ok, heres the start of the saga! sorry its very wordy but meh.. theres lots to do and im a wordy kinda guy!!
so far its been very trial and error and we (my father and I) came across plenty of problems! but will try to put together some drawings at the end with dimensions and stuff to make it a little easier for anyone else willing (or foolish enough) to attempt this mod!!
after a quick trial fit it was obvious that a fair few mods will have to be done to the top end of the column in order to fit the viva switch assembly and steering wheel in the original position as the top section of the corsa column is much shorter
the first job was to remove the outer casing from the top section of the viva column and measure to the length required and then replace the corresponding shorter part of the corsa column, ending up with this
next the inner shaft had to be adapted to fit, this was a fair bit more difficult!!
the inner shaft of the corsa column extends from the motor housing for a few inches and then has a splined end, this fits into a short hollow collar section in order for the column to collapse in the event of a crash, on the other end of this is another short section of shaft that is splined to fit the steering wheel
the welds holding the steering wheel mounting section onto the splined collar were cut and a section of the viva shaft had to be filed down about 1mm all around so that this could then be inserted an inch into this collar in order to ensure the whole thing was straight before being welded up to make this.. the splined collar is the wider part at the far left end of the modded shaft, the little peice is the corsa section that was removed
here is a pic showing this inner and outer part put together (you can just about see a couple of the pop rivets that go into the bearing collar that holds the inner shaft) below it is the much shorter outer casing which was from the corsa and the remaining lower outer casing from the viva colum
- note the erm.. corrugated? black section below the mounting brackets so the outer casing can collapse
heres the newly modded top section bolted onto the motor assembly
after another trial fit in the magnum a couple of small (ish) problems were found
1) the large bracket behind the motor that you can see in the pic above gets in the way of the brake/clutch pedal
2) the motor gets in the way of the later type accelerator pedal (the rod that comes up by the bulkead hits it)
3) it gets in the way of where the break light switch fits
4) the mounting point that is used from the corsa column puts the whole thing at a steeper angle than usual which would lower the steering wheel
solving "1" was simple.. the bracket behind the motor went in the bin - it doesnt attach to anything when mounted in the viva anyway
the only solution we could think of for "2" is to use an earlier organ pedal type accelerator
havnt quite figured out what to do about the break light switch, possibly use a hydraulic switch on the brake line itself or maybe try and find a microswitch of some sort
to fix the funny angle that the corsa mounts were causing it was back to the workbench to take the corsa mounts off and fit the viva mounting bracket onto the casing of the top section
- in order to make the mounting holes line up when the bracket was swapped over we had to remove the two sliding inserts and extend the slot they fit in another cm or so and replace the inserts..
BEWARE! THE INSERTS BREAK EEEEEEASILY!
we broke both ooops!
luckily we had another two on the magnum column which we pinched
the corrugated black section of the outer casing had to be cut off, not really an issue as it simply covers up a plain tube which slides inside another in the event of a bash - after these two fixes we ended up with an outer casing that looks like this
once again the whole lot was re-assembled and mounted back up to the motor..
heres a few pics of the sucsessfull trial fit, it all lines up perfectly! could probably get away with not even using the universal joint that is normally fitted to the rear end of the corsa column/motor.. but we will figurre that one out when we tackle the bottom end of the column
here you can see the motor is not visible (excuse the wires everywhere!) once the plastic surrounds are on everything should be hidden
heres a closeup of the mountings, they are solid as a rock and seem happy to take the additional weight of the motor without the troublesome lower bracket
finally heres a view down through the dash where you can see the motor nicley tucked away, once the dash is replaced it will be hidden
thats all for now, will hopefully get the bottom end of the column sorted soon and then ive got to wait for an electrical box of tricks to arrive before I can wire it up, can see a possible problem that the weedy viva alternator might not be up to the task as this thing aparently uses 45amps!
but hey.. we'll jump that hurdle when we get to it!
Matty
