New poster on here, old-ish Vectra owner

**mj2k** · 13th August 2025, 16:23

I'm now on my second Vectra, a 1.9CDTi Elite 16v (which appears to be wearing quite a few VXR bits) and I've been a member here for a bit over a year, but the site kept timing out, firstly when I was trying to join back in Mar 24, and subsequently whenever I've tried to post anything

So fingers crossed I can do a bit of a thread here, and excuse the rambling - there's a lot to catch up on!

Firstly, my old Vectra. Also a 1.9CDTI wagon in black, but this was a 2008 Design with about 155k on the clock. I picked it up as a ridiculously cheap Cat N from Copart (transport cost 1.5x the car!) as a temporary car to be fixed up and discarded, but I was impressed with the huge size, decent performance and good economy for such a large car, so I, er, ended up doing a little more than that

First job was repairing the damage which had landed it with Copart - just a front wing and some repairs to the bumper. Turned out there was no damage at all apart from the cosmetic wing damage:

No signs of damage or serious corrosion underneath and it seemed to be well looked after so on went the new wing, a couple of DIY repairs to the cracked bumper, and it was ready to go

...And then I started to like it. So first job was to replace the lousy wheels (could be Copart did their usual job of pinching the good ones and putting the worst they could find on it). Cheapest good ones I could find were a set of Saab 5 spoke Ronals, so on they went.

Which started me thinking...

**mj2k** · 13th August 2025, 16:44

First job was to replace the thoroughly ratty steering wheel with a Saab 9-3 one in excellent condition. I had to grind an area off the back of the steering wheel boss so it didn't foul the CIM and do some rewiring so the horn and buttons worked, but it looked great when fitted:

...And then it was onto the interior. Nothing actually wrong with it cosmetically, but I suspect the seat foam was wearing thin because the seats were pretty uncomfortable. So a bit of conversion later (including rewiring the front seat connectors and restitching the rear seat base in the correct shape) and it had a set of Saab 9-5 cream leathers fitted

Then I fitted a pre-fl centre console so I didn't keep knocking my elbow on the standard one when changing gear:

Final stage was just a bit of fun - seeing how close I could get the front-end to Saab 9-5 style without spending over a tenner. Couple of bits of vinyl on the headlights and a fiver's worth of mesh and it looked like :

It was around this time I discovered the car had a real appetite for pigeons (it squished 5 in a few months!), and it acquired it's nickname - Ole' Pigeon Eater

**mj2k** · 13th August 2025, 17:07

Next stage was a bit of electronics to get rid of my pet hates - despite trying numerous replacements I couldn't find a repairable siren for the rear end, so to save myself from annoying messages on the info display and occasional midnight outbursts of beeping I tried fitting a new Opel Vectra BCU (the Opel model doesn't have a factory fitted alarm). Bit of work on a cheapo Op-Com clone pairing the BCU, and the annoying alarm went away for good

Only issue was the auto-open tailgate didn't function, but that didn't bother me too much - it was another one of my pet hates since it wasn't particularly reliable and took forever to open / close anyway. So off came the motor, on went a set of standard tailgate struts, and one wire cut to stop the boot open warning from showing, and it was good to go.

Next, address the stereo - another pet hate. Bit more work in op-com to unpair it and tell the car it didn't have a stereo, and then a decent aftermarket DAB stereo went in, complete with decent quality speakers (by far the most expensive bit of the project).

Next was the sub-par braking - a nice set of 302mm discs / calipers from a Saab 9-5 went on the front (no surprise there), and stopping went from being faintly scary to superb.

Final job was addressing the pet hate about the other half backing into things, so on went a cheap set of reverse sensors, sprayed to match the car's colour, and fitted with a simple reverse beeper.

Straight through a fresh MOT with no warnings / advisories, so that's everything done, or so I thought.

And then 15k later (yes, you read that right - it was v heavily used!) it was starting to smoke a bit and the DMF was rattling, so sought out a 2nd hand engine. Cheapest on under 100k was (no surprise here) a Saab 9-5 1.9 cdti 16v, so I started to prepare it with new DMF, cleaned out inlet and swirl flap delete.

And then in Dec 2024, the first disaster struck - I was driving down a twisty / hilly country lane near where I live, and came across a small puddle. Or so I thought. The drains were blocked and a vast amount of rain had fallen in a short time, so the little puddle came over the bonnet!

