4AGE Starlet Sr

Right i signed up here a few days ago to help shed some light on a conversion and well this is it, will be a bit of a read and i will skip out some bits as its been an on going project and i haven't taken pictures of everything I've done unfortunately!

I shall start with the car when i got it. April 2007...

The previous owner hadn't been the kindest too it but it had promise

1998 starlet SR, 1.3i 4efe 74hp comes with rev counter TTE spoiler, backbox and springs and 5 speedline safari wheels. 3 spoke steering wheel. also the only UK model avalible in black!

good bits
54,000 FTSH upto 46k
all 5 Stock speedlines, suspension, interior and exterior all in good condition for a 9yo car.
Clifford alarm with remote start. legal tints momo pedals and gearknob. probably a few other lil bits aswel but i forgot

bad.

parts of the dash sprayed silver, tacky S/wheel with the horn relocated to the column (removed the 360 connector under the wheel?), LED lights on the dash, and some little air filters glued to the A pillars.
cheap induction kit, FSE rrfpr without a gauge so no idea if it was setup correctly and a Power boost valve fitted to the brake vacuum line. and a RAGE backbox with a flared tip.

at the dealers i got it from


first thing i did, before even leaving the garage, was rip out any of the tacky crap i could, LED's and airfilter things.

got it home to a mates and cut off the flare from the exhaust and the rage stickers on each door they were just hideous lol
gave it a good clean and then set about putting the engine and interior back to stock. airbox FPR and stock brake vacuum pipe. got a 4 spoke wheel, center console and cluster surround



Not much happened to it for the first few months, got bored so removed back seats, fitted Ae92 tvis corolla gti front seats and refitted the FSE which caused it to overfuel and burnt out the rings, but thought it might be the stem seals so did them 1st (6 months after purchase), that hadnt fixed the oil burning problem so left if for a bit with the intention to replace them but then the head gasket went. Not a good start to the cars ownership or my DIY skills, all this after just 8 months of ownership

gti seats


donor car


Well by this point i had the corolla gti sitting rusting away in my garden as my brother had given up fixing it so me and a friend decided now was a good a time as any to start putting the engine in but first needed somewhere to work on it. so rather than having a nice big garage built or anything we stumble across a 1960-70's concrete sectional garage free to whom ever removes it, BARGAIN albeit very small lol

October 2007ish
only thing we needed was a pad...



No pics of the garage unfortunately. its pretty much wide enough to get my car in with the total of about 10-12" spare around the door lol

so project 4age begins!

Now this is where you would hope i would have taken loads of pictures, but coz im a tard i didnt!

i did get some though. oh and the engine had to go in and out of the bottom everytime!

First off this was the car that made me want to do the swap.
7age 20v 1.9l 212whp aussi track slag ep91


now i was well aware that i was never going to have anything like that but this is how mine went anyway.

1.3 4efe out


test fit various times then cut notch out of chassis rail out for gearbox 5th gear casing to sit into remove battery tray (with grinder lol)
retry engine in new space, happy that it can sit level remove again and weld chassis rail up with reinforcing in place!

engine back in, attach all mounts and see where they sit in relation to current mounts.

Drivers camgear mount, cut out EP mount. cut out AE mount attact AE mount to engine mount, weld to chassis. well on one half the other side needed something fabbing up. this is what we ended up with. not pretty but functional





Gearbox mount, this was a chore, removed AE mount bracket from shell, mount and cradle from box, made a mount that bolts directly to box, so no cradle any more. Welded a rather ugly bracket to the top of the chassis rail with the AE brackets attaching it to the mount



and the rear mount was actually quite easy, stock EP car mount, take bracket from box and weld a plate to it about 4"x6" drill 2 bolt holes in the right place for it to bolt to the gearbox, job done. so quick infact i didnt get any pictures. This picture is after the 20v went in but you can see the plate im on about



the rear mount actually was the most troublesome thought, because i only used 2 bolts to start with it stripped one of the bolts out, also it being the stock EP mount it was made of chewing gum and meant the engine had about 35mm of movement causing knocking all over the shop... hence ^^^ poly bush, it also got a extra bracket for the 3rd bolt aswel!

