VX220 Project

mandarinvx

17/05/09

Had a go at some door cards today with the carbon fibre material, I like it 🙂 and sprayed the door handle guards satin black too

Also got a stainless tow bracket from simsy, which I've now primed and painted black thumbsup

mandarinvx

25/05/09

Added some chavtastic side indicator today, they work surprisingly well 🙂

mandarinvx

29/05/09

One step closer to full stealth B)

mandarinvx

01/06/09

Goodies arrived today 😃

6" dia, 29" long silencer system

With 4-1 manifold

And to complete the stealth look B)

mandarinvx

01/06/09

The new 'diet version' sub-box is starting to look a little more promising 🙂

mandarinvx

02/06/09

Thought I'd have a look at what will be involved in fitting the new exhaust today 🙂

This is what was left of the small hanger bracket - new one on order

Well at least this one actually resembles a bolt of some form

Unlike the others :rolleyes:

Had to cut the heads off

And then drill them / knock them through

And finished at last

Thankfully the bolts at the manifold join don't look anywhere near as bad!

mandarinvx

08/06/09

Picked the head up on the weekend, after the work at http://www.headlinemk.co.uk/

Valve seats machined / enlarged to accomodate the 0.5mm O/S valves

Valve seat close up

GM Performance guides fitted

And valves shaped

Also had a skim

🙂

mandarinvx

13/06/09

Finally got around to sorting out the ABS light today. I'd already traced it to the NSF wheel, so bought a connector from a breakers; it had already had a bodged repair at some point in the past :rolleyes:

And all fixed 🙂

Also painted the AP logo on the calipers yellow whilst I was there

And gave the roof a final clean with Autoglym, all traces of green now gone 😃

mandarinvx

20/06/09

The Gaz shocks made a massive difference over standard. I prefer running a low ride height, tho I must admit I think I'm going to have to raise it a bit to make bumpy roads a pleasure to drive again (instead of cringing every time I see a large bump!)

The geo will affect turn in - My last car had a very harsh geo at Topgear Automotive, and I absolutely loved it 😃

I currently have a Guglielmi geo, which is great, but I think I may go back and get the steering arms machined down to allow for extra camber (as they did with the Topgear geo) This does give a bit more tramlining on the straight tho, and seems to enhance bump steer, so if you spend most of your VX time on the motorway it may not be advisable

🙂

Playing with Gaz...

So far I've had Gaz standard on

8" 325F, 9" 375R - 90mm ride height front

8" 375F, 9" 450R - 80mm ride height front

And Gaz Gold on

7" 400F, 9" 475R - 80mm ride height front

8" 425F, 9" 475R - 80mm ride height front

And just changed over to:

8" 425F, 9" 550R - 100mm ride height front

Must admit all have been great, I've been expecting a point when the springs are too stiff to be unusable on road, but although noticeably firmer the 550's still feel fine.

The 325 front springs worked well, and the only reason I started playing was how close the nose was getting to the track due to the low ride height (removing a skim of paint in one instance, and mandarin wasn't easy to match!)

The 7" front worked well on a very low car, but do hit the bump stops more regulary

I've raised the car _20mm this time; on the last car the lowest ride height worked best, whereas turn-in doesn't appear to have been affected much going up 20mm this time, maybe something to do with the Guglielmi geo (which will now need to be done again :rolleyes🙂

mandarinvx

12/07/09

As part of the bush refresh I set out changing the ARB bushes for polyurethane ones and the droplinks for OEM replacements - Elise Parts were very helpful on the phone thumbsup

First off I had to jack the front up - a bit nerve wracking as I've never lifted a car in this way before 😃

The old bushes were looking very tired - cracked through in places -

I undid the drop links first - a true PITA after 7 years of corrosion has taken place - had to get the dremel out for two of the four nuts :rolleyes:

Then onto the ARB bush mountings. Removed the front undertray, then cut off a long section of 6mm allen key to be able to get to the top set screw

Then onto the lower one - what a ridiculous place to locate them - slap bang in the middle of the wishbone travel :9mm:

So had to udo the front bolts of the lower wishbones and knocked them up a bit, as advised in SteveA's thread thumbsup

Bar replaced and new droplinks fitted (they don't come with washers for some reason, and I had no 10mm ones :rolleyes🙂

Then bolted back up again, used stainless ones for re-assembly, and a hex head on the lower one so I don't have to move the wishbone if it ever has to come off again

New bushes in place

So overall, a very long winded, PITA process

mandarinvx

26/07/09

Changed the sub out for the new box I've made today

Still sounds great (which is a bit of a relief, in fact at sensible volumes it's hard to tell the difference! though I did spend quite some time looking at which 6x9"'s to go for 🙂)

mandarinvx

13/08/09

I've now taken the front clam off

A real PITA, all but two of the wheel arch liner fixings were rusted solid, so resulted in lots of drilling and swearing to replace with new jacknuts:

The clam mounting near the bottom of the fog light decided not to play ball, the nut was fused in place so when turning the bolt the plate behing the clam span and ripped a hole straight through the fibreglass 🙁 Now repaired and ready for a rivnut; I almost left it, as I drove without it in place for a couple of days and seemed fine, but it would only play on my mind :rolleyes:

Although the radiator had been changed a few years ago they'd re-used all the rusty fittings :rolleyes: So started replacing a few of them:

The old tow bar was well and truly rusting away to nothing, so will be replaced with a stainless steel version 🙂

The channels in the crash box collect a lot of water as the drain hole is about 1" from the bottom of the channel. I decided to drill a 5mm hole at the bottom of this section to help it drain out in the future (I didn't want to drill into the base of the channel as this forms part of the crumple zone protection)

Potential source of rattle (not that I'd noticed one) one screw on each foglight was loose, the are only screwed into the thin metal sheet that support the light unit, and only pass through a couple of mm's so had worked quite loose - replaced with a longer heavier grade (no 10 instead of no 8) stainless screw

Gave the grill a few coats of satin black 🙂

And how it currently looks, hopefully I'll finish cleaning everything, re-fix the V in place and get it back together tomorrow

mandarinvx

16/08/09

A couple of bolts had been left out from the bonnet hinge, so these were added

The door hinges cleaned and re-greased (this car actually has the door stop plates fitted too 🙂):

Everything under the clam area was cleaned with APC:

Then the clam replaced,

I decided to use hex nuts wherever possible (I have nightmares of the shallow allen sections of button heads rounding off!)
Managed to use them on the front bonnet supports - the rubber stoppers still fit fine on a hex thumbsup

And all back together - I far prefer the V being in place B)

mandarinvx

16/08/09

Cleaning a Pipercross Induction Cone

This may come as a reminder to a few of you 😃

I haven't cleaned the filter since buying the car, so thought I'd give it a go (I did this by gaining access through the nearside wheel arch, it may be possible through the boot opening, but it will be tight!)

First off, bought some cleaner and oil from Halfords - about £11 for the set

Then disconnected the filter from the inlet pipe (it a good idea to buy a flexi jubilee wrench for jobs like this thumbsup)

Then the intake pipe simply pulls off to leave you with this:

DO NOT try to remove the foam from the housing, it is not designed to be disasembled any further

Quite an impressive amount of crap came out the filter! (and this pic doesn't include the bits of leaves)

And onto this:

Sprayed liberally with cleaner, and then left to dry for many hours, then a light coat of oil applied

The only other thing I did was to spray the intake trumpet yellow, as I prefer it to red 🙂

mandarinvx

16/08/09

Then moved onto preparations for removing the rear clam 🙂

The liners weren't as bad as the front ones, tho I replaced the lower rear fasteners (which were the expanding rubber type) with M6 Jacknuts on both sides 🙂

Must have saved over 1kg of weight with the amount of debris retrieved (this is only from the rear part of the offside liner)

Set about changing bolts over to stainless, cant believe all the exhaust hager bolts came out - all of them were seized solid on my last car

And the clam bolts above the liner 🙂

mandarinvx

21/08/09

Hmmmmm... :blink:

Just exploring all the options prior to splashing out on a roots type unit...

mandarinvx

23/08/09

Vocky very kindly re-assembled my head today - so in went the:

Stainless Steel Nitrated Intake Valves
Inconel Exhaust Valves
Single Groove Keepers (2 per valve)
Large Outer Springs
Small Inner Springs
Titanium Retainers
Valve Spring Seats
Valve Stem Seals
Comp Stage 1 Cams

mandarinvx

28/08/09

Bought a Saab turbo manifold to have a play with

Good news is - it fits, and so does the standard TB, it also uses the same M6 bolts/pattern as the head

It's surprisingly light for a cast aluminium intake 🙂 and all runners appear to be equal length (around 19cm) despite what I've read previously. It is deceptive tho, but the central two runner sweep around the outside of the plenum, I've tried to take a photo - it has't really worked 😃

I'll need to cut a slot in the gasket (still to purchase from Saab) for the PCV valve

I could do with doing a direct comparison to a 2.2 manifold, so if anyone has one lying around :poke: chinky chinky

mandarinvx

A couple of pics showing the runners

Looks like it's time to get the Dremel out again 😃 There's actually quite a bit of scope for porting 🙂

mandarinvx

29/08/09

<u>Ball Joint Replacement Mini-Guide</u> 🙂

Right then, a mini guide to ball joint replacement. The ball joints form part of the MOT and if there is wear then the car can fail

The way to check is to grab the wheel top and bottom and check for any play, or more like a 'clunk'

The bottom ball joint had failed on mine, so that was the one to be replaced, it can be quite hard to tell whether it's top / bottom / wheel bearing tho

What you'll need:

Jack (2 if the ball joint starts turning, this didn't happen to me)
Wheel brace
19mm Open End Spanner
19mm Socket
8mm Allen Key (pref bit, socket mounted)
5mm Allen Key (pref bit, socket mounted)
Hammer
Small Wire Brush
Eliseparts Ball Joint Removal Tool
Ball Joint Seperator (fork type used here)
Copper Grease
Silicon Grease

Onto replacement - first thing to mention is that this is a PITA of a job - lots to do for such a small component :rolleyes: It's well worth investing in the right tools thumbsup

Jack and support the car, then remove the wheel. The undo both caliper bolts using an 8mm allen bit

pull on the back of the pads to spread them enough to get over the lip in the disc - if this is tight then slacken off the brake fluid resevoir cap 🙂

Once removed, rest the caliper out of the way, do not let the caliper dangle on the rubber hose!

Now remove the brake disc by removing the retention pin with a 5mm hex bit - best to use a proper bit and socket as you could well round them off using a small ill-fitting key

Clean the visible section of the thread on the ball joint thoroughly with a small wire brush - time spent here will save time using a Dremel later B)

Use the 19mm spanner to undo the nut - this one came off (although I had to use my foot as a lever, the thing was so tight :rolleyes🙂 but often you'll have to cut a slot into the side of the nut with a Dremel cutting disc. If the nut simply starts to spin then it could be the balljoint spinning in its socket - in this case just use a jack or piece of wood as leverage from underneath (not so easy if it's the top one you're doing tho!)

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