My ride (Part 1)

When I graduated in year 2000, after working for 5 months, I had registered for marriage with my wife and shifted outside to stay with her in Desa Petaling, which was a rented apartment lot. We bought our first car, Perodua Kancil 660M that time and we shared that car. We used that car for four years before disposing at almost 50% depreciated value i.e. we bought it at RM26,000 but traded in at RM13,800 in year 2004 for a slightly bigger car, Perodua Kenari (A) which cost around RM42,000. We opted for 6 years repayment and only paid a meager 10% down payment. Monthly instalment would set us back to around RM500. That has taken one third of my net income already while another one third has gone to house rental.

At that point of time, my decision to purchase the Kancil was solely because of the logic that the lower the engine capacity, the lower the fuel consumption would be and being just graduated and starting a family, a fuel economy car was important to me. I had contemplated of getting the 850 model (which is the same car but a bigger engine) but in view that I would not regularly make outstation trip, a bigger engine seem less important to me. Beside the 850 model, the other car that fell within our budget was the Proton Tiara 1.1. It was selling around RM28,000 at that time which was a stock clearance price. It is bigger and more comfortable but as the Tiara is based on a French model, the Citroen AX, I had decided to opt for the Kancil. Well, subsequently, there were stories indicating that Proton was unable to capably service the Tiara leaving the owners on the lurch, on top of expensive imported spare parts and unreliable mechanics. Anyway, I have test driven the Tiara recently during my search for a used car and would gladly say that the Tiara is many many times more comfortable and powerful than the Kancil, but I still could not make myself to get one as it was really difficult to find a well looked after Tiara these days. Beside the Tiara and the 850 model, the other basic car would be the Iswara, which was RM10,000 more expensive than the Kancil at that time and would not return fuel consumption rate similar to the Kancil.

The Kancil was quite a hardy car, it has taken us to places up to Kuala Kedah for long distance trip apart from normal city driving. It served us around 80,000km of mileage before disposing it, haven’t had the chance to change the timing belt yet. Equipped with a 660cc engine, it certainly was fuel economical; my best fuel consumption rate was 18km/l, usually done with RON92 petrol. But for such small engine, it didn’t record any better fuel consumption rate, whether it was used in city or highway, unlike the bigger sedans where it will record better fuel consumption rate on highway driving.

I usually rev the car gently, unless I was driving uphill and the rpm point of gear upshift were as follows:
2nd – 5km/h
3rd – 20km/h
4th – 35km/h
5th – 50km/h

The car has no tachometer so I had to depend on the speedometer to determine my point of upshifting. Due to the low engine capacity, it does not have the sufficient torque to attack uphill slopes and early planning is required for long stretch of uphill. Normally, I would press the throttle a little bit more to pick up more speed prior to the uphill to make up for the speed reduction while traversing up. Needless to say, the air conditioner had to be switched off when attacking slope or the car would just crawl up. When driving with the air conditioner off during jams, the engine temperature would increase up to the middle level of the gauge and the radiator fan would spin by itself.

This little car was not equipped with anything fancy, no airbags or ABS, no power windows, ran on fixed venturi carburetion fuel system and obsolete contact point ignition system. Definitely no VVT and ran at natural aspirated. But I managed to replace that obsolete distributor with an electronic unit from a breaker yard for RM100 to avoid the hassle of regular replacement / gap adjustment of the contact point. If I’m not mistaken, electronic distributor was used in the 850 model. Not only that, the car would just jerk and hesitate after sometime if the contact point has worn out. Suspension is the ordinary Macpherson with anti-roll bar at the front and semi-trailing arm at rear.