Engine mounted. (ignore the bar underneath that got removed and the front mount never fitted)



Testing with Obx racing manifold








now thats all the photos i got from the build but basically, finished it got the wiring sorted. drove it to the bloke who did the welding and had an exhaust made. 1 mile through a town on just an open downpipe...

managed to source the stock TTE backbox for £25 delivered, usually £100+ because they're discontinued and now rusty lol

cut it up and made the new exhaust to fit it 63mm piping on a stock 16v smallport with stock midbox.

August/september 2008

Engine spec as finished

62,000 4age smallport
lightened stock F/Wheel
single crank pulley (lack of space)
obx manifold and downpipe opened up the flanges as they weren't port matched and had steps all over the shop.
63mm/2.25" back with TTE backbox, from the 1.3 lol

now the car got MOT'd and whilst it lasted was absolutely mental for a nearly stock engine. low down was mega grunty and rev'd out to the limiter without letting up. now this was my downfall it lasted 75miles lol

the idea was cheap oil, do a few 100miles dump it and put good stuff in with another new oil filter. that never happened, not sure why exactly but bottom end failure, fitted new bearings and went again. so not sure if it was an oil pump problem or if the oil cooler by pass was the issue.

now by this point i was massively pissed off, 8 months of work for less than a day! so obviously couldnt give up here. engine out strip down to try find the issue.

November/december 2008

But then my brother stacks his other corolla gti and twists the chassis..... sweet new engine
its a Tvis version but we fit it and get it running on the smallport ecu this is about 2 months after the car had its MOT. runs like crap for months so convert the ecu harness to suit the new engine change the dizzy setup to the tvis version! thinking it should run ok now... it doesnt! ohwell keep driving it for the next 3-4 months like this

around March/April 2009



had a new water pipe made up




got bored of the black cam covers



Aaaaannnnnnnddddd then the next issue....


Thats a drive shaft... or at least half of one, bowing down to pear pressure, getting egged on by my bro telling me to rag it as its his engine and i was in front of a bunch of dubbers. how embarrassing

now it spends the next 14 months off the road as i cant find anyone to make custom driveshafts and i have lost the love for it and brought myself a corolla for a run about

Until one day we had the idea to use the corolla drive shafts i work in a machine shop so machined out my hubs to fit some passat bearings and corolla stub axles. fit the driver side shaft fits perfectly try the passenger side.... too long, back to square one again!!

now at this point i had removed the speedlines and had taken them to get sprayed, the starlet sat on some glanza wheels for now. Now at first i didnt think about it but the place i took the wheels to actually had a race car, go back to check up on my wheels and ask about custom shafts, turns out this company knows someone who makes shafts.... all the time the starlet was off the road i was minutes away from someone that could get some made up, typical haha only issue just the plain shaft....£223 OUCH and it was 30mm shorter than the OEM corolla shaft.

anyway SHE WAS BACK!!! June/July 2010

now i could get back to working on it, the time off the road was quite good, saving lots of money so i could buy bits for it.
when i picked up my corolla i arranged to meet and collect a rear axle with discs and cables and a cusco front lower brace.

these were fitted October 2010




also some coilovers, tanabe sustec pro's i believe and a whiteline adjustable panard rod




now it was back on the road i undersealed it, had a new 2.5" exhaust made aswel this is also when we worked out that my rear mount was made of chewing gum (not literally) and i ordered a new polybush for it!

oh and i had also collected a few other bits but you are going to have to wait for another night for them

ill leave you with a pic of my 2 motors



More history to follow

Nice and tidy car, anything else planned?

Ill be adding another years worth of stuff to this during the week, iv had to pop to work tonight so coulnt finish it haha

Nice job so far, looks like you are learning a lot!

gold94corolla wrote:

Nice job so far, looks like you are learning a lot!

