Budget Vauxhall VX220
Discussion
Hi all,
So I’m very much a long time lurker on Pistonheads, I often find myself perusing through the readers section, especially with lockdowns and work from home it became an all too easy distraction from, well, working...
However after lurking for so long I decided it was finally time to create my own readers thread, with a car that I picked up late summer last year.
I’m a bit of a sucker for small soft top sports car having owned a mk3 MR2, a 3.0l Z4 and still own a mk1 mx5 track hack. The MR2 especially made me the subject of much piss taking at work as one of mates once so eloquently put ‘you just love to feel the wind in your v**gina don’t you’. However girly looks aside the MR2 was undoubtedly my favourite of the budget sports cars I kicked about in. I wouldn’t say I regret selling it but I always knew I wanted to foray back into a lightweight mid engined sports car at some point.
To my mind the logical step was an Elise of some sort, more power, less weight and just an altogether better package. So in 2019 I almost bought a colleague's S2 111s but it all fell through at the last minute, and at the time not taking on the financial burden actually felt like a bit of a relief so I decided to not look for another.
Jumping ahead to last year my daily driver was an old Landrover Discovery 2 and whilst I’m inexplicably drawn to knackered old Landrovers it just wasn’t scratching the itch that I get from a sports car. So I hit the classifieds again browsing for Elise’s and wow I certainly got a bit of a shock! When I was looking in 2019 it seemed you could get a standard s2 1.8 for around £12k and a 111s for £15k however now it seemed even a standard 1.8 was pushing £20k and it was just too far out of reach and I had to basically give up on the idea again.
Then one evening when browsing as one does I had the idea of a Vauxhall VX220, I knew that they were basically the same underneath as an S2 but they were much rarer and surely they commanded similar if not more money than an S2? Well alas no, the turbo model did sure, but the 2.2 N/A looked to be a much more affordable proposition! Inevitably an evening was lost in the depths of the internet reading every bit of information I could find on the VX220 and convincing myself that this was the answer.
Now I am notoriously terrible at buying cars, I always have all the right intentions. I do my research, end up viewing a car that has all the warning signs highlighted in said research and then buy it anyway…
This time was going to be different, this was the most cash I’d ever spent on a car, it needed to be right, low mileage good condition and hopefully keep, if not go up in value over the years, and oh it had to not be silver because I always end up with silver cars. So anyway a car pops up to me very locally, it’s silver but it is low mileage and seems fairly priced, I tell myself I’ll just go have a look as it’s so local, but I’m not going to buy it even it’s it’s the straightest car I’ve seen because I’m not going to get another silver car. I arrive and the chap is very friendly, he immediately points out that the paint is knackered on the rear clamshell, it’s flaking and it’s clearly had a very poor respray at some point. A quick look underneath and I can see a lot of surface rust on the suspension components other than that it seems pretty straight.He offers to take me for a drive and having never been out in one I accept. It does seem to drive ok to be fair.
Now I’ve seen an acronym on here a lot of many blokes referring to their significant others as SWMBO’s and I feel that really a lot of the time they are actually a voice of reason for an idiotic decision based off of some late night man maths… my wife isn’t like this in fact she’s quite the opposite.
Once back from the test drive the wife and I have a quick chat out of earshot and she’s saying things like ‘you only live once’ ‘what’s the worst that can happen’ and the next thing I know I’m clumsily making an offer to the owner that can best be described as ‘cheeky’ worst as ‘taking the total piss’ and to my surprise he says yes.
So here it is a Silver vx220 with the 2.2 N/A engine with a ruined rear clam and very rusty suspension, a long way from the car I intended to get but it was cheap at least?
[url]
I realised I have written quite an essay so will stop here for now however I have plans (some already started) to do lot of work getting the car back to a good state so if anyones interested I will keep a bit of a progress log on here.
So I’m very much a long time lurker on Pistonheads, I often find myself perusing through the readers section, especially with lockdowns and work from home it became an all too easy distraction from, well, working...
However after lurking for so long I decided it was finally time to create my own readers thread, with a car that I picked up late summer last year.
