Never ending Nova project

[BRoadGhost]

the bracket must weigh the same as the battery

[Southie]

If youve got a mk2 bumper I'd just get a grill and headlights and mk2 the whole front

[paul james]

If youve got a mk2 bumper I'd just get a grill and headlights and mk2 the whole front

I'll be keeping it mk1 up front I think. For one thing I don't want to have to replace the fibreglass wings on it.

[paul james]

the bracket must weigh the same as the battery

☺ It's not quite that bad, 350g compared to 1.1 Kg for the battery. Probably works out lighter than sticking the battery in the glove box or somewhere and needing heavy extra cabling.

[paul james]

I spent a bit of time taking a few unnecessary bits out of the car. I won’t be bothering with a stereo again so the wiring for that and the aerial could go. I now regret keeping the bee-sting aerial on the car, I should have filled the hole when I resprayed it, oh well.
I removed the last fiddly bits of sound deadening I could reach from behind the dash, requiring some contortionist skills with the seats in place! I’d already binned most of it long ago, its pretty heavy stuff and well worth ditching. That little lot along with the cigarette lighter, stereo support thing and an accidentally snapped off wing mirror adjuster came to 1.39 Kg, not bad for some free weight reduction.

[paul james]

I haven't been able to do much in the last weeks as I'd smashed my shoulder up falling off my mountain bike, but now its pretty much all healed I can crack on with things again!

Not long after I resprayed the car originally, I got stuck behind a gritting lorry dropping not what I would consider mere 'grit', and it made a right mess of the front bumper. Its annoyed me ever since, so off it had to come for a freshen up



For some reason I forgot to take a picture of all the stone chip damage, but heres a photo of the back of the bumper



I decided to lighten the metal bumper holder a bit by chopping the ends off, getting rid of 466 grams. Also I wont be using all the square metal attaching bits, saving another 138 grams.



I could probably have cut off even more to save weight, but oh well too late now as I spray painted them on the washing line, as is now tradition with any small parts that need painting.



Nice and clean and rust free, which will never be appreciated by anyone else once hidden behind the bumper again :-)



With daily checks of the weather forcast I managed to spot a day that actually could be described as somewhat summer like. So out came the heavy compressor toy (I've lost so much strength from my arm being in a sling for 6 weeks, scary how quick it goes) its nice to be able to have this stuff and use it when I like.



I weighed the bumper before doing anything, after cleaning off the dirt, sanding it down, then 4 good thick coats of paint its actually lighter. 4.27Kg when it was 4.37 before, which confirmed my suspicion that paint isn't all that heavy, at least once its been applied and dried.



The grill had suffered a few chips too, so I sorted that out at the same time



I'm really getting into the idea of losing weight from the car, and its coming to the point where every little bit adds up. So I'm replacing bolts with shorter ones and washers with slimmer ones where I can get away with it. I did think about alloy or titanium bolts, but they are expensive (money I can better spend elsewhere) and just using smaller stainless stuff (which I already had anyway) gives a good weight saving really.



For some reason I'd never thought of removing the now pointless rear seat retaining bolt things, which are pretty heavy all in at 230g for the pair



The passenger side parcel shelf comes in at half a kilo. I'm keeping the drivers side one, for now...



So this weeks total weight loss comes in at 1.5 Kilos (1535.5 grams to be precise).

[paul james]

I ordered some new aluminium number plates to replace my plastic ones, they look nicer and the front plastic one was looking a bit tired. But the main reason for getting them was to save some more weight. I didn't really know what kind of weight saving to expect, but assumed aluminium ones must be a fair bit lighter.



The initial plan was to attach them to the car with strong velcro, which according to the box could hold upto 2kilos with one pad. However once attached they were pretty wobbly, and I could just picture them flying off as soon as I got up to any sort of speed. So I drilled the plates and resorted to good old screws again, much safer! Velcro would have only saved 7grams anyway, silly purchase really, but all part of experimenting :-)



Now the bumper doesn't stink the house out any more I assumed the paint had fully hardened and put it back on the car.



