nzvohc

Well decided it was time to pull finger and make some progress so work has begun again on stripping the car for re-paint.

I masked all the openings and body seams to keep the paintstripper out of the shuts as I don't intend to strip those areas right back to metal.

Tomorrow I will start sanding back the edges with an orbital sander. Will focus on one panel at a time sanding off remnants of paint and filler then sealing up immediately after with expoxy sealer. Once the whole car is sealed up again I will start the fairing process.

Goal being to have it ready to spray over my Xmas break, going be busy!

never been interested in these but that silver one is nice. how did they cut/ do the front of the guards? is it new steel/ welded stuff under the black?

Yeah they grow on you. Joint lines were plasma cut to factory measurements and then had flange welded on to bolt on nosecone, also has mounting points to chassis underneath. The black is epoxy primer to protect steel after grinding back paint and filler. I will blend the guard into the nosecone but the joint stays visible.

All you need now is a proper twin cam

Love the progress on this Andre!

Cheers, yeah TC would be nice, sad part is that this car once had a genuine Vauxhall TC motor in it, John Kershaw nabbed it for his HSR Chevette some years back. Should be able to get decent horsepower with what I have though.

So been waiting for weather to get a bit dryer to start stripping paint so not much progress lately on the body. Finally got sick of not doing anything this weekend and had a bit of a sort through my spares I have picked up over last few years to get go-fast parts for replacement engine together.

I have a few spare heads, a couple have been modded with big valves, one is ex-'friendlyfire's with bent valves (see his post) and another in better shape and more severe flow work. This is the one I will be using. I dug out a wire brush head and drill and went to work cleaning carbon off and degreasing.

Standard head on left, BVH on right.

Looking inside inlet port of standard head

and flowed head

big chunk of meat around valve stem completely ground away.

half way done..

old school porn..

Next job was to install a Stage 1 cam into it's housing after a good degrease etc.

and adjustable cam pulley

Also stoked when going through my flywheels noticing one felt lighter, so put it on the bathroom scales and found out that it is 2.1kg lighter than standard one. Should help the revs pick up a bit faster! Nice.

Next I dug out the shiney bits I had put together a while back, 45 Webers and manifold.

Was a good weekend getting dirt under the fingernails again and making old stuff new. I have a lightened and balanced shortblock waiting in the wings that I will post pics of when I start on it, and then hope to enlist yoeddynz's expertise when he gets back from lounging around in Europe and start putting this lot together.

Roll on daylight savings and bodywork.

I vote 1UZ, they fit well apart from sump location, example below... Had a reasonable tunnel chop though.

Who owns this car? I see it was at the Kaikoura Hop. Looks great!

Nice cars you have there. Was the SL90 a Nelson car up until recently? Think I saw it come and go pretty rapidly on TM recently.

Cool project man, such a beautifully proportioned coupe!

Thanks, yeah the nosecone was an inspired addition from Vauxhall! Ford followed suit with RS2000 so they must of agreed!

It made my week to have a viva in the shop. Such a awesome shaped car with nice curves.

I too, like many others, thought hmmm not sure about that droopsnoot look but now it's done the more I see it the more I appreciate it. Will look awesome once finished with the lights in place.

Now all it needs is a 3 rotor to fill in that bay.......go on Andre...you know it makes sense....

Thanks Alex, will get finished quicker once you come over and help paint strip it!

And if I was to use anything but the slant 4 it would be a UZ V8...bloody tempting already.

Excellent stuff andre, kept the old front end? Where did you manage to find the front clip?

Cheers, happy with it too. Yeah the guy that did the work made sure to make minimal cuts to bodywork and kept offcuts down to just 2 pieces, which if needed could restore car back to original.

The nosecone I sourced out of the UK via a guy on the Droop Snoot Group, including the bumper, lights, and light buckets. Unfortunately one of the buckets is stuffed from an old accident and poor repair, and the lights were too rusted to use, so I have since bought a second set of (hens teeth) lights which are in better shape. Of course now somebody over there has had a batch of brand new lights manufactured and selling them for NZ1k for set of 4....trying to decide if I can justify that cost right now.

The DSG are re-manufacturing the buckets at a reasonable cost and will be ordering a pair of them.

Nosecone fitted and pics up.

Quick pic update.

Have had the car at Autofocus bodyshop here in Nelson for the past week to fit the nosecone and I am wrapped with the job done and the transformation made, looks awesome! Had been a bit nervous about doing this conversion but now it's done I am happy with decision.

I will take care of the filling and fairing from here, but first job is to strip all the paint off to get back to bare steel. There is some bubbling of the paint from poor prep-work at last paint job, so all needs to be taken back and sealed properly before applying filler and primer etc. This will be my job for next few months, along with some fibreglass repairs to nose from previous damage, but nothing major.

Will be ordering new repro light buckets from the UK though as one of them is too far gone to repair.

No going back now!

I could be wrong but Im sure Ive seen a drophatch before in Nz?

Either way, very cool car, alway had a soft spot for viva's, still trying to get hold of a magnum I know of..

Cheers.

I recall seeing a Firenza snoot at Pukekohe Racetrack carpark many moons ago, but never seen it since, who knows where it is now.

FYI. There were only ever 204 of these cars produced, and about the same number of snoot hatches, of which about 1/4 have survived. The nosecone I have is off one of those deceased cars.

Keep chasing that Magnum down.

I'm probably missing something here/not hip to what i'm looking at but I much prefer the nose that is currently on there? But then I have always been a fan of them there vauxhalls

*prepares to be flamed/educated* lol

All good mate, these cars have not been real visible in NZ so not appreciated so much here. For me the more I look at them the more I like them. So keep on looking, it will grow on you!

Cheers

That's a serious beast right?

Discussion here: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=33612

So this is my other project, because one is just not enough....

The plan is to turn this...

into something like this...

with the help of this...

and lots of other bits!

Story so far is this, bought the car as an unfinished project and without motor and box. Have installed a stock 2.3 OHC and Toyota W50 to get it mobile, which should be this month all going well. Have had to re-install everything in the engine bay and front half of interior, along with having new driveshaft adapted, and various other little tedious jobs to get it road worthy.

Plan is to get it mobile with this drivetrain, fit new nosecone I got out of the UK, then get it all certed, painted etc. Will then build a fresh 2.3 engine, with big valve head, twin 45's, etc etc, and swap it out and paint engine bay at same time.

This is how it looks at the moment, just finished interior this past weekend, although the front seats in the pics are destined for my Viva GT, have some others in the works for this car.

Last major jobs to are to lower it a little on new springs and shocks, have new 2" exhaust system installed, and get brake lines connected and bled.

That's the short version, more to come!

Good to see it up on here Andre! Top car this one (even with that big boat anchor of an engine.... )

Now more photos please....

Oh and also some photos of your 'magnum into firenza droopsnoot' project would be great to see. That's gonna be awesome.

I want to see more viva love going on...

Alex

Cheers Alex. I figure better to have the anchor than the bilge pump...

Will start a thread on the Firenza soon, it's coming together really nicely now, interior and engine bay all but done, now want to do something about the springs and shocks to get her down where she should be seen as it's cert'd for it. Just exhaust system and brakes and I'm mobile!

Cheers

Andre

Cool little car for sale here. Luvin the wheels, have plans for widened rostyles to the back of the GT when I can come up with a spare pair. Anybody hear whereabouts of any give me a shout.

Cheers.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing ... =469187923

Hello all, new on here after much needling by yoeddy, will try and post some pics of my Viva. Cheers.

Discussion here: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=33554