I’m a bit of a sucker for small soft top sports car having owned a mk3 MR2, a 3.0l Z4 and still own a mk1 mx5 track hack. The MR2 especially made me the subject of much piss taking at work as one of mates once so eloquently put ‘you just love to feel the wind in your v**gina don’t you’. However girly looks aside the MR2 was undoubtedly my favourite of the budget sports cars I kicked about in. I wouldn’t say I regret selling it but I always knew I wanted to foray back into a lightweight mid engined sports car at some point.
To my mind the logical step was an Elise of some sort, more power, less weight and just an altogether better package. So in 2019 I almost bought a colleague's S2 111s but it all fell through at the last minute, and at the time not taking on the financial burden actually felt like a bit of a relief so I decided to not look for another.
Jumping ahead to last year my daily driver was an old Landrover Discovery 2 and whilst I’m inexplicably drawn to knackered old Landrovers it just wasn’t scratching the itch that I get from a sports car. So I hit the classifieds again browsing for Elise’s and wow I certainly got a bit of a shock! When I was looking in 2019 it seemed you could get a standard s2 1.8 for around £12k and a 111s for £15k however now it seemed even a standard 1.8 was pushing £20k and it was just too far out of reach and I had to basically give up on the idea again.
Then one evening when browsing as one does I had the idea of a Vauxhall VX220, I knew that they were basically the same underneath as an S2 but they were much rarer and surely they commanded similar if not more money than an S2? Well alas no, the turbo model did sure, but the 2.2 N/A looked to be a much more affordable proposition! Inevitably an evening was lost in the depths of the internet reading every bit of information I could find on the VX220 and convincing myself that this was the answer.
Now I am notoriously terrible at buying cars, I always have all the right intentions. I do my research, end up viewing a car that has all the warning signs highlighted in said research and then buy it anyway…
This time was going to be different, this was the most cash I’d ever spent on a car, it needed to be right, low mileage good condition and hopefully keep, if not go up in value over the years, and oh it had to not be silver because I always end up with silver cars. So anyway a car pops up to me very locally, it’s silver but it is low mileage and seems fairly priced, I tell myself I’ll just go have a look as it’s so local, but I’m not going to buy it even it’s it’s the straightest car I’ve seen because I’m not going to get another silver car. I arrive and the chap is very friendly, he immediately points out that the paint is knackered on the rear clamshell, it’s flaking and it’s clearly had a very poor respray at some point. A quick look underneath and I can see a lot of surface rust on the suspension components other than that it seems pretty straight.He offers to take me for a drive and having never been out in one I accept. It does seem to drive ok to be fair.
Now I’ve seen an acronym on here a lot of many blokes referring to their significant others as SWMBO’s and I feel that really a lot of the time they are actually a voice of reason for an idiotic decision based off of some late night man maths… my wife isn’t like this in fact she’s quite the opposite.
Once back from the test drive the wife and I have a quick chat out of earshot and she’s saying things like ‘you only live once’ ‘what’s the worst that can happen’ and the next thing I know I’m clumsily making an offer to the owner that can best be described as ‘cheeky’ worst as ‘taking the total piss’ and to my surprise he says yes.
So here it is a Silver vx220 with the 2.2 N/A engine with a ruined rear clam and very rusty suspension, a long way from the car I intended to get but it was cheap at least?
[url]I realised I have written quite an essay so will stop here for now however I have plans (some already started) to do lot of work getting the car back to a good state so if anyones interested I will keep a bit of a progress log on here.
Edited by andrewc2102 on Wednesday 27th April 23:08
Edited by andrewc2102 on Thursday 28th April 07:57
Edited by andrewc2102 on Thursday 28th April 09:10
Hi all,
Thanks for the kind words, I thought I’d put another post as a few people seemed to be interested.
So my first drive home in the new car was certainly enlightening, firstly it was the first car I’ve ever owned that seem to draw people's attention, I stopped in a fuel station literally a mile from where I bought it and a chap complimented my nice car and started asking me questions about it, he was quite surprised to learn that I’d only owned it about 5 minutes!
