My 1976 Lada 2101
Discussion
For as long as I've been on PH, I didn't realise this area existed. So I thought there might be someone who might find this car interesting, or at least the plan with this car to be interesting.
About 14 months ago I bought a Lithuanian-registered Lada 2101. Here she is:
After it was brought back, it spent those 14 months under a tarp on my mom's driveway as I didn't have the room to have it. I thought I'd have enough room within the month of getting it, but life gets in the way and it didn't come home until March.
There are plenty of negatives about this car that don't involve it's reputation. Right now, as far as I can see, the floor around both front jacking points is rotten. Part of the sill on near the drivers footwell is also rotten. Not by much, about the size of a 50p. So far, this is the worst of the rust. There's bubbles on nearly every panel. But this is a 44 year old car. So in my mind it's not too bad. Rough, but not a basket case.
The plan, for the outside at least, is to keep it the way it looks. There are plenty of people who slam these, widen arches etc, but I don't want to do that. I quite like how it looks. I may put a vinyl roof on it, in keeping with the tastes and style of the 1970's. Internally though things will be a little different. I'm not going to reuse the seats it came with. I want to go for some half leather seats, with a fabric tartan center. Again, in keeping with the 70's tastes.
The half leather seats will be coming straight out of a Rover 25 I have, along with it's 1.6 K Series engine. The Rover 25 has had some money spent on it, the cams it has aren't what it came out of the factory with. But that's as much as I know. It'll be rebuilt anyway. This K-Series will then be mated to a Mazda MX-5 5 speed gearbox (the Lada only has 4 gears). I do have a 5-speed Lada Niva gearbox in pieces, so I have that option too. A starter motor from a Ford Sierra will be starting it.
These Lada's come with a steering box. This is being replaced with a steering rack from a VW Golf Mk1 (which has been done elsewhere and seems to work and improve everything). Braking still needs to be addressed, as braking on Lada's isn't great and with a hugely more powerful engine being installed it will need to stop better. And I say hugely more powerful, it's double the BHP of the 1.2 Lada lump.
I can't think of anything else really. I'm documenting it via film and my website, as I think it's interesting and I hope that it gives someone a bit of confidence to do this themselves.
About 14 months ago I bought a Lithuanian-registered Lada 2101. Here she is:
After it was brought back, it spent those 14 months under a tarp on my mom's driveway as I didn't have the room to have it. I thought I'd have enough room within the month of getting it, but life gets in the way and it didn't come home until March.
There are plenty of negatives about this car that don't involve it's reputation. Right now, as far as I can see, the floor around both front jacking points is rotten. Part of the sill on near the drivers footwell is also rotten. Not by much, about the size of a 50p. So far, this is the worst of the rust. There's bubbles on nearly every panel. But this is a 44 year old car. So in my mind it's not too bad. Rough, but not a basket case.
The plan, for the outside at least, is to keep it the way it looks. There are plenty of people who slam these, widen arches etc, but I don't want to do that. I quite like how it looks. I may put a vinyl roof on it, in keeping with the tastes and style of the 1970's. Internally though things will be a little different. I'm not going to reuse the seats it came with. I want to go for some half leather seats, with a fabric tartan center. Again, in keeping with the 70's tastes.
The half leather seats will be coming straight out of a Rover 25 I have, along with it's 1.6 K Series engine. The Rover 25 has had some money spent on it, the cams it has aren't what it came out of the factory with. But that's as much as I know. It'll be rebuilt anyway. This K-Series will then be mated to a Mazda MX-5 5 speed gearbox (the Lada only has 4 gears). I do have a 5-speed Lada Niva gearbox in pieces, so I have that option too. A starter motor from a Ford Sierra will be starting it.
These Lada's come with a steering box. This is being replaced with a steering rack from a VW Golf Mk1 (which has been done elsewhere and seems to work and improve everything). Braking still needs to be addressed, as braking on Lada's isn't great and with a hugely more powerful engine being installed it will need to stop better. And I say hugely more powerful, it's double the BHP of the 1.2 Lada lump.
I can't think of anything else really. I'm documenting it via film and my website, as I think it's interesting and I hope that it gives someone a bit of confidence to do this themselves.
Edited by sgtBerbatov on Tuesday 28th April 08:38
Nice. My neighbour had two Nivas and a Samara in the 80's when I was a child so I have fond memories of them.
His looked mint but both Nivas rusted badly underneath.
In a way I suppose it's a shame you're not keeping it stock, but your improvements do sound interesting.
Keep posting updates and good luck!
His looked mint but both Nivas rusted badly underneath.
In a way I suppose it's a shame you're not keeping it stock, but your improvements do sound interesting.
Keep posting updates and good luck!
my granduncle used to have one back when I lived in lithuania. He had it since new, always garaged etc and it was pristine.
was in a weird dull cream looking colour.
he sold it not long before he passed away, I remember how over the top he was with it.
no idea where it ended up but was bought by someone who was into them due to condition and price.
was in a weird dull cream looking colour.
he sold it not long before he passed away, I remember how over the top he was with it.
no idea where it ended up but was bought by someone who was into them due to condition and price.
