VXOC Astra-J/GTC

That's not to good i did not see any rust on my old astra j at all
you better get them spots sorted out

Yeah it is nasty, and was terrified when I first see saw it.. Not good.
Plans to use my grinder to remove the rust, atleast on the wheel house were the paint is a rough surface anyway so it will look as original. The back is more delicate and cant wait to see whats hidden under the lamp.. Fun.


Fitted rear mudflaps today with good results and drived in mud/gravel on my fathers lawn before I washed it and it looked like the flaps took most of the dirt. Good.
Pics tomorrow - forgot my phone, too dark now.

Cat.

Sometimes I fullfill my promises:


Not too happy with the gap between flap/spoiler. See later if I fix it.

Looks good send the snow to the uk next year kids keep moaning they want a white xmas


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

looking good
they will keep that show from splashing everywhere

(27:th-Dec-2015, 21:10:35)Rusty2009 Wrote: [ -> ]Looks good send the snow to the uk next year kids keep moaning they want a white xmas

Thanks. First snow. - & + change like on/off so only spots of ice everywere... it is easy to stand on the nose when travel by bike or walk. 

Hopefully there will be more snow in january/february. Fun to ski in the woods.

(27:th-Dec-2015, 23:33:22)tucpal Wrote: [ -> ]looking good
they will keep that show from splashing everywhere

Thanks. Yes its a mystery manufactures not fit them in factory or atleast at seller.

---

Hello,

Done research on lowering springs and came to the conclusion that ebay is ~800 sek cheaper then a famous swedish shop selling the same product. Not a huge amount, but last month fuel bill was around 800 sek for me - so why buy expensive. Never bought on E-bay before so I hope it work fine.

Ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Eibach-Springs-Pro-Kit-Federn-OPEL-ASTRA-Sports-Tourer-J-35-35mm-/141317848065?fits=Make%3AOpel&hash=item20e7333c01:g:VoYAAOSw8cNUUl3p&vxp=mtr

I will fit them without changing shocks (right word?) cause I belive the ones fitted last abit longer, if proven wrong I buy new shocks too. No big deal just big work in vain. =)
We will see..

About the rust... I think I buy something like this:

 
It demand rust be shallow, I presume.. Think this tool or similar work on the wheel house. 

What do you guys think?

Now, bought axulliary lights x3 and will fit them this weekend.
Has checked if my car has canbus, and think it dosent, does it? Took out the high beam cable from its place and started her up: No signal about a broken left lamp. Infact nothing if I not missed something.

Canbus on high beam?

I know it dosent look to nice with axulliary lights but I wanna blink on jerks in traffic and too be honest original light is bad...

Axu-lights soon functional, delayed due to new cable design & pure lazyness...

Changed low beams lights today, bought Osram Night Breaker.. Left side took 30 minutes to change, right took 5 minutes, moved the air filter box to get space. Someone wrote about that and it worked.

Walked in to store:
Me: "Hi, wanna buy new lamps.."
Seller: "Jaha ok.. lets see."
Me: "Heard Osram is good."
Seller: YES! *Swiftly grab a plastic box* Look 110% brighter!"
Me: "Brighter than what?"
Seller: "..."

Was an eletricians from current project that said Osram Night Breaker was good.. Pherhaps he meant on full beam.

100W 2x flood + 1x pencil... Large diffrence from original, now the mooses can see the road and run along the light stream... lol.

175mm so not big - looks ok.

they will see you now

Will deffo see you not my cuppa tea tho.

"Here you parked me"-function now works.. I think it was me that didnt had set beams to AUTO. I was/am a bit conservative and hate EU alot so I prefer to have all lights on 24/7. Read in a thread about folding mirrors so gonna dismount side mirrors and look for eletrical engines, hopefully there is no misunderstanding. hehe =).

New springs are soon ordered.. anyone know if something usually brake when changing springs? Bolts of any kind or joints?
Also service incoming, 22% left on oil.. Is it a normal plug in the engine bottom or I need to flip the car? =)

powerfold mirrors need to be replaced you can not swap motor

fitting springs will have no issues

replace gasket on oil sump plug

Thank you. =)

Can someone help me?

Wanna upgrade the car with skirts, Opel OPC I think it is, something else in Vauxhalls language.

Side skirt: GM orginal?

