Opel Vectra Track Car

[mikuni]

Some time ago I bought myself a Vectra for a daily driver.

Nothing special by any stretch of the imagination.

But the purpose of this vehicle was not solely that of a daily driver. After far too many drunken yarns with friends who recall the exciting British Touring Car Championship during the 90's, a plan was devised.

Weight reduction was first on the cards, beginning with removing the seats and door cards

the underseal

and virtually everything in between

Before piling it into the back of the Vectra and taking it to the dump..

..where I weighed the car and it came in at around 940kg. I would really like this to be true, but somehow I just don't think it is. So once I have completed the build I will take it to a very accurate weigh bridge I have found just down the road from my house and get a more believable figure.

To achieve the desired ride height, some serious suspension work is required. The Vectras use an interesting steering setup, where the steering rack is positioned half way down the firewall. Although this is not an ideal setup for a track car it is one of the reasons I opted to go for the Vectra A, because it will allow me to reset the steering geometry much easier than with a conventional setup.

After several weeks of looking for coilovers that would come at least close to fitting I gave up and decided to make some custom items like a lot of the guys do with older vehicles, when off the shelf parts are not available. I was looking around on trademe and just happened to stumble across a set of Honda DC5 Integra coilovers for a reasonable price, made by HKS. The interesting thing about these is that they use exactly the same steering setup, to the point where my tierod ends even fit straight in. So, I snaffled them up.

I have sinced opted to go away from the Vectra A struts for a number of reasons. The main one is because fitted the coilovers to them will mean the entire strut, with bearing hub and brake will effectively be a one piece item, where I would rather have a removable coilover, in case of a required rebuild or similar.

So, I'm currently looking into the option of fitting later model Vectra B hubs, similar to below.

Hopefully this will work, not only because it offers a much better option for the suspension but also because its a nice, cheap and easy brake upgrade (Vectra A on the left, Saa 9-3 on the right).

This means I can raise or lower it by quite a lot, rather than having to make up a custom hub, which would be very costly. The only problem here, is that the steering arms need to remain parallel with the lower control arms. To do this, the vehicles roll centre needs to be adjusted. I looked at a few options here with my original idea being to install a custom balljoint with a much longer shaft length.

Instead of this;

I'll have something like this made up;

I like the modular nature of this solution, but the strength of it just makes me a little nervous, with quite a bit of lateral load being applied under hard braking, and seeing as this will be a track only vehicle, it will be seeing a lot of hard braking.

Another option is making a balljoint extension like the picture of the Vectra B setup, which wasn't available to me originally because of running the Vectra A/Saab 9-3 balljoints, which are different, but I may consider this option.

I think the best solution however, is below.

Making a custom plate up with a pillow ball fitted inside and a billet shaft to the desired length. This would be made to simply replace the original ball joint and should offer the strongest and most easily adjustable solution - if its the wrong length I can simply change the shaft rather than needing to remanufacture a whole new ball joint.

Now going on to an entirely different topic, the engine. I was intending to retain the original crappy 8v 2 litre engine that currently resides beneath the bonnet, at least until I get the suspension, brakes and interior setup.

But when a kind chap by the name of Nik put me on to what I have been searching for, for around about 4 years now, I just couldn't refuse!

This is an original Opel Vectra 2000, of which only around 80 were rumored to have been registered in New Zealand. As with most information like that I take it with a grain of salt, but how ever many there were registered in 1990, theres a hell of a lot less now! For that reason, I desperately wanted to save this one, for a road car no less. Unfortunately it was not to be, and it is so badly damaged the no doors on the left side can open and every pillar has been shifted.

But, the silver lining is that it is fitted with the fantastic C20XE engine, which offers a full 1/3 more power in even its current form over the 8 valve C20NE I am currently blessed with.

Not the tidiest beast, but a good starting point.

Tunability of the C20XE engine is better than that of the X20XEV "ecotec" I have fitted in my Chevette, so for the race car build I think this is the better starting point. Only problem is getting hold of another in years to come, which is why I originally opted for the ecotec in my Chevette, but I'll deal with that when I come to it. I don't think it will be too much of an issue as there are still a few around.

And to test fitting the wheels, to ensure the desired ride height is feasible.

The above wheels are 18x8 all around, and offset is around +45, which appears to be perfect for the car. I'll aim to retain the current hub offsets when making all modifications and may slightly widen the track at the front to help tuck the coilovers behind the wheels.

The end goal is for something along these lines, but I'm just going to keep working on it and see where it ends up.

[mikuni]

The above post is where I was at over a year ago and up until now things have pretty much stalled. There's a few reasons for this, but mainly space, time and money. The usual 3 things.

With having committed to the 1vknd trackday on the 19th of August, I decided last week that I should probably try and get things underway.

Plan was to just slam an engine in there, get it running and get it to Taupo. Nothing special and although I have a kit set cage to go in I've decided I might as well get the thing running and get out on the track.

