Corsa TD (Stood For Ages - Advice)

Phil W

Phil W

Phil W

Soldato
Joined
19 Oct 2002
Posts
9,967
Location
Jupiter
Hi all,

My brother's R5 finally gave up the ghost and the HG went. Instead of repairing it for something else to go wrong, we have bought another car.

It's a Vauxhall Corsa 1994 (L) 1.5TD. Purchased for the princely sum of £125.

The bodywork is in excellent condition bar a couple of small parking dents, and stone chips.

The previous owner cooked the engine, so a reconditioned one was put in, however he said the "radiator" was gone. After asking how it was "gone" he said "well, theres water leaking from somewhere". A mechanic mate suggested it could be a hose popped off after refitting, at the very worst a new radiator.

My quesytion is, its been sat on their drive for a few months, is there any necessary steps/precautions i should take before turning it over & starting it ?

Cheers,

Phil
 
define few?
make sure everything looks connected and nothing has perished, check tyres (tread/air)
fluid levels

if its only a few months just turn it over n see what goes wrong tbh :p
 
Last edited:
around 6 months.

Tyres arent as much of an issue as he's putting the alloy wheels he has now on it.

Brake lines will be checked, aswell as fluid levels. IIRC when i looked at it today, it was the Isuzu unit, could be wrong though !
 
You'll probably need to prime the fuel pump - I've never come across this engine but there should be a rubber bulb or push button that you press/squeeze a few times to prime the pump.
 
You probably know this already but the Isuzu engine is supposed to be very tough.

In addition to checking the fluid conditions and levels, priming the pump etc, if you want to be uber cautious, you might want to stop it firing up first time (remove the relevant fuse) so that some oil circulates in the engine before you start it properly.

Hopefuly the battery will be in good nick after all these months!

I'm sure minidan will be along soon to point you in the right direction regarding tuning that engine :)
 
energy said:
I'm sure minidan will be along soon to point you in the right direction regarding tuning that engine :)
Click to expand...

oh my little heart skipped a beat when i saw this thread hehe.

as energy said the engines are so tough you are verry unlikley to have a problem. but you need to ask yourself why have they given up with it after putting a new engine in maybe the one they put it had cooked aswell becouse they never changed the rad or something?

you dont need to prime the pump just make sure theres diesel in the tank, you can run these engines right out of diesel and just turning them over will prime and bleed it itself :) - i had to do this and was verry happy to find this out, lol

as said really just check levels etc, hope the handbrake hasent been left on for 6 months - if it had a huge hammer on the rear wheels might work if not you will have a fun afternoon :)

and best of all you can get 100 bhp and a verry interesting amount of torque out of it once its running nicley and it doesent harm fuel econemy.

HTH tho i might not be able to help so much on making it run again i wont hesitate to say i can help you find the torque.

Dan
 
Right, got it running after a new battery.

It hasnt been started since it was parket up, however we were plesantly suprised to find the handbrake was not siezed.

It was low on juice, so we put a jerry can's worth in to make sure it didnt run out.

The starter motor is sticking though, so we need to sort out that, and there isn't a hole in the radiator, its in one of the pipes leading to it.

Aside from getting a new pipe and sorting the starter motor, there should be no problems in getting it MOT'd this week :)
 
does sound like a bargain well done:) have my eye on a TD astra van atm, wait to see if its isuzu or GM engine:) and the price. lol

Dan
 
It had a Kenwood CD Player in it, which was sold almost straight away for £30 (was an ancient model) so really we got it for £95 :)
 
Rad pipe was ordered today, £30inc vat :(

Starter motor still sticking, will bump it when the pipe is fitted tomorrow and give it a good warm up, see if that cures it !
 
Last edited:
how do you tell if its an izuzu engine or a gm engine??
how powerfull is the gm version??
my mate is going to be selling one soon very cheep, seems pretty lifeless atm but 100bhp sounds fun if i strip it out. :D
 
I'd love to pick up one of these for that kinda money - if anyone knows of an isuzu engined corsa TD going dirt cheap then let me know, doesnt have to be anything special as long as its not a heap or death trap! :)
 
IIRC the Isuzu lump was used through the Nova's and up to the '97 Corsa's !

They are very torquey when wound up to 100ish bhp.
 
all novas and corsa Bs where 1.5 isuzu D and TD.
astra and cavaliers had 1.7 D and TD both in GM and isuzu, the GM engine wont be tuned. dont even try lol. the Isuzu engine had a black rocker cover with red writing saying diesel or turbo depending wich one it is. and the turbo is at the front, fuel pump behind the engine.
if you buy it and want a hand tuning let us know:)

Dan
 
Found another problem :

As above,

Recently acquired a Corsa TD, and it has had a recon engine fitted, and then it sat doing nothing for about 6 months until we picked it up.

Needs a new starter motor, but we took it for a spin today and theres hardly any power there at all. Its a very "flat" power delivery, almost as if the turbo doesnt even get wound up.

The throttle feels very "short", could this be the problem ? Does the throttle cable need adjusting ?

Cheers,

Phil
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom