Camira

[Nev25]

Yeah I know its not a commodore but I need to know
Firstly camira 2ltr engine has a pipe coming up from the sump area (beside the dip stick) and goes into the head
Is it water or oil??

Also is there somewhere where I can download a manual for an 88 camira
Ill pay if its at the right price

[UNKNOWN]

Oil..........................

[Nev25]

Oil..........................

Yeah thats what I thought but I'm having trouble getting a replacement.
I'm told that I cannot use standard water hose has to be for oil an I need to go to enzed or similar???

Also when I pulled the old one off a few drops of water come out of it???

[Cheap6]

It's (or was) quite common for that hose piece to soften and fail so they should be available, but I guess Camira's are getting quite rare by now. Have you tried a Holden dealer spare parts dept.? A bit of the hose used between LPG converters and mixers would also be OK in the correct diameter. A workshop fitting LPG may even have an offcut they will give away.

You might also look at some of the cars that shared the engine +/or chassis with the Camira: Daewoo Espero, Calibra (auto. in particular for engine bits - the manuals had 16V heads). Also worth checking are cars that have used engines from the same Family II base: SB Barina, LD Astra/N13 Pulsar, Daewoo Cielo. For mods., look at parts from Saab 900 and Vectra as well.

The water will be condensation. Some is quite normal (change the oil) but a lot is a problem.

The factory manual for JE was a supplement to the supplements for JD (leaded, then unleaded) which were supplements for the JB manual. The JE supplement only covers the changes unique to the model over JB/JD-L/JD-UL; engine management, body trim, some engine mechanical, lock up torque converter, different manual trans. ratios, charging system, off the top of my head.

Haynes (for one) published a manual that covered all the models adequately to perform mechanical work but didn't cover much on the engine management side (which is basically the same as anything else using the 1227808 ECM anyway, including VN-VP Commodores). Most capital cities will have one or more specialist motoring book suppliers, some further specialising in trade type publications = Yellow Pages for one local to you.

Any more Q's? I love Camira's.

[Calaber]

I sold a full set of factory manuals last year after nearly ten great years and four camiras - much better cars than their reputation.

[crazyspoon05]

Yeah thats what I thought but I'm having trouble getting a replacement.
I'm told that I cannot use standard water hose has to be for oil an I need to go to enzed or similar???

Also when I pulled the old one off a few drops of water come out of it???

I replaced mine on the N13 Pulsar with a piece of hose from Supercheap (for a Landcruiser or similiar IIRC), slightly longer than what I needed but was doing the trick until I took the car off the road

[lordmuz]

I sold a full set of factory manuals last year after nearly ten great years and four camiras - much better cars than their reputation.

That is the biggest load of **** i've ever read! I owned a JB 1982 SL/E camira for 13 long years... the longest 13 years in my life. I had everything replaced at least once. Engine, transmission, CV joints (lost count how many times they would go clunk clunk clunk). It was off the road more of the time than it was on the road. The biggest box of **** that Holden ever put their name to.

I send my condolences to all other Camira owners out there.

Now I have two commodores. Both excellent cars.

[Nobody Actually]

you need a rag and a lighter.

[scrabet]

haha i agree with the last 2 posts

[vlv8vic]

grandparents had camiras for years and they never missed a beat. Had more trouble with the commodore. Like every car it depends on service and how you drive it.

[Camz]

Father in law has had a JE Camira for 10yrs that was once mine for 3 yrs.
He loves it to bits & still has Formuling steering wheel, mags & stereo that I fitted!
Car has around 90,000 ks on it.......

[Cheap6]

They are vastly underrated cars. If you got an early JB, I can understand the view that they are crap. Later cars were much better.

Another example that not all Camira's were bad: My parents owned a late JB (built just before the changeover to JD) which they owned, from new, for 8 years without anything other than regular servicing required.

Two of my mates at school also had JB's (given and loaned to them respectively) which they desperately tried to kill but couldn't.

I've had a couple of Camira's myself without any major problems apart from replacing engine mounts. The engine mounts probably had more to do with the way I drove them; I learned how to hand brake turn and reverse flick in those cars (not recommended to be done on public roads ).

I still think that a great, cheap, first car would be a JE 2.0 manual, with a JD leaded gearbox (best ratios), an early Calibra 16V conversion (the heads on the early cars with the red dress strip are supposed to be better than the later ones) and Commodore front brake calipers on Daewoo Espero discs (Bolt on swap. Because the same platform was used across so many models, lots of stuff is bolt on).

If you were keen, you could swap the rear drums for discs, but it's not really necessary as they are the same size as those on VB-VL with much less weight to stop. (That's why they're so good for those handbrake turns). Or you might go for a stroker using a Vectra crank (and balance shafts). Run it on LPG to take care of the engine management and legality.

Vauxhall Cavalier - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Daewoo Espero - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Opel Ascona - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Saab 900 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Isuzu Aska - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pontiac Sunbird - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chevrolet Cavalier - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Opel Calibra - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

C20XE - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

GM J platform - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[NORTI]

Father in law has had a JE Camira for 10yrs that was once mine for 3 yrs.
He loves it to bits & still has Formuling steering wheel, mags & stereo that I fitted!
Car has around 90,000 ks on it.......

Totally off topic, but do you remember where you sourced the bosskit from for the Forumling wheel??

[coolngroovy]

I refuse to recognise the Camira as a Holden!

[Phreddy]

Hmmm, well I guess whether or not we like Camira's isn't related to the point of this thread...

Just wanted to publicly give Cheap6 a pat on the back there - some great info in those couple of posts.

