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Almost thought I was looking at my own photos there! Must be a common spot for them alright, very straightforward patch thankfully enough and theres access to seal it from behind too!
Your cars look well. The white Astra is very tidy. I have 3 mk3 Astra's currently. One is a blue Estate (1997), one is a black saloon mpi (1997) and my most recent is a very tidy 3 door hatch, black prefacelift model (1994). They're great cars and a piece of cake to work on!
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Been a little while! As mentioned last time, the floor of the car was undersealed and the rear of it was put back together. It was time to put the rear wheels on, for the first time since pulling the rear to pieces! I even got to sit in the drivers seat since it was parked in the garage: It was time to flip the car around so I waited til a nice sunny day. Bought 5 litres of petrol and a battery booster. It had been sitting a while so I removed each spark plug and squirted a little oil down to coat the cylinder walls. Overly careful probably! With the battery booster on, we had lights on the dash. The cranking commenced....and continued. It didn't want to start. We weren't getting fuel. Not surprising, the tank was bone dry and fuel lines had emptied back when I removed the tank! No doubt the fuel pump had dried and jammed a little so with the help of a friend who gave the fuel pump a few taps of a lump hammer the cavalier fired into life...with a massive cloud of smoke as the "cylinder priming" oil burnt off. My poor neighbours. Between the cloud of oil smoke that burnt off and the thunderous idle from no exhaust (literally just manifold/downpipe) it was a great feeling hearing the car run. It idled well with no strange warning lights so I was happy. On little to no clutch, we drove the Cav out to the laneway where it looked like something that rolled out of a crypt It basked in the daylight for a few hours to let the dust blow off it and was promptly pushed back into the garage but facing the other way. The front wings were taken off to inspect the inner front arches. All very clean with a couple of very small straightforward patches required! More to come soon, I've just been cleaning down and treating where any flaky paint or surface rust existed. Will weld the patches next I imagine
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Love that final picture!
Sweet looking car, I think I personally prefer the squared up Clubman nose compared to the rounded Cooper front end.
What sort of bodywork needs tackling?
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very good----------looks a decent one. is that roja red i think its called???theres a couple about up here(northern ireland) the same colour I'm a mk3 cav fan myself-------had a few of them of the years. still have 2 needing abitta work....a gsi and a cav turbo 4x4 they were great cars of that era. You are correct with Rioja Red. Its a decent colour when cleaned up! When I dust this off I'll T-Cut it and try get away with it like that for a while but ultimately a respray will be on the cards down the line. Thanks for all the comments folks. A few of you have noted the OCD-ness on the underside As said, I've seen what can go on these cars and the rear end seems to get the worst of it. This one was by no means unscarred by the dreaded rust but was nowhere near "too far gone" so decided I'd just do it to the best of ability to protect it. If I had a spit or the funds to get it dipped that'd be great but just not feasible. I plan to underseal the floorpan today. No holes or even much surface rust thankfully. The factory underseal is very much intact so I'm going to leave it alone and coat over it with the Dynax UB which is tough and forms a nice durable layer.
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Last Edit: Aug 7, 2017 6:40:35 GMT by caviste
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Pics of my daily beater, an Astra saloon with a mpi lump in it: Engine crane in the boot Along with a mates hatch: More to come soon, thank you for reading!
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In the time above I amassed a few missing bits and pieces such as: The elusive door badges! I also managed to get my hands on GM front wisshbones, Eibach springs, KYB shocks. The rear axle was also refubished along with the anti roll bar and fuel tank: Fast forward a bit and the underneath now looks like: The rest of the floorpan is fairly clean with only a few bits of surface crust to tidy up. very soon I should have this car down on its wheels and swap it around to clean up the front by stripping it all back (ooh!)
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This car was not without a couple of holes however. Both in the passenger side rear. One was at the bottom lip at the rear of the arch, the other was near the shock mount. I had to chop a little bit out of the boot floor at the back of the arch and fabircated my first ever repair patch! I welded that in first and then the square out of the arch cut out to access this point was welded in. I must get better at taking in progress pics. Here's the other patch: All patches were done with zintec steel, zinc primed and then overcoated with 2k epoxy maastic paint so should last longer than the metal around it Anyway, fast forward, the chassis legs and arches were now clean and ready for the 2k paint and finally two good coats of Dynax underseal:
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I started by removing all the loose flakey stuff and seeing where the rust started and finished. Out came the Bilt Hamber Deox gel. The idea is that it extracts the rust from the metal and leaves a clean surface on which to overcoat. This stuff worked, but, it was a pain in the nuts to use. It went on gloopy, had to wrap the ssection in cling film and leave for 24-48 hours before cleaning off, sometimess having to reapply. It took ages but slowly and surely I worked my way down both chassis legs over the space of a number of months. At various points the mojo dwindled, life got in the way, injury, deaths...basically all the curse word that life throws sometimes but always made sure to keep tipping away on the cav, a little progress was still progress. Anyway, enough of that, heres photos of the rust being removed and the chassis legs first having Deox Gel doing its thing, followed by Elextrox Zinc primer, seam sealed
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So the thing is, these like to rust, I've read threads over on vauxhallcavalier.com that'd give nightmares Fortunately, due to the lack of salt on Irish roads and having being parked in some form of shed for the last 10 years, this seemed to have avoided anything serious. It had a dusting of surface rust in places, flakey paint and crumbling original underseal. It was solid in all the right places. It was parked up like this, and promptly had the tank and rear beam extracted to see what was what: Here are a few pictures of the underside when I got it: At this point I could have slapped a heap of underseal on and saved myself a whole load of grief but I wanted this car to last and as they're so scarce I felt the need to protect it. I armed myself with wire wheels, flap disks and a heap of Bilt Hamber product and went at it.
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Bit of background on the car. Obviously its a 1993 but was imported to Ireland in 1994. Original reg is K146 ANF, don't suppose anyone knows it? It was last on the road about 2005/2006 and was stashed away in a shed until I got it. Mileage is 93,000 First thing was a timing belt: Changed oil, thermostat and flushed the manky old coolant. The car ran great, here it is dragged out into the light:
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Last Edit: Aug 5, 2017 6:47:19 GMT by caviste
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Last Edit: Aug 5, 2017 7:41:03 GMT by caviste
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Hi all, long time lurker and recently decided to add my project! About 2 years ago I came into ownership of a Mk3 Cavalier SRi. I have been into Opel's and Vauxhalls since my teens and have had a goodd few (mainly Astra's) over the years. Always daily drivers with small mods to make them a little different. I was on the hunt for a project to keep my head and hands busy and one sunday morning I spotted an ad online, not too far from me. These are like hens teeth here in the Irish Republic, you might spot a diesel Vectra A the odd time when down the country which are about the only ones still in use by a select bunch of farmers, lumberjacks, murderers or a combination of the three. They are usually on their last legs with gargantuan mileage. Something a bit like this which I spotted (with a valid NCT): Anyway, to spot an SRi online that morning was a rarity. If they do appear online for sale they've usually turned to rust or are absolutely immaculate. This one however was middle of the road and was just what I was looking for.
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Last Edit: Aug 5, 2017 7:39:14 GMT by caviste
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