Convertible in a swamp - will it survive?

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:04]So, our crew has left. The way you said that, dude. This is the intro. This is how you do it. Come here. Hey there, fellas. In this episode, our boys have all taken off in different directions. Some went to Thailand, others to, well, a place that's warm.

[00:00:21]They're swimming, drinking beers, and here I am about to They told us to work on something, but we don't want to. I mean, not working on anything is going to be boring. Time is going to drag on, but right here, we've got this green cappuccino. It's been sitting here rotting, and so why not use it for something? For the longest time, Jean has been, "Let's put wheels this big onto it, and an engine this big, and go for a drive." And while nobody is here, nobody's going to stop us from doing whatever we want. So, we'll take this cappuccino. At the very least, we'll try pulling it out of here and attempt an engine swap. Guys, check out this awesome thing I found on Amazon. A unique and original gift for a lady.

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[00:03:24]All right. So, we were just testing the Neva engine to see how good it is, and we all just saw it do a burnout in second. It seems to have plenty of power or potential at least.

[00:03:51]>> By the way, we do have an actual repair shop. Come on over. We'll replace your engine in 2 hours.

[00:04:08]As you can see, we've pulled the engine out from the Neva. Before doing that, we started it, beat on the Neva for a little bit to see how the engine is feeling, and it seems to be feeling pretty good. It has some power for the time being. So, we removed it, gave it a clean, and are now in the process of test fitting it to see how it's going to feel in there.

[00:04:32]It's already looking bad. The oil pan is pressed up against the steering rack.

[00:04:37]This gap right here, it's supposed to be positioned like this.

[00:04:44]Why not go mid engine?

[00:04:46]Why is that a dumb idea, sir?

[00:04:49]It's not necessarily dumb, but fitting it there is going to take way more effort. With it in the cabin, we're going to have to make a huge box so that it's not just the bare engine inside the car. Right, let's pull it out, cut off the mounts, jack up the gearbox, and bring it back down without the mounts.

[00:05:32]Maybe not hack it. Then when the bolts settle and find the holes, then we can try sorting the mount. Like I was saying, did it behind the steering rack and the subframe.

[00:05:44]and hack the firewall. That way, we can bring the gearbox closer, get some better weight distribution going.

[00:05:53]Let's not forget, we don't have much leg room as it is, and it would seem as if we need to widen the transmission tunnel. I mean, check out that width.

[00:06:12]So, look, Sergey, all of this jazz.

[00:06:15]Sirill did say we need to fit some spacers to get the struts in. We won't be able to fit whichever wheels we want.

[00:06:22]We're going to have to modify this thing no matter what. So, why not just lift the suspension, but nothing's really going to change. I say we don't move the engine, keep it in the correct position, and instead just increase the ground clearance somewhat at least. Because this barely has any ground clearance, we can fit the struts up to about those big nuts. So, we uh throw in the struts.

[00:06:46]Think about suspension travel. This arm is already rubbing on the strut. We're going to have to modify everything.

[00:07:06]the fact that this part is going to be a bit lower, that's not going to be an issue because on off-roaders, you'd have the axle down here while the body would be much higher. And that's exactly what we need.

[00:07:21]So now we position it, tack weld it so it doesn't fall off, bring the car down, test fit the engine, And if we are looking good, we remove the engine, bring the car up, weld all around.

[00:07:48]Looks like we're actually starting to get somewhere.

[00:08:01]And after first test fitting the engine inside the bay, while you'll notice we had to lift the subframe. I mean lift the shell relative to the subframe. This is what's known as a body lift. It's when the body is brought up higher relative to the subframe. That's what we had to do. And by how much did we bring it up? 8 cm. By a good 8 cm. That's because there wasn't too much room to spare inside the engine bay. Heightwise, I mean, a lot of engine is much taller than the one this car came with from the factory.

[00:08:34]The hood has already got a huge hump.

[00:08:37]And even with it, we still didn't have a whole lot of room.

[00:08:41]And on top of all of that, there is now more clearance between the road and the body of the car.

[00:08:48]underneath the subframe. It's the same, but the body is now higher off the ground, which is more of a positive than a negative, I think.

[00:08:57]For now, this is suspended up in the air. We'll now make some motor mounts.

[00:09:03]Position the engine inside the bay. Get the wheels back on. Get the car onto the ground. See how dramatically the body is raked.

[00:09:13]And decide whether we want to bring the rear end up just like the front.

[00:09:23]Cut like this.

[00:09:25]Also cut here. Install it. Here we put a square. We also need to adjust the height. We'll make it a bit lower. From here, we'll get it down somewhat lower.

