Frontera farm car

[charles97]

Thought I'd post this in this section as it isn't really that interesting of a car and I believe it to be a 95 reg so is it even that retro? Anyway, me and a few friends (one of them living on a farm) have wanted a car as something to play around with. We'd been looking around for something cheap, relatively easy to work on, rear wheel drive, manual and either relatively light weight or of a reasonably high displacement or both.

We had looked at a Reliant Scimitar that had been advertised on the web for £300. Now for £300 you got two bodies, a chassis and the 3 litre Essex v6 coupled to a manual gearbox. Now at £50 each for four 18 year olds that seemed very achievable, but at the time we were all still in college and three of us learning to drive so still if we could get something cheaper, we probably would. And that's when farm friend had an idea, on his farm a Vauxhall Frontera Sport had been left for the best part of a decade. It was starting to get in the way so the offer was there, we could have it in return for some help around the farm. So we all went up there and saw this Frontera, stained paint, plants growing around the chassis rails and flat tyres. But other than that it was exceptionally clean.

So next up we set to work pumping up the tyres and trying to push it from its resting place of ten years, up a gentle slope and out of the ruts it had made. Needless to say it wouldn't move anywhere, so we got the loader and a big strap and put it round the ball hitch and pulled it out. This is when we realised why we couldn't push it anywhere, three of the wheels were completely seized. So we did a bit more to it, tried getting the wheels off (one of which still hasn't come off to this day) so we could get to the brakes as we noticed that the handbrake was seized on. So whilst one of us was at work on that I went about trying to free up the locked front wheel and with a few lock to lock turns of the steering wheel it moved. We put a battery on it which involved putting a crowbar on the bonnet release latch as it was rusted solid) and tried starting it but immobiliser!

We next came back and put a battery on it and found out there is a sequence you have to do with the key fob which we didn't get right at the time so the next step was to see if the engine would turn at all and thought we'd try free off this last seized wheel. So we bring the Merlo back, put the strap around the ball hitch again and begin to drag it with it in reverse and four wheel drive then have somebody looking at the engine whilst I dump the clutch. Result! We freed the wheel and the engine wasn't anywhere near seized. Then we dragged it to the workshop where we began clearing it out.





By this time I think we'd given it a wash with a bottle of hand soap and a jumper we had found in the back.
Anyway this is as far as I'll go with the first post, this was about June/July time and theres more for future updates if anyone is actually interested. Suzuki gn125 coming soon too!

[generallee]

If I hadn't read the words, I would have looked at the pictures and thought "Wow that's clean."

Interested to see where it goes from here...

[charles97]

Nov 30, 2016 18:30:54 GMT generallee said:

If I hadn't read the words, I would have looked at the pictures and thought "Wow that's clean."

Interested to see where it goes from here...

All I can say is if you are a purist or take offence (like I did) to unnecessary violence towards a mint vehicle, look away now!

[edessex]

I like Fronteras, I like farm hacks, I like off-roaders.

I'm watching with interest...

[mikeyp247]

Dec 1, 2016 6:42:32 GMT edessex said:

I like Fronteras, I like farm hacks, I like off-roaders.

I'm watching with interest...

Same. Bookmarked.

[pistonpopper]

This is good, and really i think it should be in the readers wives erm, rides section! Looking forward to seeing more of this beauty!

[charles97]

Right so this is an image of the frontera that I found going back through messages after I had realised that I hadn't taken as many images of it as I thought I had. It had been left in the same place for the best part of a decade and we told we could have it or it would be scrapped.



A little bit of history, the previous owner had left it after he had got a new truck because of overheating issues with the Frontera(we didn't know this at this point). He had hit a deer and had also managed to over Rev the engine to the point of valve float resulting in a valve hitting the piston and being ejected out the top of the engine. We later found evidence of this incident with a crescent shape dent in the top of one of the pistons.

