My Astra 1.4

Well a bit about me first:

I'm Ben, I was 17 in December 2008, I started learning to drive in March and got my car in May! Got my insurance sorted the day I bought it and drove it 30mile home

I had to borrow the money from parents, £250 for the car and £170 for insurance deposit but they started my plan an hour before I picked up the car and I'm paying £66 a month TPFT with the policy in my name and car in my name so all good!

I then had to give up my lessons, money got tight, but I still drive all over the place with dad! love driving and love my car!

Anyway the car:

It's a 1.4 Auto Astra, I am learning with a manual license but I can drive both!, I bought it for the sum of £250 with TAX & MOT till September 09. There's some minor rust on the car - below rear passenger door & a little under the fuel cap and a small dent below the rear passenger light but again - easily sorted! Inside it was filthy, clearly never been cleaned! and it had horrid standard wheels on! Not a bad spec either for a 1993 car - electric & heated mirrors, electric front windows, PAS, central locking etc - so all good!

Anyway, my diary on the astra forum is some 47 pages long so will need to cut this down!!

When I first got the car: (ebay pics)


Grubby, had nasty alloys, nasty side repeaters (focus style diamond things) and stank!!

So next day was out there and spent the best part of 4hrs cleaning it, got the inside all hoovered, polished using a polish with air freshener and also added a "new car scent" air freshener - perfecto! I'd also bought my new alloys at this point, well bought them for dads car but decided they would look good on mine so let me have them but this is where the first problem hit! the back two wheels changed mine, front passenger fine, drivers? the locking wheel bolt on the car had rounded off meaning the key wouldn't sit in to undo it which I ended up having to drill out and now one wheel is only on 3studs till I can get a new hub! Anyway wheels went on

This typing is getting boring now so here's a list of the mods so far:

Exterior
- Started de-bump stripping
- Astra MK4 side repeaters
- Astra ph2 mirrors, mine's a ph1, so now got nice curvy colour coded ones!
- Punto 3dr rear wiper
- Astra GSi rear lights
- Red rear drums
- 15" Vectra alloys
- Blue tint extra bright headlight and sidelight bulbs
- Brand new pollen filter - £1 eBay

Interior
- New black seats with matching door cards
- Led interior light bulb
- Vectra smoked interior light with seperate map lights
- All switches converted to LED's - headlight, fog lights, headlight adjustment, heater, dials, info display, air recirculation
- New car scent air freshner
- Rubber mats
- New parcel shelf straps
- Vectra chrome interior handles
- Green bulbs in rear grab handles
- Carbon effect facia around info display

That list has probably changed a bit now, but pics ftw!



Anyway, I then got bored of all the blue so added some red!! the display went from blue to red:

Along with my fog switches, although they're more of an orangey colour
https://2img.net/h/oi41.tinypic.com/2ew0il0.jpg

Then I changed my big electric mirrors to manual colour coded later type ones:

and colour coded my door handles:


And then it stayed like that for a while, I still need to fit the colour coded handles but it's quite a long job so will do it when I have the time!

After a while I began to get bored so in no particular order I bought items and changed items

Genuine Vauxhall Mk3 Astra Mats



Bought a really rare Irmscher lower spoiler!


Then dad started my grill

Stripped and holes filled:

Sanded:

Painted:


Fitted lockwood dials:


Tinted a spare set of rear lights:




You can also see the black boot panel behind the number plate I fitted

Then got new alloys (yet to be fitted) and yeah I have got the centre caps

But the centre caps were either worn or scuffed so did this as I'm re-badging my car anyway!
https://2img.net/h/oi25.tinypic.com/25h1hd0.jpg

Lower spoiler fitted:


Got some stickers, C14SE being my engine type:

When on the car it'll just be the writing and the ring, no background

Only my front mats were genuine vauxhall, the rears were universal and I got fed up of them not fitting, so this happened:



Then wired in my switch for my sub & amp




Then fitted my bargain very rare sunroof wind deflector (again genuine vauxhall) and driving with this is awesome!


And that's now how the car stands!

Then a few weeks back I won a set of electric! m3 mirrors so got them sanded down and sprayed!



One is finished but the other needs spraying haven't had much time recently so still need to get round to it!

Also won a sub and amp on ebay for £10.50, just need to order my wiring kit


Made a wooden boot floor so its all level:

I'm going to redo the bit on the right so it is cut better but the jigsaw broke on the crap bit hence the bad quality shaping etc

Going to order some carpet and make a proper made to fit carpet

Then it hit 102k


And that's it!!! up to date at last!!

But...

Tt's that time of the year again when both Tax & Mot are due! tax runs out 31st this month, MOT 6th next month and being I can't tax it without MOT what better chance than to take it off the road for a while and get all the little jobs I've had planned for a while done!

To help me do these things I've made a list

-Sort body work out, proper wash
-Sort any rust
-Fit rest of my colour coded handles
-Re-Fit rear vauxhall badge
-De-rust rear sub frame and paint
-De-rust front legs and paint
-Refurb current alloys, smooth over badge area and spray in dark grey
-Remove bumpers and clean behind and sort any rust
-Wire in temp sensor
-repaint calipers and drums
-proper polish and sort as many of the bad paint areas as possible
-paint rear arches

Then all being well:

-cam belt change
-paint exhaust manifold with new gasket
-Oil change (already got filter)

I want to do all the above because I've no proof when belts etc were changed and although it's a small block engine, damage would be as bad, it's still not worth it and for the sake of new gaskets and belts - I'd rather get it done!!

I'm not really sure how long it's all going to take me but hey it's a project so will be lots of updates with lots of pictures

EDIT: not quite finished yet as ive got a new interior with modified door cards but will update this later as that's actually my current progress type thing so will update it as I go

good work mate would like to see this car in the flesh one day

Admin wrote:good work mate would like to see this car in the flesh one day

You will mate, I have major long term plans but you'll see it as soon as I pass!

Wow ! thats really nice work

yeah have you booked your test yet then ?

chazza wrote:Wow ! thats really nice work

Thanks loads more to do yet but getting done

Admin wrote:yeah have you booked your test yet then ?

Nope, gonna have a few lessons then book it

Well just been out on the car for a few hours and my vectra electric sunroof motor is now all fitted and working

Had to mod the casing a bit, but only a 4/5cm cut on the casing was needed and it bolted straight up so now got full electrics (bar rear windows but working on it )

Well my M3 mirrors are now finished and fitted and look really nice imo and I also wired in my temp sensor today so no longer have --:-- to the right of my display



Also bought some brand new disks from Bennetts today so will fit them when I've got a new passenger side hub




Soon I'll be getting a rear disk conversion from another astra so will be bye bye drums and hello disk brakes and then my twin exhaust

good work

Cheers

Should be going to try out my next mod this week, vectra b centre console



As you can see it houses 2 cup holders, the ash tray is smaller and the cig lighter isn't hidden and is mounted to the right, it also comes with factory arm rest with storage underneath!

very swiss

Well haven't updated this as I did the work so will do it all in one go, it's not in any order

So this weeks work:

Got my new disks fitted and painted my callipers from red to black, still need to paint the passenger side calliper but it's all good! Drivers side was easy to do but the passenger disk wouldn't budge so out came the heat gun, got it really hot - one smack with the hammer and it fell off.... nice!







Still need to get finished pics of them but tonight I went out for a drive with dad and got some new pics of the car with his new camera:












Going to get my red stripe fitted this weekend, runs through the bumper and also going to look at a laguna spliiter then future plans at the moment are to take the bump strips of and replace with vectra ones

What ya think?

wow looks good , the new pictures are very cool too!

Cheers

Update coming soon!