1989 Vauxhall Astra Mk2 Fast Road Project
Discussion
Following the selling off of my 400bhp / 700bhp per ton locost turbo project of 8 years. (https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=47&t=1418648&i=0) I knew a few things; the next car needed to be naturally aspirated, be a tin-top and be fwd. Whilst the kitcar was tremendous fun it was certainly a hold on for dear life experience and you couldn’t be on-it for long for fear of dying or going to jail. My young daughter was also keen to start coming on drives with me and kit cars aren't a safe place to be on the roads with a kid IMO.
In my late teens, I had a Vauxhall astra mk3 gsi. Bought with just 50k on at the time in standard form, it ended up having throttle bodies, rollcage, direct port nitrous injection etc. It was even featured in Total Vauxhall magazine. When I was in my early 20s with a company car, the engine came out and ended up in a Corsa B as a stripped out track car. I’d loved how much you could beat on the XE’s (or any naturally aspirated 2.0 really) so wanted something of that ilk.
My searches all centred around k20 powered things but they don’t seem to have much torque and most are absolutely driven to death up in Yorkshire so I started on a quest to buy a project. Ebay app opened and I found a project Vauxhall astra mk3 gsi in deepest darkest Scotland. The car was rusty but apparently ran and drove. It had a fully forged xe with throttle bodies and management and loads and loads of spares.
I messaged the seller and after a few back and forth I then got a random message on Facebook messenger. It turns out I knew the seller’s son from my old Vauxhall days on a website called ‘Migweb’. Not only that, but I had had a passenger ride in this exact car at the VBOA Show at Billing back in 1999. It all seemed meant to be. I had a price in mind for what the car was worth. The auction didn’t meet the sellers reserve. A few phone calls later and the deal was done. I set off to Scotland’s armpit with an empty trailer.
On arriving the car wouldn’t start, at all. Being a trust worthy chap I took the seller at his word, dragged the car on the trailer and loaded it up with all the spares.
Once back home and jacked up, the car was in worse state than I’d originally envisaged.
Not only that, the wiring was a mess and I knew I’d be inheriting someone else’s problems and just didn’t fancy the heartache. I did the sums, and with the money I’d paid and what I could get for the spares I knew I wouldn’t be out of pocket, so decided to strip the good bits off and sell the shell on. Before I did, I did manage to get the engine running (bad wiring) although this took several late nights.
With the engine and gearbox out and car stripped, the astra mk3 was sold on to someone in Wales.
That left me with a forged XE, LSD box, throttle bodies and management with no home to go to. It sat comfortably next to my old forged CA18 for a new of weeks.
After much searching, I’d set my sights on buying a Vauxhall astra mk2 and fitting the drive train from the mk3. I’m not bothered about having the model of a car that everyone wants, and after seeing the prices of GTE’s decided against aiming for one for one of those. Luckily, I landed upon an Astra Mk2 1.4 Merit S in Devon that already had an XE fitted. It had had new arches, cills and minor welding previously and then been subject to a full respray. Deal done and off I went again to tow another project back home.
The paintwork was good and bar the bumpers and plastics the exterior was better than I’d hoped. The interior only had two seats with the rest missing. Over the next month I tidied up the outside paintwork and swapped out the interior for GTE seats and found the missing plastic parts that I needed.
I started off however making the outside tidy, having GTE bumpers but not being a GTE, I decided to go for a GTE/SR hybrid. All exterior plastics were painted metallic grey and the bottom of the doors were wrapped to match. I didn’t like the wheels in black so they were painted silver.
The engine and suspension was poor though. Already running bike carbs, the engine should have been in the region of 170bhp but it was just meh. I was going to leave the original engine in until it broke but it was just dire so had to come out.
The suspension was replaced with Bilstein shocks and eibach -35mm springs. Front wishbones were replaced. Front brakes were replaced with cavalier turbo ones (that came with the mk3 gsi).
The XE on bike carbs didn’t have injection so I needed to add a high pressure pump. The astra mk2 carb tank doesn’t have any baffles so I took the opportunity to add a swirl pump and used the existing low pressure pump as the lift pump. This was all neatly housed in the spare wheel well and new fuel lines run throughout.
With the new fuel setup in place, the old engine wouldn’t run so out it came. I kept the gearbox and engine as one so I can sell as a package and didn’t want to go to the effort of splitting them out.
Whilst the engine was out, despite being tidy, I had the engine bay painted in black as I knew I wouldn’t get a decent paintjob trying to match the outside.
Once the engine bay was ready, I put in the forged XE that I’d got from Scotland.
Once in, I pulled the rocker and cambelt covers and gave them to my daughter to decorate as she wished.
The new fuel pressure regulator and hoses were installed.