The aluminium plates are 160g each, compared to the plastic ones at 240g each. Obviously we are talking about a pretty small amount of weight here, but they are a third lighter which is not bad. I know I could have just used number plate stickers, but these appeal more to me - still not compromising all style for weight saving!

so another 160 grams off the car, I'll try changing something a bit heavier next time :-)

[paul james]

Another little update. One of the alloys was looking pretty scruffy and was letting out air, so I bought a brand new one. It was still in its GM box and everything, quite surprising to be able to get these Astra wheels new after the 20+ years since they were made. I already had a new Goodyear Eagle F1 tyre to match the others as when I'd bought them online before they sent one too many and they never bothered arranging to collect the extra one from me



I have had a fire extinguisher in the car since owning it, thankfully never had the need to use it. It was however way past its expiry date and since I always like to replace any part with something better, I did some investigating. I found out about these extinguishers that were supposedly designed for space missions. They last longer than normal similar sized extinguishers, don't leave any residue behind and to top it off are lighter too. First ones I found were Sparco branded at about £80, I found this one on Amazon for £25



Its 480g, a saving of 300g from the old one. Mounted it where the parcel shelf used to screw into.



Seeing as its a nice sunny day and I needed cheering up, I took the Nova outside to actually drive it!



Went to the beach first, ice cream was enjoyed, summer traffic not so much so off I went to Brecon instead. There are some awesome twisty roads up there, and thats really where the car shines. It put a big smile on my face, and reconfirmed why I still have this noisy old car

[paul james]

I finally decided to spend the coins to get some carbon door cards, from the Polish seller on ebay. They turned up pretty quickly and have the release handle holes pre-cut which is helpful.



I did think about getting some replacement GSi door cards without speaker holes cut into them, but since they fetch a lot of money now I thought I might aswell get something even better. I'm not sure if I'll keep the GSi ones as spares or sell them on yet. My Nova spares are starting to take up a lot of room now, and I'm probably not likely to get a second Nova again any time soon!



Mmmm shiney carbon



I invested in some basic grab straps, and used one of the original screws and hole in the door to mount them. I was going to mount the door cards with aluminium bolts and rubber well nuts, but the door pull alone makes the cards pretty sturdy. So I will use stick on velcro to attach them elsewhere, and save myself the hassle of trying to measure up and drill all the holes in them.



The original GSi door cards with the aftermarket speakers weighed 2.79 kilo each
The carbon door cards weigh 0.69 kilos each

So thats another 4 kilos of weight ditched from the car

[paul james]

Passed the last MOT with an advisory on the tie bar bushes, which turned out to be worse than they first looked when the nut and washer were removed.



Flo-flex bushes have a crap reputation for a reason, now I know all too well. They hadn't covered much more than 1k miles.



So I did what I should have done in the first place and bought the better ones



Since I didn't trust the flo-flex bushes I decided to take out the control arm ones too. I discovered the mounting hole at the rear was an oval shape on both sides. I asked on the facebook page and here, most people said they were worn and needed fixing...



So after a bit of thinking I bought some 2mm thick square washers, and cut them to fit



Used the bolts to line up the washers, ready to weld them in place



All welded up, I'd forgotten how challenging it is to weld underneath a car on axle stands. Its not the tidiest of welding, but is strong and it was a bit too inaccessible to grind down. Shortly after doing this, the general opinion on the matter seemed to change, that the bolt holes are actually meant to be oval. Oh well, its stronger than originally now, and there's no benefit to the holes being oval that I can see anyway.



The Flo-Flex arm bushes hadn't split like the tie bar ones, but you can see the difference in quality from the Powerflex ones which are far better moulded.



Bolted back in



Used a clamp to convince the tie bar bushes to stay in



Since I'd added about 100g of metal to the car, I decided to counter that with a bit of removing. The pointless tailgate trim got taken off, which weighs 429g



And then found a few other little bits, some of the rear headlining padding which was easily reached etc.



Took it out for a nice drive in the country today for a few hours, love driving it but ideally I need to do a trackday this summer to make proper use of it.