Vauxhall Cavalier Super touring #16

[nariman1977]

As some of you know I bought myself a Ex-Touring car about 2yrs ago with the intention of rebuilding the car.

However soon after buying the car my mrs gave birth to our first child. So she started draining the money

I have not been able to do as much as I would have loved to do to the car in the past 2yrs purely sue to financial commitment elsewhere. But have been busy doing bits and pieces here and there.

I will be updating the second post here on regular basis on the spendings on the car as I am going along just to give you an indication on how much it costs to rebuild a historic car

I will be updating with pictures and progress as I am going ahead. However please be patient as this project is gonna take a while before completion. I would like to do the job properly instead of cutting corners and not doing the job properly, hence why it is gonna take a long time to do it!

Also, we are expecting our second child before xmass, so that would certainly slow things down a bit more again

Anyway, enjoy.

To read a brief history on the car, please see here: http://www.supertouringregister.com/...ehicle/182.php

[nariman1977]

Cost so far:

Buying the car: £2500
Spare bodykits x2: £100
Bonnet: £10
Boot lids x 2: £30
F18 gearbox: £40
Discs £300
Steering assembly £60
wheel bearings £120
AP racing 2pot calipers £160
spare set of alloys £250
polycarb windows £250
Machining of Calipers : £50
Machining new studs x4 : £60
Machining the bells: £40
Engine mounts and machine work: £100


Total: £4070

[Frisco]

Dont add up the cost. You will only make yourself sick.

[flatout]

i'd give a testicle to own that!

[jonlem]

It will be worth it in the end !

Glad your cracking on with still though

[nariman1977]

Summer 2008:

By this time, I had owned the car for over 6months and not done a thing! So I decided to pull the finger out and do a little bit. The car hasn't got any rusts on it as it has never seen road in its life, however there are lots and lots of battle ground bruzes all over her! So the plan is to do a complete paint strip and start from scratch.

Spoke to Surface Processing and been quoted £1200+VAT to dip the car in acid and then do some stuff to it so it never rusts again! Ouch!

And also been quoted £500 to sand blast her and prime!

Don't know what to do. But I know she will have to be stripped fulley whatever method will be used. So instead for now, I will just strip everything off her and wait and see what happens.

I have also had to buy 2 spare bodykits incase they become rare and can't get hold of them anymore, a bonnet and 2x bootlids form the Gsi.

The car has no steering at all at the moment and its quite hard to push in and out. so will have to do something with that first.

No brakes, no electrics! nothing.

Again I think the best option is to strip everything out, put the engine in and drill the chasis for all the cables that need to go in. Once I am happy with everything, then I will see if I am gonna have enough to acid dip her as I would really like to do this rather than sand blast.

THe engine is the 2lt turbo from the calibra I had. But the engine mounts need to be made. Also no gearbox, so will need to purchase a gearbox. I want to get the F18 from the vectra and put some quaife internals in there.

SO a brief list of work that is ahead of me:

1) Fit engine and gearbox
2) fit electrics
3) fit brakes
4) Read the blue book and see what safety equipments need to be there for the racing.
5) strip everything back out and acid dip.
6) spray the car
7) Refit all
8) Go racing

Oh, easy! no problems!

[jonlem]

Being honest don't use anything but a F28 or maybe F23 cable shift box (as Chip has) as everything else will break, Quaife or not ! I also wouldn't use a Quaife ATB if its a dedicated racer, plated all the way

My opinion is that the Quaife SCCR boxes do not suit turbo engines anyway due to the only useful gear being 1st which you wouldn't use very often.

What sort of power are you looking from the engine ?

[nariman1977]

I want to get a steady 400hp at the very most. Will be happy with a reliable 350 as well, as there will be no weight in the car and with the proper suspension it has, it should handle really good.

Why do you think the F18 will break? With the power of aorund 350, surely quaife is gonna be happy runnig at that?!

[philip2]

350 is an inbetween figure. as whther or not to stick with chips or go onto managament.

f18 will **** its self on a mildly tuned LET, so as jon has said, f28 or 23.

[jonlem]

I smashed several F18's pieces with a xe and 100shot of gas and its the torque that wrecks them.