**mj2k** · 13th August 2025, 17:41

By some miracle the engine didn't hydro-lock despite inhaling water, though it did yet more damage to an already worn engine, so it started smoking heavily. I was very impressed with how robust the Alfa-designed 1.9CDTi was in the Vectra; in it's original home in the 147 it'd have died instantly! Luckily I already had the replacement engine mostly prepared, so as soon as the weather dried and warmed up a bit a new cambelt went on the new engine, along with a new turbo and the old engine's loom / high pressure injection pump and some sensors (not all Saab 9-5 bits fit straight on with no problem

)

Absolute nightmare to fit without dropping the front subframe and hoisting the front end in the air, but after a few days of careful fiddling the new engine was in place, and it was good to go again. As a Saabra

All went well until a couple of months ago (now on 172k - 22k in a year and a bit!) when it was in the middle of a sandwich between a van and a modern Skoda. Vectra ended up with a damaged tailgate, smashed rear bumper, slight structural rear damage, a smashed front bumper (no way I was going to be able to screw that back together!) and a badly dented front bumper bar. Not totally beyond the realms of repair, but my insurance company classed it as Cat C, so it was due a journey back to Copart

Once again I was impressed with how robust the Vectra was (it was still fine to drive after a bit of temporary front bumper fettling and everything operated except one foglight; the Skoda disintegrated!) but given the timescale before it went on it's final journey to Copart, I grabbed the first 1.9 CDTi I came across so I could swap as many good parts as possible over.

And so this beastie started sitting on my driveway a couple of weeks back:

Rattled like a beggar (failing DMF possibly), headlights were decayed, some trim damage, terrible starting, failing auto-boot open, very intermittent speedo, poor dash and a snapped bonnet release, but it's been remapped, has a black leather interior in decent condition, VXR steering wheel / bumpers by the looks of it, a working sunroof and rather nice wheels

Aside from swapping the door panels / rubbers, centre console, radio, tailgate struts, heater motor, dashboard / speedo and load bay lining / trim in one panic-stricken weekend before the old Vectra went off to meet it's breaker the main thing I got to do was swap the starter, which sorted the dreadful starting (and lessened the noise of the failing DMF, oddly) but sadly I didn't have the time to save the uprated brakes or fresh inlet / turbo. Brakes have since been re-purchased / refitted, I need to sort the DMF (but one driveshaft's already been replaced) and sort out some oddities with the climate control but so far it's been even better than the old one to drive, and it doesn't have quite such an appetite for the local wildlife (only one rabbit eaten so far)

**mj2k** · 14th August 2025, 12:58

So, onto the new Vectra. Chances are it's been on here at some time - it's a bit worn out (see above) but prev owner was a definite enthusiast - he bought a personal plate (VEC is the last part) for it, gathered a fair few parts and he's still got a 2.8 which he's keeping that because it doesn't cost a fortune to run in the London ULEZ, unlike the diesel

It looks like it was a private purchase when new judging by the options selected - lowered suspension, debadge, etc and that might also explain the colour - though the car looks great in red (far better than black IMO) it's not a colour many companies would choose for a fleet car. And it came with a useful pile of spare parts, so assuming the corrosion I can see underneath isn't terminal it'll be a "keeper"; I'll no doubt be replacing the engine at some point in the next couple of years judging by the mileages we seem to do in the Vectra, but at the moment the main job to do is sorting the clutch / DMF, and doing something with the climate control.

Much as it'd be nice to keep the climate control original, the push-button on the control panel's central knob is worn out so 99% of the time it's impossible to change the air flow from 'auto', and I suspect most other 2nd hand control panels will be the same - the climate control seems to be pretty poor at choosing where to send air (much like every other one I've come across) so no doubt that button will have been pressed a lot on every other control panel too.

Since living with 'auto' won't be an option (the other half would make my life hell if she had to drive with warm air being blasted into her face) that leaves me with two unappealing alternatives - buy another control panel, unsolder the rotary switch from one of the other controls and attempt to solder it in place of the original without wrecking the panel (not easy with surface mount devices), or swap to the manual (aka 'semi automatic') aircon.

Manual aircon seems the more sensible / robust option, but that's going to be a huge ton of work - I tried swapping the components / loom over with the old Vectra's semi-auto aircon, but no joy - the heater box is going to need to be swapped because the manual aircon's actuators don't have the mount points on the climate control heater box, and also it did nothing anyway. I've subsequently found that's because the manual aircon operates on the low-speed CAN bus whereas the climate control operates on the medium, so in addition to changing the values in op-com I'm going to need to alter the wiring from the info panel to the aircon plug (seems the CAN buses run through the info panel for the aircon) and also fit a different heater box, which will be another dash-out job.

