A 20+ year love affair with a worthless old modified Vauxhall van

[AltheJazzman]

2020 - Alloy wheels:

My memory is clearly worse than I thought. As if it was just as easy as buying some wheels and tyres, then fitting them and suddenly the van looked great? Here's what the wheels looked like when I bought them. So scabby and dented I was sure I had wasted my money:

They did come back from the wheel specialist looking perfect, but as if that was the end of the story? I had the sticky track tyres fitted, and put the front pair on only to find the clearance to the brake caliper disturbingly tight! It's easy to assume that the Combo B is simply a Corsa at the front, but Vauxhall obviously upgraded the brakes for the van. To this day I have to make sure the wheel weights are not in a certain spot otherwise they hit the caliper!

The rear axle assembly is allegedly unchanged from the Astramax, which explains the slightly wider track, and weirdly deep stub axles. Even the drums are bigger than the Corsa version. Reassuring for braking performance, but not a straight fit for wheels. Here is a lovely picture of someone else's van in much better condition than mine! (I thought I was obsessed!)

The problem with the little alloy wheels was the centre caps - all part of the look. I eventually made them work by buying 3mm wheel spacers, removing the bearing caps, and filing down the clips on the inside of the wheel centre caps. Yet another bodge!

[AltheJazzman]

2020 - Intercooling

I guess you'll all like this next bit as performance upgrades seem to get everyone more excited than painting wheels.

Obviously in my quest for finding out how much power this engine could make, I wanted more, and so read about intercooling. I think I a lot of people interpret it as "makes your engine cooler", or even "makes your intake temperatures cooler", but what it really does is reduce the the air temperature after being supercharged by the turbo, so that the air is more dense before entering the engine. This allows the engine to burn more fuel proportionally, and so you make more power. More power means more combustion temperature, and therefore higher exhaust temperatures, which feeds back through the turbo, and probably heats up that intake temperature again. So the net result is the same engine temperatures, or possibly higher due to extra power. There's also the chance of increased turbo lag because of the longer intake path and feedback loop, and even a drop in turbo pressure as the air expands inside the intercooler. Therefore it's important to carefully match the intercooler size to the turbo size and engine power. So I duly bought the biggest one I could find, took off the front bumper and crash bar and attempted to work out if it would fit:

There were some clearance issues! So I did some proper measuring, and bought this one instead:

Still some challenges to face in routing the pipes around the water radiator, but nothing an angle grinder can't solve. Now for some highly scientific drawings and a list of parts needed:

The whole air intake routing layout needed to be changed. Vauxhall designed the engine bay so that all the engines would accept the same airbox, in front of the right wing. On the turbo diesel though, this meant routing uncharged air over the top of the intake manifold, into the turbo, and then charged air back up almost the same route to enter the manifold:

Most people who have intercooled this engine change the manifold for the N/A version which just has one simple big inlet. 

There was no way I was confident enough to install this myself though, so I asked my tame mechanic up the road, and he agreed to help me after business hours for very good mates' rates. We get on well. He's into rock, metal, and real ale too so conversation flows, and he accepts payment in both cash and beer. The first session went reasonably well but it wasn't done, so I carefully drove it home with several open pipes hanging off the engine, no air filter, and no front bumper (I lived literally at the other end of the road from the garage). All good and excited for the next day. We even managed to fit the impact bar with no modifications, but a few superfluous bits of bodywork were removed.

[timolloyd]

Been catching up with this excellent thread. Then, when I got to the post about the GTE wheels, I realised I’ve been admiring this van (and the 924) for years, every time I take my children to the nursery on your road!

Keep up the good work.

[AltheJazzman]

23 minutes ago, timolloyd said:

Been catching up with this excellent thread. Then, when I got to the post about the GTE wheels, I realised I’ve been admiring this van (and the 924) for years, every time I take my children to the nursery on your road!

Keep up the good work.

OMG wow! You have to come and say hi. PM me and I'll give you my address.

[AltheJazzman]

Completing the Intercooler - disaster strikes!

So the next day I started up the van ready to drive back up the road to the mechanic, left the driveway, but abruptly the engine coughed, stumbled, made a horrible noise and then stalled. My immediate thought was that one of the open inlet pipes had inhaled a loose stone from the driveway, and bent a valve and probably many other things. I didn't dare start it again, but persuaded my mechanic  to bring some of his tools down to mine to investigate. We couldn't see any foreign objects, so he proceeded to take the head off in under an hour. Hmm, nothing looks broken.

We came to the conclusion that any foreign objects must have fallen out during disassembly, or that a valve had become stuck due to the huge amounts of carbon deposits around the valve seat:

So I had no choice but to leave the head with him for a full top-end rebuild, at whatever cost (but still mates' rates + beer), and an unknown amount of time with it off the road. Still, I had my 944 to drive to work. Here's the head back from a light skim looking cleaner than any diesel ever has a right to:

 

At this point I would love to say we were out of the woods, but I managed to order the wrong head gasket and timing belt kit for this engine. The trouble is, although there are obvious differences between the 1.5 and 1.7 versions of this engine, my example is from the final model year, so Vauxhall managed to make the 1.7 timing belt tensioner fit the 1.5 engine. I therefore had to order a 1.7 timing belt kit, but a 1.5 head gasket. The wrong head gasket was just different enough to allow fresh oil to piss out everywhere after putting the head back on, so off it came again to wait another few days for the correct one. This is the wrong one:

The factory even skimped on the cam cover in the final model year, which the turbo diesels should proudly display TURBO on top, whereas mine just plainly showed DIESEL (duh, what else?). A quick eBay purchase solved that. This gives extra HP surely?

We found a better use for this part of the engine whilst working on other parts:

Finally, everything else was button up, and the air intake properly connected to a new pod filter (not because they're better, but because there was no way the factory air box could be used now)

You can't even tell what's changed:

[AltheJazzman]

2019 - scary tinworm

Back tracking again - sorry! Following the respray in 2014, I naively thought that the bodywork would be invincible. Little did I understand that:

1. It's a Vauxhall - so of course it rusts
2. It's a cheap vehicle - so of course it rusts
3. It's made of non galvanised steel - so of course it rusts
4. It has a shite design around the rear wheels with plastic spats to cover the wheel arch, which traps mud and water - so of course it rusts
5. No body shop can guarantee their work for more than a few years

The garage let me put the van on the ramp and attack it with a grinder and toffee wheel. These are the horrors I found:

This was as far as my bodywork skills went, so knowing the wallet was going to hurt again, I let the garage do a professional repair on both sides:

[AltheJazzman]

2017 - 2019 - I bought a car to match my van

I'm sure we all know the stories that start with "I was browsing eBay one evening, and I saw this cheap car".

For all the time I had owned this van, I envied the plush options that the Corsa received that was denied from the van owners. Luxuries such as: carpet on the floor instead of a rubber mat, sound insulation under the bonnet, a courtesy light in the glovebox, a leather steering wheel, air conditioning (with the petrol engine and CDX trim), and heated seats (but I solved that earlier with Calibra leather seats). So I wondered if I could upgrade to some of these luxuries by buying parts from a scrap dealer. But by 2017, the Corsa B had been out of production for 7 years, and the Combo B for 6 years, so scrap dealers were not that interested. It was also around this time that I completely abandoned calling Vauxhall dealerships for spares. I knew the answer: "NLS - no longer serviceable".  Although at the NEC Classic Motor Show I had been tipped off about an excellent New-Old-Stock parts hoarder called Vauxhall Green Parts. He clears out dealerships from stock that's running low and keeps them in a centralised place for the needy!

