The Sipani
- D1 Car Project
The Diesel Cars of the early 90’s in
the hatchback segment
In
the early 90’s there used to be shortage of good quality Diesel cars in the
small car segment. Only 2 cars came with a diesel engine-one car was the good
old Amby with a Trekker engine and the other was Premier Padmini ( a la Fiat
1100) with a V.M. Motori derived engine called 137 D. The new entrant in the
market was Sipani Motors of Bangalore. Sipani Motors was assembling Rover Montego
cars apart from manufacturing Sipani-D1 cars. These Sipani cars bodyshell was derived
from Daihatsu charade and the Diesel engine was borrowed from Autoland engines.
The engine was made in India under the collaboration from British Leyland. This
engine was primarily used in Tractors and Trawlers (Boats) in those days.
About Sipani Motors
Sipani
Motors started its life by manufacturing 3 wheelers with glass fibre body car
called Badal and was primarily sold only in Bangalore. In the early 80’s they
went into collaboration with a British company called Reliant motors. The car
they made was the ‘Reliant kitten’
and in India it was called “Dolphin”. This
particular car was a Fibre bodied model with 2 doors, and had an 850cc petrol
engine. It weighed only 530 kgs. The whole engine and gear box was made in aluminum
and the differential crown was in aluminum too. It had a tremendous power to
weight ration advantage. It gave good mileage plus it was very peppy. This car
was the undisputed king in the small car category (850cc) & dominated the Sholavaram
races, with many races won by Mr. Jayaram of Coimbatore and Dr Saboo of Chennai.
It also won many rallies, particularly the South India rally and the Karnataka
rally in the hands of Vicky Chandhok (father of Karun Chandhok – former F1
Indian driver).
‘Dolphin’ was primarily a 2 door car, so
Sipani modified the car to a 4 door configuration called ‘Montana’. This car sold more numbers than Dolphin, so they went
slightly upmarket by manufacturing the Sipani-D1.The car’s body was derived
from ‘Daihatsu Charade’ with the engine
from Autoland and a slightly modified gearbox from Dolphin cars.
Advantage
of these cars:
1.
Great looks in those days.
2.
Peppy engine.
3.
Rust proof FRP body panels.
4.
Wider body and more leg room than the present day Tata Indica.
My experience with this car
I
bought this car during the 90’s and used it. When it had covered a little more
than 10,000kms of running, it started giving one problem after the other. The
engineer in me started thinking of sorting out the problem. Since this car came
with a chassis and a bolt on body and a with North South engine configuration,
it is easy to modify.
The various issues that I tackled-
and won!
1st issue- Gear box: The first main problem
was the gearbox. Although, there was nothing specifically wrong with the gear
box, it was not meant for the 1500cc Diesel engine. So it kept failing
frequently. In those days the straight swap was the Amby Gearbox. There was no
major modification needed, because the bell housing was the same. The only
modification needed was the gear lever to be converted from column shift to
floor shift. Since it was popularly assumed that the Amby’s trekker engine was
a copy of Autoland engine, (which is a British Leyland engine) most of the
parts were the same for both the engines. This gearbox was not an all synchromesh
Gearbox as the original gear box of the Sipani and hence it was arm wrenching
to change the gears. Any way the gearbox was changed to an Amby. gearbox.
2nd issue- Brakes:
Braking was another issue with this car. Once while I was driving, I
banged my car into the car in front, due to poor braking efficiency. I ended up
repairing both cars. I had to change the bumper, radiator, A/c condenser etc. I
knew from experience that the car used a Maruti 800 front and rear brake
cylinder assembly. So I started to hunt for something in the Maruti range. I
got a Maruti Esteem Master cylinder with brake booster assembly. I had to alter the
lines to suit the new Master cylinder assembly.
The next hurdle I faced
was getting the vacuum from the engine. I tried getting vacuum from the suction
manifold of the engine, but it was not enough. Next, I tried fitting an extra vacuum
pump, but it was not possible, since there was no provision on the engine
block. To solve this issue I bought an Alternator with vacuum pump assy (Tata
Sierra unit).To get the vacuum pump running I needed to get an oil line, and luckily
I found a dummy in the engine block from which I found oil supply to the
alternator. For the return line I could not drain it in the crankcase since it
was flooding faster, so the return line was rerouted to the rocker assembly cover
from where the oil drained back to the sump.
Now the brakes were working fine
and it was way better than before. Now I could brake harder, unfortunately the
extra brake torque broke my Lower ‘A”
arm. Again I had to hunt in the market for an extra strong lower arm. But even
then it was not enough, so I had to do some extra reinforcement to make
stronger. After this modification, the brakes held perfectly well.
