Hi Everyone,

                 I thought it was about time I posted some pic's of my Cavalier 1.6 LX Auto.

I Managed to pick the car up off of ebay 3 - 4 years ago for £400,

To my surprise there was very little interest in anybody bidding for it!.

When I picked the car up it was in far better condition than what I was expecting.

It had covered 54000miles, was totally original with no welding anywhere!, all the usual mk2 rust areas i.e chasis legs etc were solid , and it also had a near to immaculate interior  ;D

The Interior was a little bit grubby but cleaned up like new with upholstery cleaner

I drove the car for a few months then decided to do some preventative maintenance....(having had a mk2 cav before and loosing it due to tin worm) I didn't want to loose this one!

I started by removing the Stone chip coating  and paint from the front Inner wheel arches......was caught out by rust creeping underneath on my previous cav 

Wheel Arch back to metal, and sandblasted in areas such as the top suspension turret  ;D

Undercoated ready for Top coat

Drivers Side

Top coated

My intention is to have the Inner Arches Stone Chip Guarded and sprayed in 2pack Satin Matt Black when it goes for the Re-Spray.....eventually!

Next inline was the Suspension Arms, Wishbones and Mounts which were quite dirty and rusty

Out comes the sand blasting kit and wire brushes

Sand blasting complete! at last!!

Undercoated ready for 2pack Black Topcoat

Wishbones and Mounts Sand blasted

Undercoated ready for topcoat

All complete looking like new  ;D

I'm Fitting new wheel bearings, ball joints, discs etc aswell....no point in cutting corners at this stage.

nice mate do you fancy popping round and doing mine  :angel:

Haha yeah no problem!  ;D......I've had enough of all that sandblasting for a few years now! Takes forever wish i'd payed somebody else to do it now looking back

Thats a great project so far you have there! Didn't know there were many people brave enough to do their own sandblasting out there still!

As for the project continuing, thanks for the introduction to this car. If you fancy making it an on running project thread, or even attending the club's annual cav reunion at billing further to email do consider joining!

What a fantastic project!! It looks in great shape 

Mmmmmmm LX  ;D Looks really nice  :-*

Very nice looking clean car! Are you keeping it as an auto?

Yes i'd like to keep it all original....as it left the factory. I won't be modifying it in any way,

The only thing i'm changing is the colour to blue. I kind of regret making that decision as white cars are popular again now but its too far down the line to change it back now  .

I'll post some more pic's of all the other work that i've done/am doing on it if everyone wants to see more  ;D

I'll post some more pic's of all the other work that i've done/am doing on it if everyone wants to see more  ;D

YES YES [glow=red,2,300]YES[/glow]

Just a thought, but if you respray the car blue, will you keep the original seats which are red/grey  ???

Katherine

Yeah will keep the seats, all of the lx models that I have seen have had the same colour grey and red seats so pretty sure the they will look ok regardless of the car colour 

Right here comes some more pic's as requested....

The Calipers were quite rusty so rather than buying new ones I decided to overhaul the old ones

Calipers after hours of sand blasting  ;D

Rather than let the calipers go rusty again I chose to spray them red with caliper paint, I also took the slides out, cleaned and lightly greased them....hopefully will give years more service now

Cars starting to come together now, the suspension struts etc. are bolted back on to the car, new pads and discs are fitted aswell and the old cv joints fitted temporarily to avoid damage to the new wheel bearings (Car has to be moved often).

Next up was the engine bay, I took the engine, gearbox, steering rack, servo, wiring loom, brake lines etc. out of the car, then peeled back the bulkhead sound proofing......was worried that the bulk head would be rotten like on my old cav!  But luckily it was all solid!.... bar a little hole smaller than a 5p in the bottom right corner. It was so small I was able to weld the hole back in without a patch. The rest of the engine bay was pretty good the only sand blasting that was required was to the underside of the radiator support bar

Next on the list of things to do was the rear axle which was quite rusty  . I decided to strip it down to a bare axle removing the anti-roll bar, brake mechanism, hubs etc, then sand blast it

Underside of the axle after sandblasting

Top side of axle ready for priming

The finished axle, painted in 2pack satin black paint ;D

Picture of the new brake shoes. I changed the brake cylinders aswell as the old ones were leaking