Then there was the annoying challenge of replacing flimsy bits of plastic trim that nobody ever seemed to sell even used on eBay. So I considered buying a complete car. One day a dark purple Corsa B 1.5TD GLS appeared just north of London for £250.  I did the sensible thing and bought a one way train ticket, and drove it home. My rationale was that it was a good deal on an entire car's worth of parts. What actually happened was that I thought it was such a plucky little car, with nice compliant suspension and an insulated interior, that I drove it around for 2 years as my first "normal" car with back seats and everything! I even passed my advanced driving course in it, and lent it to my Mum whenever she also needed a "normal" car. At the time she was living on a roaming canal boat with her partner, and their only road vehicles were his van, and their motorbike.

I even named it, as the number plate had the letters EDY in it. So Edy received the free engine mods I had learnt from the van, I upgraded the sound system, and did absolutely no other maintenance to it in the 2 years of ownership. Here's a blurry view from the back seat (probably after a few beers, with my Mum driving) (The beers were were for me, not Mum)

There was one mishap. The band I was in at the time somehow resulted in me renting half of my mate's garage around the corner to store most of the gear, so with a band mate, we would both meet at mine, and take my van and my car full of the band gear to our gigs. This worked well, except for when he took a detour via his house, and an hour later called me in a panic "Your car has gone. I don't know where, but I think someone's nicked it, with all the band gear inside too. I've called the Police but I don't know what else to do".

I walked from the pub we were playing at to his house (it was very close), but by then he had "found" the car, reversed back across the road from his house, buried in his neighbour's car. The plonker had left the handbrake off! The SUV it had crashed into was completely untouched, but it's towball had made a nice new shape of Edy's face. We did the gig, and I drove Edy home the next day as none of the fluids had escaped, and hoped I could somehow pull it back into shape:

That plan wasn't going to work though, so I went off to my nearest scrap dealer, and despite what I said above about lack of spares, to my surprise there was a Corsa B pre-facelift with an intact bumper, in what (my colourblind eyes) thought was the same colour.  I nabbed the bumper, crash bar, headlight, and horn, and gave them a few pound notes.

You'll be pleased to know that my bandmate was so embarrassed at his behaviour that he agreed to pay for repairs, but as I still had to buy a new bonnet and, slam panel, and pay a body shop for welding and paint, I realised that was beyond a normal economical repair, so we went halves. 

[24vdiamond]

Its a shame when we moved (VGP) from Bedfordshire to North East Lincolnshire we chucked 3 new rear quarter panels out for the Combo 😨

Couldnt seem to give them away back then, mind you i doubt they would have fitted in the back of the Combo as they were HUGE 

[AltheJazzman]

2019 - the end of Edy

About a week after I passed my advanced driving course, I took Edy for it's second MOT in my ownership, and... it failed dismally on sills, chassis, and critical body work like suspension and seatbelt mounts. I shouldn't have been surprised! I was sad as I had enjoyed having a "normal" car, and had spent over the odds repairing the front end the year before, but perhaps now it was time for the car to serve it's true purpose - a spares upgrade. First task was to sell the most valuable bit - the 1.5TD engine and gearbox, which I duly did for £250. I like to claim that I made my money back on this car (if I leave out the crash repairs above). The new owner was over the moon with the pre-modded engine which he dropped into another Corsa.

The next few weeks involved stripping the interior of all the nice bits of grey plastic, grey carpet, fragile clips, obscure bolts, and as I nearly put my foot through the floor I understood the structural liability this had become! I also cleaned up the rat's nest of extra wires I had added to the van over the years, added extra floor insulation, carpet, the much coveted under-bonnet insulation, and a steering wheels without wear-holes in the plastic.

Sadly it was then off the scrapers, where a fork lift crudely skewered it's forks through the perfect windscreen, and dumped the remains of the car on top of another, to be made into bean tins. Still, they paid me £45 for it.