Thanks everyone for the response!
The wife hasn't been very complimentary about the Lada either by the way!
BigMon said:
In a way I suppose it's a shame you're not keeping it stock, but your improvements do sound interesting.
I was going to, especially with the seats, but it's going to be a daily driver for me and the seats offer no real protection for people who like my arse too much. As for the engine, I wanted to do something with a K-Series and I got a Rover for cheap with the seats I liked. Given that this is a 1.2 litre Lada lump I'm not going to scrap it. I may put the engine in to something else for a laugh. But that's way in the future.Hashtaggggg said:
Is the website name truthful.. LOL
And yeah the website name is truthful! Long story short, I bought a crappy Corolla for £250 as a stop gap runabout. But I ended up liking the Corolla a lot and spending a lot of time working on it, ending up getting rid of my 2010 Peugeot 3008 and using the Corolla all the time. The wife hates it, gets me to drop her around the corner if I ever drop her off so she's not seen in it. One day I was ordering a new number plate for the Corolla, and as a laugh I put on the bottom of the plate "My Wife Hates This Car". She wasn't impressed by that. Then one day at work I thought, for a laugh, to see if the domain name existed. It did, so I got it registered. Now it's home to stuff about cars my wife genuinely doesn't like.The wife hasn't been very complimentary about the Lada either by the way!
I'll leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGLsC3qyn6c
It's been a while since I updated this, and then I realise that there's an update before this update that I didn't update.
So before I even start work on getting the K-Series in to the Lada, I needed to make sure the shell itself was sound. So the first month I had the car in the garage was spent removing the sound proofing in the car and checking the steel internally. This showed up three areas of corrosion, a patch of the inner sill by the A pillar on the driver's side, a hole in the driver side floor by the A pillar, and a bigger hole on the passenger side by it's own A pillar. I did a video of that which you can see here: https://youtu.be/RRj0oNqwXFc
After that, the only logical place is to go under the car. Which I did. Started off on the driver's side rear wheel arch, and other than some scabs it's fairly solid. And that is more or less verbatim for the rest of the under side of the car. Some bits of stone chip fell off exposing the steel underneath, but other than the three spots mentioned above it's fairly solid. To a point.
There is a chassis arm that sits basically towards the A pillar of the Lada, and on the driver's side I managed to pop my screwdriver through it. So that needs to be replaced. And in the front driver's side wheel well it looks like someone shot a hole in the strut tower. A hole about the size of a dairyleigh triangle tall and the same wide is there. So that needs welding. The front wing itself is shot. It's thin in places, and where it isn't thin it's full of body filler. The front valance is also just slightly thicker than tin foil, so that needs replacing too. The video for that can be found here: https://youtu.be/SuOvepOYIRI
The next step is to evaluate the repairs needed to the body panels. The front valance, the front wing, the doors (the bottom of these are crusty), and the rear arches all need attention. The rear arches look to have been repaired previously with a lot of body filler. So I just need to make a judgement call on those, whether I leave them or buy patch panels to weld on to them. I already have an outer sill for the passengers side which, while it isn't rotten, is damaged. So if I have the part already I might as well fit it.
I also need to take more photos, but I only ever think of it after I've filmed it.
So before I even start work on getting the K-Series in to the Lada, I needed to make sure the shell itself was sound. So the first month I had the car in the garage was spent removing the sound proofing in the car and checking the steel internally. This showed up three areas of corrosion, a patch of the inner sill by the A pillar on the driver's side, a hole in the driver side floor by the A pillar, and a bigger hole on the passenger side by it's own A pillar. I did a video of that which you can see here: https://youtu.be/RRj0oNqwXFc
After that, the only logical place is to go under the car. Which I did. Started off on the driver's side rear wheel arch, and other than some scabs it's fairly solid. And that is more or less verbatim for the rest of the under side of the car. Some bits of stone chip fell off exposing the steel underneath, but other than the three spots mentioned above it's fairly solid. To a point.
There is a chassis arm that sits basically towards the A pillar of the Lada, and on the driver's side I managed to pop my screwdriver through it. So that needs to be replaced. And in the front driver's side wheel well it looks like someone shot a hole in the strut tower. A hole about the size of a dairyleigh triangle tall and the same wide is there. So that needs welding. The front wing itself is shot. It's thin in places, and where it isn't thin it's full of body filler. The front valance is also just slightly thicker than tin foil, so that needs replacing too. The video for that can be found here: https://youtu.be/SuOvepOYIRI
The next step is to evaluate the repairs needed to the body panels. The front valance, the front wing, the doors (the bottom of these are crusty), and the rear arches all need attention. The rear arches look to have been repaired previously with a lot of body filler. So I just need to make a judgement call on those, whether I leave them or buy patch panels to weld on to them. I already have an outer sill for the passengers side which, while it isn't rotten, is damaged. So if I have the part already I might as well fit it.
I also need to take more photos, but I only ever think of it after I've filmed it.
Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff