1972 HC viva update 19/01/16

[Ebejeebies]

so i was offered this car in trade of some parts for my old project. (my humber sceptre mk3 which has/had succumbed to rust).


the previous didnt have the funds to buy the parts and he also didnt have funds or time to fix this viva. so for him swapping seems like a good idea. the condtions of the trade were 'i had to like the car, and no major structural work had to be done and in exchange i would deliver the parts they wanted'

the offer was made on the 23rd of feb, on sunday the 1st of march,my car was packed and we (me and my dad) drove off to have a look at it. 

we rolled it out of the garage and had a proper look: (ignore my old man sporting the dpm jacket)


structurally is was sounds. couple of faults cosmetically, few pin holes in the drivers wing (which are high tops?? any one no what that means please feel free to explain) and a few small holes else where but structurally it was solid. the seats are in incredibly good condition, surprisingly, and all the lights (including the interior ones) worked, well all except for the passenger front indicator. So does this deal sound abit to good to any one else? well heres the catch. it doesn't start, guy took the head off to get the valves sorted professionally, re fitted the head and nothing. hadnt really touched it since.....

so, did i take the deal? damn right i did. i was down a project car, so my weekends where becoming empty (i mean i can only drink so much). i had already paid for the parts so as fair as i was concerned that money was gone. essentially making this a free car(that point is important) and lastly, a solid shell with engine issues? yes please! my mechanical skills are much better than my fab skills.

my plan was to view the car and if i liked it, get it professorially delivered.how ever my dad insisted on bring the tow bar,just incase we could attach it and to it home. so you can guess what happened. the deal was done, attached tow bar to the viva and my audi and we towed it home.

one battery, couldnt use the wipers as i had to save the power for lights. so it was an interesting 70 miles home.  quick pitstop 30 miles from home, my might audi (with flashing light) towing my new toy. and here is at home. (bonus point if you can name the other cars in the pic)






so,my plans? 

get it started asap
get it moted and insured
slam it
respray it in matt blue (don't sure if dark or light blue yet)
banded steelies 
take it to shows

there are many things ive wanted to do cars, but havent due to not wanting to ruining them when i come on to selling them......with a free car i couldnt care less. I'm going to attempt my own respray and lowering it as much a possible. if there are 2 ways to do something with this car, I'm always choosing the cheaper one (except where safety is concerned). if it gets written off or crashed.... its a shame but atleast my wallet wont be crying with me.

And my dad, the absolute legend,on his day off, had a look at why it wasnt starting and fixed it, its was due to a bad point gap. it now runs. tappet gaps need adjusting as its rather loud but it works

had it one day, and already have a running motor,hoping to put it through an MOT either late this week or next week

more news to come as i do more work to it. 

any and all comments welcome and any advice on how lower it please say

[yoeddynz]

Welcome to vivadom :-)

[grifterkid]

Now that looks very good indeed, I think a superb deal was done there!

I bet this'll be on the road very soon and you'll be loving every second of it...

Please do keep us updated with any updates as I can see this being something really rather interesting...

[peddyp]

As above, Welcome to Vivadom!!

The high wings you mention... It's just the top line of the wing (from windscreen to headlight) has a stylish raised lip (as opposed to my flat bland ones lol)

Good luck with her, nice to see another HC being saved!

Pedro

[omega]

the red ones japenese!

[Mercdan68]

First car I ever drove legally on my own on the road back in 1985, unfortunately I killed the engine near brands hatch, and back then they were worth curse word all so it went to a local breakers, my sister has never let me forget it it was her pride and joy! In 31 years she's never let me drive any of her cars since! Great project you have there will be following with interest

[taurus]

Welcome to the wonderful world of Vivas - and finding parts is half the fun. As said, the higtops refers to the outer top edge of the wings which you see rise upwards. Mine 1971 Viva originally had them but they were replaced with the later flat topped ones long before I got it.

It's the inner wings that go on them and yours look pretty good in the photos.

If you do lower it for goodness sake keep the springs - they are like hens teeth so someone will find a good home for them. There's a guy in Leeds looking for a pair of front springs at the moment.

[Ebejeebies]

thanks for explaining about the high tops guys, makes sense now and peddyp if you find your wings so bland, i'll happily swap cars (loving the mean look of yours). taurus, thanks for mentioning about the springs, as there was a possibitly of me taking a hack saw to them, but now i shallnt.

Quick update, engine is now as smooth a a kitten, tappet gaps sorted and HE is running much happier now (apprently the viva is called sparky and is a HE according to the last few previous owners,so who am i to brake tradition)

however due to a broken engine mount and the fact you cant select gears when the engine it on. Theres 51k miles on the clock so its possible its still got the original clutch, which by now is probably as thick as a piece of paper and just as useful. sadly means there is going to be a slight delay in getting him to the ol' MOT man, how ever sourcing the parts as i type.

but hoping to book him in next week (fingers and all other extremities crossed).

also peeps, what do you reckon, respray it in a matt blue or leave as it is and go for the ratrod look?
your opinion counts!

