• Please only use these forums for blogs, they are not a discussion forum

Bens K10. The Second Micra

Time for another update.. urgh.. I've left this for so long i got loads to sort. Right... So i left off with swapping the fuel tank. and i wanted to fit my D2 coilovers before going to JDM Combe.
IMG_0344 (Large).JPG
Freshly refurbed D2s :)

IMG_0345 (Large).JPG
Covered with plenty of insulation tape to keep the threads clean.

DSC_0655 (Large).JPG
Little better than my borrowed coilovers haha

DSC_0654 (Large).JPG
Brackets on for the brake lines
DSC_0653 (Large).JPG
And the otherside.

DSC_0652 (Large).JPG
Very nice :D

IMG_0347 (Large).JPG
Gave it a wash put some stickers on and all ready for JDM Combe :)

IMG_0349 (Large).JPG

DSC_0928 (Large).JPG
Need some nice wheels though!!
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0346 (Large).JPG
    IMG_0346 (Large).JPG
    209.5 KB · Views: 426
  • IMG_0348 (Large).JPG
    IMG_0348 (Large).JPG
    259.4 KB · Views: 469
So after JDM Combe i had quite a few things still left to sort. Main ones being my fuel gauge not working, brake shoes to change and my passenger side track rod end to change (so i could finally get my tracking done lol)

DSC_0761 (Large).JPG
First off was the fuel gauge. Tracked everything back.

DSC_0762 (Large).JPG
Solder up some wires.
DSC_0763 (Large).JPG
Put it all back together..
DSC_0764 (Large).JPG
It works!! Apparently it under reads by quite a lot though, as £20 gives me a full tank on the gauge hahahaha

DSC_0765 (Large).JPG
Time to get the track rod end off.

DSC_0766 (Large).JPG
After quite a bit of persuasion it eventually decided to come loose.

DSC_0767 (Large).JPG
Threads cleaned and greased.

DSC_0768 (Large).JPG
Ready for the nice new shiny one :)

DSC_0770 (Large).JPG
Time to move onto the brake shoes. Bought some Mintex shoes for the back. Nice to see factory paint under the cover. Never been touched in it's 26 year life.

DSC_0771 (Large).JPG
After quite a bit of effort the hub nut came loose, took the hub off to make changing the shoes a bit easier.

DSC_0776 (Large).JPG
Ta daa. (i did put a new locking pin back in!!) Didn't get any pictures of the other side as i was running out of time and the other side proved to be quite a bit more difficult for some odd reason.
 
Right then...
So I left off with preparing for Japshow 2017 (which was on 8th/9th July). After doing all the mechanical jobs I then turned my attention to some of the finer aesthetics, one of these included fitting my spoilers! Both top spoiler from the 1L Super and my mid spoiler acquired from some bloke in Gloucestershire.

IMG_0360 (Large).JPG
Spoilers ready for priming and painting.

IMG_0361 (Large).JPG
Both of them were covered in lots of crap and required some major sanding back to get them smooth.

IMG_0365 (Large).JPG
The top spoiler was faded pretty badly too

IMG_0369 (Large).JPG
Mid spoiler all ready to go!

IMG_0373 (Large).JPG
Same for the top spoiler :)

IMG_0375 (Large).JPG
Ready for a coat of paint! Somehow i missed actually getting a picture of painting them lol

But i did mess them up a bit, so got a friend of mine to help me sand them back and respray them!
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0360 (Large).JPG
    IMG_0360 (Large).JPG
    315.6 KB · Views: 392
  • IMG_0361 (Large).JPG
    IMG_0361 (Large).JPG
    136.7 KB · Views: 381
  • IMG_0365 (Large).JPG
    IMG_0365 (Large).JPG
    177.1 KB · Views: 432
  • IMG_0366 (Large).JPG
    IMG_0366 (Large).JPG
    393.2 KB · Views: 434
  • IMG_0369 (Large).JPG
    IMG_0369 (Large).JPG
    297 KB · Views: 393
  • IMG_0366 (Large).JPG
    IMG_0366 (Large).JPG
    393.2 KB · Views: 458
  • IMG_0371 (Large).JPG
    IMG_0371 (Large).JPG
    255.6 KB · Views: 414
So after getting them painted up it was time to fit them to the car! This was pretty tense as all we had to go on was how it looked by eye. Top spoiler had all the proper brackets so quite a few holes needed to be drilled. Mid spoiler was a bit easier all that needed was two bolts and lots of double sided foam tape.