Thank you, and yes pretty much everything was/has/is a learning curve even now 6 years since buying it Unfortunately it was much a case of learn by doing or the old faithful buy cheap, buy twice.

When we (me and a friend matt) set out to do it. Being just 18 and never had any real building experience it was a case of try it out see what happens, of the few 4a swapped ep's i could find throughout as many forums i could, i couldnt get any help or info from them. Even now its such a black area in starlets. I only know of 2 in the Uk mine being 1 of them. Then Greece has a couple, holland Denmark 1 each and 2 in Australia. Obviously theres more not on forums and stuff but its not many!

OK so built up continues.

October 2010 continued

Cusco front lower brace fitted along with the rear axle and coilovers



car on coilovers and the lower brace near the floor.



right so i had the car Mot'd again.

now it was only after a short time i realized the car was too low with that brace and that the top mounts on the coilovers were knocking not a lot but a little bit and it annoyed me.
so i took it back to the workshop fitted stock suspension and removed the brace!

the car stayed like this until december, i only put it on the road to test for any remaining knocks and issues that the swap had cause.



Now remember i said i had been saving money or buying bits for the car whilst it was off the road? yes? well i might have missed out a couple of small details

1st small item


fidanza F/wheel

2nd


Glanza brakes and yellow stuff pads.

3rd




BC racing coilovers.

The reason for the new brakes...

well this was no longer needed


leaving me with this.


the reason being, as i had purchased this through a friend who worked at an import garage


this was brought through new era imports, very impressed with the service, great guys to speak and deal with even japanese speaking miguel in japan

this is the genuine milage in japan (picture isnt working) but 33030kms = 20523miles and it was an automatic, happy dayz

so set about getting it all fitted in the workshop

i used the ae92 box and mounts used on the previous engine and tried it in there, the alternator tensioner and bracket both were different to the 16v so the tensioner was removed as the bracket on the alternator was also adjustable so ground some meat off the top of the bracket and refitted it, job done, engine was in. had the manifold modded to suit the 20v and job was done for the time being!





excuse the messy engine bay here, there was 2 wiring looms at the time




once it was in, i fitted the driveshafts put some oil in it and towed it to a friends (Matt who did the previous wiring) where we put it in his garage to do the new harness.







Now the 2nd time round the wiring went a lot smoother, he had built himself a swift gti turbo and had done the custom wiring on this so had a good idea of how to work with car wiring this time!

we set about removing the auto box wiring, looped the neutral switch at the ecu so the car could start. then plugged the 20v loom in and run the loom to roughly where it should be. any wire that ran to the bay fuse box we wired into the ep's fuse box. The ecu was fixed under the dash and the loom pulled through and plugged in, any other wires were then numbered and fitted to a choco block for testing.

once we got it all in and double checked everything we test fired it. surprisingly we got it fired up 1st time
had forgetten to tighten the bolts on the water pump but other than that it was running sweet!

So i spent the next few nights up until past 1am pulling each plug off untangling and running it back neatly, taping them up as i went. The loom was then removed a couple of extra wires for some gauges fitted and wrapped in the twisty conduit stuff, re-taped, refitted and we were sorted!

fit the plenum over the throttles and fit drainage pipe and HKS RB25DET filter and wala...

March/April 2011







little bit of clearance issues





a little bit of testing on a private road.



July 2011

dyno session with speed limiter still in place

167.2fly at limiter 7770rpm quite a few 100rpm left!
121.9wheel
121.4lbft

stock auto ecu
fidanza F/Wheel
Hks filter
Obx 16v manifold
2.5" exhaust made by i-tuned, still with TTE tailpipe



video 1080p
https://youtu.be/uYkwmNPLzJk

after this the car was fine for ages, changed a few bits here and there like the interior, got some glanza interior panels, Optional extra top spec floor matts (5 piece) electic mirrors and rear bumper

old interior


new ( window switches got changed later)






mirrors


Lost track of time now some time into 2012 i think!

