Johnny A's delightfully different Carlton Estate

[Johnny A]

Had this for about 9 months now, its the most versatile car i've ever owned and probably one of the least rusty lmao

The first few posts by me are copy/pasted from another site that has followed the car since I bought it, so there will be continuity errors but it should all make sense!! Also there will be a few references to people on the Total Carlton website, just ignore that!

Spec: 1993 Vauxhall Carlton Estate
2.0 8v 115bhp engine and manual 5-speed gearbox (rear wheel drive)
Usage and goals:
Daily driver. Goals are comfort, cheap style, good fuel economy and ability to tow and transport gear.
Modifications to date:
Vauxhall Vectra-C 16" structured 5-spoke steel wheels, front standard, rears are reversed with 205/45/16 tyres
Custom made coilovers up front with 225lb 2.5" coil springs and Vauxhall Calibra factory dampeners, 80mm drop
Vauxhall Carlton GSi3000 saloon rear springs and standard dampeners on rear, 70mm drop
Middle exhaust silenser removed, stainless backbox and letterbox tailpipe added
CarPC with built in touchscreen

Future plans:
Matt Black vinyl wrap
Different engine (possibly 4.6 V8 on LPG)

When I bought it for £400:


Prototype coilover:

Lowered:


Steelie mods and fitment:




Latest images:










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A little update on the estate, despite feeling a little crappy I pushed through it and got a fair amount of work done.

First job was to find a solution to the exhaust bottoming out on speedbumps, rocks, twigs, raised tarmac or cats eyes. A large section consisting of the downpipe up to the cat hangs about 2 inches below the chassis line, first thought was going to require cutting and welding this section higher. In the end I had a brainwave and decided to space out the N/S/F engine mount with very large washers, this did the trick and the exhaust section only hangs down about 1/2 inch now

Other jobs I did today were fitting the rear 1/4 trims (these aren't 100% perfect but certainly an improvement), de-badging the tailgate and a pretty controversial modification was to paint the text on the tyres with white tyre paint.




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The estate hasn't been modded much recently, all I added was an electric radiator fan. I have however been using it a lot and here are some cool pictures from a little road trip this sunday.


My estate Vs a standard ride height estate:



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Just got back from a Rolling Road day at Janspeed, wasn't planning on running but when two people didn't show up (but had paid deposits) I felt it was rude not to use their deposits for a go lol

Very chuffed with the results, the engine itself didn't blow any smoke out the exhaust and made 99.21bhp and 113.18ft-lbs of torque at the wheels (at a guess i'd say I loose 20bhp through the transmission) so around 119/120bhp at the flywheel is a good guess. The factory output is 115bhp at the flywheel so its all smiles.

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Not much been done recently, had to do a lot of work to mum's XE calibra but I was rewarded with a no advisaries MOT certificate!!

I did however manage to do a few things to the Carlton, but the MOT and Tax expire next week so I needed to give her a fighting chance of passing.

First issue is the rear wheels, as you all know I reversed them and they run very close to the outside inner arches, so much so that when I had three no-so skinny peoples in the back it rubbed like a mofo and de-laminates the top layer of rubber on the sidewalls. Thats an MOT epic-fail!!

The rears have covered around 5K miles already with the silly camber so there is only 2K left maybe in them, but I am cheap so want to use them till they are dead!! So I borrowed the Lotus front wheels:




As part of the planned colour change I plan to remove the washer jets from the bonnet, so first up stealthy replacements were needed, I had my Insignia fan-spray jets left over from my Astra Coupe and I decided to install them in the same manner the Astra-G's have them. I also fitted a shorter passenger wiper blade and moved the wiper arms so they sit underneath the bonnet when parked:



Much better:



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Not sure if you guys will be able to see this video as its on FB but:
Welkom bij Facebook - Meld je aan, registreer je of ontdek meer

18 years old, nearly 110K on the clock and make 2bhp more than factory specs (no mods to engine) and not one little whiff of smoke. Vauxhall engines for the win
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[Johnny A]

I thought i'd update this thread, I have been let down with several key components on the Lotus and so work has pretty much come to a halt

With the show season already warming up and me needing a car with some go for my Nurburgring trip I decided to beef up the estate!

The Carlton Estate 3.0 24v conversion:

and so it begins!! First up I picked up a c30se in poor condition from a friend, it came with some inlet parts and a worked R28 box for £50!! I only want the engine for spares and the mint guides (engine has 58K on it)



Yesterday I met up with Chris (Carlton mad), we poked around his garage for a while before leaving in estate convoy for 24vman's house:


Once we arrived we quickly got down to business, Jon was eager to clear his garage and it got to the stage when I was literally have parts thrown at me lol

It didnt take long before the engine and all parts was loaded up, getting my super-low estate in and out of his garage sounded nasty (the exhaust and front bumper certainly took some hits)



Fits like a glove!