In a relatively short time, the engine was working and the running in miles commenced. I had to use the previous exhaust which was really poor, thankfully my rusty mk3 astra came with a lovely 2.5” exhaust from a mk2 astra. My mate in Cleethorpes kindly fitted that for me and made the necessary adjustments in the centre section to take it around the underslung gear linkage.
On the way to Cleethorpes I decided the seats were un comfy, not being a track car (yet) I set to work fitting some Zafira gsi seats which are loads better. A major improvement over the old GTE ones.
Running in complete, it was over to DanST Engineering in Bingley for mapping. The car uses an MBE967 ECU which is now 20 year old technology. I know it well, my previous astra and corsa used it and thankfully a lot of people in rallying circles use it so there are plenty of people that know what they’re doing. After a full day on the dyno and over 45 pulls it made just over 210bhp at the wheels, so late 220bhp at the flywheel. The redline is set to 8,000rpm. It didn’t miss a beat all day – a huge contrast to how my kitcar used to behave on the dyno.
Looking a cross between a GTE and SR astra I wanted to really confuse matter by adding some Sri badges.
I’ve only been out in the car a couple of times since mapping, it’s not particularly exciting and I think that’s because of the steering rack. It’s a manual rack with 4 turns from lock to lock. I took the decision to pull the rack and replaced it with a PAS rack that I took from the astra mk3, but not use any power steering pump and to simply loop the lines. This rack has 2.7 turns lock to lock and is a lot better but it was just too stiff. You needed both hands on the wheel to even think about coming out the other side of any roundabout.
I didn’t want to add a power steering pump off the bottom of the engine like xe’s had originally and found out you can use an external, electric pump. I remembered that in the box of spares with the mk3 astra I was given an electric pump from a saxo. In the last week I’ve had some hoses made and knocked my own bracket up to mount it on the inner wing.
I completed the install yesterday and to my amazement it worked first time, I’ve still to re-mount the fuel reg and header tank so I don’t know how the new rack yet translates to the road.
I’m not sure where this car is going yet, whether it will get moved on or turned into a track monster. Everyone always said it’d be difficult going to anything else from something so powerful, they were right – I’m just not sure what other options I have!
As usual, slightly more up to date info on my instagram page - https://www.instagram.com/inthe_garage/
In my late teens, I had a Vauxhall astra mk3 gsi. Bought with just 50k on at the time in standard form, it ended up having throttle bodies, rollcage, direct port nitrous injection etc. It was even featured in Total Vauxhall magazine. When I was in my early 20s with a company car, the engine came out and ended up in a Corsa B as a stripped out track car. I’d loved how much you could beat on the XE’s (or any naturally aspirated 2.0 really) so wanted something of that ilk.
My searches all centred around k20 powered things but they don’t seem to have much torque and most are absolutely driven to death up in Yorkshire so I started on a quest to buy a project. Ebay app opened and I found a project Vauxhall astra mk3 gsi in deepest darkest Scotland. The car was rusty but apparently ran and drove. It had a fully forged xe with throttle bodies and management and loads and loads of spares.
I messaged the seller and after a few back and forth I then got a random message on Facebook messenger. It turns out I knew the seller’s son from my old Vauxhall days on a website called ‘Migweb’. Not only that, but I had had a passenger ride in this exact car at the VBOA Show at Billing back in 1999. It all seemed meant to be. I had a price in mind for what the car was worth. The auction didn’t meet the sellers reserve. A few phone calls later and the deal was done. I set off to Scotland’s armpit with an empty trailer.
On arriving the car wouldn’t start, at all. Being a trust worthy chap I took the seller at his word, dragged the car on the trailer and loaded it up with all the spares.
Once back home and jacked up, the car was in worse state than I’d originally envisaged.
Not only that, the wiring was a mess and I knew I’d be inheriting someone else’s problems and just didn’t fancy the heartache. I did the sums, and with the money I’d paid and what I could get for the spares I knew I wouldn’t be out of pocket, so decided to strip the good bits off and sell the shell on. Before I did, I did manage to get the engine running (bad wiring) although this took several late nights.
With the engine and gearbox out and car stripped, the astra mk3 was sold on to someone in Wales.
That left me with a forged XE, LSD box, throttle bodies and management with no home to go to. It sat comfortably next to my old forged CA18 for a new of weeks.
After much searching, I’d set my sights on buying a Vauxhall astra mk2 and fitting the drive train from the mk3. I’m not bothered about having the model of a car that everyone wants, and after seeing the prices of GTE’s decided against aiming for one for one of those. Luckily, I landed upon an Astra Mk2 1.4 Merit S in Devon that already had an XE fitted. It had had new arches, cills and minor welding previously and then been subject to a full respray. Deal done and off I went again to tow another project back home.
