Ah, if only we could still buy cars like that! :)
Those tyres would cope with pot-holes much better than today's rubber bands.
(I have fond memories of the Recaro's in my 1978 Capri - they were awesome).
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I don't recall seeing many Astra MK1 (is that C or D?) SR models; one mate had one, but then three other mates all had SRis, which seemed much more common. Much the same trim, wheels etc. as the SR but with the 1.8 injection engine used in the Cavalier SRi.
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Great Clip!
My 1st car was a Mk1 Astra, although the one in that clip was a posh one.
i did not have Recaro's or a 5 speed gear box, and it was only a 1.3.
It was a good car though non theless - fond memories of that.
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My late father bought a nearly new Astra Mk1 1600 L estate back in '86; when he gave up driving 10 years ago he gave it to SWMBO. Boy did it fly along, reasonably gutsy engine (for its day) and a fairly light body. Brakes were carp though, worst I've had on any car before or since.
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What am I saying??? Just remembered that the injected version of the Astra SR was the GTE, not the SRi, whoops.
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>> Brakes were carp though, worst I've had on any car before or since.
The Mk1 was originally LH drive (aka Opel Kaddett). When converted to RH drive, they left the braking servo and master cylinder on the LH side of the engine bay and used a cable to connect to the brake pedal. The braking efficency was lost through the cable.
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>> The Mk1 was originally LH drive (aka Opel Kaddett). When converted to RH drive, they
>> left the braking servo and master cylinder on the LH side of the engine bay
>> and used a cable to connect to the brake pedal. The braking efficency was lost
>> through the cable.
>>
Ah yes, now you mention it I recall the brake fluid reservoir being on the wrong side, I'd forgotten about that.
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Those brakes suffered with sliding pistons, caliper slides that seized we used to change them very often same on cavalier of same age.
Rubbish design soon as cap or seal split water got in and bingo there seized.
A flying machine the mark 1/2 i loved them the GTE, SR was the spec to have.
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>> Those brakes suffered with sliding pistons, caliper slides that seized we used to change them
>> very often same on cavalier of same age.
>>
>> Rubbish design soon as cap or seal split water got in and bingo there seized.
The thing that most DIYers got wrong with this design of brake was in using copperslip on the caliper slides.
The rubber "seal" in the slides would exapnd and the slide would lock. If proper clear grease were used, as provided in seal kits by Vauxhall, the slides were fine.
Water only got in if someone used a sharp chisel to take off the metal caps on the end of the slide - again, if the job were done properly, the slides were fine.
For a few years, I ran a 1984 mkI 1600 diesel - which was really slow. Back then, there weren't as many diesel pumps at petrol stations alongside petrol pumps as there are now, and filling up was frequently a case of queuing with the trucks.
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I seem to remember Halfords used to sell a pair of slides, new metal caps and a sachet of the correct grease in their 'brake pad fitting kit' section for a fiver, or thereabouts. My Cavalier had very bent/ill fitting caps which had allowed the crud to get in. I stumbled across the Halfords items by pure accident and bought a set. Never had any problem after that.
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>> The thing that most DIYers got wrong with this design of brake was in using copperslip on the caliper slides.
>> If proper clear grease were used, as provided in seal kits by Vauxhall, the slides were fine.
White grease was supplied with my kit. Vauxhall wouldn't sell it separately, but I found that the local motorist centre down the road sold it in small sachets. Lithium grease, IIRC. Or was it marine grease?
Last edited by: VxFan on Sat 29 Jan 11 at 17:37
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A mate had an SR just like the one in the ad. Quick little so-and-so from memory and very free revving like all the Vauxhall OHC engines of the era were.
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Also I tried to remove the heater motor, as mine used to do nothing but very loudly squeal.
However as the heater motor housing was moved over to the right hand side (as you look towards the rear of the engine bay from the front) for the right hand drive models there was a brake servo right in the way so it made that job a right pig, although its probably a walk in the park compared to modern engine bays
On another note my Girlfreind at the time, her (1980) VW Polo did not have a servo at all - and the brakes where rubbish on that car.
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I remeber having a Mark2 (or was it 3) Astra GTE on hire for a week. Went like the clappers. Lovely engine and gearbox. Pity about the suspension... One for the hooligans..
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>> I remeber having a Mark2 (or was it 3) Astra GTE on hire for a
>> week. Went like the clappers. Lovely engine and gearbox. Pity about the suspension... One for
>> the hooligans..
The mk2 GTE 16v is one of my favourite mass market cars of all time. Flawed, and not as good as the competition, but faster, with a gorgeous peach of an engine, and just so exciting. It had a certain aggressive character that just made you drive it stupidly. :-)
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Yes, we had a 1.8 Cavalier CD as a pool car, I remember seeing indicated 100mph in 3rd and it would routinely rev to nearly 7K. That car took so much stick and never missed a beat, An amazing engine, wish they still made them like that!.
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>> Yes, we had a 1.8 Cavalier CD as a pool car, I remember seeing indicated
>> 100mph in 3rd and it would routinely rev to nearly 7K. That car took so
>> much stick and never missed a beat, An amazing engine, wish they still made them
>> like that!.
