Chevette Project

[burns]

Right, time for a project thread.

My Manta showed up today ready to donate some parts to my Chevette. I was worried I may be putting a tidy Manta to an early grave but it turned out that will not be an issue. Would be ideal for a rat look manta though.

The Chevette is going to be getting the engine and gearbox from the manta at the very least. This is a standard 1.8 putting out 90bhp thorugh a 5 speed gearbox, compared to the chevettes 60bhp 1.3 through a 4 speed. I also need to measure up the axles to see how hard it will be to get the manta axle onto the chevette, it's a touch wider but I may be able to work around that through a mix of wider arches and heavily offset/narrow wheels.

I've also got ~£600 bucket seats I got off ebay for £80 which will be going in when I've got some bars welded between the prop tunnel and the inner sill to mount them on. I've also put in a funky little blue backlit tacho I got off ebay for £20 which fit's in just fine with the 80's interior. Also on the interior front I have a Mountney leather steering wheel from my mum's first car which needs a new boss then will be going in the chevette to finish off the interior changes for the moment.

On the outside I need to get the wings off to do some welding before too long, both on the outer wing to sort some scabbyness and to patch a whole in the inner arch where some filler or fibreglass has fallen out of a previous whole. I've also got some replacement arch panels for the back, one of which will be going on the OSR arch to replace the current rusty one.

Having written all this down I realise this could well be a busy summer.

Once all this is done it needs a sump guard ASAP as I'm collecting huge clods of earth on my front cross member when I go down white roads. Then it should be all ready t go for some serious road rallying. The sump on the new engine will be needed to put a red top in one day so I don't want that getting damaged either.

Updates will come allong the way as I get round to actualy doing some of this work.

 

[burns]

So do I. It'll be getting scrapped when I've got my bits off it so if anyone ones to drag it away for a really ratty project they're welcome to it. I got the chevette the day before the last Southampton mini meet, but then had to go to work the next day. I'll make sure I make it to the next one, see if I can tempt fox with some retro lovelyness.

 

[burns]

Yeah, I'm sure our neighbours love us, we've already broken 2 cars on the drive this year. We've just been having a proper look at the manta (with my rose tinted specs on) and none of that rust seems to be structural, it's been preped for painting then left to start rusting. So I'm going to have to have a look underneath it and see what it looks like. It's looking like I may have two projects this summer...

 

[burns]

Damn, I wondered where penski was, I wanted to know how his shuv was going. There's plenty of other forums to find him on though. As Mr Newman says I was doing so work on the manta today in a rare burst of proactive-ness.

I got the head and cam carrier off which are two seperate parts on this engine, not something I've seen before. I've got a spare head which is replacing the one thats on there as there's a stripped spark plug socket on the old on. Everything came off quite easily apart from a tight exhaust manifold bolt and the head was stuck on quite hard once the bolts were out. Certainly not like working on a Peugeot.

When we got the head off though we found some weird orange gunk in one of the cylinders. Not sure what it is though, my neighbour/advisor thought maybe old petrol, not sure though. Any ideas?

Here it is with the cam carrier off.
(Dead Image)

And with the head off, note the gunk.
(Dead Image)

 

[burns]

Hmm, could be I guess. The HG seemed fine though and this wasn't the cylinder that was missing a spark plug so it wasn't open to the atmosphere. Very odd.

 

[burns]

I've been doing a bit of work on the Manta over the last week or so. The head is now all stripped, and it looks like the HG was blowing a bit. The orange stuff turned out to be very thick coolant with rust in. The head should be going off for a skim in the next few days then I can start putting the engine back together witha new cam belt and water pump included.

ci_newman also gave me a hand yesterday looking over the car and investigating the rust situation. It looks like it needs quite a bit of welding, both sills need patches, needs a patch on the rear arch and where the front arch joins the footwell a seam has come apart so that needs welding. Should all be do-able though and it gives me something to learn on before I attack the Chevette.

We also got the wings off the manta to sand back and paint and did most of the surface rust on the inner wings. I'll grab some photos today so you can see the lovely "beige" hammerite No1 we stuck on to keep the rust at bay. I'm still not even sure why I'm working on the Manta as it's going to have no engine before long, but I guess I can use it for a while before the engine goes in the Chevette. We shall see.

 

[burns]

Works been continuing slowly on the Chevette project. Only it's turned in to a Manta project, a spanner hasn't been near the Chevette since I started this thread. The interior has all be stripped out now and a little more rust's been found in the footwells. Most excitingly though the engine is now back in one piece and turning over. Not starting though at the moment. I think the fuel pump may have gone, the fuel filter barely gets wet at the moment. The other posibilty is the hose out of the tank may not be properly submerged, we only stuck a few litres in the tank which was presumabley bone dry before.