Secondly was just how much more a raw experience it was to anything else I’ve driven. What I mean by that is that you feel and hear absolutely everything, stones pinging in the wheel wells, the noise of the brakes (who knew brakes made so much noise) and geez the exhaust noise, by the time I’d get home I’d realised the exhaust was definitely not the standard one.
Lastly I couldn’t help but notice just how darn crashy the ride was, the suspension had initially seemed fairly compliant whilst leaving the seller's property going over a couple of speed bumps, however at speed any imperfection in the road crashed horrendously through the whole car, it can be winch inducing at times.
I arrived home a bit confused because obviously the lotus chassis is revered for it’s ride and handling and I just hadn’t really got that initial impression from the first drive, but also pretty thrilled that I’d finally attained something of a dream car (picture below is it taking pride of place in my garage)
I immediately knew that my first job was going to be sorting the suspension, the way a sports car drives is absolute top priority for me over everything else and was the reason I shifted my Z4 after such a short amount of time, clearly the way it drove was not the top priority for BMW when they designed that car…
However I decided to wait out the last bit of summer and enjoy driving it as much as I could before starting work on it over the winter, so first thing was to get the hardtop off and take it for some roof down drives.
I’m actually at this moment a long way down the line with the suspension rebuild so I’ll start posting the progress I’ve made so far in the coming weeks.
Thanks for the kind words, I thought I’d put another post as a few people seemed to be interested.
So my first drive home in the new car was certainly enlightening, firstly it was the first car I’ve ever owned that seem to draw people's attention, I stopped in a fuel station literally a mile from where I bought it and a chap complimented my nice car and started asking me questions about it, he was quite surprised to learn that I’d only owned it about 5 minutes!
Secondly was just how much more a raw experience it was to anything else I’ve driven. What I mean by that is that you feel and hear absolutely everything, stones pinging in the wheel wells, the noise of the brakes (who knew brakes made so much noise) and geez the exhaust noise, by the time I’d get home I’d realised the exhaust was definitely not the standard one.
Lastly I couldn’t help but notice just how darn crashy the ride was, the suspension had initially seemed fairly compliant whilst leaving the seller's property going over a couple of speed bumps, however at speed any imperfection in the road crashed horrendously through the whole car, it can be winch inducing at times.
I arrived home a bit confused because obviously the lotus chassis is revered for it’s ride and handling and I just hadn’t really got that initial impression from the first drive, but also pretty thrilled that I’d finally attained something of a dream car (picture below is it taking pride of place in my garage)
I immediately knew that my first job was going to be sorting the suspension, the way a sports car drives is absolute top priority for me over everything else and was the reason I shifted my Z4 after such a short amount of time, clearly the way it drove was not the top priority for BMW when they designed that car…
However I decided to wait out the last bit of summer and enjoy driving it as much as I could before starting work on it over the winter, so first thing was to get the hardtop off and take it for some roof down drives.
I’m actually at this moment a long way down the line with the suspension rebuild so I’ll start posting the progress I’ve made so far in the coming weeks.
Edited by andrewc2102 on Friday 29th April 19:18
I thought it was about time I gave another update
.
So late last year I was an idiot and impulse bought a Discovery 3 as my daily driver. I’ve had a couple of Discovery 2’s and loved them but I was getting tired of the agricultural way they drove, especially as I regularly did long motorway miles.
Having worked at JLR for 6 years and driven all of the product lineup I was hankering after one of the more modern cars and when this final model year of D3 came up for sale I had to take a look, and even though it has the potential to break in numerous spectacularly expensive ways I bought it anyway… and it’s fantastic, it’s not really a comparable car to the old D2 it’s that much of a step up but anyway onto the VX.
Buying the D3 meant that there were far too many cars on the drive and the D2 had to go before I could really start working on the suspension rebuild. Eventually I managed to shift the D2 which meant work could start on the VX.
The first step was to get the rear clamshell off, for two reasons, one was that I wanted to swap the parp cannon silencer and secondly it just gives so much more access for getting to suspension especially in a single garage!
