Micra K11 - Mandy goes to a new home

Well that was a bit more involved than I expected. But it was also as much fun as we had both hoped it would be.

The conversion this is.

Both Hannah and I have spent way more time on these little cars than they'll ever be worth (well actually- word on the street is that K11s ARE the next big thing within the trendy JDM world to soon start soaring in value..)

But we don't care because its been fun and we now have a neat little car in the combination that we wanted. Plus its bloody mint in condition so for the tiny bit of monies its cost us we now have a very good, low mileage modern daily.

Bargain.

Lets go back a couple of weeks though. Hannah started stripping Minky down. Out with her little 1.0 auto. We will flick those off for sale - low mileage and it great condition.

Then she cleaned the engine bay out and it came up pretty sweet. Not rust anywhere. K11s can be prone to rust along the bottom of the radiator support and Molly has some decent rot going on there...



So after Hannah cleaned the area we painted it black (easy to touch up in an area so prone to chipping/road grime) and I also filled the cross member with cavity wax..





Whist in that area we swapped the radiators. Minky had an auto one with extra pipes no longer needed plus a outlet in a different place which meant an uglier hose. So out with Mollys radiator, the bolts which were pretty rusty and gave Hannah a mini battle...



The battle was worth it though ! .... because....



Is what Hannah found behind Mollys radiator. We have no idea how long its been residing there but its quite rusty and could have been dropped in there by someone in Japan. It still works which is good but even better is the fact that its of a particular size! This must be sort of like finding a reverse black hole of the automotive trades world when one of these gets spat back out onto your lap...



We almost had to have a sit down after that and just ponder life.

Anyway.

Then Minky was removed from the hoist and Molly was heaved up in the air for the next stage of the conversion. We wanted her disc brake rear end. Luckily all the bolts holding it in place freed off nicely and it was removed with no dramas. Unlike many UK cars where those bolts are well known for being seized solid from corrosion. While in there I also removed the rear anti sway bar, the front one already removed ages ago when we had pulled out Mollys engine. Minky is devoid of such sportiness and will happily be gifted these treats.

We wire brushed the surface rust off and painted it all. Came up sweet. I also removed the calipers and gave them a workout, freeing up the slightly sticky pistons that had been sitting a while with no use. Luckily the pads and discs are fine.

While Molly was on the hoist I lifted Minkys bum in the air onto some stands and removed her drum brake axle, bolts having all been loosened while she was on the hoist. Axles were then swapped and it went well. Only other thing needing swapping was the hand brake cables, easy.

I am as yet unsure if disc equipped k11s have a larger master cylinder bore - no real info on this and it doesn't seem mentioned on any threads I have found. From what I have found when looking up new M/Cs there is one with a bore 1mm larger. Possibly this is fitted on Molly and we can swap it over if needed. The brakes seemed fine on the floor so test drive will tell for sure.

I didn't take many photos at this point but here's a few of the axle in place..





While Minky's springs were out Hannah cleaned them and found out they are Apexi progressives with a 30mm drop. Nice.



With Minkys drum brake axle swapped into Molly she was lowered back to earth and we could begin the dash swap. We stripped out Mollys setup first, just in case we might find a stumbling block. Luckily it all came out sweet as and much easier than I expected. We ended up removing the full loom as well because a workshop can never have enough automotive wire..



Hannah had a little helper...



Empty..





Then it was Minkys turn. Much bigger (uglier) dash came out leaving this...



Dashing...



Now to look for those differences. I know you're in there! Where are you? Ah- I see you. Steel frame work behind the dash.

Yep- one of those things was not like the other. In fact one of those things was not quite the same.

The support bars were different. But luckily the mounting points on the A pillars and floor were exactly the same. The heater assemblies were also exactly the same, as were the heater controls. They just moved them up the dash for the facelift. So with both cars stripped out I slowly built Minky's interior back together with Mollys bits. A few drill holes were needed. Oh and also- while the whole lot was out I thought best to add a clutch pedal because we might need that.

Luckily the auto equipped cars have the same pressings and they even have the bolt crush tubes mounted in place!

No hole for clutch cable...



Hole for clutch cable...



Couldn't be easier. Thanks Nissan...



Tarted up Mollys clutch pedal with some black zinc it....



Now wiring time. There were a few plugs that needed changing. Facelift Marches * and Pfl Marches share the same instrument pod. Its identical. Its just the ugly dash they changed around it.

*actually- some facelifts, maybe Euro versions, had digital speedos. But not so Marches.

So this is nice.

