Rotten Lada Riva project (N/a SR20 time)

The rings make it look much more finished and neat! great work!

Rear lights - That's inspired, just what was missing, well done ....

Ohh yes,looks great that..
The rings make it look factory,well..better than factory but you know what i mean !

A box of goodies for the front suspension.


First job was to try and get the new arms on. These are supposed to make the car more stable on the road and improve steering feel. There was no information available on how they did it but a Lada can certainly use some magical improvements like that! Fitted new balljoints at the same time.





Couldn't resist trying out some new underbody wax while everything was accessible anyway. There's no oil in this stuff so the surface dries out a bit and doesn't just was off the car as you drive it.


Using the latest in exhaust pipe tracking gauge technology the front wheels were adjusted to point forwards and time for a test drive.



Can safely say this was the worst the car has ever felt. The arms had dropped the suspension nearly 20mm (still using the same springs as before) and had added so much castor that the tyres were almost touching the front of the arches and the steering was nearly impossible to turn. Even the simplest manouvre became a 3 or 4 point turn as there was so little actual steering movement available. It doesn't show up very well in pictures.




Managed to adjust a fair bit of the castor out by changing the amount of shims on the bottom arm lower mounting points, a really handy feature in this case. Now have most of the steering angle back and wheel isn't so hard to turn. Does feel a bit better on the road too.

Now time to relocate the front shock absorbers as they sit right where the airbag needs to go. Another visit to my Fiat coupe spares shelf found a pair of KYB gas-a-just rear shock absorbers that look pretty much perfect for what I need. Once again the two post packaging bracket was cut up to make the necessary attachment brackets. They're probably far too thick but better safe than sorry.






Attached to the car after almost two hours of trying to work out what angle would allow enough travel without fouling the wheel/ tyre. At this point the anti roll bar was discounted from the equation as no amount of persuasion would get it to look at the new suspension arms, even with the new mounts supplied with the kit. I'll go back to that later and work something out although it may not need it with the airbags.






Repeat on the other side in less than a quarter of the time and time for another test drive.




Being a bit paranoid I left the original shock absorbers in place for the first run. The front end felt really good, completely transformed even on the standard cut down springs. Four shock absorbers on the front should have come as standard! back end still bouncing around even with vastly reduced bag pressures as the rear shocks are way past the end of their natural lifespan.

Time to swallow a few brave pills and start on the front bag setup. With the old shock absorbers out the way it should be relatively strightforward and yet is still seems to take longer to think about it than actually make up the parts.





Success!



Front end works pretty well first try although car in general still bouncing about all over the place, definitely not the smooth feeling of riding on air that I was expecting. Given the improvement the shock absorbers made to the front end a pair of standard Monroe gas rear Fiat coupe shocks, again from the spares shelf, looked like an ideal candidate as the lower mount fitted in the standard Lada mounting point. This time it was a TR6 chassis repair section that sacrificed itself to make up the mounts.










Air ride pretty much complete. It's definitely not as comfy as I expected but haven't really spent long enough trying to work out the best pressures to run at. Overall really good though as the whole family and luggage can be loaded into the car and you just add some air to the rear bags to stop the constant tyre scrub that plagued the journey down to the gathering last year.

The ride will depend on the pressure in the bags. You need to find a comfortable ride height/pressure combination.

The higher the pressure, effectively the firmer the 'spring' rate.

Just read through all of this. What a great project. Saving a car that most people would never have saved. I love what you've done to it too, made it into quite a nice looking little car. Air ride gets a thumbs down from me though, not my bag (geddit?) at all.

I do have a secret soft spot for these. I'd love to give one a bit of old Fiat rally flavour!

Just re-read this again, it looks fantastic, any updates at all?

love this thing! looks great

will it go any lower or is that aied out?

Featured in Retro Cars mag, on the shelves tomorrow