On board we have:
a very nice 1992 C30SE engine with all ancillaries
A rough r28 for messing about with
S6 subframe
S6 estate rear trailing arms (Chris you are indeed a god)
24v front brake calipers and discs
24v radiator
s6 slam panel and radiator mounts
c30se downpipe
24v brake servo and master cylinder (with hydro clutch take off bottle!)
Aircon bracket and idler (this is for the later addition of a supercharger)
Throttle cable
Probably more stuff I can't remember

It all went into the estate without a hitch... well apart from when the crappy loading strap brackets ripped itself from the floor!!

The subsequent weight actually leveled the car out perfectly (the factory estate rear springs were refitted for this purpose)... however chris wasn't happy with the lowering, so he helped:






Highlights of the day:
Seeing the spares man himself Chris
Meeting Jon for the first time and seeing his 4.0 Estate
Getting myself some rather cool new toys
Managing a sustained (and corrected) 54mpg whilst drafting a HGV on level road with the grille taped up for better aerodynamics
Managing 500 miles to a tank of fuel

Conversion begins Friday!

Preparations are going well, The engine has been pressure washed and is looking much happier, I trial fitted the inlets and loom and am happy to say I have only one plug I am not sure on.

Any ideas fellas? It runs along the back of the engine, very near the loom's earth points.

Everything else appears to be fine and ready for transplant, for the time being I am using the factory dual mass flywheel and standard clutch. I am hating the idea of this (and the extra work involved) but I can't afford a TTV single mass wheel and uprated clutch just yet.



Bonnet off, makes work 10 times easier:


I got to work ripping bits off the engine, Adam got to work inside the car ripping the steering column out.




The slam panel although mint had to come off, the 3.0 has a slightly different panel:




The new panel trial fitting:


Engine on it's way out:



Adam got the column, pedal box and old brake servo out:


The paint is keyed and any areas repaired, I found this repair panel already welded in... its not the best job in the world but its solid


Engine pics! Surprisingly the 3.0 24v although its over 1/3 longer its only around 50 kgs heavier (well.... without that damn 24kg flywheel anyways!). Certainly a beast of an engine!


Rear picture, complete with a lovely background image of the crap tip unit!

rubbish boat anchor of a flywheel:


The 5-speed manual gearbox, I fitted the quickshift from my old 2.0 gearbox, an Omega conical hydraulic slave cylinder (more reliable than the Carlton hydro unit). I used a braided line off a rear brake line suited to pretty much any Vauxhall, Adam drilled the hole in the bellhousing and a brake line clip is used to hold the line in place.


I cooked up a small copper line section to join the two parts together:


Oohh yeah:

[Johnny A]

Fit ye bastid!



Rear gearbox mount mods:





Little update today:
Bit of a bad start, I bought a new oil drain plug (had to destroy the old one one taking it off) and they sent me the wrong size and the brake fluid feed line for the hydraulic master cylinder has been leaking!

Oh well! I was hoping to start her up today but the lack of a sump plug hampers that! So I decided to repair the leak in the clutch line and start building the exhaust.

The starting point with the exhaust is the downpipe, the standard downpipe is horrifically low so I had to redesign it including relocating the lamda sensor. After chopping the downpipe up, running it higher (about 4 inches) and moving the lamda so it won't get ripped off I found out why the downpipe runs so low. The gearbox mount and floorpan brace run too low, so I spent the rest of the day redesigning them too!!

Even though an awesome thunderstorm distracted me a little I managed to rebuild, clean and paint the two mounts just before coming home so building the rest of the system should be easy.

Engine is ready... ish

We were able to assemble the engine but it was a bit of a cobble together job, the starter solenoid wire was missing from the starter/alternator loom and we didn't have enough fuel line to build a return....

BUT:
3.0 24v Carlton Estate first startup - YouTube
It sounded very awesome on just a downpipe! Idle was a bit high thanks to me forgetting to plug the TPS sensor in :

Pics of the day:


Currently the vac sphere is non-existent and therefore bypassed, so no dual ram for the time being:


The return line consisted of this bottle, I couldn't resist a little sip


For Murph and Pedro here is the modified gearbox mount and brace:




Bit of a lame day today if I'm honest, we were getting set to drive her today but the damn clutch won't bleed!! I used a pressure bleed kit and bled all the air out and still no joy. Suspect omega slave cylinder is the culprit

Still though, today we managed to:
Sort out the missing starter trigger wire (notice in the video I used a jump lead to start it)
Sorted out the leaking head-2-expansion bottle coolant line (throttle body bypassed)
Replaced the broken throttle position sensor (made the engine idle at 400-500rpm and keep stalling)
Fitted the return fuel line
Finished the downpipe, installed the lamda and heat wrapped the whole thing
Dismantled the coilovers, replaced the springs with high poundage ones, cleaned and refitted
Fitted the front bumper and grille
Fitted the 24v cruise control motor (can't be doing without CC!)
Generally tidied up with engine bay with many MANY black zipties


Engine now starts on the button and idles very nicely... despite the lack of an exhaust!




