Fastcabs’ Flame Red Vectra; The Vectrarri

[Fastcabs]

Hello everyone,

I’ve been meaning to start one of these for a while so here goes…

This is ‘The Vectrarri’.DCCE771B-3242-4FAA-A58F-D92B7BA91CA2.jpg


The name started off as a bit of fun. Red car, Italian engine and gearbox, Ferraris are red and Italian. You get the idea (and ok maybe the spelling should be Vectrrari instead of Vectrarri). I’m just one of those people that is daft that way and you’ll need to put up with it if you come back here for more updates.

Car has been owned by me since 2017 and it was in a reasonably solid state but a bit tired looking and suffering from years of neglect. Each year the car gets improved and I’ve decided to keep it long term and slowly restore / transform it into (dare I say it) a ‘classic’.

I’ve got so many jobs to do and a ton of parts to fit so I’ll try and provide as much detail as I can and pictures where appropriate. Hopefully this will provide some assistance to others out there and perhaps some mild entertainment while also serving as a diary for me and the car.

Spec:

Flame Red SRi Hatch
1.9CDTi 16v Manual
Parking sensors, heated seats, nav, sunroof, bluetooth, xp2 alloys

Mods:

Courtenay Stage 1 remap
EGR and swirl flap delete
VXR brakes
Eibach springs
B8 Front shocks, B4 rear shocks
Direnza spacers
K&N air filter
Jetex exhaust
Quaife LSD
Comfort unit

Mods waiting to be fitted:

FMIC
Powerflex bushes
Civic Type R seats
Video module and reverse cam


Future mods:
Performance clutch
More power
Paintwork

[northpole]

If you are going to put in rhe civic type r seats i do hope they are covered in cowhide and are heated and the type r- logo stitching be a thing of the past otherwise they'll stand out like a sore thumb...

I would keep the oem heated leather seats... or even better, get vxr leather ones to keep the lot more balanced and a desirable upgrade to whomever wants the car after you.


Just saying some mods are purely for this planned mod of the type r seats is one of them.

[Fastcabs]

If you are going to put in rhe civic type r seats i do hope they are covered in cowhide and are heated and the type r- logo stitching be a thing of the past otherwise they'll stand out like a sore thumb...

I would keep the oem heated leather seats... or even better, get vxr leather ones to keep the lot more balanced and a desirable upgrade to whomever wants the car after you.


Just saying some mods are purely for this planned mod of the type r seats is one of them.

Haha. I’ve had the type R seats for a couple of years just sitting in the garage and they are alcantara not leather. Always like them but haven’t been able to figure out exactly what to do. I have Sri cloth seats at the moment. Don’t really like leather tbh. VXR seats where considered but discounted on the fact that I could easily have bought a vxr instead of fixing up this car. Want something more unique hence the type r seats.

Rough plan (which of course may change) is to strip the original seats and weld on the necessary pieces to make the type r foam sections fit. Next will be to modify the covers slightly (and yes…remove the type r logos). Folding front seats in a 5 door is daft plus I want the seats to be safe…..

May seem ridiculously complicated but I’m hoping to sort it eventually

[Dog_Book]

A bit of sex wee came out…

[Fastcabs]

I better start reversing the car into the driveway.

[Fastcabs]

At the moment the car has no MOT so I need that sorted to get the car mobile.

Please skip to end if bored already….

Initially I was worried that the car needed more work than it actually needs. Another way of saying this is to say that I stupidly took the car to a certain chain of MOT stations (which of course I won’t name but let’s call them the optimistic opposite of ‘Slo / Doesn’t Fit’). Perhaps they have an unconscious bias against old Vauxhalls, old cars in general, vauxhalls in general or most likely they are….

That was months ago and I am over it and back to being calm.

Why is the car still not MOT’d you might ask? Do you not care? You can’t afford to run a Vectra? Are you just lazy?

I blame Peugeot. It’s their fault.

So I took the car to a more Vectra friendly MOT garage and all they found to be wrong was the handbrake not performing to what it should or something like that. Can’t remember the exact phrasing. Everything else is good and as it should be because this car gets looked after. IMHO the handbrake is good enough for an MOT but admittedly not quite the way it should. The cables, calipers, rear disks and pads have all been replaced within the last 2 years…

Annoyingly I’m going through this whole process again and I have decided to replace a lot of parts most of which will be replaced unnecessarily so. I’m an idiot like this.

I had some issues with one of the calipers last year; it was sticking and causing the hub to heat up. After checking various other things I came to the conclusion that the almost new caliper was just crap and so I got another from Dingbro and all has been well since. Unfortunately I got both calipers from the same place so I was expecting the other one to give me problems too. Well it did and I’ve got another ready to go on. Let that be a warning which I’m sure most of you know anyway; cheap parts aren’t always worth the saving and can cause more problems than they fix. So anyway, although one caliper lasted a bit longer before it started to jam / not release it caused some overheating and ruined my rear pads and quite possibly warped the disk. As a precaution I ordered new ones…

ETA on some EBC slotted 292 vented rear discs and yellow stuff pads is 10/09. ETA from Vauxhall for some bolts and caliper springs (just in case) plus some other stuff is some point between now and the end of time.

Because of the waiting, among other things, I thought I’d start the vehicle diary and also do a mini-refurb of the back suspension. I’ve got a pile of lemforder parts already sitting so I intend to get the rear anti-roll bar, the springs and the trailing arms powdercoated. I’m also going to remove the exhaust and heat shield and fit another handbrake cable (again as a precaution and as I said earlier because I am in the habit of replacing things that maybe don’t need replaced). With any luck by the time I get all that lot done my parts might have arrived.




To those that skipped to here. I’m basically waiting on some parts and as soon as they arrive, I’ll fit them, MOT the car and all will be well.

[Fastcabs]

787DC642-E2D6-4690-B41E-4367AA8851D8.jpg

New drop links, trailing arm bushes etc

[northpole]

The rear caliper sliders probably are not sliding properly i found that on mine a few days ago... as I removed the calipers to repaint them... noticed the sliders not sliding as they should... rubber grease and sorted... just FYI... it is one of the problems with the vectra rear calipers and if someone wants to tell me different... well the pads are showing uneven ware... like they are pushed on at an angle... and you guessed it right I am on the hunt for some new pads as the disks are only a year old, so are my calipers by the way. But there is enough meat on them to last me a few months of 100 miles braking a day so not in a hurry...


Just FYI check the sliders and re-grese them the sliders should be easy to push in and out.. if they don't, they need greasing.

[Fastcabs]

The sliders are usually an issue, but they were still perfect - no marks at all. The problem was internally with the caliper. If you didn’t use the handbrake at all, the brakes never jammed. The first caliper to fail, it was the lever for the cable that was starting to seize up. Eventually it got to the stage that it would never release. Had to use the wind back tool every other day until I replaced it. At one point I though I had an airlock in the brake line at that wheel. Just a poor quality remanufactured caliper. The fact the other one has gone the same way confirms it for me. Will get some pics up during the strip down / rebuild in due course.

[NeilGo]

I love the name! Great looking car and an impressive spec with some exciting jobs in the pipeline.