The Vectraghini saved from a driveway
Discussion
A mate at work sent me a message saying "Know anyone who would want this?", probably knowing full well what would happen. 
The story behind the car is rather sad - it was his neighbour's, who sadly is living with dementia. I hope he's as OK as he can be. Money changed hands, and I was the proud owner of a Vectra C 1.8 Exclusiv (and a lot of spider nests).
The car had been sitting unused on the driveway for two years, so it had accrued a rather fetching veneer of algae, moss, dirt and cobwebs. It hadn't been started in this time, and the battery was predictably flat, containing 0v. A slave battery, disconnection of the coil pack to build up oil pressure and pretty soon the engine (Z18XER for the Vauxhall nerds, of which we have many on PH. Did I say nerds? I meant haters...) was running away happily, pretty smoothly given the fuel was at least a couple of years old, perhaps more given the minuscule annual mileage on the MOT history in the past few years.
The brakes weren't stuck on, and the front discs cleaned up well, although the rears pads & discs needed replacing as they were almost metal to metal, together with the LHR caliper binding. The brake pedal travel was however a bit lengthly, and it sunk under your foot under pressure.
A set of rear discs & pads & a pair of calipers were ordered from t'internet, and a full service kit plus cam belt kit were sourced from a local motor factor. A good look around the car on a ramp revealed nothing more than the need for four tyres, which were all budget branded, ten years old and perished.
Service & brakes complete, together with a brake bleed and four tyres, we're motoring now thinks I. Remember that brake pedal travel I spoke about? No real improvement with a brake pressure bleed (although a very small one). Drat. Must be a master cylinder, for which these are apparently known for flipping/splitting seals.
A master cylinder is sourced and fitted. Again, a small improvement, but the pedal still has a horrible dead spot. Double drat.
More checks worked through. The vacuum circuit looks to be good, the servo operates as it should, the front calipers aren't seized and the brake pipes are all in good order - even the notorious one over the top of the fuel tank (cheers for the tip 757), which I checked using a borescope. There's no loss of brake fluid, so it must be an issue within the hydraulic circuit somewhere. Triple drat, must be a fault with the ABS block with a sticky valve inside (another notorious Vauxhall issue). ABS block off and sent away to be tested & rebuilt.
Phone call a couple of days later;
"Sorry Mr ITCS, we can't fault the ABS block or ECU. Would you like it rebuilt anyway?"
"Yes please, what exactly do you do in the rebuild?"
"I don't know exactly but we replace anything and everything that could fail, and that is a common failure point"
"Lovely, please crack on"
DHL deliver back an ABS block complete with stickers two days later, and I refit it. Still a soft pedal. Bugger.
By this time, the car has consumed most of the stocks of new brake fluid in Beds, Herts and Bucks and I'm now financially into a car which, having known it was going to cause this much of a headache in the beginning, I may not have been so enthusiastic.
More checks, more brake bleeding, more clamping off lines individually - I even replaced the cam cover, as the PCV valve in these can stick, causing loss of vacuum. It did to be fair remove the car's flat spot, but it didn't make it stop much better. Clamping off the hoses individually made no difference, indicating the issue lay somewhere upstream in the brake circuit.
We knew the master was good, the brake lines were good, and the ABS block had been rebuilt. What gives?
Sitting pondering one evening, scouring eBay, I came across a secondhand, tested ABS block on eBay for £25. Worth a shot to prove a point, I thought, so I ordered it. It turned up next day, and I fitted and bled it with brake fluid from Scotland, as nobody around me had any stock left after I'd bought it all.
Blow me, it worked. A lovely firm, positive pedal, the car stops brilliantly and doesn't fire the ABS randomly anymore. It seems the ABS block rebuild wasn't as thorough as one would hope.
Anyway, to celebrate, I set about cleaning, preening and machine polishing the car. It could probably do with a three stage correction, but being honest I don't have the time nor inclination, and plus, it is a shed. It's had more cleaning (and DOT4) than it probably ever has had previously. The main scrape on the LHF corner polished out nicely, there s a couple of typical dings and marks on it, but the car presents very well and looks a lot brighter than many younger vehicles.
Remember the battery that I said had 0v and had a state of deep discharge? An Optimate battery conditioner saved it, and it's back on the car now giving sterling service. Kind of offsets the money spent on brake fluid, at least.
Behold.
