VXOC Astra-J/GTC

Howdy folks!

First of all i would like to apologize before hand about my poor English, it's not my native language!

I was amazed by the extensiveness and well organised this forum is compared to most vauxhall forums!
So i immediately wanted to join this community!

I've owned all generation Astra's except for the MK7. 
Every single time i picked the 1.7 ISUZU block as it's my favorite little Diesel engine ever since it came into production!

My first car, the mk3 (1994 Saloon GLS 1.7TDS):

Lovely little workhorse had her for many years, but rusted like hell and the turbo was on it's way out!

The MK4 (2001 Comfort 1.7DTi):

Had quite some fun giving this car a OPC look! but had leaking injector seals, and overall it didn't drive very fun as the rear end kinda sways everywhere... That and i backed up into a pole, which ruined the rear end pretty badly!

The mk5 (2007 Estate 1.7CDTi) 


Didn't enjoy this car very much, it felt very cheap.. the paint was very poor and everything rattled. This was probably their worst model in my opinion, crashed it after owning it for 3 month! Don't miss it one bit!

And the current Mk6 (2013 cosmo 1.7CDTi 96kw start/stop):

Quite a lovely design, and i love how they upgraded the quality significantly compared to the mk5.
I avoided the pre facelift models as they still have the older generation m32 gearboxes. 
That and the front end of the facelift looks quite allot prettier in my opinion!

Quite love the AFL bi xenon headlights on there! That little dance they do is awesome. But i must say the adaptive high beam is rubbish, it reacts way too late and i end up blinding people easily. So i leave it off!

The heated leather seats do sadly suffer from the well known faulty wiring, but i don't bother as i've never found myself using heated seats ever.

THe navi 900, whilst okay for general use..I was quite amazed that a 2013 car does not have bluetooth audio streaming. A huge letdown! But i use a thumbdrive for now.

I did have one major issue with this car, i had a severe waterleak comming from the left side roof rail. It soaked the spare tire well and fried the towbar module.
Dealer thankfully repaired it all under warranty as it still has warranty till november


Now onto the modifications i've done so far!

-Added the little shelf, apparently they don't fit these to facelift models anymore.
Dealer quoted me 125€ (100 ish quid), so i went on ebay and bought one for 10€ 



-Replaced the horn with a dual horn!
That awful dinky little horn, how on earth did they decide this was okay on a full option cosmo... Went on ebay, bought the GM dual horn for 20 quid and replaced it!

Quite easy to do! Pull out the left fog light and you'll have easy acces, no need to remove the bumper.






Before:


New:

Very nice collection of cars there.

The 1.7cdti J still has the M32 box even on the face-lift if you didn't want the M32 you would have been better getting the 2.0cdti.

I do agree the face-lift is better looking.

(17:th-Jul-2018, 07:44:57)Rusty2009 Wrote: [ -> ]The 1.7cdti J still has the M32 box even on the face-lift if you didn't want the M32 you would have been better getting the 2.0cdti.

Aye, the facelift dtillhas the m32. But on the facelift and onwards they released an update to the m32 box. Giving it a couple of extra oil channels.

Some 2013 models do have the occasional older box in them as they're emptying old stock

All pre facelift have the older generation which suffer from oil starvation on certain bearring.
Same design as on the mk5 



I'm not certain if this also applied to the UK tho.

Welcome fellow Belgian