I bought a new track car. Sort of on a whim, saw it on eBay, had only done 64k miles. A lot of people don’t understand the vision, although everyone that’s driven it has said it’s pretty fun.
I have bought, for the princely sum of £1,500, a 2001 Nissan Micra K11, pushing a titanic 55bhp from a 1.0 CG10DE engine.
There are a few reasons I chose the Micra, namely:
To my mind there are two major issues with the K11, the first obviously being rust. The panels are really really thin. I think a lot of the body of the car is made from 0.6mm steel to save weight. The other, also a consequence of it’s lightness, the crash safety is shocking. That one is quite easy to solve, I just won’t crash it.
A less major issue is that it is quite lacking in power. I will possibly address this at some point.
The first thing I wanted to do once I got it home was paint the steel wheels white. I thought this would give a kind of budget rally car vibe. Painting wheels is a really horrible job. Incredibly tedious. I didn’t do a great job, but from 6 feet, they look pretty good. In the process of removing the rear driver’s side wheel I noticed a lot of rust in the sill. Cornflakes everywhere. I should really have just left it alone as I bought it with 11 months MOT, but I couldn’t.
See below, driver’s side sill cap, just about hanging on with a lot of seam seal – this was replaced in the process.
I bought the cheapest flux core welder I could find on eBay (£70), and a few odd bits of steel – couple of pieces of 100x20x1mm angle to make a sill patch, and a flat sheet of 0.75mm for any floor bits that needed replacing.
I am by no means a good welder, however by the end of the repair I was getting a bit better, tidier welds, less grinding. I don’t know exactly how long it took me but it was roughly 5 or 6 Saturdays, but I learned a lot, which is kind of the point of this car. I don’t have loads of money tied up in it, I can experiment with little risk, and worst case, I can probably find another Micra to swap any expensive bits onto, should this one need condemning.
In the process, I also did a permanent rear wiper delete, by welding a ~31mm circular piece of steel in. I had a correctly sized bung but it was lost in the boot of my daily – I found it, immediately after.
I have been doing bits and pieces to take as much weight as I can out of the car.
So far I have:
For the stereo, I removed the original, as it only had FM and cassette, and woeful speakers. Rather than spending loads of money on a new head unit and new speakers, I just bought a rechargeable bluetooth speaker that fits perfectly into the centre console. It is way lighter, and on a track day I can take it out when I stop. This might seem silly, but you aren’t going to find one massive lump of weight to take out of the car, but lots of tiny weight savings.
One thing that is quite notable when driving it stripped out, is that they really didn’t put a lot of effort into sealing the car up. A lot of air gets in around the bootlid and tail lights.
I think I have probably removed ~50kg. There is more to remove but I think I’ve got all of the low hanging fruit. I think I will put polycarbonate windows in the rear 3 at some point, and perhaps make some flat doorcards, which would save a couple more kg.
Next I’ve got a set of LO lowering springs (35mm), and a GizFab adjustable panhard rod. Hopefully we can combat some of the body roll. These were a bargain. I think both had been bought by someone with the same intentions and then sat around, before going on eBay a couple of years later.
I think the car could possibly do with wider wheels. At the minute I am still using the factory 14×5″ steels. I couldn’t find a huge variety of tyres in this size, and RainSports were the best I could get on blackcircles. The 185 tyre might be a bit wide for the 5″ rim. I have been trying to find a factory steel from another car that is 4x100mm, 14×6″, with roughly the same offset, but as yet I haven’t found any. I think this would stiffen up the tyres a bit, although it handles pretty nicely as it is, and the steering feels quite good.
I’m going to do at least one track day, at the current power output. Then I will decide if we need more power, and whether that would take the form of an engine swap or a turbo. There are a few options for engines, you can swap in a CG13, or CGA3 quite easily, or the GA16 from the first generation Almera. A turbo seems the more expensive option, but could be cool.