(The) Low VX Taxi

Meantime I was heading back to work from up town, running late for a teleconference and I was stuck behind some twat going 50km/h in an 80km/h zone..... I waited and soon enough there was a nice straight section with broken lines so I overtook the oblivious camry driver (there were another 4-5 people that followed suit), I had gotten about half way ahead of him when the car made a big back fire like sound and then sounded like a lawnmower..... I kept trying to drive but I couldnt push the car above 40km/h......

I pulled over around the corner and felt like an absolute idiot..... all everyone else had seen was me overtake a car only to go slower afterwards.......

I was VERY late for my meeting but made it eventually.....

The car sounded like the love child of a diesel peugot and a lawnmower...... very nasty..... I checked for any obvious damage and checked things I could (Plugs, any mess in the oil or cooling system etc..... all checked out ok. My cousin in law came out a few weeks later and his mechanical opinion was "its ####ed, not sure how ####ed but its ####ed".

I started to save for a new heart for the Taxi and a month or so later my cousin in law was back with a car trailer to take the Taxi to his dad's workshop in Lithgow to begin her heart transplant.

We got the lowest trailer we could but unfortunately the front got stuck on the ramps...... we decided to remove the front bar to get it on the trailer:





unfortunately this was still not enough (I love how low the car is but not being able to tow it????) so we drove the tow car up over the hill in the background of the above pictures which dropped the rear of the trailer pretty much onto the ground..... WE managed after a few attempts to get the car onto the trailer:





As the car sat so low on the trailer we had to climb in and out through the window (dukes of hazzard style) so we left it open enough to reach in and wind down the window..... thankfully there was minimal rain......

 

I had planned to source a new engine and have it sent straight to COME to grace it with their potent stroker kits or (if possible) source a wrecked LS equipped VT-Z for a conversion but unfortunately during the time I was saving my work situation dramatically changed and finances became rare/non existant....

The cars value was minimal, even in parts and a new car to get from A to B in without breaking down each trip would cost me more than $3,000..... so we decided to dump another stock ecotec in.

A crashed VS series III ute was sourced (perks of having a wrecking yard attached to your workshop i guess lol). so they pulled out the VS ecotec and shortly afterwards we began ripping out the old engine to canniblise the parts off it we would need.

There is slight variances in the VS and VX ecotec mainly the plenum, I believe it was a piece of pollution gear for recycling waste gases or something. We also decided to keep all my bolt on ancilleries such as air con, power steer pump etc as well as they were in better condition.

We dicovered one of the lifters had tried to escape from my old engine:





I was surprised how good the condition of the rockers and covers were (pics before I cleaned them):





I decided to use the VX rocker gear on the new VS engine, no real reason as the VS ones were fine but VX ones were in pretty good nick (and looked better with less carbon build up).

 

Thanks Hama, its pretty epic lol

 

Whilst the plenum was off the engine I stripped it down and gave it a good clean with petrol and a (fairrly soft) wire brush, I also cleaned down into the runners and any residual gasket off the faces with a razor blade (being careful not to create any pits). When I was done I gave it a hit with degreaser and a gurney:













It came up pretty good although It had far less carbon than the VS one.

 

I also cleaned the throttle body up again with petrol but this time with a soft brush so as not to create any pits. I also removed the sensor so as not to damage it.

Before (of the VS one):





After (Of the VX one):

 

Next I attacked the sump (again with petrol and a wire brush and a razor blade to remove any residual gasket then degreaser), was a bit of carbon but not too bad, TBH the outside was worse than the inside..... Pics:

 

Would love to drop her a bit more to tuck the wheels a little more, TBH with springs its hard enough getting in and out of the driveway as is lol.....

Thanks I decided to go a bit of a different direction with the plenum. I had a look around JC and had seen a few really good write ups on polishing, I had a chat to my cousin in law and he said "Well why don't you paint it black, everything you wear or own is black anyway" so down to the local parts store for a few cans of VHT. We decided to do a matt black and low gloss silver theme on the engine.

We hit the plenum and runners with some prepsol then my cousin in law hit the whole unit with a few coats of high temp VHT.