Work performed
4 years/40k service (Oil, air, fuel & pollen filters, set of spark plugs)
Cambelt change
Coolant change
New cam cover & gasket
New brake master cylinder
Restick both mirror glasses to backing plates
Used ABS block and 79 brake fluid changes
Four new Yokohama tyres
Front brake strip & clean
New rear brake discs & pads
Both rear brake calipers replaced
Interior deep clean, exterior clean, clay, single stage machine polish and HD wax
MOT test - passed with no advisories!
Work to be done
Set of mats - awaiting delivery
Auxiliary belt (the motor factor supplied me the wrong size and had to order the correct one in)
Transmission oil change (needed to order the correct gasket for the gearbox oil sump - there's no drain plug, which I didn't realise until I went to change it!)
Possibly an Apple CarPlay double DIN head unit to make it a bit more useable/up to date
The story behind the car is rather sad - it was his neighbour's, who sadly is living with dementia. I hope he's as OK as he can be. Money changed hands, and I was the proud owner of a Vectra C 1.8 Exclusiv (and a lot of spider nests).
The car had been sitting unused on the driveway for two years, so it had accrued a rather fetching veneer of algae, moss, dirt and cobwebs. It hadn't been started in this time, and the battery was predictably flat, containing 0v. A slave battery, disconnection of the coil pack to build up oil pressure and pretty soon the engine (Z18XER for the Vauxhall nerds, of which we have many on PH. Did I say nerds? I meant haters...) was running away happily, pretty smoothly given the fuel was at least a couple of years old, perhaps more given the minuscule annual mileage on the MOT history in the past few years.
The brakes weren't stuck on, and the front discs cleaned up well, although the rears pads & discs needed replacing as they were almost metal to metal, together with the LHR caliper binding. The brake pedal travel was however a bit lengthly, and it sunk under your foot under pressure.
A set of rear discs & pads & a pair of calipers were ordered from t'internet, and a full service kit plus cam belt kit were sourced from a local motor factor. A good look around the car on a ramp revealed nothing more than the need for four tyres, which were all budget branded, ten years old and perished.
Service & brakes complete, together with a brake bleed and four tyres, we're motoring now thinks I. Remember that brake pedal travel I spoke about? No real improvement with a brake pressure bleed (although a very small one). Drat. Must be a master cylinder, for which these are apparently known for flipping/splitting seals.
A master cylinder is sourced and fitted. Again, a small improvement, but the pedal still has a horrible dead spot. Double drat.
More checks worked through. The vacuum circuit looks to be good, the servo operates as it should, the front calipers aren't seized and the brake pipes are all in good order - even the notorious one over the top of the fuel tank (cheers for the tip 757), which I checked using a borescope. There's no loss of brake fluid, so it must be an issue within the hydraulic circuit somewhere. Triple drat, must be a fault with the ABS block with a sticky valve inside (another notorious Vauxhall issue). ABS block off and sent away to be tested & rebuilt.
Phone call a couple of days later;
"Sorry Mr ITCS, we can't fault the ABS block or ECU. Would you like it rebuilt anyway?"
"Yes please, what exactly do you do in the rebuild?"
"I don't know exactly but we replace anything and everything that could fail, and that is a common failure point"
"Lovely, please crack on"
DHL deliver back an ABS block complete with stickers two days later, and I refit it. Still a soft pedal. Bugger.
By this time, the car has consumed most of the stocks of new brake fluid in Beds, Herts and Bucks and I'm now financially into a car which, having known it was going to cause this much of a headache in the beginning, I may not have been so enthusiastic.
More checks, more brake bleeding, more clamping off lines individually - I even replaced the cam cover, as the PCV valve in these can stick, causing loss of vacuum. It did to be fair remove the car's flat spot, but it didn't make it stop much better. Clamping off the hoses individually made no difference, indicating the issue lay somewhere upstream in the brake circuit.
We knew the master was good, the brake lines were good, and the ABS block had been rebuilt. What gives?
Sitting pondering one evening, scouring eBay, I came across a secondhand, tested ABS block on eBay for £25. Worth a shot to prove a point, I thought, so I ordered it. It turned up next day, and I fitted and bled it with brake fluid from Scotland, as nobody around me had any stock left after I'd bought it all.
Blow me, it worked. A lovely firm, positive pedal, the car stops brilliantly and doesn't fire the ABS randomly anymore. It seems the ABS block rebuild wasn't as thorough as one would hope.