I found a handy guide on the VX220 forums and set to work, and very quickly got my first taste of just how bloody corroded everything on this car was. I seem to have a penchant for buying cars that like to self weight save, I own a rusty mk1 mx5 and there’s no such thing as a rust free Landrover so when I bought the VX I thought I was finally onto a winner, I mean it’s made from aluminium and plastic right?
Well I was so wrong removing the fixings that bolt the rear clam to the car was hideous, it was a mixture of snapped bolts, bolts that span their captive fixings from the inside, or bolts that had welded themselves to the glass fibre meaning that the only was they were coming out was with glass fibre attached. What was particularly painful was that it was clear someone had removed the rear clam in the past because none of the bolts, washers, anything matched it was clearly all just random bolts they’d cobbled together to stick it back on, and they were all knackered. The absolute best bit was the two main M8 bolts that bolt the clam to the bulkhead were missing, they just hadn’t bothered with them. Anyway I’ve ordered a full stainless fixing kit for the clam when it goes back together so in the future this job will be a doddle in comparison.
So finally I was able to remove the clam, it’s quite a site removing the rear clam on a lotus chassis, it’s not a structural member at all, in fact it’s all quite ‘race car’ with the suspension bolted to the backbone of the car. What greeted me when the clam was removed however was really quite shocking, I don’t know where this car has been used previously to me buying it but it’s like it’s been parked in salt water everyday for its whole life, the rear shocks in particular looked like they were ready to snap, the lower rear wishbones looked like a relics recovered from the Titanic. I posted a few pictures on the VX220 facebook group and everyone agreed they haven’t seen one this bad before, how splendid.
[url]
[url]
|https://thumbsnap.com/7kcmBmaR[/url]
I had actually picked up a second hand set of the VX220 Bilsteins with the intention of fitting them whilst I sent the older ones back for refurbishment, however the old ones are clearly just way too far gone to ever get reused. I also ordered seriously Lotus’s full suspension rebuild kit which includes all new bushed, balljoints bolts etc, and then I set about pulling all the suspension apart There isn’t much to say about this really it’s a fairly simple job of just unbolting everything and despite the level of corrosion I didn’t really face any issues.
[url] [url]
Once I had a pile of suspension arms and hubs, I decided to get them sandblasted, half expecting them to be so rusty that they would just dissolve into dust as he was doing them. However I got quite a nice surprise when I received them back, because whilst they initially looked horrendous, it was actually only cosmetic surface rust and he and I both agreed they were still structurally sound.
[url]
|https://thumbsnap.com/UrgjiLGL[/url]
Anyway that’s quite a long post as it stands. I'll do another update soon with the progress I’ve made rebuilding everything.
Thanks all.
.
So late last year I was an idiot and impulse bought a Discovery 3 as my daily driver. I’ve had a couple of Discovery 2’s and loved them but I was getting tired of the agricultural way they drove, especially as I regularly did long motorway miles.
Having worked at JLR for 6 years and driven all of the product lineup I was hankering after one of the more modern cars and when this final model year of D3 came up for sale I had to take a look, and even though it has the potential to break in numerous spectacularly expensive ways I bought it anyway… and it’s fantastic, it’s not really a comparable car to the old D2 it’s that much of a step up but anyway onto the VX.
Buying the D3 meant that there were far too many cars on the drive and the D2 had to go before I could really start working on the suspension rebuild. Eventually I managed to shift the D2 which meant work could start on the VX.
The first step was to get the rear clamshell off, for two reasons, one was that I wanted to swap the parp cannon silencer and secondly it just gives so much more access for getting to suspension especially in a single garage!
I found a handy guide on the VX220 forums and set to work, and very quickly got my first taste of just how bloody corroded everything on this car was. I seem to have a penchant for buying cars that like to self weight save, I own a rusty mk1 mx5 and there’s no such thing as a rust free Landrover so when I bought the VX I thought I was finally onto a winner, I mean it’s made from aluminium and plastic right?
