wheel_of_steel

In the pursuit of true KDM sancity, the beta accent was sent off the road again, and I needed a daily. Well, here it is! I present to you this SOHC accent, built in January 95. Five speed manual, four speed interior fan, three valves per cylinder, two bald tyres and one working speaker.







This is the bare bones sprint model. However, when this car was in the lot, there was a ferocious price war as Hyundai tried to claw sales away from its korean competitors, the Daewoo Cielo and Ford Festiva. All accents were being sold with free air conditioning, which was a factory option initially. I think the new car buyer had optioned up the rear spoiler and gay window shade as well, because they are both genuine items and the spoiler has been wired correctly.







850 smackeroos later, it is now in my hands. This car has quite possibly got the worst stance/fitment in the country.







Here's the engine, not much to see here. I need to replace the rocker cover gasket, and the top rad hose.







I won't lie, there are some problems that need fixing, but thankfully they are very easy to take care of. Here is a m-m-montage of what's up.







Yes, that muffler is loud as hell.







So. This is primarily going to be an unloved car, but I am definitely going to give it a thorough service, and probably wire up a GX/GT/GSi/whatever you yanks call it tach cluster. Another fun task will be to put some lights in the blanks below the indicator/brakes - I can't stand empty spots! I'll make sure to keep everyone updated with mundane details as the build/repair progresses.

Red Raspberry

Got to love the paisley seats. Reminds me of the days traveling on 727s, if they were only orange and red.....

wheel_of_steel

Paisley seats, and perforated vinyl headrests. All it needs is a roach clip and some bean bag chairs.

Zekkal

Spoiler +1, Aftermarket Stereo +1, and one futuristic looking steering wheel +1



not a bad lookin car for 850. one question tho, whats missing in the middle right clip in the montage, antenna?

wheel_of_steel

It is the missing rear window washer nozzle.



On an unrelated note, today I picked up a rear window washer nozzle, driver's window regulator + glass, rear fog light gasket and the head unit mounting bracket. I got a pleasant greeting when I got the door trim off:







Here's a better shot of the mega hectic SPL stereo:







I was halfway through installing the regulator when I had to go to work. Getting the window to fit correctly and stay on its tracks is a hell of a job! I'm so paranoid about winding the window up, only to have it shatter as it is forced out of place by a wonky guide...



I ordered a rocker gasket and rad hose, fixed the seatbelt twist, and removed the hella gay window shade too.



It has a fair miss at low revs/high load. It misses in an irregular pattern, rather than consistently missing on a certain cylinder. This makes me think it has weak spark. I ran injector cleaner through the tank but it didn't seem to make a difference over the past 100 miles or so. To be fair, the spark plugs are probably crusty as hell. I don't even want to know how dirty the fuel filter is. I'll be giving the car a good tune up/minor service over the next few days.

Stocker

First thought on seeing the inside of the door:



"somebody's been in there before."

wheel_of_steel

I managed to finish fitting the window today. Man, that was a PITA. Somebody had actually bent the aft window track to fit around the central locking solenoid... just wow. No wonder the window fell off its tracks! Anyhoo, I made two new eco friendly plastic liners out of garbage bags, and installed the OEM front speakers out of my LC. They aren't very good, but they are a thousand times better than the shitty old items for sure. For some reason, the previous owner hadn't wired the (alpine) rear speakers into the head unit, nor had they put a mounting bracket on the head unit. That is all fixed and working now.







I took it on its first freeway run, I definitely need a wheel balance and alignment. There is about -1 degree of static camber on all four corners, I somehow don't think it was intentionally set that way. Anyway, there is some pretty chronic wheel shake once you exceed about 65 mph, and the car feels very... unstable? It just doesn't feel planted over speed humps and mid corner bumps. Maybe it is because of the small contact patch/abnormally sized tires?



Turns out this heater hose is about to asplod. It leaks a fine spray throughout the engine bay, and very slowly leaks coolant at rest. I really really really don't look forward to changing this bad boy.







That makes for the second dodgy hose so far. I might just replace all of the engine bay rubber hoses for peace of mind, they are cheap and fairly easy to do. The inside of the rad overflow tank has a solid 1/8th inch of rust-silt in the bottom of it, YUCK.



Anyways, I'll just keep working on this over the next few days. I think I'll end up spending around 300 in spare parts and consumables for this whole service, which isn't too bad I guess. The end result is going to be great!

jcturbeau

so... jealous... want... rhd...

wheel_of_steel

-New tyres: check

-Wheel alignment: check

-New spark plugs: check

-Seafoam engine treatment: check



'Twas a very expensive day today. I've bought/ordered everything I need to finish with my little to-do list. Anyway, this is a Jan 95 model, and this first gen (94-96) model got a bad rep for cracking the weld between the subframe and chassis. So, I went to the service department today to see if it had been recalled for that, and found some interesting history!



The car was built on the 17th of Jan, (my birthday is the 19th, how cute) and during the year of 95 the car was taken in for the subframe to be riveted as per the recall. There was an unknown 'paint claim' made under warranty in that same year. In 98, there was another recall to inspect the subframe rivet job and this car passed that O.K. In 2005, it had a voltage regulator replaced. That was all the info the dealer had for me. So, when I was getting my wheel alignment done, I had a look at the underbody while the car was up on the hoist. Do you guys reckon these are the legendary recall rivets?







Speaking of a wheel alignment, it turns out the reason that the car feels so unstable/rides rough is because the rear shocks are SIEZED! Holy balls! It was super deceptive to figure out, because the car appears fine when you do a bounce test at each corner. However, if you lift the back of the car up by the wheel arch, it will stay there/slowly sink down over ~20 seconds. The shocks are so fuxxored that they are beyond being bouncy and floaty, but they are now siezing up and dying. Oh well, just one more thing to add onto the list of stuff to replace. If anybody wants to recommend me some nice shocks, I wouldn't hate. It looks like KYB GR-2s seem to be the usual aftermarket replacement, but honestly if they are much more expensive than stock I probably won't bother. Bombard me with ideas!



I spent most of the day just buying stuff, but I did get a chance to do the seafoam treatment and to change the spark plugs. As per standard operating procedure at wheel_of_steel's home garage, a 10 minute spark plug job turned into a long saga of BS.







Just because the car is painted green, doesn't mean the spark plug holes are fauna-friendly:







Also, it turns out there are a few cracks in the intake pipe, both before and after the MAF. The car runs really smoothly with some bodged DOHC splug leads, but it is still on jack stands so my test data is not complete. My rad hoses, heater hose, and rocker gasket should be arriving tomorrow as well. Woo!

Stocker

Keep on truckin man that's good progress.



Speaking of green, do you realize how much energy and how many material resources you are saving by doing this vs. buying a new car?