuse. Third gear is weak, and the second-gear synchro tends to wear out. Don’t be surprised with a 1-2 crunch on a high-mileage car. Rally racing will tend to bust the differential’s spider gears, but a robust limited-slip is available from Gripper. If you’re adding a turbo, the whole box has to go (though as of this writing, a group-buy on straight-cut gears is available on TeamSwift). A stronger transmission from a 1.6-liter Suzuki Esteem can be adapted.
Most chassis components and body panels will interchange with the Geo Metro. The GT’s unique bumpers—which changed for 1992, too, along with the interior fabric—can be hard to find in some areas, but Metro parts are plentiful in every junkyard.
For a great street suspension upgrade, pair the KYB GR2 shocks with H&R Springs. The cost is low, and it works very well. If you want to go racing with a hardcore setup, Hot Bits sells a full coil-over setup. Rear pillow-ball suspension mounts from an Eagle Talon can be adapted to the rear shocks.
The four-wheel disc brakes are capable enough, but good brake pads can be hard to find. Lucky that Honda CRX front brake calipers are a direct replacement for the Swift’s. Upgrade to the CRX calipers—they fit with the stock Swift rotors—and a world of pad options open up.
Look for rust on the rocker panels, and on the front frame horns near where the lower control arms attach. It can be hard to spot. The chassis is rather flexible, too, and cars with weak frames can exhibit cracked windshields. Look carefully.
The driving experience is very sensitive to weight; what’s great fun alone becomes a chore with a passenger. Likewise, weight reduction is the easiest way gain noticeable performance. The spare tire, jack, and back seat weigh a combined 100 lbs.
Avoid fitting heavy wheels. The stock alloys are a mere 9 pounds. Getting heavy rolling stock only adds rotating mass, which will make the car feel sluggish. Still feeling sad off the line? Consider using a 4.39:1 final drive from a ’95-up Metro. It’ll feel a bit better than the Swift’s 4.10:1 gear.
1989-94 Suzuki Swift GTi
layout: front engine, front-wheel drive
engine: G13B-spec 1.3-liter DOHC four-cylinder, aluminum block and heads
horsepower: 100 @ 6500 rpm
torque: 83 ft.-lbs. @ 5000 rpm
transmission: five-speed manual
suspension: strut front and rear
brakes: four-wheel disc
wheels: 14x5-in. alloy
tires: 175/60R14
PARTS
3tech: valvetrain and engine performance parts, teamswift.net/3tech
Feal Suspension: coil-over suspension (Hot Bits U.S. distributor), fealsuspension.com, (909) 477-3030
Gripper Differentials: limited-slip differentials, gripperdifferentials.com
Hot Bits: coil-over suspension, hotbits.org
John’s Foreign Engines: engine-related parts, g13b.com, (800) 450-3177
COMMUNITY
TeamSwift: enthusiast forum, teamswift.net
Redline GTi: enthusiast forum, redlinegti.com
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Miata CAS doesn't like water
Don't hose off under the hood of your Miata if your cam angle sensor has a bad seal. That shit gets wet and your car becomes disabled because of a No G Signal fault code. I stuck it in the oven for a little while at a low temperature and was all better.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Super Porsche Man!
...flies in to tweak his carburetor!
Really though, he's pointing to something in his engine bay for the other guy standing nearby. I was taking a few photos from this angle, and the car's owner leaned in. This is exactly how the photo came out of the camera. No cropping. This particular car—a 1965 Porsche 356C—will be featured in comparison with a Chevrolet Corvair Monza Spyder (a CMS project car) in the upcoming issue of Classic Motorsports. I shot most of the photos that end up in the story.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Installing cruise control in a throttle-by-wire Toyota
At the root of the problem, it turns out, was a lot of fat, stupid feet continuously mashing on the gas pedal instead of the brake. The fact that there's no mechanical cable directly connecting the gas pedal to the throttle body had nothing to do with it, though it did give plenty of automotive Luddites a chance to bitch about technology.
Fact is, drive-by-wire throttles are handy from an engineering standpoint--no need to worry about getting the cable to reach or to work right in a certain orientation, for one. They're also handy in that some cars that don't come with cruise control can be easily retrofitted at minimal cost. Yes, I've finally reached my point.
