1973 Vauxhall Firenza

:)Welcome to R-R, sounds like a very cool car to me! 8-)Hope your old Vauxhall doesn't smell of wee! ;D

HOTNESS! Welcome.

sweet motor.

penski - i'm a kick in the plums away from whitley bay..

apologies if the size of pics are too big - I appear to be slightly better with a spanner than a keyboard.............

funnily enough I met the previous owner in july down at billing and he said the same thing cos he regretted selling it but unfortunatley this ones a keeper....... ;D
having said that they seem to pop up for sale quite often in the owners club and some of them are cheap ..

yes the kadetts the one ive been trying to get back on the road for the last few years - next summer it will hopefully be done..

think i got it from demon tweeks but cant remember how much it was. the car goes much faster with it fitted..no really it does....

Rescued from the depths of obscurity .

Well , page 48 anyway...

Did a little bit of work earlier this year on the headlights but never got round to posting the pics.

Although the original lights were still useable they were well past their best and seeing as I do use the car quite a bit ( over the winter too ) I really like to see where I'm going...

The adjusters were pretty much useless too so decided to get complete bowl kits.

Got a kit ( made by Wipac I think..) ordered up . Pretty decent quality , had a plastic bowl , chrome trim , really thick rubber gasket and all the other screws and general bits n bobs.


Stripped the front end ..


Bt of brush up..


Bit of primer..


Splash of black..


trial fit ..


Nice quality


Lovely jubbly.


Had a look through our Hella lighting catalogue and after discovering that either Capri or some BMW models had similar sized lights , took a trip to Harry Pringles finest scrap emporium to see what I could find... I ended up buying one brand new Hella light from work and getting 3 good as new scrapper lights out of some early 90's BMW's..

Good thing about these lights is that they have the side light in them too so I disconnected the bottom sidelight which means the bottom indicator/sidelight is now purely an indicator.


Oh and talking of indicators. If you have a Viva or Chevette / Kadett etc and have the same problem with the indicator lens screws rusting away like this..


If you pop down to your local friendly B+Q/Homebase etc , buy yourself a nice pack of screws like this.


They're replacement screws for chrome light sockets and are exactly the same thread...

All bolted back together , much better. The Hella lights have a 'flatter' surface which gives it a slightly more modern feel.



Got more to do in the next couple of weeks or so . Been meaning to sort out the suspension bushes for ages now so I've got a full set of poly bushes to go in. Going to take the opportunity to get the arms blasted and powder coated too. Replacing the brake hoses , ball joints , one shocker and a caliper too..

It also needs some bodywork . Got a wing in the summer at Billing and just got a pair of sills from Hadrian this week. When I was doing the headlights I knocked the front wing and a big lump of filler fell out... I knew the wing wasn't the best , just didn't quite realise how bad it actually was.. Hence the sticker covering the offending rusty bit ..



more to follow...