Watch this space for progress, though if there's anyone still around who's done the conversion in reverse (i.e. fitting climate control to a lower spec car) any advice on how you did it will be much appreciated.

**mj2k** · 15th August 2025, 10:40

Done a bit of reading around it, since it's an Elite and not an SRi it presumably can't be an XP2, but judging by pics I've seen on here and elsewhere it's wearing the full XP2 kit, including gear knob and steering wheel.
Which is nice

**mj2k** · 19th August 2025, 09:47

Not the best of weeks for the red thingy - on thurs evening the clutch noise had got worse and I could feel a very pronounced judder, like the clutch was just about to fail completely. Since it's due to do some fairly serious miles this week I had to work very hard over the weekend to try and get it ready for use on Sunday afternoon (clutch swap on this combo of engine / box is almost as nightmarish as the engine swap!).

So proceeded to remove the driveshafts, drop the subframe(!) and undo the fiddly star-headed bolts holding the 'box onto the bellhousing so I could get to the clutch, and the 'box dropped maybe 3-5cm when I was doing this, before I disconnected the clutch pipe and wiggled the 'box safely out of the way.

Clutch itself was completely done for - still about 33% life left in the friction plates, but most of the the rivets holding it together had failed, so opposite sides of the clutch had about 5mm play

And to make matters worse the dual mass flywheel had completely failed, the springs had got mangled and it had jammed into a single mass flywheel, which probably explains how it did such a good job of mangling the clutch plate; it's a heavy car and the engine's got quite a bit of grunt for a 4 cylinder diesel, so it had simply torn the clutch apart through excessive torque.

Replacing the heavy DMF*in situ was a frustrating nightmare, took me well over an hour to fiddle it into place but once that was done reassembly was fiddly but reasonably plain sailing. Reconnected the clutch pipe, bled the hydraulics and then gave it a test before refitting the driveshafts. Hmm, clutch pedal went straight to the floor. Pumped it a few times, got some pressure, and then looked at the clutch pipe's plastic elbow union in case there was a leak.

Yep, leak there alright. Guess I must have fractured it when the 'box dropped slightly. Popped it off, and then discovered the plastic elbow hadn't fractured, the plastic connector in the bellhousing had instead! So the 'box is going to have to come off again once I've got the replacement parts in. Not such good news since it was supposed to be ready on Sun, so on Monday morning I had to cycle for an hour to the local car hire place and get a hire car for a week

I hate the way they keep using weird bits of plastic for important things in modern cars - they go brittle over time and once the limited supply of replacements has gone it'll be crusher time for the car.

**mj2k** · 19th August 2025, 09:48

The stupid plastic bits are still available luckily, but there is a potential workaround - since the pipes at either end of the plastic tomfoolery just end in standard hydraulic brake unions you could create a replacement out of standard brake pipe and a short flexi if needed, though bleeding the system could prove, er, interesting - you'd have to crack the union off at the end of the flexi and hope the clutch actuator self-bleeds.

**NeilGo** · 23rd August 2025, 19:52

Wow, what a journey! That’s one of the most thorough and entertaining Vectra stories I’ve read; proper dedication and ingenuity throughout. From Copart bargain to Saab-inspired sleeper, and now onto the red beast with VXR touches and a personality of its own (plus a slightly reduced appetite for wildlife lol).

Massive respect for tackling everything from interior swaps to CAN bus wizardry and clutch/DMF nightmares, especially under pressure. Sounds like you’ve got the patience of a saint and the skills of a seasoned tech!

Hope the latest round of fixes goes smoothly and the red one proves to be a worthy successor. Looking forward to seeing how the climate control saga unfolds - definitely watching this space!

**NeilGo** · 23rd August 2025, 19:56

Wow, what a journey! That’s one of the most thorough and entertaining Vectra stories I’ve read; proper dedication and ingenuity throughout. From Copart bargain to Saab-inspired sleeper, and now onto the red beast with VXR touches and a personality of its own (plus a slightly reduced appetite for wildlife lol).

Massive respect for tackling everything from interior swaps to CAN bus wizardry and clutch/DMF nightmares, especially under pressure. Sounds like you’ve got the patience of a saint and the skills of a seasoned tech!

Hope the latest round of fixes goes smoothly and the red one proves to be a worthy successor. Looking forward to seeing how the climate control saga unfolds - definitely watching this space!