'83 SS80 long term project / daily driver.

[shavenyak]

Thought I'd post up some photos of my SS80/hatch that I've owned for the last 5 years or so.

here she is, a few months into my ownership. As you can see there was some rust in the doors and the front pillars.

old photo

Started applying some cosmetic changes - painted the rocker cover with crinkle finish black, and treated the bumpers and dash with "Forever Black" - which I hightly recommend.

painted rocker cover

applying forever black to bumper

forever black dash

The passenger side lock was busted from someone breaking in, so I decided to remove it and install central locking. But rather than "shaving" the lock, I thought i'd replace it with a blanking panel.

busted lock

covering lock hole

finished lock cover

Hung some old Akai speakers in the front and hooked them up to an amp under the seat. Speakers go very well and don't get in the way of the pedals.

akai speakers installed

Next was a sump guard that came off an Isuzu. I had this image in my head, of a rally Mini Cooper with the bash plate, and I thought this would suit the Suzuki. I'm very happy with the result. The holes lined up almost perfectly with the sway bar bolts, and only needed a little slotting to fit.

sump guard

Posing for a photo with a younger cousin:

ss80 and alto

[shavenyak]

The next thing that had been bugging me for a while was the roof lining (or lack thereof). Seems to be a common problem with the hatch. First I tried gluing some carpet to the ceiling, but struggled with it and gave up. In the end I used bitumen based self adhesive sound deadening sheets. Which worked out nicely. Drawbacks to this are that there's now a lot of weight added to the car, and and hot days they occasionaly sag a bit. Will see how we go after a few more summers.

roof lining

I got a set of red Bridgestone "R-Fin II" mags. They're 5.5x13". Looked kind of weird on the car since they were red, but I kinda liked them.

red 13" wheels

But the problem with the Hatch, Alto and the Mightyboy is their 10mm wheel studs and very small wheel nuts. They did not fit the mags properly as you can see:

Wheel nut in hole

Which meant I needed to either get some custom wheel nuts made up or replace the wheel studs with the more common 12mm stud. So since it was time to replace wheel bearings anyway, I got together some Honda wheel studs, punched out the old studs, re-drilled the holes to accept the larger ones. These were then pressed in and hey presto, I now had 12mm studs!

12mm studs

Which meant I could now run aftermarket mags, and ended up finding a white version of the same rims.

white 13" wheels

Next I wanted to lower the car. I found some Toyota Starlet EP80 rear king lowering springs that fit the spring perches on the strut. I worked out that the rear of a Starlet weighs almost exactly what the front of a SS80 weighs, so figured these would be a suitable spring to use. (King Spring KTRL-55-SP)
I cleaned up the old struts and installed the springs - which resulted in about a 2" drop.

shiny struts

struts installed

While I had the struts out I also cut a notch in the brake line bracket, so now I don't need to unscrew the brake hose every time I want to remove the strut!

notched brake line bracket

In the rear I installed 2" lowering blocks, which left about 20mm of clearance for the bump stop... Might have to look at modifying the bump stop some time.

lowering blocks

bump stop clearance

[shavenyak]

Which meant that the car now looks like this:

Current ride height

Very happy with the height. Ride is a bit bumpy, but it's worth it for much less body roll during cornering. Will look into getting new shock inserts in the front struts.

Also I had a spare gearbox from a '92 CB91 F8B Alto sitting around, so I decided I'd pull the engine and gearbox out, give the engine bay a clean up and swap the boxes over.

empty engine bay

Gearbox dropped in no problems, just had to swap the speedo cable or the whole speedo drive since they are different on the gearbox end.
Unforunately once it was in I found out that one of the drive shaft seals was leaking - possibly I damaged it while lowering the engine in. Anyway finding a replacement seal proved difficult - no one could do them, and Suzuki wanted $80 ex Japan. So I ended up getting a standard rotary oil seal which is slightly different to the suzuki seal - it has one sealing lip, instead of two, and is built a little differently. But it seems to work, and only cost $10.

new driveshaft seal

Something I should have checked, however, are the gear ratios between the two boxes. I don't have a tacho installed, but I'm pretty sure the new box revs much higher at 100kph. So I might end up going back to my old box. It's a shame, because the gear selector feels nice and tight, and there's much less diff whine in the new box.


