quaife straight cut box into the nova

[Cle]

WTF ????

[matthew172]

me taking the alternatot to bits to have it chromed!


you can see in this pic how grubby and dirty the tb's had become


so i removed them and individually bead blasted them
from this


to this


so i blasted all the bodies and the inlet manifold and replaced all nuts and bolts with stainless items and had all linkages etc silver zinc plated and ended up with this


all put back together

[matthew172]

anyway at this point me and the mrs found a nice house with yard,driveway and best of all a big double garage so we had to move fast if we wanted it before someone else got it so after a few phonecalls and a few offers the house was ours!!!!! and you guessed it the nova got pushed aside for about 8 months while we renovated the house but i did still buy bits and pieces for it when i could afford it

alternator back from the chromers


i bought a metal opel plug cover and had my mate nick paint it for me, what a absolutley awesome painter he is


i was never too keen on the speedline mistrals and ive always had a soft spot for the oz rally wheels so after months of looking i found some magnesium oz rally wheels in a 6.5j 15 et45 so i snapped them up straight away, ill be getting them refurbed and painted black eventually




i also had my engine covers repainted by nick as they were a touch dirty, the finish is simply awesome

[matthew172]

well this is where the nova had been resting, in the garage at the new house






i had originally intended to freshen the bay and maybe put some high comp pistons and cams in the xe but it seemed quite costly to do this with not much of a big difference in power gain as it was already around the 200bhp mark.
so with all the inspiration of barnes absolute animal of a turbo corsa this had made me seriously think of going down the turbo route as it was so much more bhp per £ so i sort of looked at the nova abit as you randomly do pmsl! and after a few txts to barnes himself the decision was made to turbo it!!!!!!!

i didnt want to buy a let motor as it would be a grand and as i intended to change all internals anyway i thought it would be false economy so i sourced a coscast xe motor to convert to turbo spec

[ben doodar]

Looking good allways loved this nova. N have recently read the thread on corsa sport thanks to the link on Nick j's project thread. Have allways wanted to see a bud thread on this so keep the updates coming. Top work.

[General Baxter]

WTF ????

ill also say WTF

[blue_peg_16v]

nick j cant half paint nice to see the old girl makes me wish id offered a bit mor when bret had it upforsale now

[matthew172]

well i got the new xe motor on the stand ready for strip down


engine all stripped down, found 1 of the conrods were bent!






so with that done i bought a set of cav td oil squirters and the oil return fitting for the block and sent the lot to tony baker to be fitted etc




couple of days later block was ready to be picked up, very pleased with the job he has done

[matthew172]

well with the block back i needed some pistons so i got a set of omega low comp forged pistons from steve milton with pockets to handle +1mm oversize valves




with these bought i took the block, pistons and crank to paul gardner to have the block bored, honed, decked and crank ground if it needed it, turned out the crank was still perfect after 21 years of work! so it was just polished and balanced, he also supplied me with the genuine big end/mains bearings (heavy duty turbo diesel ones)
block when i got it back




crank polished and balanced


bearings

[matthew172]

i have a set of steel rods that i bought ages ago as part of a group buy on mig, glad they will come in handy


arp 2000 rod bolts


arp mains studs and nuts


steve milton head studs and arp nuts


single v bottom pulley