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Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2016 6:06 am
by Fred
Clipped them into the front of the POS and realised a few things:

1) The bonnet is still bent - bent it more, and now it needs narrowing by curving, bleh, PITA, but good enough for now.
2) The headlight bulb holders don't fit the new housings exactly. I was hoping to just swap them. Need to splice the wiring, instead.

Need to get some rust killer and zinc paint and bend the steel a bit more until It's close enough to reassemble. But I'll do the wiring first. And try to sort out the radiator, too.

Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2016 10:01 am
by Fred
For demo purposes I took this out tonight with a friend in it and did four 1-2 redlines, that's 8 redlines in 4 sessions, first, second, slow, repeat.

Was good. I forgot how hard it went in first :-D 8400 RPM FTW :-D

All with:

1) No headlights: "Oh shit, I forgot they're not plugged in!"
2) No radiator: Gave it a minute or two to shake off the chill, then warmed it up as quickly as possible :-D

Fun times. Was starting to hate the thing, sitting there, broken, etc. But in the course of 3 minutes or so I changed my mind :-D

Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2017 12:22 am
by talan
Hey man. Came across your thread in Google. I'm from NZ and looking to get a Wagon R soon. One dumb question, is the motor chain or cambelt driven?

Cheers
Talan

Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2017 8:24 am
by Fred
Chain driven. Motor seems fun to drive and decent, but mine has a bad head gasket, and I've seen others like that, too. Not sure if all bad maintenance or if the design is average, but mine has not gotten worse during the 10kkm or whatever I've put on it. Hope that helps.

Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2017 9:42 am
by talan
Cheers man! No plans to fix the headgasket issue? How many PSI do the little turbos push out?

Sorry for the questions, there ain't much info online!

Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2017 9:17 pm
by Fred
Vague plans to put a FR busa turbo in the front driving the rear, and a couple of 50hp electrics in the front driving the front, but nothing serious. I have a head gasket for it, but not a lot of desire to do the work.

No idea how many PSI it pushes, but there's a marked difference between unspooled and spooled, it's pretty slow until the boost comes in.

Questions are fine. Run yours on FreeEMS and you'll get personalised support :-)

Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2017 7:52 pm
by Fred
Did some work on this bloody thing last night!

Went to mitre10 in the drift weapon (240 wagon) and bought some AL-3 bernzomatic alloy brazing rods, in the rain.

Went to the kitchen with radiator and blow torch and wire brush and cleaned up the hole and dented adjacent tube and melted some stick onto it.

The end.

Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2017 8:26 am
by Fred
Installed the fixed up radiator tonight, filled it with water, and ran it up to temperature with about the longest drive it's had since I buggered it. No leak. Next step get some professional grade stop leak into it, and finish the panel beating. Then WOF time and use!

Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 8:40 am
by Fred
Put the old girl to some use this evening...

https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 2072070144

Image




...as a glorified storage unit! Most of the press project parts are in it, too, bar the steel itself.

I should do some more work to it soon. Drove it a little bit recently, round the block only to avoid being caught, pretty fun ringing it out to 8400 :-D

Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 8:28 am
by Fred
Well, for the first time since August 31st 2016, I took this thing for
a decent little drive! viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2530&start=30#p42621

It now has working headlights again! :-D I still need to put a few
more nuts on some studs, and straighten up stuff, and put the fan
back in, but in the dark, it looks reasonably legit from a distance.

Motivation courtesy of impending arrival of a certain large engine :-D

Need to get this thing a WOF so it can live on the street again for a while.