DSC_0792 (Large).JPG
Back at my mate Mats house, all taped up and holes marked out ready to drill the boot!

DSC_0793 (Large).JPG
First lot of holes drilled and brackets also in place to be drilled. Since the top spoiler was fitted like factory it's not going anywhere anytime soon haha.
DSC_0794 (Large).JPG
Somehow managed to miss the entire process of fitting the mid spoiler :(
But that was done more by eye as less holes needed to be drilled.

DSC_0797 (Large).JPG
Also asked his brother very nicely to borrow my old set of speedlines from my first Micra! Looks good (rear arch lip did need to be rolled though)

DSC_0798 (Large).JPG
Yes!! Looking awesome :D
 
Right time the interior fitting there was quite a lot to do wit the black 1L Super interior as well as the car! The interior needed a bloody good clean and a wet vac and the car needed a clean and wash inside haha

IMG_0377 (Large).JPG

With the new interior loaded up it was time to get to work.

IMG_0379 (Large).JPG

A few shots of how the old interior looked

IMG_0380 (Large).JPG

A few years ago i had removed quite a bit of the interior and never got around to putting back in and then lost haha

IMG_0381 (Large).JPG

At least it looked clean, well on the top anyway.

IMG_0383 (Large).JPG

Starting to take it all apart and yeah it's a bit dirty underneath!

IMG_0385 (Large).JPG

Seats out! For about the 7th time probably.

IMG_0386 (Large).JPG

Nice bit of grot there...

IMG_0387 (Large).JPG

All plastics removed and the rear not door door cards (i've no idea what they are called) are removed. So you can see just how little metal there is in a K10!

IMG_0389 (Large).JPG

Carpet out for the first time since it left the factory in 1991 (along with the smell of old people, not sure if that was factory though)

IMG_0396 (Large).JPG

Gave a good attempt of cleaning out all the crap from under the carpet. Came out alright.

IMG_0397 (Large).JPG

Boot area cleaned out again. Remnants of my failed external fuel pump placement can still be seen. Glad i got the Figaro tank now!

IMG_0398.1 (Large).JPG

Carpet laid out and ready to be cleaned and wet vacced.

IMG_0398 (Large).JPG

Come up really nice, the amount of dirty water that came out was crazy.

IMG_0399 (Large).JPG

Turn of the seats next.

IMG_0402 (Large).JPG

They came out ok, but are still stained. At least they are clean though.

IMG_0403 (Large).JPG

Drivers door card fitted and given a wipe down.

IMG_0404 (Large).JPG

Grey door car ready to be removed.

IMG_0405 (Large).JPG

Back seats in! Looking really good already.

IMG_0406 (Large).JPG

Drivers seat in and plastics replaced. Got a bit more luxury now with the surround for the gearstick!

IMG_0408 (Large).JPG

Passenger seat fitted! Had to keep with the brown belt fixings as the black ones felt rather worn out and i didn't trust them. (100k miles use, compared to the 52K of the brown ones) Used the brown mats but black ones were on order!

IMG_0409 (Large).JPG

Rear not door card door cards fitted!

IMG_0411 (Large).JPG

Ohh and a set of black seat belts to match :)

IMG_0413 (Large).JPG

Boot plastics cleaned and ready to fit.

IMG_0414 (Large).JPG

Before.

IMG_0415 (Large).JPG

After!