Anyway, where I got up to in the first post was we had just got it all rolling freely, engine turning over and cleaned inside and out - all the essentials done, this is where we probably should have put it up on a certain bidding site as a "genuine barn find".
Obviously we did the next logical thing to do was get the engine running so we pulled the dead battery off of it and put a relatively well charged one on(although we were sharing batteries with an electric fence at this point as we didn't have one of our own). Turned the key anndd immobiliser...
So, we phoned a few people who may have known what the sequence was and eventually found out that the sequence was key in the ignition, pressing the button the key fob and disconnecting, reconnecting (x3) one of the battery terminals (forget which one). Sharing this battery with the electric fence we soon learned that you had to do this sequence everytime the battery was disconnected. we tried turning the key once we had sorted out the situation with the immobiliser and it was so close to wanting to start! So we pulled the plugs and cleaned them up, drained the oil and put put new oil in and tried again. This time it runs, sounds like a '20s stationary engine, but it runs. As soon as it revs up it shoots a whole load of rust out of the exhaust and is burning something dodgy as its got loads of blue smoke pouring out of it but this may have just been where the petrol was sat so long.

The next time we come up we notice it has got a flat tyre which was the same one that was flat when we first saw it so quickly pulled the spare off the back which is a smaller tyre so the whole car leaning towards the front a bit.



After we changed this we then put a battery on it again and repeated the immobiliser sequence again and got it running, by this point we had got some more petrol and drained the old out just by disconnecting a bit of fuel line and running the pump, satisfied enough of the old stuff was out we put the new stuff in. Once we had reconnected the line we decided that it was probably time to give it its maiden voyage so drove it around the yard and it was going fine, so next big thing took it for a drive down the track from the workshop to the house where we constantly heard knocking on the floor. Stopped at the house and grabbed some food, it had all gone well so far so we jumped back in and drove back to the workshop. Upon arriving in the yard the engine started briefly cutting out and then running smoothly again which to me sounded and felt like momentary fuel starvation so we stopped and opened the bonnet to see if we had reconnected the fuel line properly. That's when we noticed some steam and a hissing noise, felt the radiator and it was ice cold. There was water in the header tank and when we took the cap off there was a loud hiss and whole load of steam came out, at this point we think it may have been expansion causing the engine to suddenly drop out as a piston gets a bit stuck? So the next time we go up there we take the grill off take the radiator out and flush that through and ran the engine. All the pulleys turned but no water was coming out of the block. Something was obviously wrong with the water pump and we couldn't actually get to it as we kept coming across seized bolts. This is the point where we thought we won't give up as we'd got a running car, but things would probably end up messy, which they did...

[mrmoonyman]

More please! Enjoyed the read so far too

[charles97]

So, hope everyone's had a good Christmas! I meant to be updating this more often really as I've got loads to post so I'll get back to it. In the last update we had managed to get the car running and driving. It was great once all the plugs had been cleaned and new petrol put in, 2 and 4 wheel drive and the high and low ranges all worked as they should. Nothing appeared to be at all wrong with the car other than the water pump not working and when it got up to speed a rather loud knocking noise. We drove the car around without the radiator in and simply put a garden hose on full power into the block and let it run out the other side. This worked but obviously only for the short journeys from the workshop to the house on the lowest revs possible.

After this we decided to remove the bonnet as well as the grill and bullbars to try and maximise airflow across the engine, one of us pointed out that the grill and bullbars probably weren't actually stopping airflow but then it was argued that the lighter the car the less hard the engine would have to work. The three items were quickly removed and placed in storage for there eventual return to the vehicle. We went for another drive and admittedly it did seems to help cooling, but obviously with no water circulating through the block there is only so much that can be done. So we ordered a 12V electric water pump for £20 but had to wait a while for that to come so whilst we were waiting we thought "what else could help with cooling?". So we went of down to the local scrapyard and got ourselves an electric fan off a fiesta for a fiver.
In the front of this yard was a section for vehicles that they were trying to sell as they were, in the bunch there was a Mercedes of about 2004 vintage, a couple of Volvo S60s, a couple of MG ZRs, and a Toyota Starlet. Then I noticed this car I hadn't ever seen before. Now to my untrained eye I thought that's some eighties and Japanese, I just didn't know what. As I walk over to it I notice the subaru badge on the front of it and it turns out it was a Subaru GL and it was a top of the range one too, 1.8L flat four, manual high and low range 2 and four wheel drive gear box. And this thing was immaculate and all original, in very nice metallic blue too with great Subaru graphics down the side. I fell in love, this car was absolutely mint and I needed it, asked the scrap man and he told me it had an issue with the fuel pump and if I gave him £150 then it'd be mine. There was also a mk2 Fiesta and an E30 Baur in the main yard that I was going to enquired about after the Subaru.
Anyway, I digress, we got back to the yard and we're looking at were to mount the fan and came up with our plan of where to mount it which meant we had to remove the bonnet latching system, but seen as it kept getting stuck anyway we weren't to worried about doing this and I said we could just make some hood pins anyway. We then retired for the day after having reasonable success in sourcing a few parts for our car and waited for our water pump to arrive.