[00:09:35]Figure it out approximately. Anyway, cut this out. Did a few bits of square tubing. 40x40.

[00:09:43]Slap it onto here. Ideally, we want to weld it onto here. Yeah, that'll be perfect. It'll hold everything firmly in place. And Neva engine mounts should work well for us.

[00:09:56]So, Sergey, you cut that off and then you decided, "No, I'm going to weld that back on." Yeah, I like welding back stuff that I cut off.

[00:10:04]>> Jean, perhaps you can explain to me why he cut and welded that bit back on exactly the same way as it was. That's because we have a rule. Cut seven times, measure once.

[00:10:26]We need some seats for that cappuccino.

[00:10:28]And we've come out here to pick something. Let's see.

[00:10:32]It's locked.

[00:10:43]>> Subaru.

[00:10:47]Problem is the bolt pattern is 5 by 110 and we do not have wheels like that.

[00:11:08]This one is a 14.

[00:11:11]I don't think 14s with a 5x 1110 pattern even exist. We can check what that Nissan hub has got. Drill right through these holes. Reposition the studs. And that way we can get 14s to fit.

[00:11:27]Here's the situation. When Sirill was building this one up with a 3S, well, he left the cappuccino knuckle. To the knuckle, he welded a hub from some Nissan one with five studs. Then he took the stock brake rotor, drilled some holes through it, and slapped it onto the Nissan hub. What he ended up with was a crazy mishmash of parts.

[00:11:54]Anyway, we don't have 14-in wheels with that bolt pattern. And so, we're going to be drilling holes in this Nissan hub in line with the holes we have in the wheel.

[00:12:05]From there, we put the studs into those new holes, leaving us with four of them sticking out in the correct pattern.

[00:12:31]Here's the thing. Film this, please. Do you see that bit that's sticking out? That one over there. There's supposed to be a fitting here with a thin sort of tube.

[00:13:05]And in factory spec, you would have had a spring on there that would have been tied to the throttle mechanism. Here you don't have that fitting. And so, who knows what to connect that spring to. We need to somehow connect the throttle cable to the carburetor. There is actually a lot of work to do. Loop the heater circuit. But for now, we tend to the throttle body. Where you going to put the fuel tank? It'll be in the trunk.

[00:13:44]So, in order for this piece of shite to be able to effectively power through the shite we'll be driving it through, well, we need some proper wheels.

[00:13:53]We fitted this one for the purpose of experimentation.

[00:13:56]We'll be fitting this one to the second wheel. As for this one, I don't think we'll be fitting it because to hell with that.

[00:14:04]We've also got this one. It's a 15 riddled with bolts.

[00:14:10]But fitting it to the cappuccino is going to require cutting everything out.

[00:14:34]In all honesty, I'd be very happy to use these because on these wheels, we can at least be certain that the lot of transmission is going to keep it together. Not only do these grip well, you also have more leverage and the heavier the wheel, the more difficult it is to spin up.

[00:14:56]There's actually not all that much we can cut out. Only about up to here.

[00:15:13]Big wheels require big modifications.

[00:15:16]In our case, we need to cut out bits of wheel arch, part of the reinforcement and the frame rail.

[00:15:49]We are sick of driving around without gauges and so we'll be installing the gauges that we need.

[00:15:56]The important ones, engine temperature.

[00:15:59]We have the gauges over there. Engine temperature, oil warning light. I actually found a gauge with a needle.

[00:16:06]the one that shows you two or four or six of the type you'd find in a 21106 series LAM.

[00:16:13]Problem is, we don't have that big sensor that's fitted to the engine right in this spot. And that would have moved the needle. You just have one for the light. And that's all we're going to need, I think, when it comes to gauges.

[00:16:39]And if I press this button, the engine is going to crank.

[00:16:45]All that's left is to start it. Check to see if the battery works.

[00:16:51]the oil pressure warning light and coolant temperature sensor. Here we have the controls and gauges, ignition starter motor, battery, oil that's missing, coolant that's missing.

[00:17:28]We need to replace the plugs. It runs though.

[00:17:30]>> Mhm.

[00:17:42]>> The engine is puffing. It runs. Battery is charging. The oil pressure light works. Temperature sensor also works most likely. Where do we go from here?

[00:17:53]Exhaust, prop shaft, seats, spacers for the struts.

[00:18:01]The front subframe we brought lower relative to the body by 80 mm.

[00:18:08]And now we learned that since we'll be running big wheels and we've cut out as much as we could, well that means we have to make spacers for the shrouds of about 70 mm.

