Hi guys,
Came across this site the other day when I saw that there were a fair few Lada's being done here. So I thought I'd share my own Lada project here for your amusement/bemusement (delete as applicable).
I bought this Lithuanian registered Lada 2101 Zhiguli in January 2019 for £700. It then spent all that time up until March 2020 on my mother's driveway under a tarp as it took longer than expected to get my garage ready.
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I'm not entirely sure on it's history really. The documents I had for it state that it last had a Lithuanian MOT in 1997, and that was it. I'm the third owner of it since it came over to the UK in, I would say, 1997. The lad I bought it from was in London, but I've also since found the chap who sold it to the guy I bought it from who gave me a bit more detail about it. Not too much really other than the carburettor was rebuilt by his girlfriend and he bought the steering wheel for it.
But here it is, sitting in my garage. Tight like tiger etc.
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Over the last few weeks I've just been stripping the interior out, the sound deadening to check the metal underneath. It's surprisingly solid to be honest. There are two holes, one in the drivers footwell and the other on the passenger footwell. A small hole in the sill on the driver side. But other than that it's fairly good.
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At the moment, for the rest of the week really, I have jacked the car up and I'm cleaning the underside of it, seeing how much of the actual chassis of the Lada is affected by rust. It's got various degrees of rust, but other than the three (fairly small) areas I've mentioned, the rust just scrapes off. Nothing penetrating. Which isn't bad for a 44 year old car.
Now the fun bit: The Kettle. Which you may know better as a Rover K-Series engine.
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I bought a Rover 25 dressed up as an MG ZR earlier this year for £350, specifically for the engine and interior. I'm still trying to work out how the engine has been molested. From my research it doesn't have standard cams for a 1.6 K-Series (which this is) and they're more inline with pipercams, but the pulleys aren't pipercams. I don't know, I've been too busy cleaning the Lada to find out definitely.
The K-Series, from rudimentary measurements I've made, is more or less the same dimensions as the original Lada unit. So it'll fit, which is handy because I only measured it after I bought the car. I've gone for a Mazda MX-5 gearbox as well, which is a fair bit longer than the normal Lada box. But the engine/gearbox combo won't go in or be worked on until the shell of the Lada is sorted out.
So yeah, this is my little project called Nikita. She's on YouTube if you give her a look so you can see what I've done but I'll update this as and when I've got something to update.
Thanks again!
Came across this site the other day when I saw that there were a fair few Lada's being done here. So I thought I'd share my own Lada project here for your amusement/bemusement (delete as applicable).
I bought this Lithuanian registered Lada 2101 Zhiguli in January 2019 for £700. It then spent all that time up until March 2020 on my mother's driveway under a tarp as it took longer than expected to get my garage ready.
But here it is, sitting in my garage. Tight like tiger etc.
Over the last few weeks I've just been stripping the interior out, the sound deadening to check the metal underneath. It's surprisingly solid to be honest. There are two holes, one in the drivers footwell and the other on the passenger footwell. A small hole in the sill on the driver side. But other than that it's fairly good.
At the moment, for the rest of the week really, I have jacked the car up and I'm cleaning the underside of it, seeing how much of the actual chassis of the Lada is affected by rust. It's got various degrees of rust, but other than the three (fairly small) areas I've mentioned, the rust just scrapes off. Nothing penetrating. Which isn't bad for a 44 year old car.
Now the fun bit: The Kettle. Which you may know better as a Rover K-Series engine.
I bought a Rover 25 dressed up as an MG ZR earlier this year for £350, specifically for the engine and interior. I'm still trying to work out how the engine has been molested. From my research it doesn't have standard cams for a 1.6 K-Series (which this is) and they're more inline with pipercams, but the pulleys aren't pipercams. I don't know, I've been too busy cleaning the Lada to find out definitely.
The K-Series, from rudimentary measurements I've made, is more or less the same dimensions as the original Lada unit. So it'll fit, which is handy because I only measured it after I bought the car. I've gone for a Mazda MX-5 gearbox as well, which is a fair bit longer than the normal Lada box. But the engine/gearbox combo won't go in or be worked on until the shell of the Lada is sorted out.
So yeah, this is my little project called Nikita. She's on YouTube if you give her a look so you can see what I've done but I'll update this as and when I've got something to update.
Thanks again!
