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Kitaro - 2004 Daihatsu Copen

Introduction

Well here we go again... :devil:
Been wanting a little side project for a while as the daily commute is incredibly mundane and I want a little fun for the weekends.
I was looking at Cinq's pretty heavily but after being messed around by 2 sellers I started looking more broadly.
Had a keen interest in Japanese kei cars for a while, find the concept fascinating and so here we are :rolleyes:
2 weeks ago I scooped up this



It reminds me of my 92 Panda in some ways, so small and narrow makes UK roads suddenly feel open and wide, no issue having to squeeze past mums in their LR Discovery on the school run.



Being a kei car it is a 660cc turbo as required by the Japanese regulations although it makes an extra 4hp compared to the Japanese sold models due to not having the 64hp cap kei cars adhere to in Japan, so the ignition doesn't retard quite as much to keep the power under that 64hp limit.
It revs out to 8000rpm and has a twin-scroll turbo so boost is pretty even throughout the range :D
It's got some rust starting to appear but its last MOT was clean sheet, 1 owner from new, serviced annually and covered just 32k miles.

Oh and the roof folds down. I keep forgetting that and have only driven it once with it actually folded back :cool:
yeah i was paranoid about the cube so its all covered in schultz style underseal as soon as it arrived, the whole floor and inside the arches and also had teh rear bumper taken off and all behind there done. I still need to drop the side skirts off and get the sills covered better though.. a job for next summer.

Its amazing the difference the salt makes, the cube is a 2006 and when it arrived everything looked brand new underneath, even the rear drums weren't rusty, but after nearly a year in the UK there's that think surface rust on the axle and suspension arms etc. Apparently in a place with no salt all that can look brand new still even when its 16 years old.
I have a big tin of underseal with the very intention of coating the Copen but never quite happened... Rear bumper definitely needs to come off as its a rot spot for many Copen's, fortunately it already had a boot leak early in its life and Daihatsu repaired it and the subsequent rust caused under warranty!

How lovely it would be to live somewhere that doesn't dissolve its cars 😕 Suspension arms, shocks, drums, exhaust, brake disc shields are all covered in surface rust, not a surprise for a 19 year old car in this country and none of it actually severe (Not a single advisory on my MOT)
My wheels are still shiny though, first time I've ever bought brand new alloys that don't come with permanent brake dust embedded in the paint! 🎉
 
Well I had my first 'scary' moment that was self inflicted since I was 18 when I locked up the fronts in the old Panda and skidded onto the wrong side of the road (fortunately nothing happened) since then in the last 10 years I've had no real incidents until I discovered my new tyres are not the best in the wet. They are summer tyres to be fair but my previous Bridgestones were definitely better.
I was chucking it round a roundabout and experienced my first ever lift off oversteer, I thankfully caught it before it completely swapped ends, even more thankfully there were no other cars about... The conditions were too wet for the speed and I take full blame but it was a brown pants moment, lesson learnt 😬
 
A fairly uninteresting update but I've finally fitted a much needed new battery, the old one still cranked the engine over fine but with any significant electrical load at idle the voltage would plummet and cause the alternator belt to slip. I had let it run completely flat twice so its not a huge surprise it's lost a fair bit of capacity and it was only rated 33Ah from new...
New Yuasa fitted, 40Ah, seems to be the largest capacity in this size. (Excuse my rusty battery clamp, much like the rest of the car it too rusts for fun)

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What a world of difference its made though, no more belt squeal, holds its voltage much better.
I'm about 700 miles past its service oops.... I've got the filters and oil so will aim to get it done at the weekend.
Also got some gearbox oil to go in, its due at 6 years or 50k miles, not there yet for mileage but I don't know if its been done in the last 6 years, no harm in doing it again anyway
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Well the weekend has been and did I service it? Nope 😶
The 1°C with wind chill temperatures put me well off but I thought I'd try and make a start. I've never actually changed the filter before, the service intervals are 3000mi for oil and 6000mi for the oil & filter. After standing over the car and looking down I couldn't actually see the filter for the life of me, then I had a look underneath and still struggled to spot it so on to google and turns out its in the most utterly ridiculous spot...

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The turbo is directly above it so its not even visible from above, to the left is the intake piping and intercooler and to the right is the exhaust downpipe so the only physical access is from underneath through the gap in the engine mount... I can barely get my hand through said gap let alone contort it to get a reasonable grip on the filter 🤦‍♂️
So I've opted to buy an oil filter wrench as I think it'll probably be the only way to get it out, hopefully I can thread it through the engine mount easily enough...
 
Is this not similar to the older Daihatsu Kei cars where the orientation makes no sense...until you realise it's might to come out directly forwards.

On the older cars you'd remove the number plate and there was a flap behind for access perhaps yours is meant to come out thorough the grille?
 
Is this not similar to the older Daihatsu Kei cars where the orientation makes no sense...until you realise it's might to come out directly forwards.

On the older cars you'd remove the number plate and there was a flap behind for access perhaps yours is meant to come out thorough the grille?
Sadly not, the service manual says to use a filter wrench through the engine mount, then rotate the filter 90 degrees to get it out, its fairly surrounded on all sides by something

i found this video, seems some oil filters wont even fit through the mount 😬 anyhow, what this guy does, drop bumper, remove intercooler pipe to access doesnt look hard and you can change your cabin filter at same time ;)
Sod that! 😂 I'll try my luck with a filter wrench. It'd take me a month of Sundays to get the bumper off I'm sure. Mine has always been serviced by Daihatsu (or a former Daihatsu garage when they stopped trading in the UK) so I hope it has the correct filter on it. I bought the silly stubbie one (in fact I bought 2) knowing that taller ones don't fit.
I asked on a Copen forum about the cabin filter and was told it doesn't have one 😂
 
Sod that! 😂 I'll try my luck with a filter wrench. It'd take me a month of Sundays to get the bumper off I'm sure.
Well I spoke too soon... :(
Made a start on it, have to drive it up onto bricks first as my jack doesn't even vaguely fit underneath it.


