my very first thought was holy god... it's devo corgis... and then I learned they are actually just candy corn/corg... and it made me sad.
I would love some Devo Corgi and am still debating them with some field modifications to make them wear a power dome.
So after ministering to the spare with a good dose of tire slime and driving it around for a day it had dawned on me that despite having a tiny bottle jack, a plug kit, a tiny compressor and the factory scissor jack with handle... the factory lug wrench was nowhere to be seen. DOH!
For the princely sum of 7 bucks, behold a tiny lug wrench that can live with the jack handle.
I guess treat this as a PSA and make sure you can get home.
The Suzuki Falcorustyco was a futuristic concept motorcycle unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show 1985. It featured a frameless design using a 500cc square-four engine as the central structural element, hydraulic two-wheel drive, hub-center steering, electromagnetic brakes, and joystick-style controls.
Finally got bits back from the cutter. Yes, reports about this film being a massive pain in the ace are true. They had trouble getting off the bed, I am ready to weep trying to get the release & transfer tape to actually, you know transfer and release. And the bubbles and warps... yup, not much to do there but cry. We are going to review process and see if it can be improved or if a better film can be found.
But on the good news side, it's big and bold and hilariously CARRY. And too big for the back window. So they'll go on the doors for weather testing. The pearlescent, iridescent, holographic, color shifting, glow in the dark film that does look hot glowing calmly in the dark.
I did cut up a 4WD for the tailgate and we are going to work on the striated Diff Lock, $ CARRY and weight limits plus a bonus スズキ from the door tag.
Welcome to The Swap Meet!
Do you have stuff that needs a new home, do you have a new home that needs stuff? Looking for something specific?
Let's see how this swap meet goes, it's an experiment.
But first, some rules:
* 1 - this is a public space, be mindful of phone numbers, email and location addresses. Assume that if you post a number, expect everyone to call, years from now to ask if it's still available.
* 2 - please report problem buyers or sellers. this is a member to member space but if people are being a problem we need to know. resist the urge to call them out in frank and blunt language in the thread, that's a hot ticket to getting flagged yourself as part of the problem.
* 3 - if it's gone let a mod know if you are having trouble deleting your post yourself. no one likes seeing the exact thing you need but it's from years ago and from a user who hasn't been seen is years. I'll flush it out at the end of the month, if it's still kicking around, repost on the next saturday.
* 4 -posts get posted on saturdays, it's swap meet saturday not swap meet whenever you feel.
* 5 - this is an experiment, if it fails it fails. if it disappears one day so be it.
The idea is this thread IS the swap meet. You have stuff that needs to come or go, you reply on here. I'll sticky it up at the top so it's always here. Provided it's maintained, the whole thread shouldn't be terribly long so, thankfully, no doom scrolling the buy/sell/trade.
so ::cuts ribbon with comically large scissors:: Welcome to Swap Meet Saturday. ::Balloons and Confetti drop::
Alright everyone, the time has come!
* The vendor process seems to be going well, we have some vendors who provide some interesting stuff and on initial review aren't a pack of predatory jackals who are only going to create trouble.
* the swap meet rules are posted. long story short, don't be a problem! let your clutter become someone elses!
Both of these are rolling out August 1, just in time for Swap Meet Saturday
Ultimately however the paper was discredited as junk pseudo-science, with many critics pointing out that just because you look funny doesn't mean you aren't a low IQ asshole with a New York Times Op-Ed from 1972 remarking that "if you hadn't done what you did, you likely wouldn't be feeling what you do".
anyone have a line on the clips that hold the "hood" I. place for the Carry? It appears someone bumped me at the gas station, no metal damage, but most of the push clips and and one of the through the tub 1/4 turn clips are shot.
Daihatsu Atrai with the remains of some vinyls. looking good chief!
So this was a problem from day one and it didn't help that I tried forcing it and murdered the Z bend.
So back on June 2nd I picked up this roll of wire at Home Depot and only today got around to fixing this nagging issue. I was just manually selecting based on conditions, heat in the morning, stop for coffee and select center vent, dial back the heat and repeat. Well summer is winding down slowly and fall will be here soon and then winter and heat when I need it would be nice.
