Nathael Jimenez's Drift Charmant

Most of you have seen this one. A dude named Wilkin sent me an email a few days ago informing that he has a Charmant project in his homeland Dominican Republic. One click on the link he gave me and i'm taken to a very familiar looking facebook page. Yes, this is that green Charmant on Facebook you've been "Like"-ing hundreds of times.

Based on what i gather from the Facebook page, Nathael Jimenez regularly drive this on Dominican Republic drift competitions, gymkhanas, auto-x and won some of them too. Seems like this monster's packing lots of fun.

As far as specs go, Wilkin didn't tell me much so i can only tell you as much as i can gather from his page. Under the bonnet of this Charmant is the super strong 4A-GZE. It seems that it was a good decision as the pics mostly showed Nathael working in his Charmant, not on it. A sign that this engine is able to take anything he throws at.

He's running the stock ECU paired with Apex'i SAFC for that much needed extra ooomph for drifting. The torque produced on the crank is then transferred to a short-shift T50 box by a three-puck TRD clutch set before finally reaching an AE86 GTS LSD rearend supported by a pair of short stroke TRD blues.

Here is Nathael's office cubicle.

By the looks of it, this is his daily driver too since he still has a working audio system. Nothing beats a simple yet efficient dashboard that doesn't get in the way when you're busy keeping that drift angle.

I'm a bit lost in translation though. If i'm not mistaken, Wilkin is a mechanic for the workshop working on Nathael's Charmant while Nathael is a member of CDCD which stands for Club Dominicano Corredores de Drift. The shop is called Frodo Garage and Wilkin also told me that this Charmant is now running a Red Top SR20DET. Did i get this right, Wilkin?

Aching to see Nathael and his Charmant in action? Other than this video of him i featured last December, here's another one i found on Youtube.

This car is still running strong and you can bet that we will see more of this beauty!

ARP Flywheel Bolts and Head Stud

Failing to find reasonably priced flywheel bolts locally, again Ebay comes to the rescue. Just bought brand new ARP flywheel bolts there. Gosh, i have so many parts coming in from overseas right now. I hope none of them got lost in the way.

Also, remember the 4A-GZE MAP sensor i won earlier? Well it turned out that the seller also had a set of used ARP head studs. Paid for it as well and hopefully they will be on their way to Indonesia by this week. ARP head studs aren't really necessary for the boost i'm targeting but since i don't know how many times mine have been torqued, decided to replace them anyway. It was a fair price.

Since i'm going to open up the bellhousing to replace the flywheel bolts, should i replace the clutch set with stronger one also? The one running currently is only used about 1000 kms.

Spent A LOT this month. I think my money hates me. They just keep running away from me.

These Crack Me Up

More than they should, actually. Most of my friends don't even get it. Heck, i don't even know why i'm laughing at these.

Too much time spent on reddit, i guess.

4A-GZE MAP Sensor, Check

Just won this through Ebay.

4A-GZE MAP Sensor. This is 2-bar so it'll only allow me to boost up to 14 psi, which is the most i'm going to go anyway, hopefully. Better start browsing how to get Megasquirt to read this.

Minor Obstacle x 8

Solved a mystery that has been bugging me for a while. Since the swap work, i've always suspected that my flywheel bolts are too short. If they are, that's bad news for the coming turbo conversion. The extra torque might shear the threads of them and left me with bigger problem. Today, i went to check if my suspicion is correct.

Picture above was taken during the swap process. You can see there aren't many threads left from the bolts. I don't think stock bolts are only that long so i went browsing for a picture of a stock bolt and photoshopped it next to my current bolt pic which i conveniently took before it got installed. Here's the result.

Left is the shopped pic and on the center is mine. Definitely mine is too short! Probably my 4A-GE originally came from an auto trans. Flexplate bolts are shorter than flywheel's so that could be why my bolts are too short. The one to the right was a failed attempt at trying to replace the short bolt. The bolt head was too big and just bump to each other on the flywheel.

For the record, 4A-GE flywheel has 8 bolts and the bolt size is M10 x 1.25 thread pitch. Shank plus thread length should be around 26mm. Here's some measurement pic taken from Toymods.

A set of 8 new flywheels bolt would set me back around $40, excluding shipping and the labor cost to replace them. There goes my plan of cheap turbo conversion. I might as well go for a set of ARP head studs then.

HKS Copy AE86 Cast Turbo Exhaust Manifold

Finally ditched the idea of using 1NZ-FE manifold and went with something that will just work. I found out from the measurements that while the second and third 4A-GE exhaust ports matched with the 1NZ-FE's, the first and fourth ports are spaced so wide that about 10-15% of the area will be blocked. It could be solved by grinding the manifold ports about 5mm to the sides but decided it's not worth the trouble. Here's what i meant.