[Ebejeebies]

thanks for explaining about the high tops guys, makes sense now and peddyp if you find your wings so bland, i'll happily swap cars (loving the mean look of yours). taurus, thanks for mentioning about the springs, as there was a possibitly of me taking a hack saw to them, but now i shallnt.

Quick update, engine is now as smooth a a kitten, tappet gaps sorted and HE is running much happier now (apprently the viva is called sparky and is a HE according to the last few previous owners,so who am i to brake tradition)

however due to a broken engine mount and the fact you cant select gears when the engine it on. Theres 51k miles on the clock so its possible its still got the original clutch, which by now is probably as thick as a piece of paper and just as useful. sadly means there is going to be a slight delay in getting him to the ol' MOT man, how ever sourcing the parts as i type.

but hoping to book him in next week (fingers and all other extremities crossed).

also peeps, what do you reckon, respray it in a matt blue or leave as it is and go for the ratrod look?
your opinion counts!

[chambers1984]

also peeps, what do you reckon, respray it in a matt blue or leave as it is and go for the ratrod look?
your opinion counts!

[/quote]
I done one of mine in matt blue mate if have a look to get a rough idea.

[Ebejeebies]

okay,i really do like the matt blue,i knew it would look good and seeing yours confirms it. how did you lower your viva?

[Mercdan68]

Rat rod look, and a nice set of original Vauxhall rostyles or polished wolf race wheels

[Ebejeebies]

Mar 3, 2015 20:35:13 GMT Mercdan68 said:

Rat rod look, and a nice set of original Vauxhall rostyles or polished wolf race wheels

i was thinking some banded rostyles maybe? as the current steelies on it barely feel the arch, something wider is need

[taurus]

Your issue with gear selection - sounds like the usual problem of the clutch plate having seized up. Mine was like that when I got it as it had been laid up for a while.

Don't get brutal with it straight away, just fire it up and leave it to idle, might take a couple of hours or even more, but once the heat gets into the clutch they usually just free off.

If it doesn't, that's the time to start the more brutal antics of starting it in gear and then stomping on the brakes & clutch simultaneously. (Mine didn't have any brakes so that wasn't an option.)

Personally I wouldn't lower it before you've tried some different wheels. If you can't find Vauxhall Rostyles Midget ones will fit, just that the central hole is smaller so the Vauxhall caps won't fit.

[jonsey]

When I was a teenager my chevette ( I think it is the same gearbox?) Developed a problem where i could only select 3rd and 4th with the engine on, and only 1st and 2nd with the engine off. It turned out to be the nut on the end of the selector rod was loose. Just took the 4 bolts that hold the tin cover on the end of the select housing above the propshaft and nipped the nut up. Strange problem but easily fixed.

[Ebejeebies]

small update (bigger one to come tomorrow evening) over the last week ive been busy buying/sourcing new parts.

Clutch-from ebay, advertised as slightly used, looks pretty much brand new and came with pressure plate. at £25 delivered it was a bargain (weirdly came with 2 clutches and 2 pressure plates, though it only said one in ad, tis a shame the second one is knacked though :/ )

Door cards-from ebay, 3 out of four of my door cards are in good nick,one is crazily cracked. i might be cutting holes in them for speakers (as there is none in the car atm, no radio either, that will soon change after the MOT).so i wanted to have a spare set. but Depending on how the speakers sound through the door cards, i might not cut into them, but will decided that later. at £35 delivered, would be rude to pass them up.

windscreen jet, motor and washer bottle-from my mates vw POLO. two issues with the washer system on the viva; A) its missing the jet B) its a manaul pump,which seems like a bad idea to use when driving. so i will be swapping those over. FREE as well

if your wondering why I'm putting down prices, its so i can keep record of how much ive spend.

now for the fun bit with pictures, if you scroll up, you see the bonnet and whole front of the car looks abit, well, pants. the red rust paint or what ever it is, looks like its just been applied willy nilly, and the bit where someone wiped it before the paint dryed looks even worse. basically its just bad, needed to be changed ASAP.
So,friday afternoon when the sun was shinning,i did just that


i already had a design in mind (somewhat burrowed from peddyp's viva). so using a bit of sand paper, i carefully scratched the red paint away from the places were i didnt want it, giving me the orginal paint back, i did consider taking it all off, but i didnt because in some places it was just bare metal underneath the red paint.


once that was done, i needed to mask up the car,sadly i didnt have any masking tape, so duct tape was going to have to do. with some newspaper, i quicky had everything that needed to be covered, covered.


a quick spray with some black rust proof spray, brought for the humber and hey presto, the car is transformed. i think this looks 1000x better that before.though admittly the blue point bit isnt perfect. but hey, for a quick and free massive improvement to the car, I'm not complaining.


please feel free to leave feedback, either positive or negative (though construcive feed back is preffered in the latter case) also anything you might like to see done to the car.

