[ Alto Works ] Suzuki Sport Racing Type-C 13” Wheels

Despite only owning my car for barely a year, I’ve had 5 sets of wheels for my Alto Works. The car started off with the stock, 5-spoke 14x5” Enkei wheels, wrapped in cheap, old, Nankang rubber. They worked fine for a bit and I’ll admit they look quite good with a set of spacers. The car also included a set of steel 13x4” steel wheels and Nexen studless winter tires, but I soon gave away those steelies.

Shortly after driving my car around for a bit, I picked up a set of super cheap 14x6 +38 Bridgestone wheels. The best thing I could say about them is that they were made in Japan. They weren’t particularly light and looked better in my mind than they actually did on the car.

A few months later, I picked up my old Wagon R again which had my old set of 14x5.5 Yokohama Advan Rally wheels in pure white. They are beefy, durable, and look really good on the car. I initially planned on using them year ‘round as my all-weather set.

It was soon after I picked up a set of gorgeous 13” RAYS wheels, which I detailed the restoration here. It was then I fell completely in love with the smaller wheels and fatter rubber, definitely fitting with the old school look of the car. To me, these still look the best and as such, I will keep them on the car as my all-weather set, wrapped with a set of Bridgestone Sneaker rubber.

So now that I have a set for “summers,” I’ll keep my original stock Enkeis as a track-focused set. The gray Bridgestones were my least favorite so far, so I sold them for about half of what I paid for them. I should’ve been happy with my three sets of wheels now, but I couldn’t settle there. I really wanted a set of winter 13s, since they fit the look of the old Alto so well.

I first looked into what I consider the best looking wheel for older Japanese cars: Watanabe wheels. After some deliberation, I decided in the end that my Roadster would look best with them, as they fit that old, retro modern look. The squared 90s look might go better with a set of same-era wheels.

Most recently I picked up what I hope will be my final (cough, cough) set of wheels, a set of old school Suzuki Sport 13x5” wheels, manufactured by Enkei, for a mere 12,000￥ ($110 USD). After searching around the internet for 1990s wheels, I discovered these wheels came as a Suzuki Sport aftermarket option in their accessory catalogs in various colors and in both 4x100 for newer Altos/Wagon Rs/etc and 4x114.3 for Cappuccinos and older Altos.

As expected for the price and much like the Rays wheels, they were shabby. The original paint is largely bubbling and chipping off, so I had to refinish the whole set. This took an incredible amount of time, as I think these were in even rougher condition than the GR-N were.

You can see the difference between these two wheels after tedious sanding.

I decided to keep them all metallic grey, but I was fine with losing the polished lip. For the base layers of paint after the primer, I went with spare dark grey paints I had leftover, then finally coating with Soft99’s Metallic Grey for the perfect shine. (Also, it was fairly expensive so I was not looking forward to buying more than two cans of the stuff.

I finally found a free weekday to get them mounted with my winter tire set.

While they are very old-school appropriate with a very cool old-school tuner look, they have an incredibly boring offset at +45, essentially the same as the stock wheels. Therefore, I also picked up a set of two 40mm spacers, which are even wider than the +15 spacers I bought earlier. This will give them a nice push to +5.

Holy wow, even just the front two wheels spaced out look amazing. And they fit under the stock rolled fenders with the cambered Wagon R suspension just fine! So far, no rubs except under reasonably hard cornering, when the turned wheels rub the fender lip.

(Also pictured are a few other modifications I’ve made recently!)

Now what to do about those rear tires? How can we fit a set of wider spacers or wheels?

[ Alto Works ] Saito Safety Roll Cage, Part 3

First up, in order to make sure everything lined up and worked before I started drilling in my Alto Works, I wanted to temporarily install the Saito Roll Cage and tighten everything down to ensure fitment. This will allow me to see where the screw holes will need to be drilled with all options installed and ensure no strange play or issues.

Surprisingly, even without bolting it in, the cage is extremely stiff and doesn’t wobble or shake; It is an absolute perfect fit. I didn’t have much time on the first day of my project, so I drove it home like this.