Don't get me wrong Quaife make neat stuff but it is not designed for massive torque figures, people have broken Quaife boxes with a LOT less than 350hp so personally I'd steer clear and either use F28's which are reasonably available or as mentioned the F23 after we see how long its last on Chips engine.

I'm not digging by the way, just don't want to see you go buying things you would expect to be up to the job when personally I don't think they are and as your tight on money you definately don't want to have to be rebuilding Quaife boxes every so often.

[philip2]

not if a quaife box is couple of thousand initially!

[jonlem]

To be fair a gearset is around £1300, add all the other bits and it is easily a 2k+ box as you say and considering Mark Beason destroyed one on a phase 3 let I would not be bolting one to even more powerful engine.

[nariman1977]

I do have a management. I have a OMex 600 series I used to have on my calibra. so will be using that.

As for the box, I will bolt the F18 to the side of the engine to make the mounts, then I will see what I would do.

But as you said, I deffo don't want to be building boxes all the time!

[nariman1977]

Originally Posted by philip2

350 is an inbetween figure. as whther or not to stick with chips or go onto managament.

I personally don't like to use chips for anything more than 300hp, unless it is a programmable chip on the roller.

As said in my previous post, I will be using an omex 600 series with antilag and traction control, although acording to Omex the traction control is not fulley released yet even though the system has been out there for over 3yrs and been sold as having the option of traction control!

[Lee H]

Originally Posted by jonlem

To be fair a gearset is around £1300, add all the other bits and it is easily a 2k+ box as you say and considering Mark Beason destroyed one on a phase 3 let I would not be bolting one to even more powerful engine.

Think Mark was only phase 2

I spoke to Quiafe as I was considering it and they rate it to 250 lb/ft torque maximum they say.

[nariman1977]

Thats nothing! only 250lb/ft! That throws that one out then!

Was this the figure for F18 or F28?

[Lee H]

Originally Posted by nariman1977

Thats nothing! only 250lb/ft! That throws that one out then!

Was this the figure for F18 or F28?

F20 with Quaife internals.

[jonlem]

I'm sure you know the front mount is different on a F28 to a F18 and possibly the F23 is different again !

Worth looking into before you spend a good day mounting it up to find you need to modify it all

[nariman1977]

Originally Posted by jonlem

I'm sure you know the front mount is different on a F28 to a F18 and possibly the F23 is different again !

Worth looking into before you spend a good day mounting it up to find you need to modify it all

No I didn't know that. I just thought they were the same.

I don't want to spend £200+ on a F28 box only to mount it up and then have to throw the rest of it away when upgrading the internals.

Do you know if the F20 is the same as the F28 as I see lots of people with XEs ask to see if they see any increase in swapping the boxes with the turbo/V6 ones?

So the mount must be the same?!

[jonlem]

The mounts are all different, standard calibra F28 mount fits a Mk3 Astra for example, many companies sell kits to get a F28 in a nova or corsa too, so basically you will need to make different mounts for any box you use.

The F13 - F20 are all nigh on the same fitment, I am unsure about the F23 but being what it comes out I very much doubt its the same as the earlier boxes but it won't be any harder to fit than any other box and I can guarantee the F28 once again uses its own mounts as its a non vauxhall gearbox.

F28 wise you are stuck for anything modified as no one does it unless its bespoke if you have cash burning a whole in your pocket speak to Elite Transmissions as they will just about make anything fit inside a gearbox casing and have done with other fast road/race stuff.

There is NOT a perfect box for a fwd LET engine, people are braking F28's now so the F23 is looking to be better box (only as its newer) but time will tell.

[nariman1977]

what was the F23 fitted to?

What about the M series boxes as fitted to the new vectras and ...

[jonlem]

M32 seems to be a suitable box but several people have spoken about using one but currently haven't so I presume there are a few issues to get over.

F23 was a Vectra gearbox iirc

[V6H]

Originally Posted by flatout

i'd give a testicle to own that!

Id give both....

[specks]

i thought you sold it ages ago,glad to see it`s still here though.

[nariman1977]

Well I was never gonna let it go cheap.

And no one offered me a good money for it, so it stayed with me.