With Zoe's 2010 Yaris, there's no computer modules to add. No expensive vacuum diaphragms or OEM switches. A trip to Radio Shack, a little time with a screwdriver, soldering iron, drill, and wire splices, and you're good to go. I'll spare you the details of the install; kind enthusiasts figured out how to do this, and posted the information online. That's how I did it. Here's the step-by-step:
More and more cars today are throttle-by-wire, so it stands to reason that methods similar to this are possible on a lot of newer cars.
I popped off a plastic panel on the dashboard and drilled holes for these switches. After soldering in the appropriate resistor--a 660 ohm one, I think--and extra wiring, it went back into the dash. I didn't photograph it with the stuff soldered up because it's, well, not my finest work. I can solder strong, but it's not necessarily pretty.
There they are. Both are momentary pushbutton switches. Zoe calls them spaceship switches. Sometime soon they'll get labels. The top one will be Warp Drive; the bottom, Shields.
The actual in-car wiring was way easy, with just two wires to splice into.
How can you run cruise control with just two buttons? Well, it's limited in features. The top button toggles the cruise on and off (illuminating the green indicator in the top picture); the bottom one sets the speed and decelerates the car. You can wire in four switches to get full functionality, but two looks nicer and it does the job.
And it works! For less than $10 at Radio Shack, this car has cruise control. Another option for this particular car is just to install the OEM cruise control switch and cut a hole in the steering column cover for it to stick out of, but the switch—a stalk not unlike the turn signal one—is still a little pricey at about eighty bucks.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Why the Fiat 500 will do well (a long ramble)
A hip lady-friend of mine recently blogged about the Fiat 500. She said:
"I have never really been a car person. My dad picked out both of the cars I’ve driven, and they’ve been good cars in the sense that they get me from point A to point B without any scarring or wreckage.
But then I saw this little thing. I want that car. This is the first time in my life I’ve written that down. I want that car. It’s so wee!"
We at the Grassroots Motorsports office have been waiting for one to come through the press fleet. We saw a white one in the parking lot at the office a month or two back, and EVERYONE was talking about it. "Is that our press car?" "It's a stickshift!" "Where did it come from?" "I love the interior." We all fought over who would drive it first. We've been waiting for one to come through the press fleet for some time.
We later found out that it belonged to the meter reader lady from the electric company. It was her personal ride. We all gave her props for driving a stickshift, she enthusiastically proclaimed her love for it, and left.
One showed up at an autocross this summer. It wasn't there to compete; someone just drove it to the event. There were at nearly all times at least four guys gathered around the thing. When the owner was near it, a bigger crowd gathered to ask questions.
All this for a kind of slow, technologically unremarkable, somewhat expensive subcompact car. Why such a fuss?
It is incredibly cute. Sure, your average Camaro shopper wouldn't be caught dead in one, but I'm sure the reverse is also true. But that's less the point, so much as its whimsy. It's fun just to look at. It makes people smile, stop, and have a closer look. The Mini Cooper and New Beetle did these things, but I hesitate to say that they did it so universally.
I thought at first that it was too expensive. It starts at the same price as the Ford Fiesta ($15,500), a considerably larger car. But, while the Fiesta might be more practical to own and perhaps are more capable as a performance car, its fun really only kicks in once you're whipping it around corners and really making use of its delightful chassis.
With a car like this, the whimsy, the thrill, the joy, comes from the minute you sit in it. You get into it, smile, and ask, "So, what can you do?" The same thing happened with my sister when she bought her (also smaller than a Fiesta but 30% more costly) Mini Cooper several years ago. She wasn't a car person, but she became an enthusiastic driver. She learned to live with its small cargo space. She'd tell stories of playing cat-and-mouse through traffic with other Mini drivers. It also helped that she got a stickshift, I think, but part of it had to be that the car made its existence clear to its owners.
Not many cars do that, or have ever done that terribly often. Even if something is fun to drive, a cheap car will rarely actually say hello. It'll have the same speedometer you see in every other car in the world; the switchgear will look the same; it'll all be in that familiar industrial-plastic black.
Guys are fascinated. Gals think it's adorable. If this car is half as fun to drive as it is to look at (foreign reviews indicate as much), it'll sell as many as Fiat can make. It might even help get more kids interested in cars and driving who previously just thought of it as an expensive mode of transport. I only hope the take rate on stickshifts is high.
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