[mrmoonyman]

The Subaru though?!? Did you buy it??

[sarkie83]

Dec 29, 2016 11:29:17 GMT mrmoonyman said:

The Subaru though?!? Did you buy it??

Exactly what I want to know...can't leave us hanging like that!

[stinkynails]

pay someone to fit a waterpump. they are literally £15 and an hours labour if you cant do it for yourself. your car is never going to run for very long if you don't get the proper pump installed.

youll have many more lols if the engine is running near properly than you will letting it overheat and blowing the head gasket.

innit : )

[charles97]

Dec 29, 2016 12:06:40 GMT sarkie83 said:

Dec 29, 2016 11:29:17 GMT mrmoonyman said:

The Subaru though?!? Did you buy it??

Exactly what I want to know...can't leave us hanging like that!

Oh so you guys want to hear about the Subaru some more, eh?

I swear I had posted this thread in the other modifications section - explains why I couldn't find it.
We weren't too fussed about putting in the electric water pump as despite my enthusiasm to get this car back on the road the other three were not so sure that was ever going to happen. So when we next got together we worked on mounting up the radiator, electric fan and electric water pump. This meant we had to trim the fan shroud so that it would fit against the slam panel and around the bumper without pushin the radiator back into the engine driven fan. Once we had trimmed everything we needed to (including the slam panel) we then committed and cable tied the fan onto the slam panel and bumper trim. After this we put the radiator in and welded the supports that locate and hold the radiator onto the mounts as we needed the radiator tilted slightly back to make room for both fans fearing the pump wouldn't be powerful enough.





Oh yeah, at this point have I mentioned the car went on a slight diet? After seeing those last two pictures and reading what came before I expect 99% of you have left never to return, but for those one percent this is where we all actually started driving it seen as we had got it to remain cool. In a post above you can see the headlining is sagging down which just ended up being in the way so that came out, followed by the carpet as we had heard a crunching cracking noise before the floor in the boot got a little lower where one of us had been kneeling whilst cleaning. Removal of the carpet proved the boot floor to be paper thin in quite a few places. Also noticed in the removal of this, rust stains behind plastic trim so in order to find out what it was causing this we removed all the trim and found where the roll hoop mounts were rotten.

[mgmrw]

Half expected to see pictures of it hammering around a quarry

[charles97]

Jan 4, 2017 23:04:12 GMT mgmrw said:

Half expected to see pictures of it hammering around a quarry

How about one from the car with my friend giving it his all? Got to hand it to him, think this may have been his first time driving a car...

[mgmrw]

Are the clocks hanging out?

[Morris63]

Evening Charles, got any updates on the Frontera and/or Subaru GL for us?