Well I was so wrong removing the fixings that bolt the rear clam to the car was hideous, it was a mixture of snapped bolts, bolts that span their captive fixings from the inside, or bolts that had welded themselves to the glass fibre meaning that the only was they were coming out was with glass fibre attached. What was particularly painful was that it was clear someone had removed the rear clam in the past because none of the bolts, washers, anything matched it was clearly all just random bolts they’d cobbled together to stick it back on, and they were all knackered. The absolute best bit was the two main M8 bolts that bolt the clam to the bulkhead were missing, they just hadn’t bothered with them. Anyway I’ve ordered a full stainless fixing kit for the clam when it goes back together so in the future this job will be a doddle in comparison.
So finally I was able to remove the clam, it’s quite a site removing the rear clam on a lotus chassis, it’s not a structural member at all, in fact it’s all quite ‘race car’ with the suspension bolted to the backbone of the car. What greeted me when the clam was removed however was really quite shocking, I don’t know where this car has been used previously to me buying it but it’s like it’s been parked in salt water everyday for its whole life, the rear shocks in particular looked like they were ready to snap, the lower rear wishbones looked like a relics recovered from the Titanic. I posted a few pictures on the VX220 facebook group and everyone agreed they haven’t seen one this bad before, how splendid.
[url][url]|https://thumbsnap.com/7kcmBmaR[/url]I had actually picked up a second hand set of the VX220 Bilsteins with the intention of fitting them whilst I sent the older ones back for refurbishment, however the old ones are clearly just way too far gone to ever get reused. I also ordered seriously Lotus’s full suspension rebuild kit which includes all new bushed, balljoints bolts etc, and then I set about pulling all the suspension apart There isn’t much to say about this really it’s a fairly simple job of just unbolting everything and despite the level of corrosion I didn’t really face any issues.
[url] [url]Once I had a pile of suspension arms and hubs, I decided to get them sandblasted, half expecting them to be so rusty that they would just dissolve into dust as he was doing them. However I got quite a nice surprise when I received them back, because whilst they initially looked horrendous, it was actually only cosmetic surface rust and he and I both agreed they were still structurally sound.
[url]|https://thumbsnap.com/UrgjiLGL[/url]Anyway that’s quite a long post as it stands. I'll do another update soon with the progress I’ve made rebuilding everything.
Thanks all.
Edited by andrewc2102 on Thursday 19th May 15:10
Progress update
So once receiving the sandblasted arms back and determining that they’re actually still fit for purpose I needed to decided what finish I was going to have them done in.
After looking around at options like powdercoating I decided to paint them myself in the end for the following reasons:
1. I’m a tight northerer and it’s much cheaper
2. I like to DIY as much as I can and this meant I could straight away start work and not have to wait on someone else.
3. The car is garaged and will never see salty conditions again in my ownership so even if the finish is less effective it wasn’t really going to be an
issue.
In the end I decided to opt for a paint called POR15, a colleague put me onto this stuff a few years back and I’d used it on Landrovers and had been really impressed with the finish it gave, it sets rock hard and doesn’t leave brush marks. For some reason I decided to go with the grey, I was inspired by Project Binkey from youtube's fantastic grey finished suspension components however I think if I was to do this again I would go black as the grey hasn’t come out as nicely as I imaged, anyway I'll let you guys be the judge.
Along with 2 coats of POR15 for each component, I ordered seriously Lotus’s VX220 full rebuild kit which is fantastic. It has everything you need to totally refresh the whole car, including all new bushes, balljoints, trackrod ends and every single fixing.
It was then just a case of painting, pressing bushes, pressing balljoints, and just generally fitting shiny new parts to the car, very satisfying and enjoyable. Pictures below of the end results.
One other rusty surprise the car had up its sleeve was the rear toelinks. Anyone that knows the Elise chassis knows the rear toelinks are a weak point in the suspension and many people replace them with uprated versions. When I was pulling the suspension apart I was pleasantly surprised to see my car was fitted with uprated ‘spitfire’ rear toe links, however as with many of the other components on the car they ended up looking like they had been salt bathed! All 4 rose joints were totally seized and they must have been wreeking havoc to the suspension geometry when the wheels were moving up and down on the road.