Project time was a bit scattered afterwards, but I resolved to finish as much as I could, whenever I could. Sadly, because the September summers in Japan are always a rainy mess (it has been raining virtually every day for two weeks), I couldn’t repaint my backing plates, which are a must to get things mounted.

But we can drill. After carefully center punching all the holes, I drilled them one-by-one, putting bolts through each time to ensure the bars do not shift around. I then disassembled the whole cage again. I used a rat-tail file to clean off the metal burrs, vacuumed out the interior, and then painted to coat the exposed metal several times with rust preventative paint.

Before the cage goes back in, I need to add foam padding so my body and especially my head have some protection in a crash. The last thing I would want is to strike the bare metal bars in a rollover. Even with padding, I am well aware that it can still be unsafe for a daily car. I ordered these rolls to cover all surfaces, 12m of 4-5mm thick foam for about 7000￥ ($65 USD). While they are adequate, I plan on adding thicker padding for the bars near my head later.

With the cage reassembled outside the car, I first painted the cage where any scrapes, scratches, or surface rust are present, then I wrapped the whole front 4-points of the cage with padding, acetate cloth tape, and zip ties. This ensures that the most likely surfaces passengers may come in contact with are relatively safe. The rear bars I will probably leave exposed as they are, as the chances of accidental contact are minimal. Plus, the aluminum cross brace just plain looks cool.

To make the installation easier, I also took out the rear bench seat, which came out with about 6 screws in total. I plan on leaving the rear seat back off the car, since it weighs quite a bit and also partially blocks one of the rear safety harness bolts when the seat is folded down (as it must be with the harness bar in place). I will, however, keep the rear seat bottom, as it provides a flat surface for rear storage and is good sound insulation since this is still very much a “street” car.

I look forward to the day when I go all-in and strip out the interior panels and carpeting.

Before the cage could go back in, though, the front carpet and rear panels also had to be cut out for the roll cage feet. The front carpet was fairly simple to cut with scissors, but the rear plastic panels had to be roughly measured out. I cut a pretty large opening, which isn’t quite as beautifully perfect as I would like, but this will make installation of the bolts much easier with the extra bit of clearance to work with.

With the backing plates finally painted with layers of primer, rust-preventative paint, enamel paint, and clear, I bolted the screws in and added plenty of silicon for weather resistance, as I did with my roof vent. I took a lot of time with this, carefully tightening the bolts evenly to ensure everything was straight.

Once that was complete, I could finally reinstall all the carpeting and panels back into place.

Impressions
After driving around for a few days, I can say the car definitely feels more solid around turns and bumps. The interior shakes and rattles noticeably less and the car overall feels nicely composed. Part of this may be the added weight distributed around the car, which I can feel; it’s almost as if I have an added passenger sitting in the middle. I can also hear the added weight, since my rear tires, already prone to rubbing over hard bumps, rubs marginally more often now.

As for comfort, I am glad the side bar does not intrude as much as I had initially anticipated. I specifically said the singular side bar, not plural side bars because unfortunately, the passenger side bar does not fit with the stock seat in place. It looks like it only works with a slimmer bucket seat.

Getting in and out of the car is slightly more difficult with the roll cage, but not as strange as I expected. Honestly, the bucket seat still requires me to disgracefully fall out of the car, so the bars change little. Any passengers, though, will have to be careful, lest they hit their head on the upper bar and fall out of the car disgracefully as well. Otherwise, the interior front cabin space, rear seats exempt, is largely the same as it was before and not a significant hindrance.

Conclusion
In the end, the Saito Roll Cage was a pretty cool addition to my Alto Works, giving me a bit more stability and more importantly, a lot more safety. May it also give me some street racer cred.

[ Alto Works ] Saito Safety Roll Cage, Part 2

Brands
According to all my searches online, I could only find two brands currently offering roll cages for my old Alto Works, Cusco and Saito Cage. Cusco has two sub-brands, Safety21 which is made out of heavier but cheaper steel and D1 which is their lighter chromoly design. Saito Roll Cage is more of a custom builder, as they make cages to-order, but offer a plethora of custom options that Cusco does not, including varying cross brace designs, materials, colors, and even additional bolt-in mounting points.