I also took the time to replace all of the dash lights with LEDs for maximum illumination and saturation, and cleaned the gauge faces as well, 30 years of dust do be like that.
And while I was at it I swapped the tail lights over to LED to match the front modified signals to include running lights (see previous). And as a coupe de grace I threw in a red LED dome light for giggles.
If anyone else is suffering the sticky or snapped HVAC selector, it's honestly dead simple to do, you'll spend most of the time, aside from pulling the dash, getting the wire length correct, it IS a little bit of trial and error. I started with the Z bend and then fed a huge amount of wire through the sheath and got the "front" set up after setting the selector to "center vent", reached down and pulled the flap selector to "center vent" and then just wrapped it around and clipped. I had originally started at the back end and it turned into a whole production of not right. Start at the front and work down. frustrating to me is the fact that the selector isn't screwed/bolted to the plenum but rather to the dash... makes it a floppy mess to fix but to be fair, Suzuki probably never imagined some dude 30 years on would be fixing this truck by making parts in the driveway.
or Saturday, I'm not you dad.
For those who remember the old school Raceway park ads, it's always Sunday.
But, in addition to giving the vendors and makers a space, we want to give everyone else a space as well. Likely you have seen some discussion about opening up a Buy/Sell/Swap/Trade space so your clutter can become my clutter and those wheels I have collecting dust can get a new home and you can sell that collection of carbs you somehow own. We want to open up a space where members of the community can peer to peer stuff as well.
The specifics are still in discussion, ie one single thread etc but we've seen a need for a patshatl.
So, how you YOU feel about it? Let us know in the comments.
Do you provide products or services for the Kei community? Would you like to be able to tell us all about the wonderful things you do? Do you wish you could be a little more forward about the things you do?
Well great news!
As some of you may know, we are going to try some things out here, see how it goes. You know, like your first drive in a Kei as you juggle sitting on the wrong side and shifting with the wrong hand while clutching with the right foot and face planting into the door frame as you try to back up.
So... what is going on here I can feel you thinking. The long and short of it is there is a wealth of folks who have some cool and nifty stuff, services etc. There is also a collection of folks who are, shall we say, problematic. I want to promote one and with luck influence the others to either pack it up and move on or get with the program.
How? By offering a little bit of leash of course, and this is where you come in. There will be some limited loosening of the rules on buying & selling and promotion provided a number of things:
So, if you want to get in on this, message the modteam and let's shoot for an August kickoff!
I'll preface this by saying that I appreciate and understand the philosophy of the forthcoming Slate but the timeline didn't align with my needs.
It has 40hp at best, it has crank windows, it has no AC, it has tires smaller than the wheels on my jeep, it has wheels smaller than the rotors on my jeep.
It has a 4 speed with 2 speed transfercase, it has lockers. It has a drop side bed with a fully flat bed.
It's 30 years old, has no "modern" anything like SRS, ABS, airbags, traction control... infotainment consists of a Japanese frequencies AM radio with a speaker in the face and any cows you might see along the way.
And I'm okay with all of it.
1996 Suzuki Carry DD51T. 1500lb of righteous fury. It loves doing 40 to 45mph but can do 65mph if you really want it.
I needed a more economic means of getting to work and while things like the Slate are cool, way too far out in time. I made the next best choice, I bought a kei truck. I am old enough to remember when Japanese imports were synonymous with words like "thrifty" and "spartan", when everything was an optional purchase and basic had a whole other meaning.
Kei class vehicles are a uniquely Japanese philosophy; legally defined in terms of dimensions, displacement and power output, strictly adhered to in design and packing big dog energy in a little dog package. Intended to be economic to own and operate, favorable tax advantages and a small footprint to fit within small infrastructure while also being able to hit the highways between towns.
As far as trucks go, it's 4 on the floor, low range, lockers and a bed that can hold 2 pallets up to 750lb. Unofficially, with my greedy boards it managed 3 yards of mulch like a champ. It's thrifty on fuel provided you respect it, everyone" loves to say they can't highway, it won't do 80. It likes country road speeds but will do okay at 55, it's a balancing act of keeping up while staying right.
But this isn't what you came here for right?