IMG_0417 (Large).JPG

Yes!! Looks like a proper car again inside now! (Not a massive fan of stripped interiors, and it's not like the K10's interior is particularly heavy)

IMG_0418 (Large).JPG

Parcel shelf fitted and tools in the boot :)

IMG_0425 (Large).JPG


IMG_0426 (Large).JPG


Some pictures of me on the Saturday of Japshow! The MSC were quite impressed with the K10 which made me feel good as that makes the hard work all worth it :)
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0393 (Large).JPG
    IMG_0393 (Large).JPG
    264.8 KB · Views: 416
Last edited:
So I think it's about time for another update :p (only took a few months)

Anyway back to August 2017 and I had booked a week off work because it was my birthday and I wanted time to work on my K10, and since i'm a slow worker i needed a week. Plans for the week were, engine out, remake chassis mount, fit 5 speed box, new LUK clutch, Frank special flywheel and my set of Tomei Cams :cool: (was also going to spray engine bay but ran out of time for that one lol)

IMG_0438 (Large).JPG
Into my mates unit for the week ready and waiting.

IMG_0440 (Large).JPG
Engine bay before the mods started.

IMG_0442 (Large).JPG
My original rear gearbox mount vs the new one. When i packed the old bush out i had no idea it was in the wrong place haha

IMG_0443 (Large).JPG
Everything removed and engine ready to come out. Engine bay desperately needs a good tidy up.

IMG_0444 (Large).JPG
Engine out!

IMG_0446 (Large).JPG
Engine bay is ok but it's a little beige and full of stuff that doesn't need to be there. Ahh well this one is for another day.

IMG_0447 (Large).JPG
Original MA chassis mount removed ready to be repositioned for the CG.

IMG_0448 (Large).JPG
Mount off the chassis.

IMG_0451 (Large).JPG
Original CG10 flywheel and 160mm clutch plate. Turns out this one could not cope with twice the power. Hopefully the LUK kit does a little better!

IMG_0452 (Large).JPG
Doesn't even look used, would have been fine if i wasn't running near twice factory power lol.

IMG_0456 (Large).JPG
One of my better purchases/finds. A genuine Frankspeed special flywheel. It's an extremely lightened version of a preface CG10 flywheel. One on the right is how it would have originally looked!

IMG_0458 (Large).JPG
Top down view.

IMG_0459 (Large).JPG
View from the back. A lot of material has been removed from this!

IMG_0460 (Large).JPG
Another top down comparison. Really wish I had weighed this tbh.

IMG_0461 (Large).JPG
New flywheel now on the engine with my nice shiny LUK kit :)

IMG_0462 (Large).JPG

Interesting gap!

Part two to follow as I could not fit all the pictures on one post.
 
Excuse the two month gap! I really need to get back into my posting grove lol Currently working hard on the 10 with some yet to be announced mods. So back to August 2017, jobs left to do are to move the engine chassis mount, fit my MA12 long ratio 5 speed and my tasty tomei cams :cool:

IMG_0464 (Large).JPG
With the mount now off the chassis it was time to line the engine up as best as possible ready for the mount to be rewelded on. In hindsight this actually went in the wrong place lol.

IMG_0467 (Large).JPG
My MA12 5 speed long ratio gearbox. It will be nice to finally be able to cruise at 70 without doing 4K+! Fun fact the ratios are the same as the MA10 4 speed but 5th is sort of an overdrive.

IMG_0468 (Large).JPG
This is my old 4 speed was quite surprised to see that it was actually smaller than the 5 speed, probably has something to do with missing a gear.

IMG_0472 (Large).JPG
Time for my cam swap, until this point i had never removed a set of cams from a CG but knew how to do it in theory. Easy to remove but took about 2 hours to figure out how to line everything back up haha.

IMG_0473 (Large).JPG
On the top of the picture we have a standard CG13 inlet cam and on the bottom we have a Tomei cam. It's not a regrind but actually a whole new cam, main difference is the duration is much greater than the standard cam, allowing much more air into the engine!