[taurus]

It is a pity the front no. plate is bent. I used to make those when I worked in a baskstreet garage years ago, on my Viva I was going to take them off and put black & white plates on - then someone on here persuaded me to keep the originals. It'll probably straighten a bit, but they never look quite right.

Looking at the development of photos I can't make sense of when the red oxide got onto the car - I thought you'd done it, but obviously not.

A tip for you - on the Viva front suspension there's a bolt runs through the top of the shocker, it has a steel tube it runs through and 99% of them that steel tube welds itself to the bolt with rust which makes it a pig to get off. So when you get round to working on the front suspension check that bolt carefully before committing to belt it out with a hammer - 'cos if you wreck the thread and then can't get it out you're in for a heap of woe. There's no space to get a cutting disc in there. It took me 5 minutes to remove the o/s one, and a day to do the n/s.

Ignition system - there's a simple update. I fitted an Accuspark module to replace the points and a 12v coil to replace the ballast coil. You then need an 12v ignition live to feed the coil. If you look at the fuse box - the second block of wires (rear), on the second row from the front the ballasted feed is on the 4th hole, move it to the 5th hole and that's an unballasted 12v feed. That way you take the ballast wire out of the system which on old Vauxhall wiring looms prevents your Viva turning into an impromptu BBQ. Simples.

[Ebejeebies]

So today was clutch day. wake up, take off the gearbox, change the clutch, reassemble and be one step closer to MOTing it. Simple plan. and of course, as every one knows, nothing is ever that simple with a classic car.

i've never done a clutch change on a viva before and i didn't have a haynes book to help. but i know the basic princibles of how to change a clutch and, well, this is my first time doing it on a RWD car, but ive done it a few times on FWD cars. how much harder could it be???

first things first, raising the car,nothing too exciting happened here, bit of a dodgy angle on one of the axle stands,but a quick shift of things changed that. Safety first and what not.


next did i just did what i though made sense, removed the propshaft, support the engine (from below with a trolley jack as i didnt have anything long enough to support to support it from above) remove the gearbox support bar and mount. this all happened rather easily, no stuck or seized bolts.which made a nice change.

removed the speedo cable and clutch cable. no problems here.
cracked all the bolts connecting the gearbox to the engine,i also removed the starter motor just in case the bolts also connected the gearbox to the engine. and starting at the top, undid and removed all the bolts. which again was fairly simple, except for a tricky to reach bolt at the top of the gearbox,took a bit of fiddling to undo but atleast it wasn't seized.
so i undid all the bolts and connectors,and did the gear box come off?

in short,NO.

firstly it needed that little bit of persuasion that gearboxes need when taking them off. but once i had a good 1 or 2 centimeters clearance all the way around the damn thing still wouldnt come off. no idea why, i looked and couldn't see any thing holding it on (the answer was of course staring me in the face)
at this point my mate showed up on to use some of my tools to fithis air horns (dixie of course)

this is his wee beastie (hopefully he'll start his own thread soon)



he's flipped the front leaf,thats why its got a massive front camber,but hes soon going to get a proper lowering kit for it,to do it properly. but hopefully he'll start his own thread so he can explain what and why hes done what hes done (so some good comments might encourage him hint hint)

anyway back to this P.O.S gearbox. it was loose and very free, below is the gap i had,i could twist the gearbox 180 degrees but still wouldnt come off, i was clearly missing something.


if a had a manual it would of told me what i forgotten to take off. Or some more experience......so i went and asked some one who did. my farther, and much to my annoyance, spotted my problem in all of 20 seconds. a fresh pair of eyes always helps.
the problem was the guard at the bottom of the gear box, it didnt connect the engine to the gearbox so i repeatedly over looked it. it covered the fly wheel, so it stopped the gearbox coming off. two minutes and two bolts late at it was free.
extremely dirty, but free.
i quickly removed the old clutch which had seem to be seized. good call there taurus. wasnt in the best condtion, but i could of gotten another couple of 1000 miles out of it.


time to fit the new clutch. Or not. see if you can spot the difference between the two clutches (one on the left car came off the car and one on the right was to go on the car)


so that ruined my plans. back to the internet to find the right clutch, same as in a chevette apparently.

back to the gearbox, any oil that might have been in it once, had escaped, to the bell housing. it was filthly.


you can see where i was scrapping the gunge off with a screw driver. but with a bit of elbow grease,some petrol and one slightly ruined wire brush.i transformed it into this



so its all fun and games, ive got a new clutch coming and a lead of some engines mounts, so who knows, might get it down next weekend? haha

[120y]

Yep same as a chevette, it used the same engine and box.
keep going with this looking forward to seeing this driving again

[Ebejeebies]

you and me both bud, hopefully nothing to major turns up on the mot. i am honestly expecting it to fail on a load of little things,just hopefully no big body work type things. fingers crossed.



and Taurus, i don't actually know what ballast and unballast feeds are, or how they effect the car. could you post or pm me a description of what the major differences are etc? especially if it prevents fires haha.