[AltheJazzman]

15 minutes ago, 24vdiamond said:

Its a shame when we moved (VGP) from Bedfordshire to North East Lincolnshire we chucked 3 new rear quarter panels out for the Combo 😨

Couldnt seem to give them away back then, mind you i doubt they would have fitted in the back of the Combo as they were HUGE 

Oh wow entire rear sides? You can still get arch repair panels though which you'll shortly find out was essential for me! 

[MJK 24]

Really lovely intercooler installation there.  You should be proud of that 🫡

[AltheJazzman]

44 minutes ago, MJK 24 said:

Really lovely intercooler installation there.  You should be proud of that 🫡

Thanks. Yes I'm very pleased that it fits behind all the factory bodywork considering the vehicle wasn't made to take it. I'm not a fan of the "massive rectangle cut out of the bumper" look.

[inconsistant]

My mum had a W reg Corsa CDX like your one above. Metallic blue, bought from new, always garaged, it was immaculate.  She sold it at 10 yrs old and about 35,000 miles to a family friend’s daughter who had just past her driving test. She wrote it off within a couple of months. 

Have you come across this thread I wrote a few years ago yet? 
Vauxhall & I

[AltheJazzman]

8 hours ago, inconsistant said:

My mum had a W reg Corsa CDX like your one above. Metallic blue, bought from new, always garaged, it was immaculate.  She sold it at 10 yrs old and about 35,000 miles to a family friend’s daughter who had just past her driving test. She wrote it off within a couple of months. 

Have you come across this thread I wrote a few years ago yet? 
Vauxhall & I

Ooo CDX was the fanciest one with potentially heated seats and aircon. Edy above was GLS, so 5 door, sunroof, rear speakers, electric front windows, electric mirrors, and the Van trim model is called Epic, which was full poverty spec! Another tragic end to a Corsa though.

[inconsistant]

They bought it against my advice, It didn’t feel anything like top of the range. Front electric windows only, alloys,  no CD player, no sunroof, so maybe it did have  A/C (in those days you had to forgo one for the other), cloth seats in a tacky pattern, and the interior felt cheap and flimsy. Being top of the range it cost a lot too for a supermini. I t was an auto, 1.3 or 1.4.  At the time we had a 1998 Rover 200, a 1.4 Si I and it felt nicer in every possible way:  better equipped and nicer to be in and drive .Mum’s Corsa was W reg so 2000 model year? They’d been out almost a decade and were showing their age a bit. I knew there was a new model around the corner but they just couldn’t wait. I also tried to get them to downgrade to a GLS as there was no real difference in spec, but to no avail. To be fair they absolutely loved it. I hated it. 
Will add a photo when I find one.

[M'coli]

On 26/04/2025 at 09:53, AltheJazzman said:

With my proud shiny van, I went on another road trip in Summer of 2015, this time to the West Coast Scottish Highlands:

That looks very Kishorn-y, north of Lochcarron.

[AltheJazzman]

17 minutes ago, M'coli said:

That looks very Kishorn-y, north of Lochcarron

I didn't actually get up that far North, apart from crossing over to Skye and around that island.

The first shot is from Galloway Forest (so pretty much as Southern in Scotland as you can get!), second shot is Broadford on Skye, and third is Portree also on Skye.

Do you live up that way?

[M'coli]

No, I live in Yorkshire but love The Heilans.

[AltheJazzman]

Still 2019 - probably not in sequence

Found some Gaz coilovers on eBay, better than the no-brand ones I bought as an experiment just to see if I liked it lowered. They came without helper springs, bump stops,  or top mounts, all of which I ordered from Gaz, but by the time I had a functioning safe set, I probably should have just bought them new!

The middle exhaust section fell apart, so I bought a new one from something silly like £25.

2022 - the year of potholes

I'm sure most people will remember how awful the UK roads degraded around this time, possibly due to neglect throughout Covid, and then a bad mixture of extreme weather conditions. Well I quickly discovered what a liability it is driving a lowered vehicle on small alloy wheels, and stiff sidewall track tyres. On a road near to home, I hit a pothole, hard, and immediately heard a rhythmic knocking which turned out to be a dent inside the wheel hitting the brake calliper! Amazingly it was still holding air pressure! A friendly family let me use their driveway to fit the spare wheel.