As for the interior equipment level, there is no low fuel and door ajar warning light at the dashboard meter panel. You just have to rely on the fuel gauge and the interior light door function for such warning. Rear wiper does not have intermittent wiping speed unlike the Wira. It just wipes continuously and the rear wiper noise can be very annoying. The steering and seat belt are not height adjustable. The air conditioner has a 4 speed blower fan but the air outlet is somehow quite faraway from the driver, the cooled air may have been heated up by the time it reach the front passenger. I believe the current line of Kancil has got a 3 speed blower fan and a/c control panel is exactly the same as used in the Kenari. Equipped with a Sanden air conditioner system, it would take quite awhile to cool the interior in a hot afternoon but it just not comparable to the cooling efficiency like the Iswara. This is not surprising as the condenser and radiator in the Kancil engine bay are assembled back-to-back and cooled by one fan whereas in the Iswara engine, the radiator and condenser are separately placed with one dedicated fan for each of the heat exchangers.

The headrests at the front and rear seats are not height adjustable. You can also forget about equipment like power window and powered side mirror. Similarly, interior decorations like the door trims are not available. However, the said equipment is found in the 850 model instead and also including accessories such as dashboard tray for minor storage and holding of cup.

Not much of modification made on this car. Its body flexed tremendously when taking corners. I’ve installed a cheap strut bar for RM20 to reduce the body flex. Taking corners were made worse as the suspension was found to be misaligned with positive camber misalignment at 10,000km. The front two tyre was entirely shaved bald at the outside edge. Got the camber fixed at RM50 (RM25 for the screw and RM25 for labour) as the service center refused to make good of the problem, claiming that it may have been caused by abusive driving. Well, maybe yes or maybe not. Obviously nobody can tell it was misaligned until they noted signs from the tyre and nobody will take their new car for alignment inspection upon collection. But after fixing the camber, pick up and R&H got better. However, the semi bald tyres were rotated to the back and not replaced. All the four wheels were shodded with Silverstone Powerblitz 1800 tyres with the size of 155/70/12 in steel rims (PCD 114.3 and 4.0 width), quite a stiff, noisy but durable tyre. Those semi bald tyres were eventually changed at 40,000 km and it costed me RM80 for a replacement tyre.

Other mod I’ve tried was weight reduction by removing the spare tyre. Didn’t really improve the acceleration a lot but the rear seems to be bouncy due to a lighter tail perhaps. I usually inflate 29psi for the front and 26psi for the rear tyre. This car also required brake bleeding service every 20,000km as it tends to be spongy after that. As the Kancil is based on the Daihatsu Mira L200 chassis, there are other more powerful engines that can be fitted into the Kancil without modification to the engine mounting such as the EF-JL which is a turbocharged 660cc EFI 12 valves SOHC engine. These engines are quite old in Japan and total cost of fitting one into the Kancil would not exceed RM3,000. But my honest advice is to either strengthen the chassis first, or just use the car as what it is designed for.

The car is the smallest ever sold in Malaysia but it has the flexibility of folding the rear seats. There was once when I shifted my home to Sg Buloh, I managed to load a single door fridge into the rear seat of the Kancil, to my amazement. But being a small car, you won’t enjoy much ride comfort similar to bigger sedans like the Proton Iswara. And the small tyre used in the Kancil has made the ride comfort even worse. However, with that small size and short wheelbase, I enjoy every moment of overtaking in fast corners, while other bigger sedans would normally have to slow down to prevent understeer. The highest speed I’ve tried was 120km/h, the steering wheel was vibrating heavily at that speed while the engine just roared like mad. The ideal cruising speed would be 90km/h. Anyway, that noisy engine would not allow any conversation at high speed, probably due to its 3 cylinders nature or the recommended 10W-30 thin oil. I’ve tried pasting a piece of noise insulator under the bonnet but it was a waste of money.