With 4A-GE cylinder head exhaust port being smaller than 1NZ-FE's manifold ports, 35 vs 40mm, there's a bit more tolerance for port-to-port spacing. However, it only goes to an extent and caused the 1st and 4th port to be slightly eclipsed by the manifold shown by the shaded areas.

Decided that it's not worth risking the flow of the exhaust gas with the 1NZ-FE, i went with one that is actually for 4A-GEs. Ebay went to the rescue once again and just today i bought the infamous HKS copy cast turbo manifold for AE86 there, pictured above. They come with T25 flange which should fit my turbo perfectly. Somebody already did a good review on it and so i will just shamelessly copy it here.

Pros: Fits pretty decent, cast manifold, brutally reliable.. Top mount so everyone can see your cool turbo in ya face!! If you got the guts for it, you can put on a t25/t3 adapter and bolt up a t3/t4 and it can stick out the hood and you can make a functional hood scoop. :)

Cons: Top mount causes turbine housing to be too close to the brake booster where eventually the heat will shred the diaphram and cook the fluid in your brake booster YAY. Also causes the downpipe to have a sharp angle and its difficult to route a big downpipe with this setup. These were made originally to be on a right hand drive JDM car. Forces the oil return line to be pretty much right on the exhaust manifold.

Improvements: Angle the turbo slightly with the compressor pointed away from the block to get the downpipe and the turbine housing a bit of room away from the brake assembly. Angle the pipes downward to allow larger turbos to be mounted up without cooking the paint off the hood.

Verdict: Its a buy, it does what its supposed to do, just needs some cleanup as far as spacing and such. Actually its reported that the HKS and knockoff cast exhaust manifolds make some of the best hp around if you can just get the thing fabbed in correctly. I know a considerable amount of people who just gave up on the darn thing because it was hard to make a downpipe fit.

Glad with the fact that The Dog is RHD so the cons mentioning brake booster doesn't apply to me. The sharp angle downpipe still applies though. I already imagined that those Megasquirt relays on my firewall will have to be relocated.

This pic that i got from here shows you the downpipe angle view. Yup.. those relays will have to move somewhere else.

Just how exactly do you execute the suggested improvements mentioned above? Here's one way to do it, also taken from the same page.

With that purchased, a Blow-off Valve, turbo MAP sensor, intercooler and plumbing are next on the shopping list. I wonder if those Ebay universal intercooler piping kit has enough pipes for my Charmant?

Playing With Statistics

I've been keeping track of every single purchase or expense i made for this build since Day 1. Thought it was a good exercise to keep the cost within budget. I also kept every seller details i've made contact with just in case i need to make the same purchase later. How detailed is my project tracker? Well, i can tell you the newspaper date from which i found the previous owner's classified ads for this car. It's March 3rd 2009. How's that for detailed?

Today i played with this project expense tracker and made some interesting statistics. Here's a list of it. I converted to US$ using current exchange rate so you don't have to.

1. This project is 814 days old, started on March 9th 2008.

2. Most expensive item bought is the smallport 4A-GE engine, costing $1,404

3. Least expensive is a hose clamp for Bosch fuel injection pump nipple for $.58

4. Average value for each spending is $174.09 (!)

4. Longest duration without any expenses made is 231 days, between May 10th 2010 when i bought a pair of RS*R rear lowering springs and made the final payment for my engine swap work on Dec 27th. This was when work load was at its peak. Dark times indeed..

5. Most popular post on this blog with 3,034 page views so far surprisingly has got nothing to do with Daihatsu Charmant or 4A-GE. It's My Previous Ride: Toyota Kijang Pickup 1991. This simply tells you how popular Toyota Kijangs are in Indonesia.

6. 95.34% people reading this post didn't realize that there are two #4 on this list. Including you.

How about some fun charts? Let's start with this.

Above is the project cost growth over time separated by expense categories. So far i've spent a total of $15,028.13 on this project and yet still no sign of it ending. In case you're wondering, "Others" are expenses that simply don't belong in the other categories. Things such as tax, mechanic tips, transportation cost and the price for the car itself goes here.

You can see above that my biggest expense so far goes to Engine and Driveline. Just how big is the portion? Here you go.

Surprised to see that i spent more on Others than on Suspension and Handling!

Here's the last one.

That's the distribution of the number of spendings made so far to the date of month they were made. Funny to see that it's spread quite evenly. FYI, my salary is being transfered at the end of each month. This chart just tells me that being on a monthly payroll has no effect on my spending time of the month. Poor and pennyless? Don't care, the show must go on!