Rebuilt my front brakes and gave everything a coat of gold hammerite. Looks awesome through the white wheels.

front brakes

rear brakes

Also got a cheap racing steering wheel and bosskit to suit. But I thought I'd get creative and use the original Suzuki horn button:

steering wheel mod

steering wheel with horn

That's all for now!

[shavenyak]

And here's some photos from this weekend - entered the Suzuki into a gymkhana.
Was so much fun!

[JB]

Cool looking Hatch! Nice work. Do you still have the set of red mags, if so, would you be interested in selling them?

[shavenyak]

Yeah I do, am about to take the tires off to put on another set.
I will be selling them - but.. I am in New Zealand, and I assume you're in Oz.. Still keen?

[Dave]

Nice! Interesting use of parts from other cars there too, could be helpful.

I reckon the steering wheel with original horn doesn't look too shabby either

[Trav]

I like the wrinkle coat on the rocker cover. Want to do the same to mine when I rebuild the engine. Trying to decide what colour to do the block though. Mmmm...

[JB]

Four 13" rims should fit in a medium sized box and not weigh too much! When the time comes that you want to sell them, let me know and we can go from there.

[shavenyak]

Have made a couple more modifications to the car recently.
I wasn't happy with the rear suspension travel with the lowering blocks in, as those of you who have 2" blocks will know, there's only about 10mm before the bump stops hit, which makes for a pretty painful ride.

bump stop gap

So I decided to remove boxes that the bump stops hit, which lets the axle travel up another 100mm or so.

the culprit

chop!

Still heaps of clearance in the wheel arches - no scrubbing when I go over bumps etc, and the axle doesn't foul on anything. The only issue is that now the shocks reach the end of their travel before the bump stops. This is a pretty major issue, but it would take a pretty heavy load to make the suspension travel that far, but It's something I'll deal with soon - I'll either find shorter shocks or maybe re-position the shock mount.


I recently bought a mig welder, and got the opportunity to (learn to) use it. I had a few bubbles in the paint above the drivers door. After poking them a bit I soon discovered there was a fair bit of rust that needed sorting out.

rust hole

I cut out the rust so I was left with clean steel and straight edges.

cleaned up

Bent up a piece of fresh steel..

new piece

tacked that in place

welded in place

then welded in a piece for the roof skin.

roof skin welded

end result:

all done!

[shavenyak]

Also I bought a pair of seats from a SW20 Toyota MR2. Originally I wanted something a bit more "period correct" ie, something early 80's or late 70's that suited the car. But these came up pretty cheap, and while they are definately 90's styled, they're plain black and blend in pretty well. And they're also very comfy!

new seats

So I set about making them fit. Physically they are pretty narrow seats, so they seemed ideal for the suzuki. The seat rails were spaced apart too wide to go straight in, and swapping them over wasn't quite straightforward. The suzuki seat rails attach directly to the seat base, but the toyota ones are attached to brackets that attach to the sides of the seat base.

brackets

Removing the rails from these brackets wasn't as easy as simply unbolting them. They were held on with pressed rivets AND spot welds.

rivets

But eventually I got them seperated, and from there it was just a matter of bolting on a pair of flat steel bars, which I then bolted the seat rails to, at the correct spacing.

frame installed

finished product

The biggest hurdle was the drivers seat, which due to the fact it had a seat base tilt adjuster, was missing a bolt hole that I needed to use to attach the lateral steel bars. So I had to weld on a piece of steel which cleared the tilting mechanism. The result was not pretty, but worked.

new bracket

And finally I bolted the seats into the car! They're awesome!

seats in the car!

The only gripe I have with them is that I had to position them out from the center, slightly closer to the doors as the brackets on the side of the seats were catching the seatbelt stalks when sliding back. This means the steering wheel feels like it's slightly to the left. Hopefully this is something I will get used to, or else I'll have to attack the brackets with the angle grinder!