3rdissue-Ride height: When the car was marketed
it came with Maruti 800 12” inch wheels.
The ride height was very low and it was scrapping the speed breakers. When I
checked for the PCD ( pitch circle dia)
it was the same as Maruti Esteem , so I went for direct swap of 13” inch wheels
from Maruti Esteem. I found that the wheels were fouling with the body, so I
had to raise the suspension height to stop it from fouling. This sorted out the
problem.
4th issue- A/c Alteration: I fitted a Sanden A/c unit
for the car. Unfortunately it was overheating the engine, so I had to make a custom
made radiator which was of the 3 core layer type. I also added an electric fan
for the a/c condenser unit.
5th issue- H/L Alteration: The original headlight was of poor quality
and it was getting rusted. I replaced it with a Maruti Esteem headlight unit.
6th isuue- the Gear box issue continues: Apart from the Gear box
being very stubborn to change gears, the release bearing was getting worn out
very fast-within 15,000kms. The simple reason being it was made of carbon type release
bearing and not the latest roller bearing type. Every time you have to change this
release bearing you would have to bring down the gear box from the engine and
it was becoming a nuisance. Plus, it used to cost Rs 1500/- each time to do the
job. I decided to change the gearbox with a 5 speed unit. I got a Contessa
Isuzu 5 speed gearbox. The outside of the bell housing was fine, but the inside
of the bell housing was fouling with the flywheel. We had to grind the Gear box
casing a little bit but we couldn’t do more because the wall thickness might
get affected, since it is made up of Aluminum. The next step was to shave of
the flywheel and we shaved about 3 to 4 mm from the flywheel.
The next hurdle we faced was that the old
ring gear could not be fixed. I had to hunt for a suitable ring gear and I
found it in the form of the Matador F 307 engine Ring gear. Another problem was
the old starter motor was not engaging with the new Ring Gear. The Matador starter
was big and it was fouling with the Engine block. Then we found another match in
an Isuzu starter motor. We had to alter the Engine block back plate for all the
components to be aligned properly. Now this job was completed properly.
7th issue-Propellershaft: The old propeller could
not be used for 2 reasons. 1st issue was it was longer. 2nd
issue was the new one was a free floating type and coupled only in the differential
side. I got hold of a Contessa propeller and sliced it to fit the length. The
mounting points were all altered to fit the new unit. The car was ready for a
trial run.
8th issue-Speedometer: The car was peppy to
drive and the vibrations in the car also were considerably reduced. We
encountered one more problem in the speedometer. The speedo needle was lazy to
climb and we found the reason to be the difference in the differential ratio, even
though both Contessa & Sipani –D1 were
running on 13 inch wheels. After
many trials and errors, we found the approximate difference. We took the car to
the meter shop and again after lot of trial and error we more or less found a
correct match. We had to order a specifically made Speedo cable for this
operation. We found the car was peppy and it gave a decent mileage of 14 km/Ltr
inside city and 18 to 19Km/Ltr outside city limits.
9th issue-Electricals: After all these modifications,
we found that the car’s electricals were pathetic. We had to completely rewire
the car and install a 100 AH battery, since the Alternator was of the Tata
Sierra type.
Car Display
We
found the car was working perfectly, so we decided to take the car to the
factory in Hosur. The management was happy to see these kinds of modifications
in the car. Unfortunately the company had shifted their priorities. They were
now more interested in making ‘Rover
Montego Cars’. They were also busy preparing for the launch of their new
vehicle called ‘Arjun’, which is still plying in many parts of rural India with
a Single cylinder Greaves Lambardini Diesel Engine.
Conclusion
I drove this car for around 77,000kms during
the 5 years when it belonged to me. Then I sold it for Rs. 72,000/-. I really
enjoyed altering the car. Some people might question whether it was worth it
all. In my opinion this car allowed me to test my skills to the max and to test
the maximum extent of technical boundaries that I could push in that period of
time (late 90’s). In some areas I had to take lot of risk during the project, if
there was any miscalculation during the project the whole car would have become
a scrap.
Any way I had a good
time with that car!
1. Mr. Krishnamurthy
2. Mr. Gisulal
3. Mr. Raja
4. Mr. Rocky
5. Mr. Jamsheed
4. M/s Amman Auto Works,
Chennai
5 .M/s Annai Lathe Works,
Chennai
6. M/s Angel Meter Works, Chennai
7. M/s J. J. Auto Spares,
Chennai