[lightyearman]

more details, this looks to be fun

[charles97]

So updates;

I won't drag out the story of the Subaru any longer. At the time, although I was working, I didn't really have any "spendable cash" as it was all being saved up for driving lessons, tests, buying a car and insuring it. However the time came where I got some spendable money, so next time I was out with one of my friends we drove passed the yard to make sure it was still there, and it was, but being Saturday afternoon the yard was shut. So on Monday, I call up the yard as soon as they're open and ask about it
Me: "Hi, I was just wondering if the blue Subaru out the front of your yard is still for sale?"
Yard owner: (laughs hard at my question) "No, we crushed it yesterday morning"
I just let this news sink in and think I only managed a quiet "okay"
To which he replies: "yeah sorry about that"
Me: "Alright, no worries. Thanks, bye."
Yard Owner: "Bye" and as he goes to put the phone down, I hear him say to the other guy there "Bloody typical isn't it? A soon as we crush it, someone wants it..."

So quite gutting. Not only because I'd missed out on something that I wanted, but also I'd not managed to save a nice little retro - and one I'd never seen before at that. Probably made it worse for me because I thought that not only would it probably be the cheapest car I'd ever get, but it could be my first proper project car, something I could take to shows, something that would be different from everybody's first car being a corsa and something that I could just truly enjoy. So not only would it be loved in the future by me it's a damn shame as well because it was very clearly cherished in the past too. But what can you do, at the end of the day it's gone but that only means I'll have to try save something else.
(Oh, and I did get a cheaper car, a Seat Ibiza that was £130 with 3/4 of a tank in. So the car probably only cost £100?)

But onto the vehicle that the thread is supposed to be about, the Frontera.
Speaking of which, maybe I'll have to make the first car I save a Frontera, to make up for what we did to this one.
So we had discovered the floor in the back was pretty thin in places and stripped out the rear carpet. After a quick going over with a wire brush and screwdriver, turns out that in some places there wasn't much metal at all. So to patch the floor or at least make it look better was on the list, pretty far down the list but on there none the less.



After we had put the spare wheel on we noticed that this one also let out air, so we got some puncture repair stuff put in there which seemed to do the job. As the spare had come off the back and we weren't getting a new tyre to replace the flat, we decided to take the frame work off that holds the spare wheel onto the rear door. By now the water pump had arrived so we got round to fitting that and wiring it and the electric fan in. So we also took the dashboard out so we could pull the wires for both through the firewall and into the cab and then have switches on the dash. We wired it all up, then tested it and it all ran fine with no over heating to report so we wanted to get driving it. Also there were plans for a roll cage that was going to follow the A pillar up and back down the B pillar so think the dash was staying out for that, but we've still not built the roll cage or put the dash back in, so it may just stay that way.



So as can be seen in this image, we had got it pretty stripped by this point but the all important seat belts, grab handles and steering wheel are all still there. Now as to why the front carpet came out, partly due to a soggy patch that we wanted to investigate and get rid of, also to get to the floor to weld the cage in! And why to door cards came off...
I have no story behind that, maybe that was just because they were looking out of place by now. The mirrors were electric adjust though so we did make a hole in a bracket coming off the door and pushed the switch in so we could keep that luxury.

[charles97]

So we got the water pump in and wired up last time and took it for a test run. It ran really well for about 15 minutes over the fields and survived a bit of hooning but then the temp gauge climbed very rapidly.



So out in the front looking at what the issue could have been we realised the pump was still pumping but had managed to get air locked, sounded like the water had stones and grit in it - nasty sound! We switched the car off and let it cool for a bit then limped it back to the workshop and took the pump off and repositioned it and ran it for a bit to make sure there was no air in the system. That all worked and didn't have anymore issues with it after that.

So after this I didn't go up there for a while which is a shame because I think this is when the most actual driving happened. However, there are still pictures of some of the shenanigans that went on, including;


Minor case of external combustion where some freshly cut straw got caught between the exhaust and frame.


Which resulted in the addition of a "sump guard" that I'm told was attached with four self tapping screws.


Oh yeah and at some point the exhaust was cut off in an attempt to make it sound a little less like...



The exhaust was falling off anyway, in fact the first time we started it up it shot out a whole load of rust and rust coloured smoke. Giving the tail pipe a gentle nudge with my boot revealed an unnatural flexibility half way along the car so we thought its best to cut it off before it falls off in a field somewhere. We got the recipe a bit wrong though, it ended up sounding full on Foxhall Stadium which was a bit unfortunate.