After the first coat for the plenum & runners (whilst wet):

 

I had seen the buick style rocker covers but was pretty light in the wallet so we decided just to paint the rocker covers matt black as well:





We also decided to do the engine cover, just in case I wanted to use it again:







We also gave the HM headers a quick hit of high temp silver to freshen them up a bit:

 

Whilst the paint was drying my cousin in law went about cleaning up every piece of the engine that couldn't/didn't need to be replaced (thermostat housing, alternator, PS pump etc) with a new one and replacing everything else (water pump,thermostat, tensioners and pulleys, a few sensors that were prone to failure etc).

Once all the bits and pieces were finished being painted the engine was reassembled with brand new gaskets for everything (Excluding head gaskets).

This was a big learning experience for me as I only knew basics about this kind of thing so my cousin in law spent a fair bit of time naming parts and showing me what he was doing. He offered to "hand crank" the engine so I could see the top and bottom half in motion:



(Note) the bang at the end is my cousin in law dropping the ratchet he was using to crank the engine over.

 

Bags would be good, unfortunately my boot is a little full with the 15" sub and gas tank lol. I plan to look into different setups when finances improve see if I can maybe squeeze in two smaller tanks etc.

I love your cars stance (had a quick peek at your thread)

 

Mini tubs lower or just a few mm lower?

 

So the engine started to take shape again so grabbed some happy snaps:























Then I found on Google this really cheap V8 conversion technique, it was by the original designer of the DUAL Supercharger Turbo Air Intake Fuel Saver Fan so installed it. Some pics:





But it was too powerful and kept on making my laptop screen display "Danger to teh manifoldzzzzz" I think it was a tropical type so not compatible with my car.....so we decided to just stick with the ecotec:

 

Took a bit of jiggling but the ecotec was in its new home.

Next my cousin in law started bolting back up all the ancillaries, put a nice new serpentine belt in and finished assembling the engine.

I had decided to upgrade the stereo a bit (more for quality rather than quantity). We found some Pioneer 6” Splits for the front doors, Pioneer 6” 3 way speakers for the rear doors and a set of Pioneer 6 by 9 3 way speakers for the parcel shelf that had come out of wrecks.

I already had the Alpine PDX-1.600 as I had planned to install it in my Soarer plus heaps of speaker wiring and a few fuses and RCA cabling.

I bought some grills for the parcel shelf, an Option Audio OAC160 4x 190wrms to power the speakers, some 4 gauge amp wiring and a nice shiny 300 amp fuse. I also got a few bits and pieces so that I could unplug the sub and its amp and remove it quickly (to gain access to my spare tyre).

So I began running the amp wiring back from the battery to the boot. Then I ran wiring for the front and rear speakers to the amp (I chose to use the standard wiring for the rear doors as they are only hooked up to the head unit anyway)......

Then I installed the speaker grills and six by nines (should have bought grey grills as my parcel shelf was very faded..... ahhh well hindsight lol).

I chose to leave the removable amp setup till later and just installed the amp and hardwired it for now.

Then my cousin in law soldered up all the connections and we put the door trims back together.

I installed the 300amp fuse on the four gauge wiring near the battery, then I installed a splitter near the amps and a fuse for each amp as well (better to have overkill and not burn down my car).

We gave it a kick in the guts and wow, the quality was dramatically improved! the sub amp was a bit lower power now so it was in-line with the speakers too.

We went back to finishing the engine off so we could get her back on the road.

My cousin in law had pretty much finished and was just putting in all new hoses for the cooling system when he ran into a problem, whilst the hose kit he got was correct it wasn't for a "gas" car...... on the phone and nobody could supply this kit....... The supplied piping had two pieces that were too short (they had to go from the mixer to the heater tap and somewhere else near there I forget now) so some correct diameter piping was sourced and installed.

They also noticed that the transmission had a few leaks (more than likely caused by the kangaroo mentioned a few posts ago) so some new seals were installed and a service undertaken.

The front passenger side wheel bearing was pretty stuffed too so that was replaced, was a bit of a pain and expensive as it only comes as one piece (the whole wheel hub and abs unit).

The heater tap and radiator didn't need replacing as both had been done after the accident and flushed periodically so were in good condition still.

So the car was filled with fluids again. a load of cheaper oil and some engine flush was run through and then the filter was replaced and the cheap oil replaced by some Penrite Gas

The undercarriage was hit with degreaser and a gurney a few days later.