Les Getz - Hyundai Getz Beta swapped hill climber

Good job on making it work with the drill press.  I'm a big believer that you don't need to run to a mill or lathe to make every part, and you can make a lot of stuff happen with just a couple of simple tools.

I like the build too!

So things escalated a little tonight when a new set of countersink drills turned up. I thought it only fair to try them out. I finished off the curved slots and then set about reducing some weight. Given the amount of time I have now I think I'll keep reducing it further. 

This is what I have now. I'll need to find a shorter bolt to hold it on too.

Had a massive win today. One of the outstanding questions I had over this conversion was what driveshafts I would need. I knew my left Elantra shaft would be about 35mm too long. I was able to escape today to the wrecking yard for a whole afternoon and pulled shafts out of five cars I'd shortlisted from catalogue searches. And I found what I needed from an 88 mitsubishi magna (diamante in north America). Pic below of the too long elantra shaft and the just right magna shaft.

I also found the power steering pressure line I would need and an 18mm rear swaybar I can adapt, also out of a magna but a much newer wagon.

Finally got out of isolation to work on my car!

First job was to build a baffle box system for the sump. I used a generic kit from eBay that uses the cosworth style rubber flaps. I chopped this up to form the box and joined it with the pre existing plate in the sump. Then I made a 3 inch ring around the pick up with slots in it. I made a bracket to hold the pick up in the correct spot to check clearance. The MIG was having some feed issues so the welding is hideous but it will work.

I finally settled on using Speeduino ecm so ordered the core 4 unit out of fit efi in the UK. My friend whose workshop I'm using has been developing a penchant for motorsport wiring lately. He pulled the ecm from the getz and the case was too small. So I grabbed the elantra ecm which is bigger and has the same plug. He made it fit in the car then set about harvesting the connector off the board and creating a daughter board to join it with the speedy.

I'll be able to use the original getz loom with only minor mods to join it with the elantra engine.

While we were under the dash playing with ecm's it made sense to have the seats out. I started to fit the race seat I have. It started strangely by fitting the black leather steering wheel I picked up from a Tiburon. Then I lowered the column on 20mm spacers with longer bolts. Started mapping out the brackets. They are going to be complex so didn't get far, more on that later. 

While I was in fabrication mode I decided to fit my race seat and sort out the driving position. I installed some spacers in the column to drop it down 20mm and fitted a slightly smaller leather wheel from a Tiburon. Next I fabbed up some mount brackets for the seat.

Next was engine assembly. I fitted my new pistons and the checked the compression ratio. It came out at a stout 11.4:1. Pretty happy with that, I was concerned that I'd removed too much from the chamber but obviously not. Head is now back on along with clutch and gearbox. Now I can assemble all the rest of the bits and pieces ready for install.

More good progress tonight with the inlet manifold and most of the accessories cleaned up and refited. Starting to look like an engine again. Next will be to fit the cams and set up all the shim clearance and dial in the timing.

Had a pretty solid weekend working on the Getz.

Got the cams in and valve clearance adjustments done. I had two full set of shims but still needed to grind a few to the right size. Then I had to dial in my timing with the adjustable wheel. Next I modified the valve cover to have mounting points for the spark plug cover. This engine had a massive full engine cover, I picked up a bikini cover off the non vvt version that can be made to fit.

Also picked up some deka 290cc injectors out of an Audi and got them fitted. Engine is basically all buttoned up except for the exhaust manifold that still needs some fettling.

Finally I got to rip out the old 1.5. Wasn't much left holding it in, only driveshafts and mounts were left to be removed.

I replaced the high pressure power steer hose with one that suits the new pump location. Of course it didn't fit straight away and got some fettling too.

Managed to roll the engine into the gap before I ran out of time. The engine bay ne edds a thorough clean n before I hook in to mounting the engine anyway.

Cleaning time today. Got the car back on its wheels and pushed it out the shed for a good wash. This is the result after some polishing and bolting some bits back in. Always nice to work on something clean.

I had a play with the gear shift too. I shortened the linkages at the gearbox end with a quick cut and weld and put some spacers under the shifter to bring it closer to the steering wheel. 

Coming along nicely.

Whats you plan with the inlet manifold being a little high? The wiper motor assembly and panel that goes between the shock towers gets in the way.

Also I'm very interested in how you go with the Speeduino. Ive been looking at them for a while and if end up with a turbo I will give the Speedy a go. I did my loom slightly different to yours. I used the Elantra loom and swapped a few plugs from the Getz loom over. But I'm keeping the Elantra ECU and want to try and keep everything fairly stock, and factory items working, eg. thermo fans, AC, instument cluster, etc.

I've been very lazy lately. Its 90% finished but still need to finish a few things up. I'm currently trying to 3d print a top half to the Getz air box that fits the air flow meter from the Elantra. Space is a little tight but I'm trying to keep it looking as stock as possible.

How did you modify the rocker cover to suit the slim spark plug cover? I cant find a slim cover so I've been thinking of getting a rocker cover and spark plug cover off an i30 but not sure if the bolt pattern is the same.