Luckily the chap that makes these is a very helpful, he was able to sell me new rosejoints for each end of the toelink effectively making them brand new again, he did also express his shock at how rusty they were stating he’d never ever seen any that bad… that was nice to hear!
Rebuilt with new rosejoints and rubber covers.
In between waiting for painted parts to dry I was able to get some other jobs done. One was removing the rocker cover and inspecting the camchain, I’m happy to report that the chain tension was nice and tight and the nylon guides looked basically brand new with no signs of wear on them. I decided to leave the chain for now as I genuinely don’t think it needs changing, it can be done with the rear clam fitted in the future anyway.
The other thing to do was to change the exhaust, I’m really not a fan of the aftermarket system that’s been fitted, it’s one of those exhausts that’s just loud, and that’s kind of it’s only trick. Ultimately it’s a 4 cylinder Vauxhall engine it’s never going to sound particularly good, and I’d rather it just sounded like Vauxhall intended when it came out of the factory. I’d already picked up a second hand standard backbox and hoped it would be a simple job of swapping the old for new, but the rust festooned b*****d that is my vx obviously had other ideas.
Rusty U bend to Cat joint
The standard VX220 exhaust system has an exhaust U bend that’s a separate piece whereas this aftermarket backbox had the U bend welded to it, this meant that the original U bend I required had long gone. Also the bolted joint between the U bend and the catalyst was a total mess and was never going to come apart and be re-useable. After some shopping around, it turns out the U bend isn’t sold anywhere new, in the end I came across a guy selling a sports catalyst and U bend and decided this was my best option. So basically the exhaust system has ended up being, standard manifold, sports cat, standard U bend and standard backbox I’m hoping this will be a good combo, I’m also hoping it gets through the MOT emissions test… the first startup was promising with it sounding buch less boomey.
Will get another update soon on refitting the rear clam and getting a full 4 wheel alignment.
Thanks for reading.
So once receiving the sandblasted arms back and determining that they’re actually still fit for purpose I needed to decided what finish I was going to have them done in.
After looking around at options like powdercoating I decided to paint them myself in the end for the following reasons:
1. I’m a tight northerer and it’s much cheaper
2. I like to DIY as much as I can and this meant I could straight away start work and not have to wait on someone else.
3. The car is garaged and will never see salty conditions again in my ownership so even if the finish is less effective it wasn’t really going to be an
issue.
In the end I decided to opt for a paint called POR15, a colleague put me onto this stuff a few years back and I’d used it on Landrovers and had been really impressed with the finish it gave, it sets rock hard and doesn’t leave brush marks. For some reason I decided to go with the grey, I was inspired by Project Binkey from youtube's fantastic grey finished suspension components however I think if I was to do this again I would go black as the grey hasn’t come out as nicely as I imaged, anyway I'll let you guys be the judge.
Along with 2 coats of POR15 for each component, I ordered seriously Lotus’s VX220 full rebuild kit which is fantastic. It has everything you need to totally refresh the whole car, including all new bushes, balljoints, trackrod ends and every single fixing.
It was then just a case of painting, pressing bushes, pressing balljoints, and just generally fitting shiny new parts to the car, very satisfying and enjoyable. Pictures below of the end results.
One other rusty surprise the car had up its sleeve was the rear toelinks. Anyone that knows the Elise chassis knows the rear toelinks are a weak point in the suspension and many people replace them with uprated versions. When I was pulling the suspension apart I was pleasantly surprised to see my car was fitted with uprated ‘spitfire’ rear toe links, however as with many of the other components on the car they ended up looking like they had been salt bathed! All 4 rose joints were totally seized and they must have been wreeking havoc to the suspension geometry when the wheels were moving up and down on the road.
Luckily the chap that makes these is a very helpful, he was able to sell me new rosejoints for each end of the toelink effectively making them brand new again, he did also express his shock at how rusty they were stating he’d never ever seen any that bad… that was nice to hear!
Rebuilt with new rosejoints and rubber covers.