None of the options available are weld-in cages, which for my intents are purposes is more than adequate. This will make installation much easier and is adequately safe for what I need. Further, bolt-in cages allow simple transplantation for when I will eventually move it to another Alto.

Am I planning to get into a rollover? Obviously not, it’s highly unlikely that I will get into an accident of that sort. And since I will not be doing wheel-to-wheel racing, it is not for abiding by racing rules. Honestly it might just be for the look, but I am also buying one because I don’t trust the safety of the car, even if I am only driving it at 5/10ths around town.

With so many “points” available, I thought about my needs and narrowed it down to either a 6-point cage that can still allow 4 passengers or a “10+ point” cage with some side bars for side impact protection.

With all the options available on the internet, what did I go with?

While new prices are fairly reasonable for Cusco, starting at around 50,000￥ ($460 USD) for a six-point, ever the frugal person, I looked for used options online. I found some 4-point roll bars for as little as 20,000￥ in rather poor condition, but I held out past a 30,000￥ 6-point one til I found the exact model I wanted: A Saito Roll Cage that went for 70,000￥ ($645 USD), unfortunately located all the way in Iwate, 12+ hours away from me and the seller was not willing to arrange shipping due to the size and bulk.

As it just so happens, I was planning a summer road trip to Hokkaido and I would be driving back, passing through Iwate. (Check out my recent Instagram posts to see my adventures.) I contacted the seller and arranged to meet him at his home in the beautiful mountainous countryside, picking it up and squeezing it into my Swift Sport. I drove it home like this, cramped with two weeks’ of clothing, camera gear, and camping equipment.

Why did I go through all the trouble to buy a bar that was nearly the price of a new Safety21 steel cage of similar design? This cage has virtually every single option that Saito offers (and even doesn’t offer) on their website. The bars are made of lighter chromoly, the X cross brace is made of super light aluminum, the bar is a true 8-point brace with two points of mounting by the front seat belt mounting points, and it also has side bars. For all these complete options, the bar would easily sell for well over 110,000￥ new, so in this respect, the price is quite reasonable.

Time to get it installed! Of course, this necessitates striping out the interior. I knew eventually the seats had to go, but I also had to remove the rear quarter interior panels and pull up the corners of the carpet.

I also spent a bit of time cleaning up the mounting plates of the surface rust and the silicon residue leftover from the previous owner’s installation.

Read on next week for the final progress!

[ Alto Works ] Saito Safety Roll Cage, Part 1

Safety is always a concern when driving, especially if you take any “spirited” drives around mountain touge roads. One way to protect occupant safety is to install a roll bar or roll cage which will add rigidity to a car as well as protect the people inside in case of an accident or rollover. In my accident, I especially discovered kei cars are made of cheap, light metals, so having some protection in my Alto Works will be especially important.

Overview
A roll bar is a simple bar that prevents the roof of a car from caving in, in case of a rollover. You can find aftermarket bars most commonly on open-top convertible roadsters or mildly-modified sports cars used on tracks in non-wheel-to-wheel racing events. In fact, a roll bar is a legal rule requirement for open top cars, as the chance of rollover and roof cave-in are quite high. Certainly, a front windscreen will definitely crush with the weight of a car.

Roll bars are typically simple 2 or 4-point bars that go behind the driver and mount to the chassis of the car. An overly simple 2-point bar is a hoop. While this might be cheap and light, it can be dangerous as it can fold over given enough lateral pressure. It may also be referred to as a “style bar,” as it is essentially more style than safety function. A 4-point roll bar also adds to legs that mount further behind a 2-point hoop, creating 4 points of hard mounting, which will strongly resist any folding should the worst happen. Some roll bars have cross bars that add strength to the whole system.

A roll cage is the next ultimate step in ruining a perfectly streetable car. They are so-called a cage because it essentially surrounds passengers with a metal cage that can protect during a roll-over or from impacts.

Roll cages start at 6-points and increase in complexity and cross mounting points based on safety needs. 6-point roll cages add two arms that go in front of the driver, mounting near the footwell. There are two variants of this, bent arms that follow the curvature of the front dash and through-dash arms. The “standard” bent arms are easier to install, but eat into the cabin space a bit, making ingress and exit a bit more cumbersome. The through-dash cage requires permanent holes to be cut into the stock dashboard or removal of the dash entirely.