Keep up the good work and I'll try get back into mine.

In reply to Kenzza :

Yeah so the manifold is a little high, made worse by me putting the map/iat sensor in the top. At this stage I think it will fit with a bump put into the top panel. I'm dropping the motor as low as I can, the sump will be about 10mm above the lowest point. This buys me some room. I haven't had the motor right where I want it yet as the diff case hits the cross member and sway bar. Next job is to notch the cross member and move the swaybar.

The speedy board I'm using is getting a daughter  board to fit in the Elantra case using the existing connector. I have a minimum order of 5 units if you want one, could work something out?

How much room do you have for a turbo? Mine is super tight behind the radiator. I'll be interested to see the airbox you make, this is the other tight area I have.

My plug cover is off a beta 1 engine from an earlier Elantra. Be careful buying valve covers as there are a few shapes, but at a glance look the same. I just drilled through two of the holes and tapped and glued some button head bolts in the valve cover. The oil cap helps hold it in too.

Cross member came out and got a good scrub before copping a notch in the left side. Went straight back in and I made some 5mm spacers for the swaybar.

Another trial fit and it's in!

In reply to ill_climber :

That looks good. Also looks like it will clear the panel that goes between the shock towers.  :)  I had to notch that panel and bend part of the wiper mechanism to make it fit. But I used 2 of the factory mounts, looks like you will get away with it because your making custom mounts.

There is no room in between the exhaust and radiator, in fact i had to trim part of the fan to make it fit. IF I fit a turbo down the track I will have to get inventive with mounting position. Maybe off to the side, in from of the gearbox? That creates more problems though lol.

I'm a little worried about the smaller getz air box restricting the airflow, but I'll use a K&N panel filter and enlarge the ducting in the bottom half. Just have to see how it goes. I really want to keep it stock looking under the bonnet, so if the authorities lift the bonnet they wont realize anything is different :)  These are test prints, they wont be red.

In reply to Kenzza :

That's a decent 3d print, I've recently got a 3d printer myself.

I have stock looking ambitions for my engine bay too. My plan is to run a 2 1/2 inch pipe through the stock airbox to a filter in the corner of the bumper.

Started in on the mounts today. As fortune would have it, I can use all of the factory Gets rubber mounts. This will make any required replacement easier. 

At the engine end the Elantra bracket slotted things almost in the right place. I elected to put a 15mm spacer to drop the engine down for clearance on the inlet plenum and to lower the cg. The setup here is temporary due to some strange hardware. The engine side of the bracket had 2 m14x1.25 studs in it and 1 m10 bolt. I found a longer m10 bolt but struggled to replace the two studs. Current work around looks like making m12 thread inserts out of spark plugs. Not sure yet if it will work. Only other thing I've found in m14x1.25 is bmw wheel bolts, available in packs of 10....

Next was trans end. Lots of chopping of the Getz trans bracket was required due to the location of the reverse light switch and clutch slave on the Elantra box. Beyond that, the holes went up 15mm and across 20mm, then reinforcing was added.

The remaining mount underneath is next and looks reasonably straight forward. 

Driveline is all mounted up now. My spark plug based thread inserts worked out well. I made a 15mm spacer and bolted it right up.

The underside mount was also easier than I first expected. I was able to drill new holes in the existing bracket from the Getz and just trim some excess material.

With that job done I was able to start hooking things up.

Bit more progress this week. 

Most of the engine connections went straight on. Bit of a fiddle with the power steering pipework. The coils got moved across  a bit to make room for the airbox. Gear cables need some work to line up the shifter properly. Cooling system is done using a 1.4 Getz bottom hose an a 910 Bluebird upper hose. Heater hoses are done in straight. Throttle cable swapped over from the Elantra. 

Now on to the fun bit. Wiring. First job was to expose all the harnesses. So dash and interior came out.

Once I was in this deep I started adding lightness by removing redundant wiring and ditched the big foam mat on the firewall and all the sound deadener. I reckon near 30kg went in the bin.

I started laying things out on the engine. I reckon I'll be a while getting this done.

So, after a 3 month hiatus from working on the car, this has happened:

Yep, the car is back in my driveway. With ongoing access challenges added to the 1 1/2 hour round trip to work on the car, I made the decision to complete the build like most people on this forum do, in my driveway. I've set up a small workspace in a single car garage around the other side of the house and the garden shed now has lots of car parts in it. But now I can progress whenever I have a spare 10 minutes.

In the time since I was last here, I got myself a tig welder and have been frustrating myself learning to use it. I'm planning on tackling the air inlet pipe and pod filter mounting first while the front is back on the car, before continuing with the wiring saga. 

I've been chipping away at the car most evenings since its been home. The tig learning curve continues and I've made my first part with it. Its not perfect by any means but has some bits I'm quite happy with.

I made an inlet pipe to mount the pod filter in the corner of the bumper using exhaust tube. It routes through the original air box to maintain a stealthy look.

