My new Almera SRi

Well here she is everyone, only had her just less than a month and im in love again haha.

Well heres a couple of quick pics from when i first got her on the drive, full GTispec interior including rear headrests, leather steering wheel, leather handbrake and leather gear knob. Lowered 40mm and a straight through powerflow exhaust.





And took my spare 1.6 apart last weekend and the head has been sent away to have some fettling done to it, port polish inlet, exhaust, polished combustion chamber and valves and 3 angle valve grind. Tiny valves, no wonder the heads are restrictive!





And cleaned the engine bay up with degreaser and a jet wash, nice and clean.




All comments welcome, cheers, Paul.<br><br>Post edited by: Cov_Racer, at: 2007/06/20 23:50

why is the battery held down with a bungee clip??? lol, the almera looks nice tho, you should go for vvl!<br><br>Post edited by: squarepants, at: 2007/06/15 07:09

looks a tidy one mate,

should see a nice improvement with ur new head

Jim

looks great mate, you losing the air con?

Nope keeping the air con, needs regassing and will come in handy over the summer.

Now ive got a 1.6 its worth a bit of tuning, will aim to send the inlet manfold away for extrude honing and ill do the throttle body myself. Once the free flowing head is fitted then its worth popping some JWT cams in to see what they can really do. Then once the insurance drops im either going to turbo the 1.6 as they give out quite impressive power or go down the SR20 route.

As for the bungee strap lol previous owner ill put a proper clamp on it soon.

Thanks for the comments

another almera woop woop lol looks apot on, what you doin with the sunny?

great aint they tommo hehe

thinking of selling it but i really dont want to, i love that car, love the image, the attention and ive got a spare 1.6 engine that was getting rebuilt and then turboed to go into it. Decisions decisions. basically its just sitting on the drive, if i keep it though, in a few months ill have the money to crack on with the work.

id put a standard bonnet on the sunny, and drop a turbo 1.6 in it. sunny looks the balls!

You mean this tommo lol

Freshly resprayed front bumper aswell before a cruise:

quick update, decided to give the front lights and indicators a gti update, took a pic with one side done to see the contrast..

Replaced the rear suspension today, standard springs but its just to get it through the MOT and im just grateful to actually have some suspension at the rear, silky smooth woo!

While replacing the rear suspension, jacked rear up, went round the front a thought yes this is how i want the front to look, lowww:


Before, people at JAE will agree it wasnt far off a 100mm drop lol!


After, riding high but atleast its comfy!


And the offending item, i knew the spring was snapped but didnt realise it had snapped in 2 places! Once the car was jacked up there was no tention at all on the spring. Also the damper was TOTALLY buggered, could easily slide it in and out with no effort, empty of oil and nearly 5mm play at the lower mount end, moving from side to side. Even like this it stuck to the road. Once i took it off it scared me a bit to think id been driving around on that fragile suspension! As you can see theres not a lot left of the bump stop haha

Well its had a few hours spent on it today, wash, polish and a good cleaning inside, passenger seat still wont slide, no joy on blaming a jammed penny

The offending item of blowing flexipipe can be seen next the car grrr, exhaust sorted anyway and it now pops like my sunny woop woop

Well, fitted the GTi brakes yesturday, they need another little bleed as theyre slightly spongey, But they seem to work much better once a bit of heat is put into them. They have been stripped down with a wire brush attack, chemical wash, ultrasonic wash, then hung up and every part sprayed, slide ways thoroughly cleaned and sprayed inside with copper grease, slides beautifully now

Got green brake fade after 3 laps of hams hall last night lol, was to be expected as the pads are new, they wont be on long though.

Going along the tryed and tested yellowstuff, goodridge hoses and 5.1 fluid

Havent had a chance to clean the car recently so excuse the brake dust, most the dust on the caliper is from cleaning the disc surface up, had surface rust on them.

One step closer to becoming a GTi

Going to look into making an actual rear strut brace which bolts to the suspension tops.

Had the clutch changed on saturday as i was sick of the constantly varying bite point and odd slip also the pedal was verrrry heavy.

One that came out was a Valeo clutch so best guess is it was the original, one of the springs in the centre hub had snapped and allowed it to rattle when i shook it, wether that has any affect on the grip, pedal feel i dont know.

Anyway fitted an LUK clutch and at last it pulls properly especially off the line as i always had to be gentle pulling off form stationary with the old one.

Anyway heres the shitter...

Randomly popped the bonnet earlier to check the oil and saw a bolt hanging out, yes hanging out! And the another had unwound 5mm, havent had a chance to check the others yet but the garage is getting a bollocking. Only thing i can think is that the long bolt is where the short bolt should be as there is about 8mm of thread showing through the threaded hole on the block therefore the short bolt has come undone as barely any thread would have been in the engine block

I always go to this garage for clutchs and they go and do a shoddy job like this! And they also said i NEED a new clutch cable, said that about my first almera, didnt believe them and it never felt worn/damaged.

Lucky its not a Pug 106 as i discovered last night, only 3 bolts hold their gearboxes onto the engine!

Update, picked this brilliant manifold up from Kelv on saturday, top bloke, had to scoot and get his mates some trainers



Exhaust is a tad raspy now but i can live with that as its a good performance rasp not just a back box fart haha

Was a bit of a pig to get on the car, had to jack the car up quite far, remove the rad fans and radiator, also the air con gas/oil has gone as i had to remove the pipe which was fun having a mist of refrigerant around me haha. I will need to get a custom pipe made up for it as it will go back on however it touches the manifold and i dont want to melt it.

I thought it made a difference but had to check it wasnt just in my mind because i wanted it to make a difference, so had to test it....

Before hand, against a mates fiesta zetec s, he would just pull away easily, by 70mph he would be easily 1.5 maybe 2 truck lengths in front of me!

Not anymore, absolutly nothing in it now, seriously impressed, AAS exhausts know what their doing!

To put it in perspective a fiesta zetec S weighs 950 kilos and standard rolling roaded cars have been proved to be 110bhp, So for an Almera that weighs 1050 ish kilos from factory, plus the addition of heavier wheels, heavier brakes, a very heavy parcel shelf and tools in the boot im seriously impressed, so curious im going to get it rolling roaded

Overall im really chuffed and im tempted to buy a set of cams next month also