List of 7 possible objects.
Rear: https://www.bildelsbasen.se/se-sv/Opel/O...-Bak/Alla/ 

Want the car too have this package.
http://www.garaget.org/?car=298696&image=3067056

New washed.. Hope summer soon come, its minus but atleast dry. But they salt the main roads so wet anyway lol.

Someone else have problems with water pouring in at rear doors window corner when washing? It seems like the water beam is pressing the window in and create a gap were water finds it way in. A large miss by Opel I think.

i have heard about that maybe a faulty seal

Well ok.. better then a walrus.

=)

Eibach lowering springs ordered =) Will be fitted when I change to summer tyres in april.. Law say winter tyre until 31 March and studded until 15 april if nessecary.

Still low temp night time. Two weekends ago we had 15-20 cm snow sunday night, it melted away during the week, sun is coming. =)

Cleaned the EGR-valve this morning - hope to get rid of some problem.

Valve is visible and dirty:

What I didnt do was dismount the pipe from exhaust side and intake side, time was an issue, but I noticed there were alot of "black butter" on intake side. I am very happy cause now Easter weekend is saved and pherhaps a drink for Freja.

Intake side:



Gonna buy gaskets and clean everything..

Thanks to Tupcal for his guide without it I would never had the guts to do this. =)
https://www.vxoc.org.uk/forum/Thread-2-0...BODY-CLEAN

do the pipe and the inlet manifold also

Left side mirror almost came off the other day while I drived on the E6.. it started to flutter and when I pulled of the highway into a roundabout it tipped over and trapped itself in the mirror housing, I just rolled the window down and took it. Bought glue and fixed it.

One day later the right one decied to try its luck and flee the sinking Opel

Talked with my local Opel workshop and they said... "Well, its an Opel." Also bought gaskets for the manifold cleaning and asked about next big service, 13700 miles has it rolled now.

2 of 3 car related things completed this weekend.

Lowered with Eibach springs


And manage to fit "whatever it is called"- in english.. Lågnivåadapter in swedish.



I just hope the cables stay, cause it was hard to fit them.

Took an afternoon in total so cant say I used all weekend long... too bad I forgot about a few gaskets so no inlet cleaning this time. 

Next up is oil change and fuel filter just to see if the pressure sound disapear. =)

LOOKS GOOD

Changed wheels today.. no other things done.

The cars 'road contact' is alot better after the lowering springs were fitted + I can hold higher speeds in curves. Not that I drive specially fast in normal cases but noticed a real diffrent. Its funny how I am always first, but still follow the strange signs with numbers someone put up on the side of the road.. hmm.. mystery. 

Oh and would like to thank Tuffknuff and Cornishtaz for the guides they posted about signal adapter and how to fit springs... very helpful and a real good start to read.

Fitted cable from adapter to boot.. Was it a good position?

Squeesed it underneth two black plastic boxes along the treshold (correct word?) were there was a bunch of cables already.

front seat:


backseat:


Then up under backseat and under the boot floor... no pictures. Must now build a box for a speaker.

keep up the good work

(3:rd-Apr-2016, 21:05:34)tucpal Wrote: [ -> ]keep up the good work

Thanks =)

This is what an estate wagon is for..

a good cheap way to lower your car haha

Yes and easy to adjust + little workout. =)

With 1% left on "oil change-o-meter" I changed oil and filter.
14100 miles now and no problem. Soon new cam belt and large service.

Test drived Astra K and not too impressed if I compare to J even if I liked one of the "show" cars they had, black and nice interior. Its still a baby car so alot can happen with K-model within a few years... we will see. =)

Rubbed & waxed the car today. All day it took, good. Washed and cleaned behind doors, was alot of dirty stuck hard behind rear doors... Now none.



Service booked @ week 27.. First week of vacation.

You can tell you have done a good job

Well.. nothing happend except service. Changed a few bulbs to parking light and adressed me about the lamp issue. A burned contact which disturbed the system, not in store that day so I might come back. They also found a fault code on EGR-valve but no problem. Good.

Little worried about one thing, they used another oil than before, historic oil is Dexos 2 5W/30, also what I refilled when I changed, and now GM-LL-B-025 5 W/40. Any idea?

Gonna hear with them about the rust too, if GM fix it or not. Been very busy to do it earlier, finally vacation.

Ok, rust on back hatch. Ok, not so serious.. yet.



I removed the glass, marked were the plastic has scrapped paint from metal. Plastic touches the metal when mounted.