In between waiting for painted parts to dry I was able to get some other jobs done. One was removing the rocker cover and inspecting the camchain, I’m happy to report that the chain tension was nice and tight and the nylon guides looked basically brand new with no signs of wear on them. I decided to leave the chain for now as I genuinely don’t think it needs changing, it can be done with the rear clam fitted in the future anyway.
The other thing to do was to change the exhaust, I’m really not a fan of the aftermarket system that’s been fitted, it’s one of those exhausts that’s just loud, and that’s kind of it’s only trick. Ultimately it’s a 4 cylinder Vauxhall engine it’s never going to sound particularly good, and I’d rather it just sounded like Vauxhall intended when it came out of the factory. I’d already picked up a second hand standard backbox and hoped it would be a simple job of swapping the old for new, but the rust festooned b*****d that is my vx obviously had other ideas.
Rusty U bend to Cat joint
The standard VX220 exhaust system has an exhaust U bend that’s a separate piece whereas this aftermarket backbox had the U bend welded to it, this meant that the original U bend I required had long gone. Also the bolted joint between the U bend and the catalyst was a total mess and was never going to come apart and be re-useable. After some shopping around, it turns out the U bend isn’t sold anywhere new, in the end I came across a guy selling a sports catalyst and U bend and decided this was my best option. So basically the exhaust system has ended up being, standard manifold, sports cat, standard U bend and standard backbox I’m hoping this will be a good combo, I’m also hoping it gets through the MOT emissions test… the first startup was promising with it sounding buch less boomey.
Will get another update soon on refitting the rear clam and getting a full 4 wheel alignment.
Thanks for reading.
Edited by andrewc2102 on Thursday 2nd June 21:14
gofasterrosssco said:
With the exhaust silencer off, worth removing the mid section with cat and removing the pre-cat in the end of the standard pipe - you're not going to notice any big power gains, but it won't affect your MoT emissions test, and if you subsequently look to Supercharge the engine, its a big restriction to get rid off.
On wishbone coating, absolutely nothing wrong with POR15 - its more robust than a lot of powder coating and can easily be repaired with a paint brush. It may not look amazing but who cares really.. I done mine in black ~2 years ago and no sign of deterioration despite 2 year of all year use.
I changed the cat for a sports cat as there was no way I was separating the existing backbox and cat they were welded together with rust, the sports cat doesn't have the pre cat that you mention so that's good.On wishbone coating, absolutely nothing wrong with POR15 - its more robust than a lot of powder coating and can easily be repaired with a paint brush. It may not look amazing but who cares really.. I done mine in black ~2 years ago and no sign of deterioration despite 2 year of all year use.
Good to here some positive feedback on the POR15 paint, I was a bit concerned it wasn't the right route to go down!
Been a while since I have an update but partly because I’ve just been enjoying using the car!
So in the last post I had basically finished the suspension rebuild, and I refitted the rear clam using an all stainless steel fixing kit meaning that it should come off a lot easier if I ever need to again.
.
The next stop was getting the alignment done. I use a local guy whose business is solely setting up performance orientated vehicles, he is very thorough and can really transform the way a car drives.
Rather embarrassingly (for me) he always does a full MOT style check of each corner of the car before starting work, and I confidently announce that 'everything's brand new you won’t find any issues there'. So you can imagine my surprise when he tells me the front right (brand new!) trackrod has play in it. After a bit more investigation we work out it’s actually the inner tierod on the steering rack, one of the only bits I haven’t replaced.
Frustratingly this meant that until I’d sorted this there wasn’t much benefit in doing the alignment, so I re-booked for a couple of weeks time and then that evening ordered a steering rack rebuild kit from the original Lotus steering rack supplier.
Unfortunately the inner tie rods aren’t a particularly good design, there’s a small Nylon cup that’s preloaded by a spring and the nylon cups fall apart after about 5 years, really the only way to rebuild them is to remove the whole rack from the car.
The main issue with this is access, especially the two universal joints under the dash,in the end I found the best way to access them was to remove the drivers seat and lie on the floor with my legs in the air, pretty uncomfortable and claustrophobic but I managed it.
Once out it was a case of drilling out locking pins and replacing the broken nylon cups, then the preload then has to be set by the locking nut and by hanging weights of the end of the trackrods until it holds.