Then the problems, fitted a half size civic rad and had a custom pipe made up. a week or 2 later the pipe popped off a few miles from home, no biggie, got some beading welded on and that was sorted. but when bleeding the system i noticed the knocking i thought was the VVT pulley was actually something knocking against the crank pulley. i could see it wobbling like it was off balance!

civic rad and custom pipe (bit weird)





well got down and had a look only to discover this in the lower cambelt cover.







that is a bolt... It had fallen out of the engine mount inside the cover and taken a liking to the belt!!

heres the mount with the missing bolt (warning of powder coating, alway retighten anything bolted against it)


slightly munched belt.


now whilst replacing the belt it made sense to replace the bearing and the lower casing obviously (just in case any debris got in the bearing) and i also made a custom manual tensioner as you never know when or if you will need to replace the belt etc



cleaned and degreased, had an oil leak from the o-ring on the dipstick (replaced)



belt refitted millage



troubles solved... again

next on the list of mods was some trumpets and ITG sausage filter, got this from a levin that was for sale and these were for sale with it so P.m'd the bloke, got a good price and had them delivered

on the levin



On the starlet



flyby

https://youtu.be/c9fzO9qtg14

next was some lightweight JDM wheels, not sure of make but weighed 12kgs with tyre and came with Advan AD08's which were barely used, i got these for little more than the cost of the tyres brand new!



also purchased a HKS racing 4-1 manifold which i neated up and started heat wrapping as it had been rewelded by ray charles





June/July 2012

but i didnt get it fitted straight away as i would need my exhaust modifing to suit as i was using a 16v manifold at the time. so instead i got a TRD front brace and a cusco rear, refurbed the TRD one black and white so suit the bay. I had also brought a new 5spd gearbox from a levin, £110 collected from birmingham. Picked it up chucked it in the back of the corolla and set home. get home and iv got a spare ae92 box so just compare the 2 and the pin through the diff is different, check online turns out the new box has a OEM lsd fitted WINNER!!

so back to matts to use the garage again,
old box, painted a bit tacky even tho i painted it haha



new box in, testing and 2nd gear crunches at low RPM but fine under abuse.... owell abuse it is lol

new box has shorter ratio's in 1st 2nd 3rd and 4th not sure about 5th





Early August 2012

Then made another trip to birmingham to swap a genuine Toms bucket (another cheap bonus from the import garage) seat and my corolla passengers seat for a set of recaros with a little bit of cash his way.

needed a bit of a scrubbing but i was happy with them, made the return journey alot better than the toms bucket




didnt get the door cards because they were for manual and mine electric so one of use would have had visual holes left!

Mid to late August 2012

Then finally finished the manifold and got a £20 3" sports cat from a friend and a RARB from someone on facebook, got them fitted and the next day had it sound checked and it cleared for use on snetterton for an amateur track day!









bit of boredem whilst waiting for the exhaust


Picture of me on track


Video from my Iphone cable tied to my rear veiw mirror.
https://youtu.be/eGR704oGs9U

Not a brilliant session, some me being a retard, some the car like front brakes were shocking after a few mins :/

so after the session my brakes looked like this, 20mins or about 8mins of actual hard driving :/


October 2012

so next upgrade was WMS 277x25mm 4 pot setup
braided lines
motul rpf600 fluid
ferrodo ds2500 pads





little bit of a difference from the glanza 256x18mm singles with yellow stuff and ebc discs

Mid November

then up came another dyno day
new setup
75mm trumpets and ITG filter
HKS racing 4-1 mani
3" sports cat
2.5" exhaust
fidanza F/Wheel
delimited auto ECU
levin gearbox

175.7fly @ 8150
131.6wheel @ 8130
122.5lbft

side by side dyno with previous results in red, as you can see the open setup looses mid-range power and torque. but the sound is more than worth the loss


bad video, good sound


and now the latest plans, picked up some Omori gauges that need fitting, an optional extra armrest and a spare bonnet

arm rest


stock bonnet with vent cut into it, being painted chalkboard black in my bedroom with a paint brush haha


Im currently waiting on a fuel tank, powder coated wishbones to fit some poly bushes in, got a whiteline 24mm FARB to fit, a OMP rep steering wheel and some JDM reflet crystal headlights. will be getting these all fitted when they all turn up and i get some motivation to fit them all.

anyway heres a few extra pictures of her when shes all cleaned up










P.S If any of the private road clips aren't to the forums liking i shall remove them!