>>
Around '87 our pool car was a Cavalier GLSi with the 2 litre 8v engine, I must admit I did tend to use a 'change up as the rev limiter kicks in' approach on the rare occasions I drove it (around 7500 rpm) ; they never seems to give any trouble though.
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>> On another note my Girlfreind at the time, her (1980) VW Polo did not have
>> a servo at all - and the brakes where rubbish on that car.
>>
Wifey's 1986 one still didn't have a servo. I don't remember the brakes being rubbish, but of course they took more effort. Preserves the pads though!
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>> On another note my Girlfreind at the time, her (1980) VW Polo did not have
>> a servo at all - and the brakes where rubbish on that car.
My sister had the same model. Being as I worked in London and she wanted to go meet some friends for a weekend could she drop her car at my office in Uxbridge then collect it from my house on Sunday? No prob says I and she duly appears briefly at the office's public counter and hands over the keys.
Jump in at end of day, out the office car park and left into a mainish road where I somehow stopped for the lights.
Drove it the remiinig 10 miles very very gingerly - I think, as well as the absent servo (not uncommon at the time) it was another case where the master cylinder ws left in the LHD position.
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>>
>> The Mk1 was originally LH drive (aka Opel Kaddett).
They're all designed in LHD in the first place, although I suppose more care is taken these days to try and make the design as transferrable as possible.
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things i remember about the mk1
the burnt orange paintwork always faded badly
the wings were made of gateau
the brakes were indeed appalling i once did the cable to the pedal up slightly then got a phone call a few hours later to say the brakes has seized on and what was i going to do about it (i went and got it)
the rear shoes had weak rear springs
the rear axle was dangerousk
the opel with the 1.2 pushrod engine was asthmatic once it had done a few
position of steering wheel was tiresome after a while
they looked dreadful inside when all the black plastic had been back to blacked throughout
sills were very difficult to weld up as the edges turned to cardboard and fizzed rather than take the hot flame of the torch
think thats enough for now
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Notice how in the ad for the Astra, among the list of the cars good points (Recaro seats, 5 speed gearbox etc), they mention "Front Wheel Drive".
We have argued the FWD v RWD debate to death of course. Just mentioning to point out that there was a time when FWD was considered an attractive selling point.
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Several old Vauxhall adverts on www.visit4info.com (as well as 1001 other adverts)
Glad my Vectra doesn't do this when I fill up though.
tinyurl.com/27kt64z
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My 95 180i auto is still going strong at 220 000kms.
Cruises nicely at 130+, and sips fuel on the long runs.
Drove a HIDEOUS Coarsa last week, as a tester. Gutless 1.4 POS, loaded with all the bling, but was missing stuff like PDC, which is strange cos the visibility is so poor.
It droned along at 4000 rpm at motorway speed, and I was always looking for another gear 1-2-3-4-5 and it needed a 6th!
also, it was in bright yellow. Yeeeuch.
expect a review later.
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Oh thanks for that I had one of those in Opel form in a beautiful metallic gold. I loved that car.... I can still hear Bryan Adams and Reckless thumping away on the auto-reverse casette. Those Recaros always caught everybody's attention and they reclined pretty well too I seem to recall :-).
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A friend had a 1983 Astra 1.6 Export S - two-tone red and black, otherwise identical to the SR right down to the alloy wheels.
It was faster than all our 1.6 Cavaliers and 1.3 Astras, too.
We were all Vauxhall converts in the early 90s, split equally between Cavs and Astras accordling to what we could insure. After a couple of years we progressed on to SRis and GTEs, with their attendant fuel leaks.
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Ahh yes the leaking flexible joints under the B posts....
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Tidy looking 1600 SR here, although I don't think the body coloured grille is original:-
www.flickr.com/photos/triggerscarstuff/5028995387/
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>> the leaking flexible joints under the B posts
The 1.8i used to leak anywhere by all accounts.
Mate had his (rear-mounted.electric) fuel pump pop off a hose in the middle of Sandy market place and pump 10 gallons of petrol onto the floor - had the police out spreading sand on it.
And my uncle had a C-reg 5-door GTE (rare beast that was) which sprayed petrol all over the hot exhaust manifold one day. How it didn't go up is anyone's guess.
I heard of at least two other 1.8i's with similar problems.
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Replacing fuel pump support bobbins and fuel pipe was a common job when these cars were in for service - at the Vauxhall dealership, we kept the right pipe and rubber bobbins in stock.
It was worse on Carltons and Senaotr As - there was a rat's nest of high pressure pipework round the injectors which would fray and leak. On later cars, the fuel was delivered by a one piece fuel manifold which clipped onto the injectors, but the earlier L jetronic systems didn't have this.
Among the joys of cars of this vintage were seperate ECUs controlling different aspects of the engine management. Senator As had seperate fuel, ignition and idle speed control units - a real joy during fault diagnosis!
The other common basic fuel system problem was the tank breather pipes in the rear O/S wheel arch - these would perish and let water into the tank. These were another item that we looked for during a main dealer service, but which I imagine was overlooked once the cars escaped into the wild.