IMG_0474 (Large).JPG
A close up of one of the cams. The Tomei cam does not look quite as pointy as the standard CG13 cam. For awhile I thought that my very expensive cams were not as good as standard until I realised they are not pointy because of that thing called "duration". While i'm certainly far from being a cam expert. What i can gather is because the Tomei cam is less pointy (but still lifts the valve down the same amount) it holds the valve down for longer, meaning more air can get into the engine meaning more power!

From what i've been told these give you a nice 12hp increase.

IMG_0476 (Large).JPG
I also changed the top tensioner. Think mine was the one on the right and I the one on the left was from one of my old CG10s i had lying around (as you do haha). So i swapped it over and it did make a difference.

IMG_0478 (Large).JPG
While I was on the idea of trying to loose spinning weight I also fitted a CG10 crank pulley. These I was told are a whole 600 grams lighter than the CG13 pulley! Also has the bonus of removing the harmonic dampener (which is just a bit of rubber than can degrade and make your crank pulley fall apart).

IMG_0479 (Large).JPG
All back together and ready to go! Along with some nice new exhaust gaskets :) At some point I will clean and paint this engine
(a year later it's still on the to do list....)

IMG_0480 (Large).JPG
While I was busy fitting cams my friend had welded in my engine mount. A bit rough and ready but "it'll do".

IMG_0481 (Large).JPG
Time for the engine to go in.

IMG_0482 (Large).JPG
Engine in. Unfortunately it turned out that my mount was in the wrong place causing the engine to sit on the tit and cause me problems with second gear. (or at least i hope that's what is causing it)

IMG_0485 (Large).JPG
Gave the battery tray a quick wire brush and a coat of paint so it looked a little bit nicer.

IMG_0486 (Large).JPG
The radiator got a pressure wash to clean all the dead bugs off (eww) and flushed though all the old crap. Surprisingly it was pretty clean. Also it turns out a facelift MA10 rad is actually really good at keeping my CG13 nice and cool.

IMG_0493 (Large).JPG
All back together! Got a GA16 airbox fitted while I was at it along with a support bracket and a cable tie to hold the box down to it!
So that's about all i manged to get done in my week off. I gotta remember what I did after this so i'm sure i'll have another post at sometime.
Micra went quite a bit better with all these new mods and i got a nice lumpy idle too :D
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0477 (Large).JPG
    IMG_0477 (Large).JPG
    289.2 KB · Views: 399
Although lighter/ened crank pulleys obviously allow a faster rotation there is a reason why they're dampened-to protect the longevity of the crank.
The rubber on stock pulleys dampens/absorbs the shocks through normal road use and without that it could speed up deterioration of block internals.

In my own experience-

On my 2JZ-GTE JZS161 I bought a 2 piece Titan crank pulley. It was lighter than the original whilst also still being balanced to offer protection within the rotational movement of the crank.

On my GTO mk2 tt I had a cheapo non balanced lightweight pulley and although it sometimes effected my electrics due to the huge amount GTO's had a long with a sound system I ran it as my daily for 2 years and the engine was faultless- it ended up going to Germany so can't comment on the long term effects (if any) it had though.

Thought it was worth mentioning because although it's debatable as to how much damage it can cause and at what rate, it's worth considering if you're spending a fair amount on your engine and it's used regularly.

Btw where did you source the Tomei cams and how much did they set you back if you don't mind me asking?
 
@DEdgeMac Cheers for the info on that. I was thinking it should be ok as it's a standard crank pulley for the CG10 but it's weird how only the CG13s got the dampened pulleys.

I bought the cams from a friend of mine who used them in his rally car. He bought them from someone on the MSC facebook page who had bought them years ago when the MSC did a group buy to bring costs down.
Normally they run around £600 but I was lucky and picked mine up for £250.
 
Few well...
This is a bit of a post revival. The K10 is still alive (just) been off the road since around 2019 and looking quite sorry but hopefully i do plan on changing all that.
See if i can be bothered to keep on top of my blog posts now :ROFLMAO:
 
Back
Top