More or less the whole edge is damaged due to bad fitting or design.. no idea.

Visible marks on the plastic aswell and not to hard to identify were the two bottom marks came from.





Gonna hear what Opel say about this on monday, or when they have time.

---

Right side. The better side, as always. Rust here within a few years too.



On the cars I have removed glass the glass do not rest on paintjob. This is a disaster.
Gonna remove the other pieces of the tail lights to see how it looks.

Well... something that kept me sleppless at night. 

Removed inner cover & mud flaps.
Picture show left wheel house, front side, rust due to gravel and salt I guess. Also rust underneth a string of body "paint", some white hard stuff.. We call it "karosskitt".  Two metal peices were rust grown was hidden underneth. Made the surfaces to bare metal and painted them. 



This is rust under the inside plastic cover, also were two metal pieces meet. Grinded it to bare metal and new coating.



Better picture of the area



I did what I could do to fix this. Scraped, grinded and brusched before I cleaned and covered it with paint proper coating. Right side was only the gravel and salt spray to fix, what I could see.

Gotta say the GM can do this better.. Good with plastic inner cover but without proper coating the rust will come anyway. I wonder if GM even care, cause this is a disaster. Car is an 2011 for god sake.

Front and left side fixed today. Could only see gravel & salt spray from pre-mudflap age... So stupid not to have mudflaps, and EU, removed mudflap-law from Sweden.. and look how it went. I hate EU. Merkel and EU-President can crawl around in the gravel and fix my car next time, see how fun that is. Wanna write some bad words.

Also GM... Why have they built a car that spray the whole side with gravel? The wheel is almost outside the body. A swedish car magazine wrote about it and dealership wanna glue plastic covers to protect the sides and assemble mud flaps. GM knows about the problem... If you watch close on my car it is sprayed along the body 10 - 15 cm up on the doors.

Pictures of normal wear:




Both areas has been under constant attack from gravel & salt during 5 years so nothing to say about that. Now it is cleaned and new painted + mud flaps so I hope its ok for ten years.
Also fixed a few places were the car been jacked up at.

Removed some random plugs underneth the car and it looks like GM sprayed alot of wax inside beams and stuff. Very good. Feels like there is hope for the car in future too so gonna give it a new cover underneth. Must see what it cost first, but cant be so much.

A good wax under seal will sort it out glad we will be getting rid of crazy eu laws soon haha

(27:th-Jul-2016, 22:44:13)tucpal Wrote: [ -> ]A good wax under seal will sort it out glad we will be getting rid of crazy eu laws soon haha

yeh... I come over and live soon.

______________________________

Car is done, finally.


She look abit happier.

Tomorrow if time want I gonna check out some OPC-skirts, used ofc and in wrong color. But its soon christmas so need work to do.

a body kit will look very good

Look forward to that

Front mud flaps wont fit properly with skirts so I try to fit them anyway... Luckily the skirt comes in 2 pieces.





Think I took away too much. It was difficult to see, easyist was to follow the arch on fender and just measure...
Next time I know.
Will need more work to get it enough to perfect or maybe a whole new flap. We will see.

Pherhaps paint left side next weekend.

bin them they will just rub the paint work
best thing to do is to use a small section off clear protective wrap
on the front of the side skirts to act like a stone guard and protect the paint
i am just fitting some side skirts myself that's what i will be doing.


something like this then there is no need for mud flaps.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3M-Car-Paint-P...SCxeIvM4_g

Hmm.. I dont know. Still be unprotected underneth. Mud flaps covers abit.

If this aint going well I look at another solution.

400 ml x 4 of color & dubbel sided tape ordered so hopefully I can paint next weekend.

Happy I didnt paint this weekend cause my body was exhausted after work. And no mushrooms found in forest... I am not fast enough.

Thinking of glue too.. PL-400 is too stiff I think, and Opel used window glue it looked like, it is soft and strong but expensive.
Sikaflex 221 is something I gonna buy, its not as stiff and as I get it doesnt contain acid that attack metal.

Any thoughts?

Use tiger seal for bonding the side skirts

Thanks for tips.

Cant say the paintjob was a sucess, but better than I thought it would end. Compared color with car today...


Look at the reflection from the piece of wood in the middle.

This is after water grinding with 2000 paper. I might spray more clearcoat and redo the grinding.

Hard to see anything but: what do you people think?

 
Good kittie.. Kill & eat.

Did you buff it up with compound paste also