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>> It was worse on Carltons and Senaotr As - there was a rat's nest of
>> high pressure pipework round the injectors which would fray and leak. On later cars, the
>> fuel was delivered by a one piece fuel manifold which clipped onto the injectors, but
>> the earlier L jetronic systems didn't have this.
Yes, my '87 Monza suffered from this - I had two days of backache after bending over the engine replacing all the rubber sections of pipe. The fuel used to leak onto a hot exhaust manifold. On the news you now hear about Toyota recalls for a 'possible' fuel leak affecting some models. They should have looked at my car - what a joke.
Reading the rest of your post, I'm glad I scrapped the car rather than sort out the idling problems - looks like I could have spent a lot of time and money curing this.
Opels of this vintage, and Vauxhalls I believe, suffered from poor quality wiring that went brittle with age, also the wiring looms were of a length that there was only just enough to reach the dash switches and no slack - I had a hell of a job trying to reconnect them after doing some repair work.
They were also prone to severe corrosion along the front inner wing area - the first I knew about this was when I overcooked it at a roundabout hanging the tail out, and rode up the kerb after over correcting - the next day the outer wing was higher than the bonnet line!
Monza's - a nice car to look at but quite a few weak points. And a car for people with deep pockets.
EDIT - But the best seats I've ever had in a car, dark chocolate recaro's, I should have taken them out and made them into office chairs!
Last edited by: corax on Sun 30 Jan 11 at 11:28
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>>looks like I could have spent a lot of time and money curing this.
Very easily, yes!
These early engine management systems, like the injection systems on the mkI Astras of this thread did not have self diagnostic capability. There was no option of plugging in a computer to obtain live data, there were no blink codes or trouble codes to guide fault diagnosis.
The closest you could get to seeing the system from the ECU's perspective was by using what was called a breakout box, which plugged into the ECU harness connector, and allowed you to easily connect a multimeter to the pins - with this box, and the workshop manual which told you which breakout terminal tallied with which ECU connector, and then with what sensor or actuator, you could work your way through the system.
This procedure was tedious even when you had a well defined fault. With intermittent faults which might or might not be present while you were looking for them, it was rather difficult.
Another point of note about these early electronic systems was that they were much moresusceptible to corruption and damage from spurious electrical signals caused by interference. An early Senator B I worked on had a number of expensive automatic gearbox ECUs fitted before someone worked out that it was electrical noise from the spurious aftermarket high tension ignition leads which was wiping the ECUs programable memory.
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>> These early engine management systems, like the injection systems on the mkI Astras of this
>> thread did not have self diagnostic capability. There was no option of plugging in a
>> computer to obtain live data, there were no blink codes or trouble codes to guide
>> fault diagnosis.
And the Bosch Motronic I have on my car now really is a fantastic piece of technology compared to the early versions. I have never had to touch it apart from replace the air filter and run some injector cleaner through it. It just starts and runs year after year with no glitches.
I guess that manufacturers were at the same stage developing petrol injection as they are now with diesel technology, where there are problems due to under development, in itself due to the pressure to comply with emissions standards over too short a period of time.
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I seem to recall my 85 Cavalier 1.8 SRi had electronic fuel injection and a conventional electronic ignition system with a good old rotor arm distributor. You could set it for unleaded fuel, for example, by retarding the ignition using a strobe light and turning the distributor to suit.
Mine was largely troublefree. I had a pump relay burn out, which was caused by a dodgy aftermarket immobiliser shorting out (lots of smoke), but otherwise it was fine.
I really liked these engines. Smooth, gutsy, reliable, easy to work on, and very free revving. I drove mine hard for a couple of years, and it needed very little other than routine servicing.
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>> You could set it for unleaded fuel, for example, by retarding the ignition using a strobe >> light and turning the distributor to suit.
>>
I had one of about that vintage and it had a jumper link under the under the bonnet which you changed according the fuel used. My boss drove it while set to low actane fuel and he told me to buy the more expensive stuff!
>> Mine was largely troublefree.
>>
Mine broke its cambelt multiple times, including once leaving me in lane 3 on M62. I stopped in traffic only for the engine to die. Thankfully the central reservation was wide enough to get the car on by moving it on the starter. Police took about 40mins to get to me.
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>> I had one of about that vintage and it had a jumper link under the
>> under the bonnet which you changed according the fuel used. My boss drove it while
>> set to low actane fuel and he told me to buy the more expensive stuff!
>>
>> >> Mine was largely troublefree.
My 1993 2.0 8V Cavalier had a simaler thing, a jumper/connecter that you simply turned around under the bonnet depending on what type of fuel you wanted to use.
This car however I ran into the ground, and it was vertually indestructable, i used to do to a 25 round trip daily, and then a 160 mile round trip every weekend, the car was NEVER serviced and it only had to go when it dumped half a tank of petrol outside my parents house (the fuel tank split) - not once did it ever "complain" at the abuse it used to get.
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Vauxhall - Anyone fancy a new Astra SR? - Bill Payer