While there are nearly infinite designs and options, many cages also offer some cross braces that add rigidity. Some more serious folks who may do wheel-to-wheel racing will add side bars that protect the occupants in the case of a side impact. This isn’t even including the cages that are completely welded in to the chassis.

Material Types
There are two primary materials used in bar construction, mild steel and chromoly. Essentially, both are steel, but have differing weights and strengths. Mild carbon steel is much heavier, but is cheaper to produce and low alloy chromoly is lighter. There are some arguments that claim because mild steel is “softer,” it is more durable after stress or impact, but I don’t know the real facts about that. Racing regulations typically allow either material to be used in cages.

Western or Japanese Differences
In addition, there are further important options to note between “western” and Japanese roll cages. (I am defining them as “western” and Japanese simply for the sake of brevity. There are western companies that follow the primarily Japanese design cues of roll cages and vice versa. Note this also typically only applies to off-the-shelf bolt-in and not custom-designed weld-in.)

Image from www.cusco.co.jp

In all English standard safety guidelines, the “points” of a roll cage are where the cage is mounted into the chassis. However, companies like Cusco also define those “points” of a roll cage as points where bars cross and connect. Here is a chart from their website. I definitely do not agree with their way of counting points, but I suppose we’re just nitpicking semantics here.

Western companies often minimize the number of bolts used to assemble the cage. Some off-the-shelf companies still require some welding to connect the major hoops of the bars. Unless you are doing professional wheel-to-wheel racing, most Japanese circuit racing rules still allow multi-piece bolted assemblies, which also eases production and shipping costs.

Probably as a result from the more solid design of Western cages, harness bars are often integrated into the cage itself. This results in the more proper harness angle of < 20 degrees from the shoulder, according to many safety harness manufacturers (more in a later post). In the case of a multi-piece bolt-in, I would definitely not trust mounting a harness to it. Hence, typical Japanese harnesses are installed via eye bolts to the rear passenger seat belt mounting points.

Many current racing regulations for cages in the west require 45 to 50mm diameter piping, whereas Japan still commonly uses 40mm. Whether the additional strength and width of the pipes are a necessity is also arguable.

General Advantages
So all these bars are great, but why would anyone want to add a cage? Besides the aforementioned safety advantages in case of a roll-over, having protective bars could prove a literal life-saver in the case of an accident. Keep in mind that kei cars in particular have a thin, sheet metal chassis which will no doubt crumple completely in any higher-speed crash. I’ve seen some post-accident and they don’t look pretty. Undoubtedly the newer models are better designed, but not my Alto. A 21+ year old, lightly rusted car based on a 1980s body will definitely not have such protection.

Beyond the safety aspect, a roll cage will definitely add body rigidity, essentially more than compensating for all those interior braces offered by various manufacturers. This should theoretically aid in handling and minimizing torsional stresses of a flimsy frame.

There is a ton of properly employed safety methodology here. Two guesses as to who the manufacturer of the base car is…

General Disadvantages
Unfortunately, roll cages have plenty of drawbacks themselves. On the flip side of the beneficial safety aspect, a poorly designed roll bar could potentially result in additional injury because exposed bars are extremely dangerous compared to softer plastic interior panels.

Even through-dash types of roll bars compromise interior space and make getting in and out of a roll caged car more difficult, not to mention some cages eliminate the rear seats entirely. This not only reduces passenger and interior space, it is also an issue come shaken time, as the number of passengers can not be changed. (Unless the paperwork is redone, but that is a several hundred-dollar proposition.) Shaken with a roll cage also requires it to be well-padded to pass inspection. (According to sources online. I’ll update this information when I have to shaken again.)

Lastly, a roll cage adds weight, even if it is the lighter chromoly type. This will negatively affect fuel economy, speed, and braking distance. In reality, this weight is probably pretty negligible given that most Cusco cages only weigh 30kg (67 lbs) or less, but in racing (as well as to my little 63 HP kei car), every ounce counts.

For me, the pros definitely outweigh the cons.