[00:18:21]We'll see whether they help or not. If not, we'll do the same thing back here as we did up front. Meaning, we'll bring the subframe down using spacers. That we'd prefer to avoid.

[00:18:59]All right, we've installed some spacers for the shocks and we didn't get the result we wanted And so we were forced to fit spacers underneath the subframe in order to lift the body.

[00:19:13]The spacer between the body and the strut. That one is about 5 cm thick.

[00:19:21]And this one I made 7 cm or a grand total of 12 cm worth of spacers.

[00:19:29]We've done that for a number of reasons.

[00:19:31]First off, the strut is behaving in an interesting way. it's hitting the suspension arm. And so we didn't space it out as much because when we bring the wheel down, it's going to move up relative to the cup and it'll do its thing with how it is. The spring cup is lying right on the arm.

[00:20:08]You'll notice there's interference over here >> with a cup.

[00:20:13]>> But wasn't it higher than the suspension arm?

[00:20:16]It was not. It was touching it.

[00:20:19]>> Oh, yeah. You're right. I didn't undo that one yet.

[00:20:24]Either they welded something on here and we need to hack it.

[00:20:28]>> Can we maybe try this? seems like a decent enough idea. Undo these and just throw it in there as it is and fit some extensions down there like in the rear suspension of a lot of Samara.

[00:20:42]That way you'll bring the cup upwards and it'll just be the shock absorber tube going through that orifice and the suspension arm. I mean, yeah. First, we undo the strut and bring it all the way up to see how much space there will be in between the cup and the suspension arm.

[00:21:20]For two days, we worked on the prop shaft, trying to get the uni to flex as the suspension articulates.

[00:21:27]But as it turned out, the differential is hard mounted to the body, and the only thing moving is the axle shaft. And so getting all of this to move with the suspension was unnecessary.

[00:21:39]We could have just made it straight.

[00:21:41]Don't hit it like that with a uni joint over there and call it a day. The thing is that we understood and realized that. We saw it. We only just noticed it. But our past experience with Lattis has led us Yeah. the rear axle on a lot of moves around. And it didn't even occur to us that here the diff is welded or rather bolted down.

[00:22:23]Got you.

[00:22:40]Tie it to something first, then bolt it down. Bring it down and attach the hardware.

[00:22:47]For now, we use a rope, cable tie, clamp so that it doesn't get in the way.

[00:22:51]Jesus.

[00:23:33]Well, it drives.

[00:23:36]>> Oh, wow. Keep rolling.

[00:23:44]>> Burn out.

[00:23:49]>> The wheels seem to be a bit The way it digs up the gravel is just I mean you idiot.

[00:24:34]This thing is manic. The ground clearance seems to be fairly high.

[00:24:41]This turned out well. Good thing we fitted these wheels. They are awesome.

[00:24:47]The lot engine is more than up to the task. Well, of course. If only it had an auto box, then I wouldn't have to worry about stalling it. You're just bad at driving stick.

[00:24:58]>> Show me how it's done. Get in. That pile of snow is too small. I prefer bigger ones for the car to catch air.

[00:25:10]All right. So, the thing is able to move around. That's a nice place to start.

[00:25:15]We've already identified certain issues.

[00:25:19]Specifically with the suspension, the front wheels are coming into contact with the body, meaning we have a lot of massaging to do with a sledgehammer.

[00:25:27]The engine, we need to warm it up, do some adjustments, fit the airbox to help with feeding it air, perhaps replace the spark plugs and ignition leads. Operation is iffy, but that's not important. Wheel alignment is a bit off. That might be due to the tire rubbing when you steer.

[00:25:46]We'll work it out once we get to hammering. But it does drive.

[00:25:50]>> It's uncomfortable to sit in. You can't see a thing. I mean, you can see a bit, but yeah, it's great.

[00:27:07]There is one catch here.

[00:27:10]It's all good. But he was actually right.

[00:27:13]Either the clutch is too weak or we have too much traction.

[00:27:17]So during the test drive, we identified some issues with the front struts. When we initially increased the ground clearance, there was a gap, but once we went out, the tire began to scrape the fender.

[00:27:36]We'll have to hammer the arch some more here. You can see the marks. We are now going to tend to these minor issues and get the thing ready for a proper drive >> so that there's no interference here.

[00:27:52]I got to extend the restrictor that I walled up so that when you turn left, this doesn't go right quite as far.

[00:28:26]So, here's the situation, guys. I have been gone for a week. I come back and what do I see? The boys weren't just sitting around doing nothing. They've built this lovely contraption. We had the shelf from a Suzuki cappuccino. It didn't have an engine or anything. and they decided to make well it's my understanding that they spent a while arguing about what they'd like to make something for drag racing or drifting or for off-roading and the results of their efforts. Well, I'm looking at it and it would seem as if they decided to go the off-roading route in terms of how much this thing weighs. You know what I'd like to do now?