The downpipe! At its lowest point its level with the sills, the flange runs higher up into the chassis to make sure clearance is maintained... if you look closely you can see the top of the triangle is only about 5mm from the prop!


The two metal ties next to each other are either side of the lamda boss, which now sits upright in between the tunnel wall and the gearbox


Interestingly the engine/exhaust has actually got louder since building the rest of the downpipe!

Small update:
Been working too much on the car so when I was invited to a BBQ I decided to go for that, I did however put a few hours in.

I tried to bleed the clutch again with no success, so I put my brain to work and came up with a working theory:
The slave cylinder cannot be at fault - I concluded that after finding no leaks at the slave cylinder (if fluid was indeed being pushed by the master cylinder it would have to be leaking out here otherwise)
The master cylinder could be faulty (fluid blowing past the seals)
An air bubble could be trapped

So I shamelessly stole the known-working master cylinder from my friends Astra (I have already bought another one but it hasn't arrived yet), I plugged it into the hydaulic line on the carlton and bled the system with with the Astra M/C just hanging in the engine bay. After bleeding a lot of air out I found the M/C would have the same amount of resistance as the original one... until 4/5's of the way down the compression it would start to move the clutch!

With my brain working hard and powered by Monster Ripper energy drink I recalled bleeding other cars and remembering they would NEVER bleed perfectly and the clutch would need to be depressed all the way to the floor to disengage the clutch (after a few days the remaining air bubbles would escape up the feed pipe and the pedal would be fine).

So was the original M/C knackered?? Actually no! (in theory), I checked the total swing of the clutch pedal and found with the pedal pressed against the carpet in the car the M/C was only 4/5's compressed!! I did some measurements using the brake pedal as a reference point and then there was only one thing for it, out came the steering column (4th time its been out now), removed the M/C and then the pedalbox. The pedalbox, M/C and old 2.0 servo were then reassembled on the floor for testing. Using the brake pedal with the servo attached as a reference I determined the pivot point for the M/C needed to move down 3mm and back 3mm to give a total range of movement within the clutch pedal's range.

By the time I had determined the fault and chatted to Carlton_mad it was time to leave for the BBQ, BUT hopefully it will all be fixed on Saturday.

Side view of the assembly:


You can see here the original pivot hole, the position of the M/C hole is where the new pivot point needs to be:

[Johnny A]

Few pics of the recent photoshoot and subsequent paint job:

[Johnny A]

Few pics of the recent photoshoot and subsequent paint job:











I bought a 8kg TTV racing flywheel last week and thanks to a friend a decent R28 has been provided, these two are going in tomorrow.

Today I cleaned up the unit and fitted a set of 10mm (yes 10mm) silicone spark plug leads.. what a difference!! She pulls stronger now so definitely a good investment.

Last week I controversially fitted a pair of FORD Fiesta RS Turbo recaro front seats, I used to have a set of these in my Nova turbo and I loved them for their comfort and body holding.

I also fitted a digi dash, its modified with white LED's so no yellowness!!

erm erm erm oh thanks to a friend I got hold of a coin holder that goes under the handbrake handle, woo!!

The list still goes on with future plans, I have sourced 2 sets of Insignia 17" steelies. These look identical to my 16" steelies but... larger. Why bother?? Well lets face it the car is very low, too low in fact. Two sumps and a little exhaust damage has dictated that. If I were to simply raise the car up it won't look as good (arch gaps). The way round it is to maintain the same suspension height but make the wheels bigger, thats half the reason. The other reason is I have some big brakes to go on and they need 17's minimum.

Since last updating the car has had some radical changes, the week I had off was to paint the car. It was a risky paint job but it was a success:




The original knackered paint was prepped and then the pattern hand drawn onto the car and then each of the four colours (sand, nato green, brown and black) painted on separately.

The whole process took 9 days in total (about 70 hours) and is well worth the effort, but work still needs doing.

Yesterday I fitted the new front brakes in preperation for the nurburgring trip in september:




The brakes are Hi-spec monster 6-pots with alloy bells and 330mm rotors, although they are new bedding in you can feel the difference.

