Turkish's Astra G 2.0 Turbo "Sleeper"
Discussion
Bear with me... This will be a long post! So this is the story of my daily driver of the last 5 years nearly; a lovely Jade Green 2002 Astra 1.6 8v. The car belonged to my Mum beforehand, and my Stepdad's Father before that, so it's been in the family since about 2004. I was given it by my Mum for Christmas 2012 as she was going to scrap it!!!
A long long time ago...
She's always been a bit rough around the edges, with just about every panel having some sort of dent or scratch! But it was cheap motoring, ran really well and seemed to drive pretty nicely too. My Mum mainly used the car to take our family Labradors out for a walk, so as you can imagine the inside was covered in mud, slobber and HAIR. Lots of it!! The first time I took my friends in it was a trip up to Sheffield for a night out... When we got there we spent a good 20 minutes patting eachother down to get rid of all the hair stuck to our clothes lol! So this is where the name Dogbus came from.
Flash forward to January 2016 (almost to the day as it happens) and my Mum phones me at about 10pm absolutely distraught as my Grandmother is dying in hospital in Inverness. We jumped into Dogbus, left home near Warwick and drove through the night as fast as I possibly could to try and get there in time to say goodbye to her. We made it from Warwick to Inverness in six and a half hours, with some pretty heavy snow all the way from Perth onwards and the car never missed a beat, rocksteady the whole way. Not to sound like the Clarkson Porsche 928 story but we made it there and had half an hour with her before she passed away. As daft as it sounds, from that day onwards something changed with my attitude towards the car fand I decided she really did have some soul and character.
Moving onto September 16, and I began looking at Dogbus to see what would be needed for it's next MOT in January. All four tyres were close to their limit, both front top mounts were shot, the backbox was missing, an engine mount was close to failure, a front wheel bearing was heavily worn and it needed a new CV joint amongst other things. I'd been toying with the idea of doing an engine swap on her (the original bulletproof 1.6 8v was touching 130k now) so I decided to bite the bullet and bought myself this...
Loads of new chassis bits, just had a clutch, timing belt and tyres - perfect!! So I got it bought, got it home and found it was a real peach of a car... But nevertheless Dogbus was to live on. Just like the story of Snape and Voldemort, the Coupe very quickly looked like this:
Then this:
And so the swap into Dogbus was ready to go. Me and a couple of friends did the whole swap in the space of 3 days up at his unit. It ended up being a bit more involved than we first thought - the entire dash loom needed swapping which is an arse of a job! We also slung the 5 stud hubs, 308mm front brakes and entire disc rear beam onto the car. Fuel tank and lines, gear linkage and shifter box, clocks, the lot... The only bits that are really original to Dogbus now are the shell and all it's panels, heater matrix, interior carpet, doorcards, headlining and the rear lights!
During the swap:
Thankfully she started first turn of the key after a bit a few seconds of getting fuel up the lines! I ran the Coupe wheels initially, then quickly sourced some 16" Saab steelies for the added Sleeper effect!
I had to get a custom exhaust system made as funnily enough a 2.5" system with a downturned tip doesn't exist off the shelf!
And that's where we're upto today! Next step is to get the car correctly mapped to suit all the new bits and ensure it's running 100% as safely as it can be. I'll try to keep this updated with the shenanigans of Dogbus, and some videos once it's mapped (it should be around 250hp which'll be a good laugh!).
Sorry for the long post, hope you all enjoy reading
A long long time ago...
She's always been a bit rough around the edges, with just about every panel having some sort of dent or scratch! But it was cheap motoring, ran really well and seemed to drive pretty nicely too. My Mum mainly used the car to take our family Labradors out for a walk, so as you can imagine the inside was covered in mud, slobber and HAIR. Lots of it!! The first time I took my friends in it was a trip up to Sheffield for a night out... When we got there we spent a good 20 minutes patting eachother down to get rid of all the hair stuck to our clothes lol! So this is where the name Dogbus came from.
Flash forward to January 2016 (almost to the day as it happens) and my Mum phones me at about 10pm absolutely distraught as my Grandmother is dying in hospital in Inverness. We jumped into Dogbus, left home near Warwick and drove through the night as fast as I possibly could to try and get there in time to say goodbye to her. We made it from Warwick to Inverness in six and a half hours, with some pretty heavy snow all the way from Perth onwards and the car never missed a beat, rocksteady the whole way. Not to sound like the Clarkson Porsche 928 story but we made it there and had half an hour with her before she passed away. As daft as it sounds, from that day onwards something changed with my attitude towards the car fand I decided she really did have some soul and character.
Moving onto September 16, and I began looking at Dogbus to see what would be needed for it's next MOT in January. All four tyres were close to their limit, both front top mounts were shot, the backbox was missing, an engine mount was close to failure, a front wheel bearing was heavily worn and it needed a new CV joint amongst other things. I'd been toying with the idea of doing an engine swap on her (the original bulletproof 1.6 8v was touching 130k now) so I decided to bite the bullet and bought myself this...
Loads of new chassis bits, just had a clutch, timing belt and tyres - perfect!! So I got it bought, got it home and found it was a real peach of a car... But nevertheless Dogbus was to live on. Just like the story of Snape and Voldemort, the Coupe very quickly looked like this:
Then this:
And so the swap into Dogbus was ready to go. Me and a couple of friends did the whole swap in the space of 3 days up at his unit. It ended up being a bit more involved than we first thought - the entire dash loom needed swapping which is an arse of a job! We also slung the 5 stud hubs, 308mm front brakes and entire disc rear beam onto the car. Fuel tank and lines, gear linkage and shifter box, clocks, the lot... The only bits that are really original to Dogbus now are the shell and all it's panels, heater matrix, interior carpet, doorcards, headlining and the rear lights!
During the swap:
Thankfully she started first turn of the key after a bit a few seconds of getting fuel up the lines! I ran the Coupe wheels initially, then quickly sourced some 16" Saab steelies for the added Sleeper effect!
I had to get a custom exhaust system made as funnily enough a 2.5" system with a downturned tip doesn't exist off the shelf!
And that's where we're upto today! Next step is to get the car correctly mapped to suit all the new bits and ensure it's running 100% as safely as it can be. I'll try to keep this updated with the shenanigans of Dogbus, and some videos once it's mapped (it should be around 250hp which'll be a good laugh!).
Sorry for the long post, hope you all enjoy reading
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