Whilst I was there I decided to repack the rack with grease and re-do the rack preload because mine felt quite dry and notchy when turning in by hand. The preload is set by pulling the rack it’s full length and the force to pull it should be set to the specification, I actually ended up using travel luggage scales tied to one trackrod to do this which worked well. After greasing and resetting the preload the rack felt much nicer to turn.
It was then a case of putting the rack back in the car, and making sure the steering wheel wasn’t so far out there wasn’t enough adjustment in the track rods to adjust it during alignment. It was then back to the alignment place and this time he managed to get everything set exactly to the Vauxhall spec, this included having to add in a number of camber shims as it was previously setup with very aggressive levels of camber for the road.
The drive home was somewhat of a revelation, the car was compliant not crashy, it actually felt like it rolled more but this wasn’t a bad thing, the steering was massively improved, the turn in was way sharper and there was way less inclination to understeer, in short it felt like the car I expected it to in the first place.
The next week it flew through its MOT with only a couple of advisories for tyres and since then I’ve just been using it as much as I can, including heading over to south wales to drive some of the road Chris Harris often using for filming in his videos.
For the rest of the summer I just intend to enjoy driving it, and then this winter make a start on some of the cosmetic improvements it very much needs.
Thanks for reading.
So in the last post I had basically finished the suspension rebuild, and I refitted the rear clam using an all stainless steel fixing kit meaning that it should come off a lot easier if I ever need to again.
.
The next stop was getting the alignment done. I use a local guy whose business is solely setting up performance orientated vehicles, he is very thorough and can really transform the way a car drives.
Rather embarrassingly (for me) he always does a full MOT style check of each corner of the car before starting work, and I confidently announce that 'everything's brand new you won’t find any issues there'. So you can imagine my surprise when he tells me the front right (brand new!) trackrod has play in it. After a bit more investigation we work out it’s actually the inner tierod on the steering rack, one of the only bits I haven’t replaced.
Frustratingly this meant that until I’d sorted this there wasn’t much benefit in doing the alignment, so I re-booked for a couple of weeks time and then that evening ordered a steering rack rebuild kit from the original Lotus steering rack supplier.
Unfortunately the inner tie rods aren’t a particularly good design, there’s a small Nylon cup that’s preloaded by a spring and the nylon cups fall apart after about 5 years, really the only way to rebuild them is to remove the whole rack from the car.
The main issue with this is access, especially the two universal joints under the dash,in the end I found the best way to access them was to remove the drivers seat and lie on the floor with my legs in the air, pretty uncomfortable and claustrophobic but I managed it.
Once out it was a case of drilling out locking pins and replacing the broken nylon cups, then the preload then has to be set by the locking nut and by hanging weights of the end of the trackrods until it holds.
Whilst I was there I decided to repack the rack with grease and re-do the rack preload because mine felt quite dry and notchy when turning in by hand. The preload is set by pulling the rack it’s full length and the force to pull it should be set to the specification, I actually ended up using travel luggage scales tied to one trackrod to do this which worked well. After greasing and resetting the preload the rack felt much nicer to turn.
It was then a case of putting the rack back in the car, and making sure the steering wheel wasn’t so far out there wasn’t enough adjustment in the track rods to adjust it during alignment. It was then back to the alignment place and this time he managed to get everything set exactly to the Vauxhall spec, this included having to add in a number of camber shims as it was previously setup with very aggressive levels of camber for the road.
The drive home was somewhat of a revelation, the car was compliant not crashy, it actually felt like it rolled more but this wasn’t a bad thing, the steering was massively improved, the turn in was way sharper and there was way less inclination to understeer, in short it felt like the car I expected it to in the first place.
The next week it flew through its MOT with only a couple of advisories for tyres and since then I’ve just been using it as much as I can, including heading over to south wales to drive some of the road Chris Harris often using for filming in his videos.
For the rest of the summer I just intend to enjoy driving it, and then this winter make a start on some of the cosmetic improvements it very much needs.
Thanks for reading.
Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff