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Project Stealth

34K views 231 replies 30 participants last post by  corsaXEV_chris 
#1 · (Edited)
I First got my astra sxi in sept 2006. I bought it pretty much standard with 70K on the clocks. Things soon changed - basically the whole look of the car and also the engine (engine number one blew up lmao). Originally I modified the 1.6 a bit and eventually got bored with that and decided to go zlet. This is how it started;

So it all started when I got bored one day. I wasnt really a fan of the standard look so I set about looking for some bits and bobs for it. Luckily enough (for me anyway) someone I know managed to write off their astra which I managed to aquire a few bits for. namely kamei grille, full powerflow exhaust system, smoked irmscher lights, wheels and tinted windows and lowering springs all for pretty much nothing
. This is it after the above parts were fitted:







It also came with full leather interior. they are heated seats but as of yet I still havent got round to wiring them in:
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#2 ·
I soon got bored of it how it was - the 3 problems were 1. I hated the wheels, 2. It was still far too high and 3. it needed colour coded side skirts and bump strips

So a good refurb to take out the battle scars and several rattle cans of gloss black later the wheels were soon shiney black and also got some colour coded side skirts and bump strips:








I got invited to a rolling raod day and unleashed the "beast" on the rollers haha. Came out with 107.5bhp which I was happy with as the engine was pretty much standard bar catback and induction kit and it was running on poverty spec tesco fuel
 
#3 ·
Then Came the 60mm Lowering springs and a few other new bits - new exhaust and decat de-cat which was all nice and heat wrapped, polished rocker cover, removed front tints (big thanks to local police for that mod :(), and also took the headlights to bits to spray the lenses black and some german stlye plates:









 
#4 ·
SInce then there hasnt been much done to it really. This has mainly been due to the crap summer and me being on holiday for most of it. I put new disks, greenstuff pads and goodridge braided hoses on. Other than that the only thing of note really is I've sprayed the side repeaters completley black, sunstrip has gone for an all black one and basically anyting else non-black has been made black or removed except the carbon footprint sticker above the exhaust (which endlessly annoys my hippy neighbour who hates the car - the only real reason it is still there), Most recent pics:






 
#5 ·
So that is how the car is now. I hadnt planned to go all black when I got it but it just sort of happened that way. Over the next few weeks it should be getting a mantzel style powerbox - just waiting for parts to arrive for that and to go with it its getting a CDA air box filter thing and possibly some coilovers if santa is kind at chrismas lol
 
#13 ·
Well, a little update :D

Some shiney bits turned up today, namely a x16xe lower inlet manifold (big thanks to gaz86 :beer::beer:) and also my new mantzel style powerbox thing. Im really impressed with the box, the build quality seems excellent and it came the day after I oredered it so all good really:




And the powerbox:

Fitments and stuff:



and instructions for an "easy fit" haha


SO i put the two bits together and fitted the egr blank and so far so good. bring on the weekend when it goes on the car:


 
#14 ·
bad times at the weekend. I knew the throttle bodies off the xe and xel were different but the mounting holes are the same so I was hoping that the cutout slot you can see on the powerbox was the same. It turns out it isnt so needless to say the manifold is still sat in the garage so its either gonna be a pikey job to fit a blanking plate and fit my throttle body or I might actually have to spend some cash and buy an xe throttle body :(. Then to top it off one of my brake cylnders has burst AGAIN which pissed brake fluid all over one of me wheels and has taken most of the paint off.

But, on the plus side, I have coupe side skirts oredered and onn route :)
 
#15 ·
bad times at the weekend. I knew the throttle bodies off the xe and xel were different but the mounting holes are the same so I was hoping that the cutout slot you can see on the powerbox was the same. It turns out it isnt so needless to say the manifold is still sat in the garage so its either gonna be a pikey job to fit a blanking plate and fit my throttle body or I might actually have to spend some cash and buy an xe throttle body :(. Then to top it off one of my brake cylnders has burst AGAIN which pissed brake fluid all over one of me wheels and has taken most of the paint off.

But, on the plus side, I have coupe side skirts oredered and onn route :)
i love the look of the german plates, are they street legal though? i thought you had to have registration plates in a defacto standard typeface in the uk?
 
#16 ·
ah mate thats such a shame :( will all pick up soon dont worry :D

as for gernam plates, they are legal as long as they have the address on them of where you got them mate (example, if style dynamix made them then they have to have the style dtynamix address printed/stamped on the plate)....also you can no longer have a D/EU/S etc etc on the plate, you can only have GB...i wanted S for sweden for my tank but i cant now :(
 
#18 ·
not updated for a while so here goes. The powerbox still isnt on because Im still waiting for my mounting plate to be made up :(

but there have been a couple of new updates on the going faster and slowing down quicker front. Firstly, i got some red dot disks for a bargain price from work so I stuck them on the car and the brakes are 1000x better. No pics fitted but its not too interesting tbh.







The next bit was I was awoken thismorning to a knock at the door with a suspect package waiting. Turns out its the ebay special exhaust manifold;









and sort of put together





All I need now is some heatwrap and an exhaust manifold gasket and ill get it fitted. More to follow
 
#21 ·
The new manifold has now been added but the old one was a right **** to get off, ALL of the bolts were rusted on so much swearing and shouting later the old one was off. The bottom bit needed cutting as with mine being the X engine it doesnt havea joint under the car. the 1st cut was about 5 inches too short so it needed cut further back. For anyone fitting this on a X16XEL, cut the old exhaust just after it bends back across. The bit in the pics below is the origina and needs to be more cut off than that.



.



The next problem was the lambda sensor wouldnt come out. I decided the solution was to "gently" tap it loose with a hammer. After a good 10 mins of bashing the old manifold the sensor came out but a little bit broken. The car now thinks its running lean eventhough its actually really rich and the eml comes on randomly




So with that sorted the new one went in;



And while skid was bolting that in I set about putting my gauge pod in - big thanks to glasgow_stu for that mount. Yes, I know its not a turbo but the boost gauge also runs on vaccum which is handy as ive had issues with no vaccum which = no brakes so it gives me advanced warning of when they are going to pack up and has helped me out a few times;



I also put a new dash clock bulb in so a nice early 120,000 mile present lol




I took a few pics after it was fitted but when I drove it the colour changed to a blue/purple and looks pretty cool so Iv uploaded these instead








And these are the videos. I only have 1 outside atm and they are all short cos my cam is gash and only does 15 second vids at a time. My mate has some quality driveby vids and stuff that il upload at some point to go with these. The ones inside the noise isnt coming thru properly but turn the speakers to full and sit an inch away and its not far off lol





 
#23 ·
Well, seems like I forgot about this thread hence the time since the last update. The car has changed quite a bit so Il start from the start :). I cant really be bothered to type all this out again so its mainly copied from my thread on AOC so sorry if anyone has read this on there. As I mentioned earlier on I had bought a mantzel style powerbox off ebay and this is how fitting went;

well it seems Im finally getting somewhere with the manifold. My TB wouldnt fit so I was going to get an adaptor made to fit it. But at work I saw a tap and die set for next to nothing, so bought it and with some guestimation unleashed a drill onto £180 worth of manifold and tapped in some new threads which surprisingly worked and the TB fitted


 
#24 ·
Right, work on the manifold has continued. Its getting there

So I didnt bother depressurising the fuel rail and just took it off. It pissed a bit of petrol out but no too much tbh

SO here is the old one with TB and tubing off


Wiring harness coming off


Old one off:






I took the old manifold to bits and the reason why they are so restrictive is pretty obvious tbh. The red arrows show the airflow in thru the throttle body, down into the bottom half where it has to go back up over a ridge, round the bottom loop, back up into the top and over where it comes in before going back down into the engine - all in all a right **** of an inlet route lol





So this is the new one complete with fuel rail ready to go on



And with the top box back on but you can see the problem - the throttle body is going to hit the brake fluid resevoir so my dads work are making up a nice bit of metal that moves the TB 3 inches further forward so it can fit past the resevoir.





So hopefuly the mount will be made up today and it should all come together by the weekend.