[00:29:05]Weigh the thing. I am super curious as to how much this tiny car in this condition. you could say with full weight reduction is going to weigh. I am indeed curious.

[00:29:34]>> All right. So, look here.

[00:29:36]The weight of this car, I mean, >> it's not super heavy, but it's also not as light as I expected. I honestly thought it would weigh 550 kilos.

[00:29:48]But now, I think it's time for a drive in brutal conditions. What do you think?

[00:29:53]Why don't you pause the video and tell us? Is it going to do well or is it not considering its weight, wheelbase, horsepower, and the fact that it's rocking mud tires? Yeah, pause the video and comment.

[00:30:11]All right, guys. We're out in the field and now it's time to put this little monster through its paces.

[00:30:17]There is more than enough room for that.

[00:30:20]And so, let's get to it.

[00:30:58]Woo!

[00:31:09]Now, I mean, it's pretty neat.

[00:31:12]It goes pretty well because I guess there used to be pavement underneath it.

[00:31:17]Yum. Didn't close the visor. Dust in my eyes. It goes very well over an even surface. It handles well, but over those holes, it's pretty harsh at speed. Yum.

[00:31:28]But I still think it'll be awesome on these big tires in the mud. Not to get ahead of myself, but here it felt great.

[00:32:08]So, here's what's up. Through the fields where you have a more or less, let's just say, even surface, it's quite a comfortable thing to be in, actually.

[00:32:22]But where you got big bumps or holes, >> the thing gets tossed around quite a bit >> and keeping it under control becomes quite challenging.

[00:32:58]All right. So, now we have gotten to an interesting road.

[00:33:03]We've gotten off of that smooth field >> and now we're driving through a bunch of mud.

[00:33:26]The car is going to struggle on these wheels. If the clutch holds up, it'll move through quite handily.

[00:33:36]All right, so I've had a go on regular wheels. All was good and well. And before I was seeing that on a smooth surface, this car was doing very well.

[00:33:44]But on a rough surface, the front wheels were all over the place. It was hard to control, but hey, back there things went well. The car drifted nicely. A bit of throttle. And with it being so light, the rear wheels immediately start to spin. But now we've gotten to a road with some obstacles.

[00:34:05]Some of them might be really deep, but we fitted a new set of wheels.

[00:34:10]some off-road tires. And now let's go conquer some mud.

[00:34:53]Holy cow.

[00:35:11]Okay, so I've driven down to the swampy area for a bit of I mean I'd really like to try to get through.

[00:35:24]I'm certain that there's water underneath the grass.

[00:35:28]How much though?

[00:35:30]Only one way to find out.

[00:35:33]Somebody has already made a bit of a mess here.

[00:35:53]>> The chunks flying my way.

[00:35:56]I mean Okay, I'm out. And >> oh, that smell of roasted cludge.

[00:36:10]It is horrible.

[00:36:22]>> All right. Now, why slowly?

[00:36:27]Get going.

[00:36:32]>> That's the way to do it.

[00:36:43]>> It handled that portion very well. But from here, from here things get way more challenging.

[00:37:06]didn't make it.

[00:37:20]Okay, I see.

[00:37:24]>> It would seem as if This thing lacks a bit of ground clearance and the holes have been made deeper by the water.

[00:37:36]>> But no worries, we'll get it out of here somehow.

[00:38:09]One ETV pulling another one.

[00:38:10]Effectively, they are similar in weight.

[00:38:13]Problem is the ETV has got a weak winching. We need a snatch block.

[00:38:25]All right, guys. This is quite an interesting picture.

[00:38:29]It was going pretty well, but something got snagged. Could have been the rear diff, but then there isn't really any other option. Another thing that strikes me as really interesting as well, we fitted some big wheels and the gearing just wasn't right. The engine was having a really hard time and the clutch gave up, burning to a crisp.

[00:38:53]But the important thing is that the car was doing really, really well. It was fantastic.

[00:38:59]We are now going to take it back to home base, modify it slightly. Mad props to the boys. They did a great job in one week's time putting together this bruiser. And we have that G Wagon that needs to be tested. And I do think you will see this car once again together with the G. We can even do a sort of battle between the two. The little cappuccino versus the G because this tiny car has got massive potential. 20 times that of its own size.

[00:39:29]Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss anything. And that's all I got for you.

[00:39:34]We're going to keep splashing around together with the frogs. And uh yeah, catch you guys later.