Comments and opinions welcome guys

Brilliant thread, I can see a lot of thought has gone into this conversion, it has taken a long time and each problem has been overcome and the build improved, again brilliant.

Kev.

As you paul i love your build,
Amazing little car

Power to weight must be awesome

Nice, I see you were able to post finally

K20VFX wrote:

Brilliant thread, I can see a lot of thought has gone into this conversion, it has taken a long time and each problem has been overcome and the build improved, again brilliant.

Kev.

Thank man. Unfortunately most of it has been a case of fixing all my previous bodges or areas where i cut corners the first time! All part of it though, but could have saved soo much money by doing stuff properly the first time round lol

miib14 wrote:

As you paul i love your build,
Amazing little car

Power to weight must be awesome

again thanks! She goes alright, had it on a weigh bridge, full interior and fuel 940kgs so if i was to strip it and remove the sound deadening i recon i could see sub 900kgs fairly easily

gold94corolla wrote:

Nice, I see you were able to post finally

Yeah i think i just needed that extra few hours to roll over the week mark, cheers

any updates to this paul?

nothing excessive, but got more bits through and have fitted my new fuel tank as my old tank developed a leak!.

gave the new tank a wire wheel to remove any rust, then a coating of red oxide then a good coating of waxoil.








and this is the size of the garage the first 16v swap was done in, obviously before my dad filled it up with all his crap lol



whilst fitting my fuel tank i also fitted my new whiteline 24mm FARB and regreased the rear one as it was squeaking. The front one needed a little bit of chassis modification to clear in a couple of places which is why there is waxoil on the bar and we also made a few small modifications to the gearbox mount and the handbrake cable brackets to clear the exhaust and stop all the rattles


Was soo nice to get to drive the car again, first time this year due to the tank leaking so bad, and now all the rattles and squeaks have been solved just made it 10x better

So the last of my bits that have finally arrived so have these to fit now as well (not pictured is a pair of powdercoated front wishbones)
the thing in the bag is the now fitted FARB


finished my bonnet off finally


a set of crystal headlights rather than the frosted standard ones


Also got this today as well, rep OMP wheel, feels really sturdy not like these ones that can be bent by twisting


i shall make a proper update over the next few weeks when i finally get a chance to fit most of my bits so you can see them on the car.

some really nice bits there paul, i like the bonnet best

Me too just need to get a rain cover made up or some nice weather so i can get pictures of how it sits with the throttles behind it

Very Nice! Lots of work! Keep posting!

Had a chance to fit my new headlights Saturday morning before going out on the lash dressed as a mexican for some friends birthdays.

heres the new vs old headlights



both new



and one with the brothers b16 civic



The cars got no MOT at the moment so getting a new windscreen on saturday so i should be out working on the car getting a few things fitted. then shall book it in and see how she fairs up

Cant decide if i prefer amber corners instead of the clear ones, might fit my old ambers on and see which i prefer :s

Wow that was a good read. I learned quite a few things. Beautiful Starlet man. Respect!

No amber please!

Whats wrong with amber, its ukdm lol

amber may look good, may even make it look more like a sleeper lol

wow insane car!!

Yeah ill get some pics up over the weekend, mine are smoked but if i like them ill buy some normal ones i think.

And thanks john

Well new windscreens been fitted, i test fitted my bonnet and i changed my corners, to my smoked ambers.

Heres some pictures in no particular order








I definately prefer the ambers so have arranged a trade for some un-smoked ones for my clear ones

nice, but im not a great fan of the blackboard bonnet on the car sorry