[Reaper]

That is the biggest load of **** i've ever read! I owned a JB 1982 SL/E camira for 13 long years... the longest 13 years in my life. I had everything replaced at least once. Engine, transmission, CV joints (lost count how many times they would go clunk clunk clunk). It was off the road more of the time than it was on the road. The biggest box of **** that Holden ever put their name to.

I send my condolences to all other Camira owners out there.

Now I have two commodores. Both excellent cars.

Especially with the early ones if you got a bad one, you had a real dog of a car. On the flip side, there were a heap of really good ones about. I had one - gave it absolute hell and it just kept going. Compared to their peers (lasers, mazdas, coronas etc) they drove really well. By the time the JE was released all of the reliability issues had been more or less knocked on the head but the stigma of the "Camira" tag doomed the nameplate to the scrap heap.

Reaper

[sv0478]

i had a jb camira wagon..... gave it absolute hell
and it never let me down
took it bush
4 wheel driving
went through creek crossings
did me well for the 4 yrs i owned it
b4 i traded it in for the vt wagon

[Cobez]

YouTube - Camira Ad 1984





Camira........It's the Datsun Sunny of the Holden world.

[Calaber]

Those who have owned them are better equipped to discuss them than those who only go by what they heard.

Some were crap, and they ruined the Camira's reputation, but its a bloody shame because most of the problems were caused by Holden workers putting them together so shoddily. The only chronic fault that Camiras suffered was unbelievable rust. If you looked after it, and kept the fishoil into it, you were safe, but if you relied on the GM assembly and paint, you lost out big time. There didn't seem to be one panel that didn't rust in the JB and some of it was downright dangerous.

Despite that I stand by what I said, and some of the other members have experienced the same toughness and durability that I did, and I had all three models.

Good Camira = great car. Stuff what others think.

[Cobez]

I personally think they are gutless cars powerwise obviously. Drove a bloke at works Camira about 2 years ago when we went around to the shop for smoke-o and never drove it again. Hated it.

Ugly cars too.

[Reaper]

I personally think they are gutless cars powerwise obviously. Drove a bloke at works Camira about 2 years ago when we went around to the shop for smoke-o and never drove it again. Hated it.

Ugly cars too.

Hmmm.... Never drove an auto one but my 1.6l JB manual was quite good compared to most cars in it's class of the era. It was no rocket but still went ok though.

Reaper

[Dayvo]

alot of them did suffer from valve stem seal failure. Try the local Library for the workshop manual .As for the panels rusting out ,it must have been a desigh flaw as they were built along side the commodore on the same production line and were subject to the same anti rust treatment and painted in the same paint shop .

[Cheap6]

I personally think they are gutless cars powerwise obviously. Drove a bloke at works Camira about 2 years ago when we went around to the shop for smoke-o and never drove it again. Hated it.

Ugly cars too.

There was a big variation in performance between models:

JB, with the 1.6 carb. were pretty slow, particularly in 3 speed auto. and 4 speed spec. where geared fairly tall and widely spaced. Add in A/C and power steering and the little engine was working pretty hard. Incidentally, JB Camira A/C, when working properly, is like a refrigerator - i.e. very good.

The leaded 1.8 EFI (Bosch multipoint) JDs - October 1984-December 1985 - were reasonably quick as they had significantly more power (83kw vs 64kw, I think) and better (lower and closer spaced) gearing, at least on the 5 speeds.

JD unleaded were slow again with a lower compression ratio and use of Delco TBI - back to 60 something kW (the exact level is best forgotten, so I have) and taller gearing once more. (I think the engine was adopted with minimal changes from the US J-car as a quick and dirty means of complying with the introduction of unleaded petrol - GMH was effectively bankrupt at the time.)

JE (unleaded) used a 2.0l multipoint and were back up to 85kw, with the inherent torque of the bigger engine. Gearing was somewhere between the JD 1.8 leaded and the others. There was also a 1.6(?) TBI version (initially?) available on the base (SL?) model which hardly anyone bought.

Camiras were a bit bigger than the small cars of their time but not quite as big as the other '2.0l' cars so they sort of got a bit lost in who they were aimed at. They were (are) fairly light at around 1030-1070kg so with the bigger, more highly developed engines they were pretty quick for their time.

The 83 and 85kW power levels give power to weights similar to that of the contemporary Series 1, 2 and 3 RX-7. Most people (at the time of release) didn't think they went to badly.

Tuning and condition make a big difference too. If the cam belt is stretched or out a tooth, power takes a big dive, as does having the ignition timing set improperly.

With JE, the early fuel and ignition maps in the memcals are better than the later ones which were updated to fix customer reports of knocking.

[Fekason]

I bought a VL Commodore (3.0L) and JE Camira (2.0L) in the late 1980's.

I really liked the Nissan 6, but the Camira was a great runabout. Good performance, good response, good economy, good handling and fun to drive. From all reports at the time, so were the early JD's.

The JB and the unleaded JD were underpowered, and probably challended the old 120Y on the "pulling the skin off the rice pudding" test. Drivers had to trash them just to get going, let alone keep up with traffic. That is not a good recipe for reliability.

The low powered derivatives were aimed at those seeking better economy due to the fuel shock in the 1980's. However, the JE with the 2.0L was probably the most fuel efficient as the engine handled the job without straining.

Yes, JB's were unreliable. But JE was a really good car. I was sad to see it pass away in the mad scamble for shared models pushed by the Button Plan.

[Calaber]

Yeah - replaced by a rebadged bloody Toyota!

The only good thing about that was that the Camry of the day was a good model too. I hate Toyotas, but that 86-91 model was a neat and well proportioned car. It just looked stupid wearing Holden badges.