1995 lada riva estate.

Next I decided to have a look at getting the front wheels bolted up properly. I’d redrilled the hubs already but I sit I’ll needed to do the discs, and I needed spacers for the front wheels to clear the calipers and also for them to sit right in the arch .
I thought before I made it all up from scratch I’d see if there were some I could buy and mod to save time/materials.
Being a jammy b@stard I ended up with a pair of H&R 4/98>4>100 adapters for £25, located only 10 miles up the road!



This changed plans somewhat as I knew I needed 20mm of spacer, so the easiest way to do it was just fit these up and we were done. Theoretically they were a bolt on fit, but I thought it might end up otherwise. Ladas have a massive cast iron hub with a drum brake offset (they have a factory spacer to correct this) so the hub snouts offer cause problems a with aftermarket wheels.

This is how much i ended up machining off for the adapters to fit-


Pretty much all that material is redundant to start with as it’s outboard of the bearing.


With the adapter now fitting, the next issue was that the heads on all the wheel bolts I had were too long to sit in the adapter. Back to the lathe it is then…




Repeat X8.


And then it all bolts together!


With added screw-in studs as well.


There’s even room for the grease caps.


Which sits the wheels about here.






Which I’m pretty happy with. I’m awaiting some nice wheel nuts, but apart from that, that’s the ‘make wheels fit properly’ aspect sorted.

I’m still cracking on with this. with the bare carcass of a very broken Porsche removed from my place by copart, it means I could put it on the one piece of usable concrete in currently have to facilitate further works.
So I did!



When I had it running I found i could put it into all gears with no crunching regardless of if the clutch pedal was pressed down or not. This was slightly worrying as the only mechanical spare part that came with this when I bought it was another gearbox…
I thought about it and figured there were two options. It could be the gearbox, but there was also a chance the clutch cylinder was somehow wedged open. It didn’t move at all when the pedal was pressed so this was hard to ascertain. So I removed the slave cylinder to see how grotty it was. As I removed the last bolt the release arm sprang back so that answers that one!
It’s an unusual way for it to fail, but I’ll happily take it.
Now if I put it in gear and try to start it it moves, which is good as it means the gearbag works. I just need to replace all the hydraulics, as they look like this-




Brake master is no better so that came off too.


I’ve bought a full kit of master, slave, flexi, lines and reservoir for the clutch, and a master cylinder and new feed pipes for the brakes.
It is coming from Ukraine, but I’ve been assured they’re shipping as normal and I will actually get it. Let’s hope so as I’m running out of time to get one elsewhere!

With that problem diagnosed, i then put the car up on the big axle stands so I could carry on underneath.


The front suspension had previously been thrown together fairly loosely to keep the car mobile, I needed a few large size spring washers and stuff for bits so I’d ordered all those and just needed to fit them and bolt check everything.

This anti roll bar was a utter sh1t to get back on with the polybushes. I ended up jacking the car up by the clamps to force them onto the studs!
Got there in the end, although it was a good couple of hours of swearing and destroying the fresh paint 🙄


I put the freshly painted metal guard thing on under the fuel filler neck too.


Amazingly these screwed straight off with even needing any tools once I’d undone the pinch bolts! So i gave em a wire wheel up and plenty of coppergrease before reassembling. Obviously I need to retrack it after dropping it on its and I had visions of them being seized solid so I was pretty pleased when they just unscrewed.


New brake flexis were fitted. I’ve reused all the old hardlines as there’s nothing wrong with any of them, I’ve just blown the old fluid out with an airline.


The rebuilt calipers have also been fitted.


I’m basically done under the front now apart from waiting on a couple of new clips for the flexis.


Then I fitted the rear seatbelts. These came out of that Felicia hatchback I broke, I removed them for a guy who was ‘desperate’ for them, then disappeared up his own ar$ehole once I’d removed them and asked for payment.
Good job really as I didn’t have any for this and these fit perfect and even mount the recoil units at the same angle so they work correctly. So thats a bit more legality gained.


I then did a load of electrical snagging. a mixture of 20 years sitting idle, being disassembled by an idiot and a bit of corrosion meant a lot of things weren’t working.
The horn now works off the button, all the indicators work, I’ve rewired the washer pump, all the dash telltales work and the stereo is wired in.

The alternator still doesn’t seem keen to alternate, so I’ve still got that to sort, and the interior lights won’t turn off, but otherwise all seems good.

By this point things were really coming on, so I did a list.

Always had a strong respect for these cars - they may not be to usual Western tastes, but they did what the design brief required.



Fingers crossed! It appears that a lot of Ukraine's industry is still exporting & seemingly as normal, if the availability of products from the many Ukrainian scale model kit manufacturers is anything to go by (& this includes items released since since February, rather than stuff that had been shipped prior to then).

Thumbs up!

Well seeing as I’m sat waiting for it to stop p1ssing down, you can all have another update.
That’s the slight problem with me not having proper facilities at the moment.


But, before it rained I got other things done.

Rear wheel studs turned up and fitted, another tick.


Battery clamp found in boxes of junk. Cleaned and painted-


And fitted.


Then I decided I should Probably have a crack at one of the bits of welding, so I didn’t have to do it all as one solid block.

This is the first suspect area.


Trim removed and wire wheel applied. Not that extensive tbh.


The repair is two overlapping panels and one little bit of arch lip. Here the first part made and welded in. It has a bead rolled step and a couple of folds.


The outer was much more complicated than it looks and curves in multiple directions. Lots of bashing about and shrinking later, it’s done.


There was a little flat bit of arch lip done before it went on but I didn’t even take a photo of that.


Sealer and paint, one bit of welding ticked off!

I thought You had used masking tape for that list to just tear it off when the particular job is done.

Davey, that’s the one.

Two reasons for ditching the masking tape list-

-It got rained on twice, and they don’t peel off now without going to mush and making an awful mess so they had to be removed with a Stanley blade and thinners.

- no satisfaction of seeing a completed list at the end.

I had to screw this w@nky old bonnet someone left lying around to the wall and use that instead 😂

I approve of the new list board. Although watching you remove masking tape with a Stanley blade would be more entertaining than a lot of other things going on right now...

Next I tried to do the oil and filter.
The oil was pretty cheap, £21 delivered which seems quite bargain to me. Anywhere I could pick it up local wanted significantly more anyways.
Obviously after ordering I found I’ve got 2-1/2 bottles of 10/40 semi in the cupboard 🙄


Slight problem with the filter. I guess even though it came in the car, it ain’t the right one.


Yeah that’s longer than the gap between the chassis rail and block 😂
Ordered the right filter and forgot about doing that for the minute.

Next I replaced the broken studs on the servo.
I’m not quite sure how this happened tbh, I was just spinning the nuts on to fit the m/c and the stud just kinda fell off.


The threads look chewed so I suspect previous asshattery.


I totally failed to take a pic of me extracting the old ones and welding new ones in, so here’s a pic of the master cyl painted black instead.
I did this as it got 3 drops of rain on it and went rusty which looked sh1t .
Master cyl was a whole £25 delivered, actually cheaper than buying from ladapower who wanted £45. It’s not like it’s a no name discount stock job either, Borg and Beck with a warranty.


The then fitted the master cylinder, before finding this on the floor.


It goes here, so I had to take it off again to refit it. Good job I spotted it now I guess!
Repaired studs visible there too.


Master cyl on and lines connected up with plenty of coppergrease. Fiddly.


These also turned up. Comically cheap, £4 delivered. I guess no one wants short wipers these days.


Well, except these guys. Mind you, when did you last see a Ford Ka? Their rate of attrition must be almost vertical.


So, that’s another couple of jobs ticked off.