The next day I went back in full vigilante mode to photograph and measure the offending hole. I even took a can of spray paint and drew a massive warning triangle on the road. Oddly enough I've since discovered this is the quickest way to get a pothole repaired, as the council would sooner remove evidence of vandalism than any other damage.

To fix the wheel, I took it to a local engineering company run by old school grumpy gits who are very good at their job. He normally turns around wheel repairs within a day or two, and for £40 I had it back, round and true! A bit of rattle can over the repair was enough

.

[AltheJazzman]

Still 2022 - rust and pulleys

Here's some photos of rust that I noticed, documented and tried to ignore. I did add rubber pads on the tops and bottoms of the doors so that the corners don't keep smashing in to the bodywork every time they are closed (what a stupid design!), and treated the offending areas with Hammerite Kurust. The other areas would come back to fight me next year

. 

Next, an identified rattling from the engine turned out to be the crankshaft pulley trying to self disassemble. The design of this part includes a rubber centre to help dampen the inherent lumpy vibrations from the high compression diesel engine. In typical Vauxhall fashion though, they didn't expect the vehicle to last this long, so the metal has outlived the rubber, and become two separate parts. Somehow, this was still driving the belts when under tension, but not without some odd noises.

I removed the rubber, and had my local garage weld up the two halves. Several people on a Facebook group told me the vibrations would destroy the crankshaft, engine mounts, or all sorts of other disasters.  I've done 15,000 miles since with no apparent engine destruction, and besides, I can't buy a new one!

[AltheJazzman]

2020 - finding rear doors without rust

Of course, I'm out of sequence with this story again. The van came into my ownership with a heavy duty Masterlock circular padlock thing with two crude brackets bolted through the rear doors. The original lock had clearly been jimmied open. I replaced the handle and lock barrel with the set from my old white van. It didn't matter that the key didn't fit because it has central locking, and I have a remote button for alarm and locks too. During the respray in 2014, the garage fitting blind coach bolts into the holes as a neat but easier alternative to welding up the holes (they offered me a choice). Despite this, the doors had started to rust around the coach bolts, the bottom edges where the seals conveniently trap water, and around the windows.

So I created an eBay search, and two years later a pair of scruffy but sold doors turned up.

 

Then I just had to pay my favourite bodyshop to remove the glass, tint them (I've always preferred tinted rear windows on a van for security), remove all the hardware, tidy up the metal surfaces, and paint them inside and out. Oops, that was expensive.

[AltheJazzman]

2019 and 2022 - Race Van!

As a paid up member of the Porsche 924 Owners Club,  I was invited to attend a very relaxed open day at the prestigious Prescott Hill Climb sprint track near Cheltenham. So far though, I've failed to actually take a 924. In 2018 I took my 944, and in 2019 I thought it would be very fun and silly to take the van. At this point it had the original turbo and generic part worn tyres as I was still messing about with suspension alignment. It certainly generated some attention though, and I volunteered some blurb about it's background to the organisers, which earnt me some commentary over the PA system to the whole crowd, and a published segment in their club magazine.

In 2022 I returned to the event with the van, now with sticky tyres and a bigger turbo. No published article this time though for fear of stealing attention. A few friends in the 924 Owners Club were genuinely impressed with it's performance. I would like to see how it keeps up with a standard 924! More torque but worse handling. The engine temperature climbed worryingly quickly on this short blast though, so I'll have to work out how to solve that later.

[Matty]

Wow it bloody eats gears when you're on it! Looked very quick that.

[AltheJazzman]

19 minutes ago, Matty said:

Wow it bloody eats gears when you're on it! Looked very quick that.

A combination of low gearing, my little 13" wheels and undersized tyres, and a typical diesel narrow power band of about 1000 rpm between gear shifts!