My Diamond.

[Welsh Dan]

Well, I thought a project log would be a good way to keep track of things, so here it is.

This is the car shortly after I became the owner, the previous owner was my mother . This is september 2006:

It had just been shod in Goodyear Eagle F1 rubber in that pic, as the tyres mum had on it were terrible, next on the list of things to sort out was night time visibility, cue a set of spots:

however the mounts that came with these quickly became prone to drooping, adding some grippy rubber didnt help either:

So, with that in mind, I made my own, at the time I made these I was planning on adding another pair of spots, or a pair of fogs, hence them being larger than needed:

All lit up:


Quickly my attention shifted over to braking, so I aquired a set of Cavalier TD calipers, new Ferodo 3466 pads (predecessor to the DS2000/2500 I think), and a pair of ATE 256x20mm discs:


The calipers had to be shaved down to fit under the wheels though.

Moving on, I bought some GTE dials and retrimmed GSI seats:


In order to get the oil pressure indicator working I had to source and fit a 2 pin sender:

[Welsh Dan]

The engine, having done near 130k was getting a bit smoky, and liked to consume oil , an identical 1.2 unit came up locally for a tenner, and had done around 30k, but had been in storage for around 5 years:


I ran into a problem after I got it home, it had previously had an oil cooler fitted:


I removed the adapter and was left with a nice hole that I couldn't fit an oil filter to:


A trip to the scrapyard armed with some pipe grips yielded the missing threaded tube, and the engine swap could commence:


Thanks to Big Gra for his help.

In around 15 months I managed to scrub most of the tread down on my front tyres, and discovered what happens when you fit a 4.5J wheel instead of a 5J one over TD brakes and try to drive away from the tyre fitters :

[Welsh Dan]

I recently aquired a mk1 wraparound spoiler:

and some GTE/SR bumpers:


The spoiler cleaned up nicely, and the bumpers are in the middle of being re-painted satin black, no pics yet.

I'm also in the middle of making myself a rose jointed gear linkage:


The most recent addition to the car has been a heated front windscreen, and its fantastic. The heating elements are contained within the glass so you can't damage them, and they're hard to notice/easy to ignore unless you go looking for them:


Here is a very poor vid of it in action :
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/noval.../017screen.wmv

[Adam]

Nice.
What colour the gte bumpers going?

That heated screen is proper cool. Miles better than waiting for the blowers to clear the screen, or having to pull over and clear it by hand

[andy_srt40]

pulling over on a cold poorly lit road to clear your screen is half the fun!!

well that's what i tell my self

[belly257]

cool where did the heated screen come from what car?

[Adam]

No car/\
He organised a group buy from a company that makes them.

[Welsh Dan]

Adam, the GTE bumpers are going satin black, its hard to take pictures of but here's a pic I took earlier as the first coat was drying:


The paint finish isnt perfect, as the bumper has a few scratches and the like on it anyway, so I'm basically going for coverage without runs . It looks good so far though .

[Adam]

Good choice.

[Riggy]

i agree with the screens i miss mine so much by not driving the nova

i want one for the astra next