1975 Lada 2106 ITB'd Mx5 vvt swap. Bulkhead and Gearbox tnl!

Great build thread! Bookmarked

Great work!

Thanks for the replies motivates me to do more.

So moving forward after the smooth bay. You probably noticed I smoothed over all of the holes for the brake and clutch servo.

I sourced an early Lada 2101 master cylinder as they do not use a servo and after many hours using google chrome on translate and drive2.ru (russias car bible) I got in contact with a company called garage1970 or whatever the Russian translation is as they where halfway through building a reverse servo kit so that the servos could be reverse mounted into the car and not in the engine bay.

After a lot of Google translates it was finally paid for and a month or so later the kit arrived. The kit wasn't very complete so I had to do a few modifications.



For starters the bracket to mount it onto the bulkhead was missing. But I made my own in the end as they didn't want to send the part unless I buy something else. Okay fair enough.

Secondly they used a threaded rod for some reason to connect from the pedal to the master cylinder so you could hear the threads as they rubbed against the seals. Not ideal so I smoothed the threads so that it no longer grinded against the dust seals.

And then the pedals had no stoppers for there rest position so the pedals would just jump around freely so I made a stopper for the clutch pedal after realising the brake light switch acted as one for the brake pedal.

Once this was solved it was time to move onto the steering. Funnily enough having my second lada I have actually never driven one yet so I can't vouch for it but I know everyone complained about how the bad the steering was so I replaced the steering box with a Toyota yaris mk2 rack.

I bought the kit from speedfreakworkshop in Russia. It came with everything needed to fit but to save money I ordered it without the steering rack planning to buy one in the future. Which turned out difficult because I needed a LHD rack which I ended up sourcing from Lithuania.


For some reason I am unable to upload pictures now. Maybe poor signal but I will edit this post later when I get some signal.

Bookmarked!

I'm going to try to find a workshop once I have moved back to Newbury, I'm hoping some of your good fortune bleeds through to me...

As regard to your welding, and your attitude to just get on with it, I was once told "you cannot learn to swim unless you get in the water". Thin steel plate seems to be the hardest thing to learn on, so you're doing a great job!

Another test fit of the wheels to motivate myself











Everything was great but there was one thing that really bothered me about the angle of the front bags

So happy with the progress. Tyres ordered. And whilst I'm waiting I stonechip the inside of the car.




Tyres arrived and time to test fit.

When I bought the car it had a "lada 1600" badge on the boot but the original "zhiguli 1600" badge was still in the boot in very poor condition. I managed to scrape the paint off the back and paint it back up with model paint and out it back where it belongs. So the clueless will never know what the car is 🤣

The next few weeks where long and awful as I rewired the entire car. With a new modern fusebox and also a "aux loom" in the boot for the air ride and the Bluetooth headunit I hid in the boot.

All the wiring for the fan, headlights and horn hidden in the inner wings.

I found a fiat 125p rear bumper as I don't like the plastic on the lada ones hoping it'll fit. And it did!! I just needed to weld some extensions onto the bumper mounts and in the future I need to trim down the sides as they rub on the rear 1/4s. I'm starting to get nervous about the rear arch as I can't find a repair panel anywhere and the one I got promised fell through.

Shotgun exhaust fitted. Headlights and grille fitted and also the lada 2103 front bumper.

So it's now Sunday and we leave to go to players on the Thursday. MOT booked for Thursday.

I finish putting the chrome on the car. Fit my steering wheel (I made sure it was the absolute last thing I do before turning the key) and take it for a test drive.

Apart from overheating because the fan switch wasn't working she drove faultlessly. I ended up being gone for 3hrs and she didn't skip a beat. Only issue i had was a rear suspension knock due to a loose bolt on one of the 5 links on the rear axle and after that she was pukka! I was so happy.