The fitting wasnt as simple as I had originally hoped. The wiring harness needs the EGR sensor plug extended and both sensors for the TB extended to fit. There are a few coolant hoses that needed extending and various other breathers and vaccum lines all needed the length changing. Aside from that the old manifold was aweful to get off lol

For anyone interested to fit one of these to a X16XEL in an astra you need a x16xe lower manifold and fuel rail (injectors are the same, fuel rail isnt) and a mount made to avoid the resevoir along with extended wiring and hoses,
 
#25 ·
Well, after much arsing around and various set backs I finally got everything sorted. 1st thing today was putting the holes into the mount my dads place made (they can probably do a few more of these if anyone decides they want to do the same). The two flanges were ground from 15mm to 10mm each and the tube was cut from a square block :O. Just as well they are quiet lol.




Then I extended some bits of the wiring loom, namely the EGR valve plug, Idle control valve plug and throttle position sensor plug



Then it all went together, filter on, tubing in place and coolant in along with new shiney white engine cover and richbrook polisehed oil cap thingy and my favourite bit - the dr pepper bottle catch tank until I get something made properly :)







And then the moment of truth. Would it start...



The answer was yes eventually. Some epic ammunts of smoke as the **** that was in the ports burn off but after that all was good. 1st drive was a bugger as it wouldnt go into 2nd, 4th or 5th. Turns out id dropped a spanner and it was sat wedging the gear linkage so quite literally a spanner in the works. In terms of power tho its a bit better bottom end but after 3k rpm its much quicker. It even got a "**** me thats better" from paul in the passenger seat and it starts to spin once it hits 3k in 2nd gear. Im happy - now for a remap.
 
#26 ·
Well, the car went on the rolling road yesterday. There were a few niggly issues I wanted sorted first such as the leaky 'zorst, the overdue service and the massive overfueling issues. However, one of my mates was taking his C2 GT upto a french car rolling road day so I thought Id take it on for the crack and attempt to show up some frenchies. The results for the whole day were low with the best car being a clio 182 with a full system making 161bhp and a cammed, remaped saxo VTS making 130bhp. Mine came in at 118.2 which I was a bit disappointed with but thers plenty of room for improvement as I sort various bits and bobs out.

 
#27 ·
More progress marras. Went a bit mad with paypal, ebay and other various places and ended up with some new stuff. These be;

Coilovers off fleabay that are on the lowest setting (for extra gangstaness haha)

Some HIDs (so I can see in the dark)

My coupe sideskirts finally painted (because I sold my old ones)

And my grill is orange :S (because I came in from a night out, went into the garage looking for bait, saw the grill on the bench fully prepped to go black again and saw a can of orange paint..... the rest is history haha)















And completley unrelated to the car but this was the sunset over my house last night that I thought Id take a picture of because it was nicer than usual

 
#28 ·
So thats what Ive been up to for the last little while. The Lambda sensor has been sorted but its still not fueling properly but apart from that its pretty much OK. The car needs mapped still as you can see from the pissed powercurve so if anyone knows anywhere/anyone nearish to newcastle that can do it let me know. Comments welcome, good and bad but bear in mind the grill wont be staying orange
 
#31 ·
that looks awesome :cool: theres only a few mk4's that apeal to me, and that there is one of them :cool: :nod:

and i see some camber on the front :D
Cheers bud. The camber is wild :D. You should see how far out the tracking is too, all needs sorted at some point lol

Those powerboxes are ace, I've been to the guys house that makes them. He's a dead sound guy. :D Good work with the TB as well! :)

Give it a service! It'll love you for it. ;)
He seemed a sound bloke when I emailed him. I gave him as much info as possible on how I made it fit and im sure my email I sent him is now the main thing on the ebay listing. Id reccomend them to anyone, well built, turned up within a day or 2 and for 200 quid delivered for 20bhp+ is pretty damn good tbh. I challenge you to do an easier mod for the money that gets more gains lol. Mapped it should be well into the 130s. I sorted the service out a few days after the rollers. The oil was ok ish but the plugs were black with how rich it had been running
 
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