Anyway, to celebrate, I set about cleaning, preening and machine polishing the car. It could probably do with a three stage correction, but being honest I don't have the time nor inclination, and plus, it is a shed. It's had more cleaning (and DOT4) than it probably ever has had previously. The main scrape on the LHF corner polished out nicely, there s a couple of typical dings and marks on it, but the car presents very well and looks a lot brighter than many younger vehicles.
Remember the battery that I said had 0v and had a state of deep discharge? An Optimate battery conditioner saved it, and it's back on the car now giving sterling service. Kind of offsets the money spent on brake fluid, at least.
Behold.
Work performed
4 years/40k service (Oil, air, fuel & pollen filters, set of spark plugs)
Cambelt change
Coolant change
New cam cover & gasket
New brake master cylinder
Restick both mirror glasses to backing plates
Used ABS block and 79 brake fluid changes
Four new Yokohama tyres
Front brake strip & clean
New rear brake discs & pads
Both rear brake calipers replaced
Interior deep clean, exterior clean, clay, single stage machine polish and HD wax
MOT test - passed with no advisories!
Work to be done
Set of mats - awaiting delivery
Auxiliary belt (the motor factor supplied me the wrong size and had to order the correct one in)
Transmission oil change (needed to order the correct gasket for the gearbox oil sump - there's no drain plug, which I didn't realise until I went to change it!)
Possibly an Apple CarPlay double DIN head unit to make it a bit more useable/up to date
Edited by itcaptainslow on Sunday 13th July 13:40
Edited by itcaptainslow on Sunday 13th July 16:57
I always liked these. I had one as a hire for a week to commute to Stevenage from Rickmansworth and it was light years ahead of the hideous Kia Avella (a rebadged Ford Aspire despite looking a lot like a Vauxhall Astra) I was dailying in Malta at the time. I really enjoyed it. Was it a victim of the Clarkson effect? Too many sheeple jumped on that hater's bandwagon, imho.
A500leroy said:
757 will be in shortly and will get rather excited,you may need eye protection
Think I may of started something here on PH's.....
Looks very clean OP, far too clean for me of course...., I hope it gives you a nice quiet life, even if it doesn't they are dirt cheap to fix as you've found out already - welcome to shedding, its every liberating!
7 5 7 said:
A500leroy said:
757 will be in shortly and will get rather excited,you may need eye protection
Think I may of started something here on PH's.....
Looks very clean OP, far too clean for me of course...., I hope it gives you a nice quiet life, even if it doesn't they are dirt cheap to fix as you've found out already - welcome to shedding, its every liberating!
Tommie38 said:
A colleague at work had one of these about ten years ago. He was doing around 300 miles a week and was topping up oil about as often as he filled it with petrol. Litres of it.
He never serviced it. Must have been driven at least 2 years like that
Quite possibly the Z18XE engine. They liked a drink, and got worse if you ran them low on oil.He never serviced it. Must have been driven at least 2 years like that
Or, it could have been an XER and the PCV had stuck
Oh bravo I love this! Good work on getting the brakes sorted. Unfortunately a rebuilt part can be overrated Vs a used part of there are no common issues.
Not much love for the Vectra but I had one in elite trim with the 1.9tdi 120 engine for several years and took it from 120k to 200k with minimal issues. Really comfy cruiser and felt very solid. Heated leather, cruise control and a lovely big boot. Didn't handle badly like others would have you believe. Headlights were diabolical though...
Only moved it on as the rear camber arms wore out (replaced with cheapies which only lasted 10k) and I fancied a change. Still miss that car, which brought my newborns back from the hospital.
Not much love for the Vectra but I had one in elite trim with the 1.9tdi 120 engine for several years and took it from 120k to 200k with minimal issues. Really comfy cruiser and felt very solid. Heated leather, cruise control and a lovely big boot. Didn't handle badly like others would have you believe. Headlights were diabolical though...
Only moved it on as the rear camber arms wore out (replaced with cheapies which only lasted 10k) and I fancied a change. Still miss that car, which brought my newborns back from the hospital.
Lincsls1 said:
That looks very tidy, you've done a great job on it.
I bet that serves you really well.
I'm slightly biased having owned several Vauxhalls, but I find them to be good reliable cars, if not that exciting.
That’s a pretty good summary, really. It’s not the most scintillating thing, but it feels pretty well built, there’s no body corrosion underneath and it’s comfortable, quiet, handles tidily if in a somewhat unexciting manner. For doing what it was built for - cruising motorways eating miles carrying many people and things - it does that well.I bet that serves you really well.
I'm slightly biased having owned several Vauxhalls, but I find them to be good reliable cars, if not that exciting.
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