vauxhallviva.com

Last week I got a Bedford CF Autosleeper as an organ donor for 4 crates of beer.
But it's in too good shape to use it as a donor car, so I'm going to restore it.

But on wednesday i have an appointment with a guy who has all parts to get the 2.3 Liter Engine running (ignition parts, beltdrive, ...) for the Viva.

I just arranged a Viva HC 1800 with damaged rear as a donor car.
So we got all the parts together for 2017.

Get to pick it up in February

We fitted 2300 engine with 1800 HC parts, transmission, rear axle and everything else to the HB.
The only thing that doesn't fit is the propshaft.
The 2-piece shaft is too long (about 10 mm with fully rebounded rear axle).
Does the HC have a longer wheelbase? I thought it was the same.
We are using the complete front axle assembly and rear axle from the HC.
There should be enough space for fitting the propshaft, so the propshaft doesn't kill the transmission at compression, right?

I believe that the HB has a 25mm or so shorter wheelbase but I'm not 100% sure.

Because we also had problems with clearing the steering column and the firewall (damned LHD), we chose a more radical attempt.
We moved the whole engine/transmission setup 30 mm to the front. That brought us enough clearance for the steering column and at the firewall and space for the propshaft.
Now we just need a narrower radiator, but that can be sourced from another (newer) car.

So, the race is over.

We only did a total of 223 km in 24 hours.

After 20 minutes into the race we lost our V-belt.
Contact with a stone deformed a bracket for the generator.

The temperature gauge wasn't working properly, so the driver at this time didn't notice it before losing engine power.
That was too late, he didn't make it 500 metres back to the paddock.
Piston was melted and jammed, you couldn't see the blue smoke in the gravel-dust.

The 2300 was dead.

We had a shortblock and cylinderhead of the 1800 in spare, so we did the swap in 10,5 hours lying in the mud/grass.
After that we were on the track for 2 more hours.
The glown out exhaust manifold cracked after the exhaust having harsh contact to a stone, so we had to wait for cooling down and welded it up (welding cast iron with MAG isn't working very well).
1 more hour on the track and the manifold cracked again, so the same thing again => cooling, disassembly, welding, assembly.
After this we finished the last 40 min on the track without problems.

It was hard and exhausting, but after all we hat a lot of fun and finished the race with a working car.

well done, though clearly that's what happens when you put smurfs in charge of maintenance!

Bad luck with the mechanical issues, but you guys kept going after one, two, three mechanical failures that would have put most people out of the race immediately. You deserve a trophy for that effort alone!

Very well done.

Peter

Sadly, it was the last race of this type.
The racetrack was sold to a rallyecross-team, they won't do any race-events because of angry neighbours.
They will only use it for practice and lease it to other teams, no more 24 hour races.

It was the last racetrack in Austria with a 24 hour permission, so there won't be another race suiting the Viva and us.

Now we are thinking about what to do with the Viva, a lot of (dirty) work went into it and now it's completely useless in Austria.
We got a complete and barely good HB SL90 shell, so maybe we are building it as a street car.
Or we will sell it as a complete package (2 shells, 3 times engine, transmission, axles) to anyone into Vivas.
I really got into this cars during the last 2 years, but I'm looking forward into getting a Firenza Droop Snoot