The paintwork was good and bar the bumpers and plastics the exterior was better than I’d hoped. The interior only had two seats with the rest missing. Over the next month I tidied up the outside paintwork and swapped out the interior for GTE seats and found the missing plastic parts that I needed.
I started off however making the outside tidy, having GTE bumpers but not being a GTE, I decided to go for a GTE/SR hybrid. All exterior plastics were painted metallic grey and the bottom of the doors were wrapped to match. I didn’t like the wheels in black so they were painted silver.
The engine and suspension was poor though. Already running bike carbs, the engine should have been in the region of 170bhp but it was just meh. I was going to leave the original engine in until it broke but it was just dire so had to come out.
The suspension was replaced with Bilstein shocks and eibach -35mm springs. Front wishbones were replaced. Front brakes were replaced with cavalier turbo ones (that came with the mk3 gsi).
The XE on bike carbs didn’t have injection so I needed to add a high pressure pump. The astra mk2 carb tank doesn’t have any baffles so I took the opportunity to add a swirl pump and used the existing low pressure pump as the lift pump. This was all neatly housed in the spare wheel well and new fuel lines run throughout.
With the new fuel setup in place, the old engine wouldn’t run so out it came. I kept the gearbox and engine as one so I can sell as a package and didn’t want to go to the effort of splitting them out.
Whilst the engine was out, despite being tidy, I had the engine bay painted in black as I knew I wouldn’t get a decent paintjob trying to match the outside.
Once the engine bay was ready, I put in the forged XE that I’d got from Scotland.
Once in, I pulled the rocker and cambelt covers and gave them to my daughter to decorate as she wished.
The new fuel pressure regulator and hoses were installed.
In a relatively short time, the engine was working and the running in miles commenced. I had to use the previous exhaust which was really poor, thankfully my rusty mk3 astra came with a lovely 2.5” exhaust from a mk2 astra. My mate in Cleethorpes kindly fitted that for me and made the necessary adjustments in the centre section to take it around the underslung gear linkage.
On the way to Cleethorpes I decided the seats were un comfy, not being a track car (yet) I set to work fitting some Zafira gsi seats which are loads better. A major improvement over the old GTE ones.
Running in complete, it was over to DanST Engineering in Bingley for mapping. The car uses an MBE967 ECU which is now 20 year old technology. I know it well, my previous astra and corsa used it and thankfully a lot of people in rallying circles use it so there are plenty of people that know what they’re doing. After a full day on the dyno and over 45 pulls it made just over 210bhp at the wheels, so late 220bhp at the flywheel. The redline is set to 8,000rpm. It didn’t miss a beat all day – a huge contrast to how my kitcar used to behave on the dyno.
Looking a cross between a GTE and SR astra I wanted to really confuse matter by adding some Sri badges.
I’ve only been out in the car a couple of times since mapping, it’s not particularly exciting and I think that’s because of the steering rack. It’s a manual rack with 4 turns from lock to lock. I took the decision to pull the rack and replaced it with a PAS rack that I took from the astra mk3, but not use any power steering pump and to simply loop the lines. This rack has 2.7 turns lock to lock and is a lot better but it was just too stiff. You needed both hands on the wheel to even think about coming out the other side of any roundabout.
I didn’t want to add a power steering pump off the bottom of the engine like xe’s had originally and found out you can use an external, electric pump. I remembered that in the box of spares with the mk3 astra I was given an electric pump from a saxo. In the last week I’ve had some hoses made and knocked my own bracket up to mount it on the inner wing.
I completed the install yesterday and to my amazement it worked first time, I’ve still to re-mount the fuel reg and header tank so I don’t know how the new rack yet translates to the road.
I’m not sure where this car is going yet, whether it will get moved on or turned into a track monster. Everyone always said it’d be difficult going to anything else from something so powerful, they were right – I’m just not sure what other options I have!
As usual, slightly more up to date info on my instagram page - https://www.instagram.com/inthe_garage/
Brilliant, decent car back in the day and one of the great unsung heroes of the eighties nineties tuning scene in the XE. Happily because people who don’t know what they’re talking about think Vauxhalls are all s
t they don’t have quite the same scene tax as other cars from the same era.
t they don’t have quite the same scene tax as other cars from the same era.Newarch said:
Brilliant, decent car back in the day and one of the great unsung heroes of the eighties nineties tuning scene in the XE. Happily because people who don’t know what they’re talking about think Vauxhalls are all st they don’t have quite the same scene tax as other cars from the same era.
A mint GTE is comfortably North of £13k, which is still too rich for my blood. Especially if you don't want to leave it as an original car.t they don’t have quite the same scene tax as other cars from the same era.Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff