Hi, just bought a VX220 N/A

Matt

Hi all,

I've just bought a VX220 N/A in red. Not sure which red it is though! Always wanted an Elise years ago but alway put it off when it came to the crunch. Somebody else in our office has had an S2 for a while and it's sort of one of my rules that I won't by the same car as any friends etc. so I had to turn my attention to the VX220! Have wanted one of these for a while, really wanted the turbo one but things changed a bit, had kids, moved house etc and now that I'm back on my feet I didn't forget, I wanted a nice car back! I was going to blow a large sum of money on a car but have compromised a bit and spent 1/2 getting the wife a 57 reg Vectra SRi and now have just bought me this N/A one instead of the turbo which I couldn't stretch to.

I do about 50 miles a day up and down the motorway so don't really think it's the best every day car. The wife isn't that impressed but I've been running around in a Ph 1 Clio 172 for the last year and that just isn't right for a 30 year old design engineer, although I do love the Clio! Anyway, the dilemma was whether to get a year 2000 Porsche Boxster 2.7 (about same performance) and with the sort of driving I normally do, it probably would have been the better option to be honest. I just thought for once though to go with my heart, go against everyones advice and if I get sick of it, it should be easier to sell a lowish mileage VX220 than a highish mileage Boxster.

I haven't really driven it apart from 2 test drives so can't wait to get it taxed tonight and it's insured from tomorrow! It's a 53 reg with 49k miles on the clock and I think I've made the right decision. I've pretty much fallen in love with it! My 2nd little test drive last night before I handed over the money made the Porsche seem very boring indeed! It's just whether I can live with it day in, day out.

I opened the garage door to show my 5 and 2 1/2 year old boys this morning and they were very excited!

I have a couple of questions that I might be able to find out by searching on here.

I was reading the manual (which I found under the seat) and it recommends not to put a child seat in the VX220! Has anybody done it? The older one could probably get away with just the booster seat now although he uses the back of it in the vectra still.

The cam chain was obviously a concern ... should mine have had the uprated bits and bobs on it being a 53 reg? Is there any way to tell, or check? Doesn't seem like any rattles but I'll need to drive it more to check.

The guy I bought it from said the EGR valve was faulty as he had it on the diagnostic machine. I was planning to make a cheater to the plans on this forum, I'm quite into all of that - one of my other hobbies is model engineering so the plate will be no problem and I used to do a few bits with electronics when I was much younger so still got the strip board and might have resistors etc but I think for the price of those I'll just buy new! I may just end up buying the ones from this forum though, depends whether I can be bothered!

Oh, another question is, I do most of maintenance on cars myself. How difficult is it to do things such as change the oil / filter, fuel filter, air filter etc? Not had a proper look but spark plugs don't look a problem. On the clio you have to take the airbox, half of the inlet manifold, throttle body, plenum etc off! It is
a poorly designed engine in my opinion!

The first thing I did was register for this forum and VX220.org. Absolutely chuffed to bits at the moment, I sat in it for about an hour last night just working out where things were etc!

I will post some pictures later.

Nick

Matt

Just putting some pics up, they wouldn't let me tax it as it's only insured from midnight :thumbdown: !!! Will have to go first thing in the morning will have to take it steady on my first drive to work, never thought I'd say this but can't wait to go to work tomorrow! 😃

vocky

Hello and welcome to the site cheers..

just remember to 'drive like a granny' if the roads are damp or wet, the vx220 will bite and bite hard, especially out of a roundabout.

Otherwise they are very easy to work on and fun to drive, timing chain should be the later spec too 😃

Matt

Hello and welcome. The 220 looks great :thumbup:

Matt

Thanks Vocky,

I think I may be buying one of your cheaters v soon - think I will try to make one first with the circuit diagram you kindly provided - it'll be fun even if I mess it up! Do the resistors need to have those exact values?

Yeah I'll have to go steady, I've had quite a few rear wheel drive cars now but none quite like this.

I had an MG Midget when I had just passed my test which was a bit of a handful in the wet and I found out the hard way, spun and went into a hedge, could have been much much worse in fairness - didn't have that for long though and think mum regretted getting me that for my first car. The reason for it was not pose etc (although I did) but because I could insure that for £450 when I was 17 as a classic as opposed to the £750+ for the 1.0 Skoda 105 lux my grandad kindly donated! The next one I got was when I finished uni and got a job, I got an MGF VVC and remember it well going sideways around the first corner I would normally have taken much faster in my Rover 214! Since then I've had a smart roadster which was lively but had a trick stability control system which sorted you out, a BMW 330Ci Sport - the stability control was brilliant on that too and a BMW 120d again, had a good stability control system that could make anybody look spectacular! I turned that fully off once and overcooked it.

So with this power / weight, RWD and no driver aids it could really show up my lack of skill! Will have to be very careful, I'm quite good at driving like a granny now anyway, I do it to save fuel!

This may be a daft question, but in the manual it mentions winter tyres - do you think they'd give any benefit on one of these? A guy at work recently stuck some on his BMW and he reckons it made the difference between being able to move and not being able to move! He had to buy a new set of wheels though which would be the same on this. I'm just thinking as this will now be my every day car!

Thanks Matt, hope it is! It is certainly the best looking car I've ever owned and possibly the fastest accelerating! 😃

Bit of a long story but I saw the car for sale in a Honda dealership quite a while before xmas but when I eventually was in the position to buy one - sods law, it went! But when I was searching for another a couple of weeks later it came back up on ebay so I pursued it form there. Basically I think the honda dealer had it too long and sold it through the trade so this guy being an underwriter got his hands on it at a good price but not really knowing what it was. It wasn't to his tastes so sold it on for apparently no extra. When I viewed it in the honda dealership the salesman there was telling me it had quite a few stone chips but when they painted it, apparently it wasn't the best match in the world so they re-sprayed the whole thing. They've done a pretty good job, there are a couple of tiny bits of overspray, sure I saw one run somewhere and there are few small blisters now - not sure whether that was because it was sat outside during winter though, maybe that's why they moved it on. That doesn't really concern me though, I think I got it at a bargain price and I bought it to drive, I'll look after it but it's bound to pick up stone chips anyway.

Nick

Matt

ps. Matt, like the Astra VXR. I've come close to buying one of those before too! Even before they are modified the power to weight ratio is approaching that of the new Focus RS - people tend to forget how light and fast they are! I've had the pleasure of seeing a Nurburgring on the rolling road with a little more power than yours - awesome!

A guy in our office at work has a Vectra VXR, his son has a remapped Corsa VXR Arctic (sounds amazing - if I had to do 1 modification to a corsa or astra it would be a remus exhaust) and his best mate has an Astra VXR so we are building up a bit of a clique there now!

On another note, I went to uni in Sheffield - great City! :thumbup:

Matt

Cheers Nick, I do love the VXR, best car I've had. I've have loved a VX220, but had to use a dealership to get rid of the Vectra SRI I had previously, and none could get a 220.

Sheffield is quite nice, I do enjoy living here (it's just bloody hilly!)

dodger

Hi and welcome to the forum

Sjdickso

Welcome to the forum, looks like you have go t a very nice 220, did you have any issues with youe 172?

Matt

Yeah it is hilly, luckily I was there between 1998 and 2001 when it didn't really used to snow much - must have been a nightmare in some places over the last couple of winters!

Thanks guys.

Yeah I did have trouble with the Clio ... To be honest, I bought the Clio on a bit of a whim. I needed to downgrade my car at the time from the Mini Cooper S, so I sold it and had a weekend to get something else. I didn't want anything mundane though (that was the problem!) so I looked at a Rover 200 BRM, Mondeo ST200, Puma (but that was on the mundane side) then the clio popped up for a touch more. Test drove it and though that's got to be the one! Because I hadn't spent much on the car (£2100) I couldn't justify changing cam belt, aux belt and pulleys as the idea was to save money not spend it.

But that came back to bite me, one day I pulled out of a junction and it just stopped- dead. I knew immediately there was no compression from trying to restart it so thought the cambelt had snapped and bent valves. As I said, I do a lot of the maintenance myself so I started straight away and thought I'd whip off the rocker cover to see if the valves were bent as the cam belt hadn't snapped so I was puzzled. This is when I realised how silly the design of the engine was. To get to the rocker cover, airbox, throttle body, inlet plenum all had to come off. To get the top half of the cam belt cover off the engine mount has to come off. then I tried to take the rocker cover off but ended up smashing a bit off the casing - it doesn't come off without taking all sorts of other stuff off and the camshaft bearings are half in the rocker cover and half in the head - therefore linebored so the rocker cover is matched to each individual head.

I later downloaded the manual and found out you can't actually get the rocker cover off without first taking all sorts off - including the cam pulleys. To re-time the camshafts there are 4, yes 4 locking tools you need!

Luckily, a guy on a similar forum was doing a turbo conversion on his car and his engine was going spare so he offered to take my car away and fit it for an absolute bargain price. I took the opportunity to get him to put a new clutch and aux belt kit on at the same time. He had replaced the cambelt already. I let him keep my engine as I had no use for it, he's since stripped it down and found that one of the idler pulleys had shattered causing the timing to slip. More design floors with this engine are that all of the pulleys are not keyed to the shafts - only held in the right place by the torque of the bolt, so friction! If any of those slip it does the same job as a cam belt snapping - pistons into valves! Crazy design.

Other than that, it's mainly been wear and tear items - when I got it, it had the obligatory boy racer bits on it so I took a bit of time getting original bits to put it back to standard. One of the rear shockers was knackered so I sourced a full set of shocks and springs from a clio cup and put those on. I've put discs and pads all around on it, the rear wheel bearings had gone so I just got the discs with them already pressed in.

That's about all though, touch wood, it's running really sweetly now. I'll be tidying it up and selling it very soon if all is well with the VX. I think I'm better off selling it while it's got a good few months tax and MOT left on it. It really is a quick car so am sure it'll only take 1 boy racer to come and have a drive and it'll be sold!

Bet you wish you never asked - why did you ask?

Nick

Matt

NickCG said:

Bet you wish you never asked - why did you ask?

Si (Sjdickso) blew his wifes up :shh:

Sjdickso

Matt said:

NickCG said:

Bet you wish you never asked - why did you ask?

Si (Sjdickso) blew his wifes up :shh:

I did indeed :silent:

We have ph2 172
Had it from 2 years old had all belts done at correct times etc, like you say they are expensive and a nightmare to work on. My mechanic loved it when i had the plugs done.

At 68k the gearbox decided to fail on me as i came off a slip road of a motor way, it blew the gearbox to bits and took out the bottom end of the engine 🙁 The tow guy couls not belive the mess when he picked me up!

The idea of stripping the car was not really fesable so after a long search i found a low mileage 182 engine and gearbox, i then bought a genuine aux belt pully cambelt and waterpump and had it installed to find out my car needed the older style gearbox with the diffrent speed ring, after tyring to sell the 182 gearbox my mechanic sourced a correct box and it was back alive.

Like you had discs bearings etc done.

Hope all goes ok with the 220 😃

Matt

Oh dear, sorry to hear about that, great feeling when you get it back though!

My gearbox started getting noisy before that happened to the engine, particularly when you release the clutch there's a sort of rattling then a whining / whirring noise at low speeds - I was hoping it might be the clutch release bearing but I got the guy to replace the clutch (if he did - maybe he just kept my clutch!) Anyway, the noise is still there. Just changed the gear oil and there was no bits of metal / swarf coming out so don't know what it is. I think it is the box though because if you put it in neutral the noise goes even when letting clutch in and out.

Thanks, hope so too 😃 Do you have a 220 too or another vauxhall?

Sjdickso

Hi Nick,

I think they do have whinny boxes anyway.

Yes i also have a 2.2 Astra

Matt

I've decided to put the Clio up for sale now 🙁 Didn't really want to but figured while it's got MOT and Tax it'll be easier to sell. Also, just being sat there on the drive outside for 6 months isn't going to do it much good.

I thought I'd do my egr cheater last night. Got all the resistors / diodes and used the instructions Vocky had kindly provided on here.

First job was to take the egr valve off. 1st bolt was very stiff but it did move slightly so I soaked it in WD40 and did the other side. That was fine. Came back to the other, worked it back and forth a bit (it felt like it was moving slightly) then went for it. Snaaap!

Something usually goes wrong but didn't think it would on this simple job! So had to mess on drilling that out and re-tapping 1/2 a turn at a time! Made up a blanking plate and luckily found a couple of bolts ideal for the job.

Then I set about making the circuit. I had some strip board left over from my days of messing around with electronics. It's afairly simple circuit, my only concern was which way around to the diodes go?! I took it as the bit with the line across being the black ring on the diode. Plugged it in but the light didn't go out. Had a feeling it wouldn't! So I disconnected the neg terminal on the battery over night (even that wasn't easy!)

Came back this morning and re-connected battery, light stayed out all the way to work so am just keeping my fingers crossed! Surely the fault would re-appear straight away if the valve wasn't plugged in? So the circuit must be doing something? Mine isn't as elegant as vocky's, it's about 3 x as long but just wanted to make sure I had it layed out correctly. I put it in one of those sealablebags with the pins poking out but will have to check it, that may have melted to the rocker cover!

It also seems to have sorted the prob with my cooling fan being on constantly, it came on one night and then didn't go off when came to it in the morning. Could they be related? Or is it just because I disconnected the battery and it reset any faults?

Cheers,

Nick