Well even though it's a fairly basic car as far as getting to the nuts and bolts, it fought me the whole way! I snapped about 15 bolts getting the front apart. The rust has worked it's way into most of the bolts, so they're really tight. I even managed to open up a couple of knuckles when some bolts broke. That's always fun hahaha.

The motor mounts have a little shock absorber on each side. These things are COOL!

Getting the factory oil cooler out took ages, but it's out now!

The drivers side A pillar has seen better days, but it's fixable : )



This is the drivers side chassis rail. It's lovely : )

The drivers side headlight housing has this big seam around it, which I'm pointing to. I can push it backwards and forwards with my finger, and it makes a nice crunchy sound : )

I know it looks like nothing, but I could have thrown a party at this point! The seats were held in with fairly long allen head bolts, that were rusted in, and it took me about 45 minutes a seat just to unbolt them!

Under the carpet in the rear, there are two steel flaps that make the floor when the rear seat is folded down. The pic doesn't show it but the paint on them is amazing! It's completely untouched and they look brand new. That's good, because nothing else on this car does : )


There's a few small bits of rust around the rear hatch. Nothing to major but they'll still need to be cut out and fixed.

This is the rear of the drivers side rear wheel tub. The intersection of where the tub meets the floor is pretty knackered.

Drivers side rear quarter.


The rear of the boot floor doesn't look that bad in the pic, but it all needs to be replaced.

This pic is just because : )

Passengers rear quarter is a bit crusty too, but we already knew about these areas. So far there's been no real surprises.


I know I'm posting a lot of boring rust pics, but these are more for the owner to see than anything else.

It's amazing how much better it looks already just by pulling the bump strip crap off the sides.

Doing a quick test fit of the rear flare, just because I wanted to : )

It's going to need a bit of work to make it fit properly, but it's going to look awesome when it's done.

The front bar/spoiler.

I'm not really sure why there's these clumps of poo on the bolts holding the rear side glass in, but it's there anyway : )


Getting the interior out was a bit of a mission, but there's enough out now to keep me happy. The only thing left that I haven't done yet is remove the sunroof, but that's for another day.

Time to yank the 3 litre monster and getrag 5 speed. The 5 speed will be going back in, but not with this engine




Well that's it for now. It's taken just over two days just to get to this point! The owner also has another one of these so I've been trying to be as careful as possible when removing opel parts, even though we're not using them on this car they can be spares for the other car.
Next job will be to strip the paint and get some etch on it. Then the chopping can begin : )