Safe it is to say then, that Kei cars today are very clearly kneecapped straight from the factory, and for customers who don't enjoy driving on automotive crutches, the Jimny is also offered with a 1.5L 4–Cylinder engine producing a halfway–decent 100HP to lug around its near 1.1 tonne body. This grade of the Jimny is known in its home market as the Sierra, and is the sole engine offered in export markets. Here in PDLand, Kei–compliant Jimnys are instead offered an option to swap their R06A engines for a meaty K14C 1.4L Turbo 4–Cylinder sourced from a 2017 Swift Sport, perhaps serving as a pastiche of the Sierra trim to go along nicely with the wide body fenders that don't go quite as far out as the ones bolted onto the Sierra. At 109,180 Credits, it may be the single cheapest heart transplant in the game, but said operation is still largely locked behind the prohibitively expensive task of being Collector Level 50, and when combined with the cost of a base Jimny, the package is still VX Viper levels of money, all for a car that tops out at 168km/h (104mph) at Suzuka's relatively short home straight. Is it worth it?
#kzf #rarry
As is very often the case with engine swaps, simply carving out a car's original engine, throwing in a more powerful one in its place, and leaving everything else as–is creates a lopsided contraption that isn't very wieldy nor useful. In the case of the Jimny, it already has troubled and suspect on–road handling even with its original engine, and so dumping in an engine that produces some 217% more power only serves to highlight and exaggerate all of the car's original problems, plus heaping on new ones such as "the original gearbox is way too short for this kind of power". That said, the base 63HP Jimny does have a hard time reminding its driver of the respect it requires when being driven, and giving the Jimny well over double that finally makes it feel like a "real" car—one that I'm much more awake driving and in turn, readily respect.
Needless to say then, a heart transplant begets much more costly trouble down the line, involving specialty aftermarket parts like suspension, gearboxes, differentials, and tyres, to say nothing of the hours of tinkering and testing required to get the maladjusted car to drive right. At this point, one must ask themselves the question of: "Why would I even bother swapping the engine if I can pour in the same amount of effort into the car with its original engine?" After all, the Jimny's smaller, original engine weighs less, and if given a performance limit achievable by both engines, why bother spending that kind of money on an engine swap to begin with? It's not like the K14C engine of the Swift Sport is a racecar engine with unreal fuel efficiency.
Yes, the larger K14C engine weighs more than the R06A engine—21kg (46lbs) more according to the game, to be precise—but said increase doesn't have nearly as big of a hit in–game as it arguably would in real life, because the mass increase from engine swaps in this game don't affect the mass distribution of the car at all—it's just magically distributed across the car evenly, meaning that a big, hulking engine up front isn't going to cause the car to push much more with understeer as one might expect. With the mass disadvantage made almost irrelevant, the K14C engine I find is just a better engine for track use, simply because I find its torque to be much more evenly distributed in the mid to top end, where track cars spend all their time, and is so much more pleasant to drive for it. The R06A engine on the other hand, was set up from the factory for low end torque to facilitate crawling and climbing on harsh terrain, and the game simply doesn't give us players enough tools to meaningfully change that, relegating it to always being a short–shift engine. Helpful if the event heavily rewards fuel efficiency, but overall it's just slower everywhere else, even when tuned to roughly the same PP level.
If going all–out on tuning, of course the K14C Swift engine will have a higher power ceiling than the diminutive R06A Jimny engine, and it's in this application where the costly heart transplant goes from an expensive statement to a bargain kit car: throw the full catalogue of GT Auto parts and works at it, and you end up spending more or less the asking price of a standard Gr.4 car for something that will not only comfortably outrun any Gr.4 car, but will do so while severely undercutting their PP ratings. Take for example Suzuki's own Gr.4 entry: the Suzuki Swift Sport KATANA Edition: it's one of the fastest Gr.4 cars rated at 652.00PP fresh from the Brand Central. My full works Jimny with the K14C engine will wallop that from Streets of Willow to Bathurst on the same Racing Hard tyres, while sitting at a mere 583PP!
Fuel economy aside, I'm willing to go as far as to say that the K14C Swift Sport engine is a straight upgrade over the original R06A of the Jimny in every aspect. Engine swaps may usually be pretty Frankenstein combos with lopsided results, but it's not like the base Jimny has much finesse to lose. Yeah, it's difficult to drive at speed, but what better flex is there than to beat purpose–built racecars with a shoddy DIY contraption falling apart at the axles? If that isn't your cup of tea, I think the Jimny swap is one of the most grounded and most usable engine–swapped cars, requiring only light adjustments to be a good drive. In short, I think it's a highly versatile swap that has something for almost everybody.
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