Managed to get it all ready to run today. Wouldn't start straight away, sounded like it wasn't getting fuel. I chucked a bit more in there then check voltage at the pump, nothing. Checked the FP relay and found I had installed the wrong one Changed it and it started first pop

Sounded terrible, as the hydraulic lifters were a bit lazy but after getting up to operating temp and giving it a few revs they eventually came right.

Still got quite a lot to do before it is driveable, but its all down hill from here so hopefully I'll be able to get it to the track this Friday.

More updates to come relating to harness, seats, wheels and hopefully suspension.

[CaMpylobacter]

love it! keen to see progress as progression progresses

[kyteler]

So cute.

I wanna do either the Primera or the Renault.. or the Peugeot... or the Mondeo... or the Accord...

[sheepers]

i heartily condone the shit out of your actions.

what's your target weight/power for it???

[Snoozin]

Hell yes! Thanks for putting up a thread

Desired ride height is definitely desireable. I reckon it'll be a hoot to fang around in this coming weekend anyway, as long as it's loud it will feel sorta supertourer.

I want a racecar.

[anglia4]

Fuck yeah!

I should build a duratec mondeo to fight with you

[CaMpylobacter]

So cute.

I wanna do either the Primera or the Renault.. or the Peugeot... or the Mondeo... or the Accord...

I have a peugeot that'd be the perfect white 405mi16 base

[Truenotch]

Glad you finally put up a thread! Will be watching closely...

Have you snaffled up any 18" porsche slicks? They aren't running in NZ anymore, so it's going to be a lot harder to find them soon.

[buriedalive]

Awesome!!! I love the old Touring Cars/BTCC etc I was just watching some of the late 80's/early 90's ATCC yesterday.....really miss the variety of car manufacturers.

Good luck with the build, I look forward to seeing more updates

[Spencer]

Have you snaffled up any 18" porsche slicks?

I had a set of the fronts they run, in the end I thought they were too big for a super slammed car. Theres some reasonably priced semi's in 18" with better sizes I think

[Vintage Grumble]

Bout time you put up a fred eh. Seeing those rims tucked that far up in those arches gave me the

[mixmasterlex]

^ Shit yeah. Epic. Always had a soft spot for the t-cars of this era. Probably due to toca on ps1 ha. Pretty easy to get these handling as good as say the primera? Reason I ask is accords, these, tend to handle average compared to the primera's which were quite hard from factory. I'm sure with the right parts anything is possible for sure.. What sort of power did those motors make standard?

[Vintage Grumble]

The std opel's handle not to bad at all really, so I guess they should be a good platform for a racer. But on my lord, the father inlaws primera track car rips your face off grip wise.

Yeh, what kind of power do the 16v's make? When will it be making BTCC spec levels of power?

[drtdvl]

Brad - those ball joints with the 3 pin mounts, look just like those off a 306 control arm. might be something to look at.

[mikuni]

So keen for people to build equivalent toys and come racing with me! Would be so awesome with one from each manufacturer that competed in the 90’s and even some that didn’t.

The C20XE makes similar power to other 2 litres of the era at 150bhp, which isn’t a great deal but it does open up quite well, with 200bhp being available (at the flywheel) with just a decent intake, exhaust and cams.

As for target power/weight, I don’t really have one at the moment so it will just be to get it as light as possible and then slowly modify the engine to get as much power as I can on a very limited budget. I think I’d be happy with around 900kg dry and a torquey 200bhp.

Markku, diddy has some of those Michelins and I seem to have inherited 2 of them, but as he says they are quite big and the ones we have seem to be pretty hard. For what I’m aiming for semi’s will be more than enough for quite a while. The V8 utes seem to use them, which could be a good source of second hand tyres for me.

Handling wise, they aren’t too bad but don’t have the sophisticated multilink suspension of the Primera, which makes it easier to modify (read: hack up) but harder to get good results. I think with a semi-decent set up, light weight with good weight distribution and decent tyres I should be able to get it handling relatively well.

[Vintage Grumble]

Sophisticated multilink suspension is for homos anyways. The in laws primera has a beam rear end, lols.

[davidian]

wow man thats awesome, good luck on this

[mikuni]

Sophisticated multilink suspension is for homos anyways. The in laws primera has a beam rear end, lols.

Is that the P11 that was at one of our trackdays? They did revert back to beam rear after the P10's irs. My Vectra uses beam rear, but the touring cars and the GSi use irs. You can get beam working quite well with the right setup, I guess that P11 is testament to that.

[Vintage Grumble]

Yep, the dark blue P11, I didnt realise they went back to beam's after the P10, made me LOL. The bluebird of that year was IRS tho. The beam thats in their car now is for the wet, as the dry one got owned by angus fogg when he wrote the car off. He told the father in law that it could go quite a bit quicker with the more cambered beam, but was super knife edge/deadly to drive.