But the plugs are all different on the back as are all the lights inside and wiring traces, especially with one pod suiting an auto and not having a rev counter (which we just had to have!!!). Made trickier by the fact that Japanese built Marches use many different colours for things compared to European Micras and we only had wiring diagrams for the latter. Those diagrams were infact pretty useless for a lot of it.

So we had to do a bit of paperwork, head scratching and suss some things out...



This involved scribbling on paper, looking up stuff on nerdnet and beer...



Kevin thought it best to sleep this one out...



Eventually we had it all sussed (we hoped). One annoying thing was that Nissan decided to save pennys by not including the required trigger wire for the rev counter into the loom from the ECU. I had to make one up, fit it into the ecu plug and run it up through. Then , with carefully scribbled notes to hand I started splicing mollys set of plugs over to Minkys loom, adding and subtracting what bits wee needed..



My new wire stripper tool was much better than my old one. I like new tools, even better when they are getting used!..



A neat little thing I have not seen before was a little reed switch on the speedo, to send a pip signal back to the ecu/abs for speed...



Electrics all sorted I turned to swapping over the steering column. Mollys one had black plastics to match her dash and a very nice leather rimmed steering wheel. Bonus points also awarded for being height adjustable.

Extravagance!

I needed to swap the lock barrel over - because whilst having two sets of keys is sort of quirky cool when you own an old shitter its not going to wash it for a modern...



Dash assembly was fitted back in, with each piece of the jigsaw carefully cleaned , plugs were plugged in and steering column fitted. It was looking good!!!...





ENGINE TIME!

Oh lordy- how far should we go with cleaning this little beauty of CG13 goodness? I was strong and didn't get too carried away. But it made sense to give it a bit of a tickle while out and so easy to get to.



I admit I did spend a bit of time cleaning up an gearbox that no one will probably ever see, but for which hides an LSD within, again, something very few but the most geeky of K11 boffins would ever spot. I couldn't help myself...



Minky was carefully lowered down over her new heart. What a thoroughly exciting moment (for a car geek enthusiast) and everything bolted up fine. I had to do a bit more wiring detective work because autos and manuals are a fair bit different with the switches for reverse and neutral...



I fitted a new water pump because it makes sense when its such a prick to do in situ..



The exhaust from Molly was swapped over. The main pipe was bigger by 3mm but I had also discovered that the 1.0 exhaust had a sound deadening reducing plug halfway up one of its straight through mufflers, only visible when the exhaust is off and you look in with a torch. Oh plus - Molly has a nifty little chrome tail pipe extension that cleaned up well and looks better than the 1.0 pea shooter.

We also changed the dizzy out. The facelift cars ditched the Mitsubishi dizzy for a beefier Hitachi unit that apparently has a more robust coil. There was a bit of heat decay to the plastic trim on the ignitor terminals so I plopped a bit of epoxy on them. While in there I noted that it has a 4 point optical trigger. Just the one I couuld see. So without an obvious cam angle sensor this surely means that the injection must be batch - not fully sequential. Discuss...



With all the fluids topped up, gearbox filled with brand spanking new oil, blessed by the Castrol gods because LSD and the battery charged up with much excitement and a smattering of nervous energy I turned the key. Will the thing start?

No. No it didn't.

Ha- but only because I had removed the fuel pump fuse so I could build up some oil pressure on an engine that has been sat for ages. Fuse in and it started straight away - just like a good little K11 should

Neato! So we did the correct thing and took it for a good hard hoon!

Wow! The engine pulls really well, the box has a super nice gearshift action and the LSD is a delight on all the narrow twisty roads we have around our place. I think for normal shopping car duties it would obviously be a waste but as soon as you start really using the gears out of corners there is no scrabbling at all. It just pulls out from corners beautifully like a good front tugger should.

The rev counter works! Yay. Got that right then..

The exhaust sounds nice. It has a subtle burble and a sporty sound when revved hard but not at all noisy.

The car really needs the anti sway bars fitting asap but for now its ok. The 70 series profile budget 'supercat' tyres, although in good tread, are comically noisy when heated up and started chirping everywhere. A shame because even though unfashionable in their height they fill the arches nicely.

We ideally need 14" wheels anyway because there is barely a well rolled joints worth of space between the calipers and inside of the steels at front. If we want to upgrade the front brakes the 13's will have to go

So anyway- its all good. Lots of fun little cosmetic jobs now (ignoring the elephant in the room that is painting and then swapping on the PFL wings, spoilers and bonnet.

Here's some pics I took yesterday evening...