An update on the wiring 

I continued to unwrap the harness in the car as I knew I had connectors to move and wires to add. No idea why I hadn't thought to earlier, but I removed the entire harness from the car and dumped it on the table. Much easier!

I slowly worked my way through all the wires. This is the sub harness for injectors and IAC and vent valve. I had to swap in the Elantra IAC plug. As each section was finalised I would wrap it up neat in Tesa Loom tape and conduit.

The coils came back out again to modify the bracket with a DT connector clip and the wiring repinned to suit also. The Getz harness had separate plugs for each coil and the capacitor, so these were merged to suit the Elantra coils.

Next was the wide band o2 module. I needed a power supply that was only when the engine was running, so I picked up the power out of the fuse box from the fuel pump relay. I'm using solderless open crimps and heatshrink for all connections in the harness.

WBO2 module go double sided taped to the underside of the battery tray to keep it out of harms way.

...and the connector for it is here

I have a few more wires to add to the harness before making final connections at the ECM connector. I will then need to fully document all the changes and the pinout info.

Tidied up a few jobs today I wanted to do before the harness went in.

First was trimming all the excess brackets off the dash bar. These aren't required as the lower half of the dash won't be there. More added lightness. 

Next I cut out some alloy sheet to block the holes in the firewall where the AC used to live.

Then I pulled out my shift cables to sort them out. Somewhere in the swapping of gearboxes and brackets and chopping up the linkages, the cables became too short. Also the soft rubber bushes were flogged out and just not race car enough.

I'd bought some 8mm rod ends for this job months ago. I added some 25mm cap screws and nuts, then measured and chopped.

I needed to shorten the inner cable a bit too

Then I just TIGd the cap screws to the cables before a quick quench so it didn't melt everything. 

I bolted it all back in the car and it works nicely. I'll do some further mods to the gear stick to bring it closer to the steering wheel later too.

Good to see another small hillclimber on here, quite keen to see how it performs. I currently run against hyundai excels that are ex race series cars so interested to see how this compares. Where abouts are you? Was it NZ?

Massive progress the last couple of days. I've actually started putting things back in for the last time.

The wiring saga is now mostly finalised and all back in the car. It took forever to document everything but that will pay off if I ever need to change or fix anything. Worth noting none of the wiring info i found for the car was correct.

All wrapped up and ready to fit

After the harness was In I got stuck into some assembly of the battery tray and inlet system. 

Then filled in the top of the engine bay with the Cowell panel and wiper mechanism and swung the front back on for a look. Looks pretty close to stock to the untrained eye.

Inside the heater box went back in and I was able to fit my 3d printed evaporator delete pipe I made months ago.

I chopped the lower half off the dash so gave that a trial fit too

Next on the list is extractors and exhaust.

I think I should stop making predictions about what I'm doing next. Easily distracted I tidied up some more wiring in side by terminating all the extra wires I put in the harness and relocating some plugs around the fuse box. Only on of the plugs will be used initially, for launch/nls over ride. The other two are basically for telemetry. A mate of mine is developing a race dash so I provisioned for it while the loom was apart. 

In order to fit my extractors I had to deal with the thermo fan that was pressed against them. I ordered the highest output low profile fan I could find on EBay. The mounting hardware supplied with it sucked. A trip to the hardware store for some panel washers and felt insulators combined with stainless cap screws and locknuts I already had, worked to hold it to the radiator core.

Next I started work on airflow through the front of the car. My plan is to seal everything up so any air going in the front of the car goes through a cooler or into the air filter.

I used some plastic root guard from the garden centre. I glued pieces over the surplus holes in the front structure. 

This covers the right corner. The power steering cooler and eventually an engine oil cooler will live under here.

And one for the left corner to seal the air filter in to the bumper.

I was happy with how the thin plastic had worked so far but wasn't willing to back it for my next job.

Recently I went to an aviation museum. I was lucky enough to get a tour of the workshop where some retired guys restore old planes. They were rebuilding a fuselage from hand beaten aluminum. It was inspiring. 

So I picked up some 1mm alloy today and started messing around filling the gaps between the radiator and the front structure. The pieces I made had to be tapered and were just short enough to fit in my press brake for bending. I made a die to stamp a recess in for the nutserts to sit flush. I bolted the in and stuck foam sealing strip on.

I've found cooling for hillclimb has gone the opposite way for me and i struggle to get gearbox etc up to temp. We do around 1 run an hour so it's a lot of trying to control temps and get the timing right to run at optimal temp. I get my motor up to 90c before the run and have my fan manually switched so i can control it. Gearbox temps are really a crapshoot that I haven't gotten into yet. My steering rack is manual converted and diff is in the gearbox as is yours.

tyre temps were around 50c after a run and varied a little front-rear left-right but not a major amount. Mt Cotton works the drivers rear pretty hard compared to passengers rear which i get 8-10 inches off the ground regularly. 

i have charts of all this including ambient temps etc if you want them. Australian champs are at Mt Cotton next year if you're coming up.