It was an easy car to do DIY maintenance too. I did the oil and spark plug change myself. Also have experimented the ignition timing adjustment. But the tight engine bay can be very difficult to reach certain parts of the car. Changing of clutch requires lifting out the entire engine which can attract costly labour charge, but I haven’t had the chance to change the clutch before I sold the car. Original air filter (paper element in black colour) is not cheap too, cost around RM32 while original oil filter cost around RM8. Becareful of fake oil filter in the market that is made exactly like original with the 3D genuine sticker to fool uninformed buyers. The only way to tell if it’s fake is by looking at the holes inside the filter. If it’s round in shape, it’s a fake. The fuel filter is located near the fuel tank and not near the fire wall. It can be quite dangerous to change that filter as fuel may easily splashed into your eyes when you try to remove the fuel filter underneath the car. Recommended engine oil was Castrol MTEC 10W-30, which cost around RM30 last time. I’ve also tried using Ace Hardware oil that was selling RM7 per liter last time and it ran fine. There was once I’ve filled in Petronas 20W-50 semi synthetic oil into the Kancil and didn’t suffer any loss of power despite its thickness. In fact, the engine was less noisy at high rev. Spark plug used is the same as those used in the Iswara engine but only three is required.

During the whole period of ownership, these were the problems we’ve encountered in our Kancil:-

- window rubber seal can brittle and break easily, leaving a small hole that can allow small drip water to enter during rain
- starter solenoid was defective, sometime the starter will not crank and I only hear some click sound, has to turn the ignition key a few times (or many times occasionally)
- that Clarion cassette player could not play any cassette tapes after a few years and it has damaged a few of my favourite tapes
- the driver side was leaking but was fixed under warranty, however, the rear door at the driver side would also leak occasionally when raining heavily
- one of the screws fixing the gearshift lock has loosen and drop into the gearshift lever suddenly while I was driving, causing me not able to shift to certain gear
- the reverse gear very difficult to engage, sometime I need to lift off the clutch pedal and step on it again to engage the reverse gear (could be design defect)
- the back light for the meter panel is not bright enough (design defect)
- all the speakers are mounted at the rear, you won’t hear a thing at high speed (design defect)
- front camber misalignment (I still think it was manufacturing defect)
- brake and throttle pedal are too close (design defect)

Vehicle specifications
Model code: L200
Overall length: 3,395 mm
Overall width: 1,395 mm
Overall height: 1,415 mm
Wheelbase: 2,280 mm
Tread (front): 1,215 mm
Tread (rear): 1,205 mm
Fuel tank capacity: 32 liter
Kerb weight: 681 kg

Engine specifications
Engine code: EF-CL
Engine type: Gasoline, water cooled, 4 cycle, SOHC, 2 valves per cylinder
Cylinder number & arrangement: 3 cylinders in line, mounted transverse
Bore x stroke: 68mm x 60.5mm
Displacement: 659 cc
Compression ratio: 9.5
Max output power: 22.8KW at 6400 rpm
Max torque: 5.0 kgm at 3200 rpm

Transmission specifications
Clutch: Single dry-plate with diaphragm spring and mechanical actuation
Gear ratios: 1st – 3.5
2nd – 2.111
3rd – 1.392
4th – 0.971
5th - 0.794
Final drive – 4.722

Brake: Solid disc (front) and drum (rear)

Engine tune-up
Firing order: 1-2-3
Ignition timing: 7 +-2 degree BTDC
Engine idling speed: 900 + 100 or -50 rpm
Valve clearance - Intake (hot): 0.25 +- 0.05 mm
Valve clearance - Exhaust (hot): 0.3 +- 0.05 mm
Spark plug: NGK BP5ES, BPR5ES or Denso W16EXR-U, W16EX-U
Spark plug gap: 0.7 – 0.8 mm
Distributor air gap: 0.2 – 0.4 mm
Distributor heel gap: 0.45 mm
Drive belt deflection: 8.5 -12/10 mm/kg

Lubricant recommendation
Coolant: 3 liter CCI long life coolant 30% density (silicate free)
Engine oil: 2.3 liter Castrol 10W-30
Transmission oil: 1.6 liter Castrol HE 80W
Brake fluid: DOT 3