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Checked I could get my new oil filter wrenchy thing onto the filter, no problems there so I dumped the oil. Removed the filter, its too big to go through the mount... 🤬 I really didn't fancy the remove the front end of the car approach in the cold so old filter screwed back on 😶
Fresh oil in at the least and I did the air filter which is just about the only easy job on the car.
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It'll just have to manage with the old oil filter for a month until I can be bothered to do the filter change the hard way... At least it has fresh oil, that has to be worth something...
I didn't bother with the gearbox oil or the spark plugs I have to go in after because it'd already pissed me off, I will do them sooner though as neither should be a tricky job
 
A minor breakdown (which turned out to be nothing really) occurred this week, jumped in and it turns over but its sounding uneven and doesn't fire, the speed its turning over is going up and down a bit which instills the fear of compression loss. I hadn't driven it for a little over a week but being late for work already I opted to take another car and worry about it later.
I did some googling and discovered a no start on a Copen is commonly a flooded engine, this does make sense as the last time it ran I simply moved it to another parking spot was probably running for a grand total of 30 seconds. Honestly didn't know EFI engines really flooded themselves, I've never managed to flood anything since my carby days.
The following day I pull the fuel pump fuse and cranked it over, it was still very uneven but smoothed out the longer I turned it over until it sounded normal again. Popped the fuse back in and started up no bother, it did however absolutely reek of petrol and the exhaust was nice and smoky

Went for a quick run and seemed to clear up nicely so all is well again.

I hate the tyres, despite the decent reviews I found at least in this size they're crap. I can easily make both fronts spin in completely dry conditions when setting off, the ABS triggers very easily under braking, they understeer horrifically compared to the Bridgestones and they're the worst tyre I've ever experienced for aquaplaning. Basically everything that can be bad about a tyre... there are very few options at this tyre size unfortunately, I can't go any wider as they only just fit under the arches as it is.
Oh and the headlights have gone all cloudy again :cautious:
 
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what size tyres?

headlights.. you need to use something with UV protection after you make them clear again or they go really fast.. little bottle of ceramic coating is a decent option and not too expensive. Can do other random little bits as and when if you have a bottle too. Should last 18months or so before you should lightly polish and re-apply in my experience
 
what size tyres?

headlights.. you need to use something with UV protection after you make them clear again or they go really fast.. little bottle of ceramic coating is a decent option and not too expensive. Can do other random little bits as and when if you have a bottle too. Should last 18months or so before you should lightly polish and re-apply in my experience
They're 165/60R14, standard fit was 165/50R15. Both aren't easy to get tyres for...
Thanks for the headlight tip, I will have a go when I tackle them next
 
Re. The flooding, my swift used to do that if shut down immediately after starting you'd have the devil's own job to fire it back up. It was fine warm but if it was started from dead cold on rich mixture it did pretty much what your Daihatsu has done.

I used to make sure the revs had dropped from cold idle to more normal idle before shutting down. Didn't half get some looks pushing it when it needed moving feet..
 
Been meaning to update this for a while...
Finally pulled the front bumper, it was a pain as expected and even then you have to cram your arm through a small gap to reach the oil filer. Got there in the end and correct sized one now attached, hope to never have to take this bumper off again....
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Changed the spark plugs, actually found an invoice for them having been done 14k ago so I was surprised how dark they were, I did run the car with a broken O2 sensor for a good while so may have contributed?

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Passed another MOT with no advisories so all was well and good, been out in the sun lots of course

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I still hate the tyres but oh well... I may stick the original wheels on as I've found you can get Nankang NS-2R's in that size.

Before I get carried away with tyres I have to address the slipping belts, both alternator & P/S belts slip from time to time under load, I've checked they both are the correct belt and both are tight, I tightened the alternator belt one even further but this didn't change anything so I might need a new alternator if the bearings shot
 
Well he's been garaged again for the winter, bought a cheap(ish) runabout instead. Rust is now starting to come through the sills, it was only a matter of time really and I don't want to use him into the winter again.

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Had a fight with the alternator and lost, can't get the damn thing off access is pretty awful (wheel off and some arm contortion) but I can't get my breaker bar in and my spanners just don't give me the leverage. I will soak it in some plusgas next time I have a stab.
It is alarmingly close to the ground and I suspect the damage was done driving though a flood (not a deep one but then the car only has about 5" of ground clearance) so I suspect the alternator saw a good drowning. Will have to get the sills addressed early spring
 
Good news...

Soon to be worth twice as much once the MCM tax hits 😉



I did laugh at "the oil filter was only done a few days ago so we aren't going to change it again" the internal monologue may have said "oh aye, really?".

They are very complimentary if the plugs for merch don't get over powering.
 
Good news...

Soon to be worth twice as much once the MCM tax hits 😉



I did laugh at "the oil filter was only done a few days ago so we aren't going to change it again" the internal monologue may have said "oh aye, really?".

They are very complimentary if the plugs for merch don't get over powering.

Yes I saw this, very convenient to get some free personalised modding guides. Coincidentally I had another fight with the alternator this weekend and lost once again. I think I will move onto the rusty bits and come back to that, changing the oil filter seems like a distant memory now 😂
 
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