New Brake drum's!. I decided to paint these to stop them rusting so I chose silver caliper paint which was the nearest match to the original colour of the drums

The coil springs were quite rusty aswell so I stripped the paint off with paint stripper, then sanded the rust patches. As a finish I purchased some plasticote in the hope that it will flex as the springs move........hopefully they will be ok! time will tell

fantastic project pal  looks a minter 8)

Thanks m8, It's my first major project, started on my first cavalier when I was 17 but the bulk head was rotten so pretty gave up and weighed the car in .......then this one came along when i was 23 .....was the model i've always liked  ;D just had to save it!! Any idea how many Lx models are left in the country now? can't be that many can there??

What a fantastic job your making mate,think i will have start mine all over again now.

hi, looks like it gona be like new when it finished. how long has it taken you to get this far, cos im due to start on my cdi soon. thanks

Hi, Its taken a long time....about 3 years! I only get an afternoon a week to spend working on the car, and haven't got the car in a garage.....Its outside so its all dependant on the weather.

If your going to go down the sand blasting route on all of the suspension parts etc I would really consider getting a sand blasting company to do it as this is what takes all of the time.....such a slow, boring and dirty job using a diy sandblasting kit! I ended up looking like a coal miner after i'd finished blasting! ;D

Other than the suspension components the Inner wheel arches were quite quick to do.....probably took me around about a couple of days per side.

The engine bay must have taken me 2 days to remove the engine,gearbox,steering rack, wiring loom etc etc. Around about a week to prepare the bay for a respray as there are so many nooks and crannies to sand up ready for painting. I also decided to take the battery tray off aswell as there wasnt any paint at all underneath ....was really lucky it wasnt rotten!

wow you've got patience mate, but what a result. superb job.

ps : when's billing

DO you want to do my LXi next  ;D

Yeah it has taken a lot of patience so far…..quite often I get the impression my neigbours think I’m mad for doing it! , but I’m glad there are some people out there with similar interests for the cars. I found some of the other project threads on here motivating enough to keep me going!  ;D

As for Billing I will hopefully make it there eventually….I still have a lot to do on the car before I’m going to put it back on the road……The underneath being one of them, its pretty much rust free but I don’t trust the stone chip coating so I’m going to take all of that off and repaint the underside to be on the safe side

Right a few more pics

I made a start on the offside wheel arch, it was getting a little bit crusty at the bottom corner near the sill so I decided to cut it out and weld a repair patch in. The rest of the arch was as new with no rust present at all  

Repair section ready to be welded in. rather than lap the new arch with the old I decided to butt weld them so there is no water trap behind. I've also came up with a cunning plan on a way to fill the inside of the arch repair with waxoil aswell >

Repair section welded in 

Arch with welds ground down and tiny amount of filler

The finished Arch ready for painting 

What kind of Sandblasting kit are you using & what grade of Sand or is it grit ?

Next question - what size of Compressor are you using to supply the sandblaster ?

I'm just about to invest in some gear so your advise would be great.

Hi, I’ve been using the Sealey Shot Blasting Kit (Part number SB993)

http://www.sealey.co.uk/PLPageBuilder.asp?gotonode=ViewProduct&method=mViewProduct&productid=9212

As for the Blasting Grit I’ve used x2 25kg bags (Re-using the sand) for all of the suspension bits and a few other areas of the car. (Sealey Product Code: B/25KG)

http://www.sealey.co.uk/PLPageBuilder.asp?gotonode=ViewProduct&method=mViewProduct&productid=6296

I’ve got a small direct drive compressor, off the top of my head I think it’s a 25 litre one.

It’s not really big enough to keep up with the air requirement as the compressor is always running….Very noisy as its a direct drive!

So it is probably best to buy the biggest one you can afford, I've used a Sealey belt driven Compressor at my work which was much quieter than my direct drive one. Try looking at machinemart -

http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/categories/search/air-compressors

Hope this is of some help

cracking job mate 8)

Thanks for taking the time to pass on the information I asked - have seen the Sealey Sandblast Kit & think this is the way to go.

Was looking at Soda Blast Kit from Eastwood but at £250  a bit steep.

You have had great results with your gear so probably do the same.

Your photos have spurred me on again to get back into the garage.

Good luck with the LX

Nice LX, good work this ;D