(Dead Image)

The worst rust we've found so far is this hole in the footwell/inner wing, goes all the way down the seam.

(Dead Image)

So it's mostly putting stuff back together and fixing rust on the cards for the next week or two. Play was stopped for the day though when I squirted a load of carb cleaner (containing methanol and xylene) in my eye and ended up in A&E.

 

[burns]

Wow, didn't realise how long it was since I posted in this thread. The engine was running a month or two ago, very loudly since all the silencers have holes a good 3" square rusted in the bottom of them. It does move under it's own power now though. I've also learnt to weld kind of poorly since I started this project. We've found 8 or 9 bits of rust which need patching. 2*wing tops where the outer and inner wings bolt together, 2*floor patches, a patch between the footwell and A-panel, two patches in the sills and one near the fuel tank. Of those I've done the first 3.5.

One of the wing tops. Painted up in hammerite rust beater. Think I might have to put a top coat on that.

(Dead Image)

The A-panel.

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The O/S which is half done.

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Still soldiering on. My target to get it finished is the 8th of august when the MOT on the Chevette runs out and that gets the same treatment. Then I need to start swaping engines about. It's certainly been a hell of a learning experience so far and I've got the confidence to tackle a few more jobs on the car now.

 

[burns]

One more picture that didn't fit in my last post. Todays welding, not too tidy, but seems to do the job.

(Dead Image)

Also is there any chance a passing mod could change the thread title to "Manta/Chevette Project" please? Wouldn't want too mislead people now would we.

 

[burns]

Come on dave, get cracking Only 14 days til the MOT runs out on the shuv..

Sell the manta, buy an MR2.. you know you want to

Heh, go on then, I'll swap you.

TBH I know nothing about paint. What I'm doing at the moment is trying to keep the rust at bay as much as possible. As you can see from the first pictures there's a lot of other painting do do as well as just sealing up my welding. Is acid etch the best stuff to use then?

My house mate as a 3HP compressor so I could get a spray gun and give the rest of the stuff I do a going over with that. I've been using zinc weld through primer on the under side of these repairs where I won't have access once the welding is done. *Goes and looks up davids 182*

 

[burns]

w000000000000000000000000000t!!!

Passed the MOT today .

Advisories on condensation in the head lamps and worn ARB bushes and a rusty rear arch. It's made me a very happy bunny. Now all I need to do is get some paint on it so it has a chance of passing next year. I seem to be having auto-choke problems too, on the way home it would start idling at 2000rpm for no apparent reason, not sure what that's about. I'll try and get a weber on there ASAP and that should get me more power, a manual choke and better MPG.

It's now running calipers from a Calibra and vented disks from a Carlton so the brakes should be a lot better than the standard ones, plus one of them isn't seized.

I need to get a gearlever gaitor before I die of CO poisoning too.

Might have to start doing some work on the Chevette again soon.

 

[burns]

I think I'll just paint it at some point. I'm still not convinced of the brilliance of this ankhor wax stuff. My petrol gauge seems to have died at some point as well, should make actually driving places a bit scary:s.

 

[burns]

Air leaks into the vacuum side of the induction system are just about the most common cause of high idle speed - could be worth looking into

The idle's settled down a bit now having clocked up 2000 miles.

That however is inconsequential as I have now bought a cav SRi ready to donate an engine to the manta cause. Soon it'll be running 130bhp, not a huge amount but it's pretty much a 50% increase. It'll also provide a better fuel economy and have no crappy carb to worry about. Yay.

So the chevette project's going well really. It's still sitting in the garage, but now I've realised just how rotten it is and I can't be bothered to fix it, the manta was getting done when I was conveniently unemployed.

Incidentally, I found an ignition barrel in the hole in the last picture, I'm not quite sure how it got there, but it was very rusty.

 

[burns]

Poor shuv

Yeah, but I can rebuild it, we have the technology it will be stonger, faster etc.






But I just can't be arsed when it's this cold out doors.
At least I will have some of a manta engine going spare to put in it one day.

 

[burns]

Well it was nice and sunny today and not so cold so I acctually did some work on the Chevette for the first time since June or so. I've chopped both the inner wing tops off, and replaced the NS one with lovely fresh steel. The OS one is going to have to wait until after the Manta has it's new engine I think as the Cavalier arrives tomorrow morning.

The OS wing before:

The OS wing after:

And the NS wing with added new metal!

That just leaves patches in both sills, the OS inner wing, and a chassis rail box section kind of thing. The plan is to have it MOTed again by June, ready to move house without having to tow it. Should be fairly easy if I pull my finger out.