Today the prototype coilovers were replaced with the new ones which are basically the same but:
Offer a better shocker range for the drop I wanted (prototypes would bottom out)
Run Bilstein B6 monotube dampeners (im a big fan of these)
Run higher poundage springs

After a little tweaking the new setup feels perfect for road holding and isn't overly harsh.

[Johnny A]

Last weekend after getting drem's cars to the unit I set on finishing off my new front coilovers, they have performed perfectly!! Not too harsh but a firm ride with plenty of grip.

They are indentical to the prototypes I did but the bottom carrier bracket is a few inches up the shocker body, this allowed the shocker itself to sit perfectly in the middle of it's travel when the car with at the correct ride height (no more bottoming out!).

Saturday saw them come off, the brake line brackets were welded on and the assemblies painted with the usual black hammerite.



The tops of the tyres are now inside the front arches, so over the past week rubbing was a issue. So in true Johnny A 'I'm not bothered' style I took a big hammer and rolled.... well hammered the lips back as far as I could, then took a large G-clamp and wooden blocks to press the lips flat. Then I flared the arches a little... by yanking them!!

The result:



The front screen was replaced this weekend too, MUCH better:




On sunday I picked up a comatosed Dremal and a tired Little 1 and headed to the unit, I didn't get much done as I was feeling fairly lazy but I tweaked the ride height of the coilovers and made a better positioned clutch cable mount:

[daddy cav]

Win

Are you cutting out the rear arches ?

Is that a Volvo front bumper . .

[Kev_G]

amazing work Johnny

[Johnny A]

That's it chaps you're up to date!!

Currently I'm busy getting the old girl ready for the ring trip which is only a month away!!! First off I still haven't fixed the non-existent stem seals and possible head gasket problem, this is top priority now and the car comes off the road for 1 week to have the current head pressure tested, skimmed and cleaned. If you have read through the entire thread you will notice I make several references to a 'friend' taking my spare good head and doing a stage 1 P/P which I also said would be ready before Billing (yes.... July).... well that still hasn't happened which TBH isn't a huge surprise. I won't name names, although most of South Central know exactly who I'm on about lmao

After the head is rebuilt I will add the 30% uprated chains and decent guides salvaged from the spare engine to make a nice bomb proof one.

Other things on the 'to do' list include:
Fitting a Monaro VXR rear diff (its surprising how compatible these are)
Fitting oil temp, pressure and wideband gauges/sensors to the engine
Sourcing high poundage rear suspension
Building a variable valve exhaust system to alter noise and back pressure (already have all the bits)

[Johnny A]

Win

Are you cutting out the rear arches ?

Is that a Volvo front bumper . .

The new insignia wheels stick out more so reversing the rear wheels means they stick out WAY beyond what an arch flare could handle, at the moment I have toyed with the idea of fitting Frontera sport front wings onto the rears to give me around 3 inches more clearance to solve this.... but ATM I am happy with how it currently sits.

Its a Vauxhall Senator front end conversion with a Carlton GSi front bumper

[Astra Dan]

Fkn a!

[dewismotorsport]

No wonder you needed your sump modding that things on the deck! Looks mint and will be very poky with the senator lump in good work

[reecegsi]

That is ace love the lowness bet its scarey going over ramps thoe just love the look of it :lol:

[GTE 16v]

Nice one Johhny, lots of work gone into that. Love the Brakes.

Not sure on the colours but it is very you, if you know what I mean.

[Benn]

Loving the camo paint,it looks frigging awesome! Will have to take more pics of it.. As none of mine made it in to the thread..lol

Brakes look awesome.

Bloody good work.

[Johnny A]

No wonder you needed your sump modding that things on the deck! Looks mint and will be very poky with the senator lump in good work

Told you! The sump is great, no catching at all. I haven't fixed the sump plug yet, is there a crack around the threads??

[Johnny A]

That is ace love the lowness bet its scarey going over ramps thoe just love the look of it :lol:

It's fine actually, just drive slow!

[Johnny A]

Certainly need another photoshoot.

Everyone loves the brakes, they work as good as they look too

[vxlgsi]

Ha thats awsome you gotta love motors like this!

[Bicco]

Awesome dude, love it!

[andy318is]

Absolutely bat **** crazzy!!! I ****ing love it!! :-D

[dewismotorsport]

Told you! The sump is great, no catching at all. I haven't fixed the sump plug yet, is there a crack around the threads??

Very possible as it was smashed to pieces when you sent it me, a load of ptfe tape around the plug threads would solve that I'd of thought mate

[Johnny A]

Post edited - Keep childish stuff to Facebook.

[jamied]

Post edited - Keep childish stuff to Facebook.

[Johnny A]

Post edited - Keep childish stuff to Facebook.