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Dave's new 155mph wardrobe mover / Reason #378 why the Cavalier won't be done soon

8K views 47 replies 17 participants last post by  Davey j 
#1 ·
Yep, more frankly brilliant decisions brought to you from north of the border! Up until recently the daily driver fleet consisted of Helga, my long suffering Swedish bit on the side who's been used and abused for the past 12 months / 30,000 miles and has proven to be utterly utterly brilliant and never put a foot wrong. I've also been running the Cavalier SRi as and when required however it's been puffing blue smoke, needs a clutch, won't idle well and generally needs some TLC. That along with the fact the old diesel V70 needs an Mot prompted me to weigh up my options.

Having decided my old workshorse would fail it's MoT miserably based on the fact it's been royally abused and during the aforementioned 30,000 miles and has had about £30 spent on repairs, I drew up a list of possible replacements for it. It had to be pretty cheap, reasonably interesting, big enough to fit all my crap in and be free from uber complex control systems and multi-link suspension and general nastiness like that. Aka, something from the 90's when cars were built with a degree of skill. Plus she stated under no circumstances was it to be another Volvo. Period. End of. Divorce meterial.

So, couple of weeks back I retired the SRi back to the garage and bought this...



:face:

It's a 1997 850R wank-o-matic with 142,000 miles on the clock and a stack of receipts that could cholke a decent sized horse. Recent wallet emptying shenanigans include four new Falkens, refurbished wheels, cambelt and water pump, all new bushes, all new brakes and a new Magic Tree. Test drove it in the rain, suddenly remebered how alarmingly quickly they could get you to 150mph and handed over some cash. A well thought out decision I felt. Ang, well... she'd probably argue that fact to be fair.

Anyways, no sooner had it arrived back home and I had a call from the garage where the old red shed was residing and being checked over ahead of it's Mot. To be delight, it needs a couple of bulbs, a balljoint, handbrake tweaked and an ABS ring. I immediately cancelled the funeral and proclaimed it was going nowhere. Ang, well she was less delighted to discover the driveway now houses two Volvo estates though has perked up slightly now that she's discovered the TRCS on/off switch and the Sport button. Basically they translate as to the "More tyre smoke" button and the "Where's the fecking fuel gone?" button?

Progress, we need progress... so I 'borrowed' Coo's machine polisher and set about doing the whole car. 3 days and severe sunburn later (tis a rather sizeable old thing!) and it was done though I haven't tackled the roof yet as that would be like curring the pitch at Wembley with a pair of scissors. I suspect I may have to hire one of those massive industrial spec floor polishers for that job. Another several hours were spent digging the splattered compound out all the door checks, window seals and off the driveway... the neighbours dog... the house... and that was that.





Only changes so far are a new thermostat which weirdly was the same job I had to do on that short lived Vectra GSi estate. Difference here is the Volvo took all over 5 minutes and the V6, well that was nearer 5 sodding hours. I've also fitted clear repeaters on the wings for extra scene points and cleaned my Ikea/Swedish pornp spec wood, alcantara and leather spec interior. I also nearly electrocuted myself whilst poking stuff with a multi-meter and in the process, the EML light came on to make it's displeasure known. Got that reset last night. I also managed to get the average fuel consumption up from 16mpg to a truly outstanding 29mpg. I now know why the man at the Shell garage smiles at me so cheerily.

On the other Vovlo front, it's MoT expires in a couple of days so I should really go and make a start to it though it's made it's feelings about the new car well and truely known by a) breaking down and b) seizing it's alternator pulley. Investigation revealed that, contrary to Angela's belief, Volvo diesels will not run on air and athat some funny fecker wanted £180 for a new tensioner and pulley. Not on my shift sunshine.



Baws to that plan. One BMW Z3 timing belt pulley later and we're back in business for less than £15. Though according to knowledgable men with beards on the Volvo club thing, it won't work. A 500 mile round trip to Cumbria yesterday would suggest otherwise. So, needless to say the Turbo has been shoved onto the back burner yet again whilst I play with the Swedish twins for the forseeable future.

:face:
 
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#34 ·
T5's came first and they were pretty much boggo standard 850's with the 225bhp 2.3 5 cylinder engine, then they launched the T5-R which had half leather, big front bumper, the graphite 5 spokes alloys and the same engine with a bit more boost and 240 - 250bhp and then finally they dropped it and did the R for a bit, basically the same aside for slightly different interior and the 7 spokes. So aye, the one Top Gear has is an 850R and they've called it a T5-R which is right up there with calling a Cavalier Turbo a GSi Turbo. And... anorak off.

And yes, the black T5 is for sale (potentially sold pending collection) as I've had enough and need to clear some of the fleet...

Bad times!
 
#36 ·
To be fair, it did ok (well, so far) and actually coped better than I thought it would. Given it used to get defeated by the speed bump in Tesco and would happily light up it's tyres on a damp motorway... how it actually did what it did, fair play! That said, in a couple of the scenes it was sitting seriously nose down - really not sure those roads will do anything for it. Sat on 40 series tyres and uprated shocks, hmmmm! Least May was driving it with a degree of care - I reckon if Hammond or Clakson had it, they'd be driving a Scorpio by now.

Poor thing!
 
#47 ·
Double edged sword. I absolutely love them but the fuel costs are horrific. It's one of those cars that, given how much fuel it consumes... you feel it should really be a bit faster. That said, at lower speeds they're pretty sedate or at least feel it, it's only once they're moving they get going. My T5 had been tweaked slightly, probably 250bhp (ish) and despite that being the same as the R, it felt so much faster. Still consumed fuel at a phenominal rate of knots but I just used man maths to justify it.

T5 does 20mpg average, diesel does 50mpg... that's an average of 35mpg so basically the same as having two 1.8 Astras or Vectras.

Honest!
 
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