It's a god damn hoot to drive. Deep gears and a reasonably close ratio box paired with a fairly flat power curve mean you can get to 4th and stay there for the open road but with a low center of gravity, low ride height and a thirst for engine speed, you can drive it fairly well in the curves in stock form, exceedingly well once prepared. The manual steering rack hides nothing and while small, the brakes do respond. It's not a racer but with light weight and some power, you can have a load of fun at reasonable speeds.
Like anonymity and personal space? forget it because everyone loves them, wants to get a better look and talk to you about it. Getting fuel can become a process. Being cool, funky, rare and dare I day cute, they demand attention.
So how's it been? Amazing. I have rejected all of the isolation from the process that has become the modern religion of automobiles. I can feel the road surface, feel the chassis respond. I can hear everything. I'm not in a bubble of isolation, being wooed by a screen I could serve a turkey on; if I'm cold I move the slider to heat, if it's raining I roll up the window and turn on the wipers. Everything is analog, what I want when I want it.
It's primitive, basic, spartan and exactly what I need in a truck and want in a vehicle. Looking towards the future, if Slate can honestly capture this and not suffer the Maverick bloat issue, there are many of us who want basic over bougie.
For those who have a winch bumper installed on their truck, anyone care to share some photos of how it ties in?
I'm told that Jeep YJ/TJ bumpers are a snuggly fit, not too wide, not too tall. Attached are some shots of how these tie into the jeep.
In an effort to better understand the overall health of my truck I decided that a compression test and leakdown test were in order as well as a fuel filter and PCV valve.
Compression test went flawlessly, plugs out, foot to floor: 195, 190 and 195psi. Leakdown test, after learning how this particular unit likes to be zeroed gave me 10%, 15% and 10% which correlates with the compression test results.
On a recent trip the truck sat at about 5000rpm for hours climbing hills in PA and when we got back after eating two tanks of fuel in two days we had a choppy idle but would smooth out with some throttle.
I swapped in some irridium plugs, swapped the fuel filter and the pcv and the idle is smooth, throttle is crisp as can be expected and the timing is getting peak vacuum around 9° at 950rpm.
The plugs that came out, stock type NGKs, didn't look so bad, no freaky deposits or massive erosion. Cathode and Anode still pretty sharp.
Overall I want to chalk the shakes up to 30 years of tank fines, varnishes and entrained water ending up in the filter due to hours of high rpm steady state driving and slopes and curves sloshing everything around.
I'm feeling pretty good overall about the results, let's me feel comfortable knowing it is squared away inside.
If you can believe it, the timing marks on my 30yo truck had some surface rusting and a crud impaction on the mark. Who would have thought?
Since I am taking some time to do some deep PM work, mind as well clean up the marks, run a compression and leakdown test and some other bits and bobs.
First things first, with the engine running, I reached into the hole with some steel wool to dress the flywheel face followed by some acetone on a rag. this gets me a reasonable clean surface. I finished by cleaning up the marks with a scratch needle.
step 2: flat black paint. Since I have to pull the plugs for other services, it makes rolling the engine over to the marks super easy. once found, shoot the whole face of the flywheel and let it dry, advancing the crank to expose more marks. in my case, dd51t carry with a F6A carbureted with a manual there are marks for TDC, 5°,7°,10° and 20° btdc (before top dead center). The stock timing for my setup, per the fender tag is 7°btdc at 950rpm idle speed and the distributor's vacuum advance disconnected.
step 3, contrast marking with a paint pen. after blacking the marks, I went back over all the marks with red paint pen, let them dry and then back at the marks with the scratch needle to reveal a sharp dark line in the middle of a red hash mark. I would have loved if they had stamped deeper and I could find my carbide layout scribe but do what we can with what we have.
the results give me an easy to see under a strobe mark so I don't have to make a gas line welding tent over the hatch and pray I can see them. As a word of caution, cheap timing lights these days will use an LED source that is no way near as bright or intense as the old school gas strobe lamps. they however can act as a tach and handle programed advance timing with frightening ease.
So far, the time it took to clean up the marks had made the act of timing the truck so much easier. Short of pulling the transmission and yanking the flywheel and going nuts with a 5 axis mill, it'll do.
Spending a lot of time in HiAce currently, I noticed two parts that need to be sniffed out of the catalog and priced.
cup holders
USB ports
Times Union article on the fight in New York