Mk3 Cavalier Owners Club | Vauxhall Cavalier Dot Com

Nice looking cav you have there chap. Shame about the rot in the boot, not trying to scare you but when all that is grinded back ready for welding you could end up with a much much bigger hole because what looks like solid metel might not be once its been grinded a bit but anyway lets hope its not that bad for you.

The wire under the seat is indeed the heated seat wire, the wiring for the switches is under the dash behind the odments try thats below the radio.

Some LED bulbs are brigter but be careful which ones you get as some of them are really crap.

Dashboard swap is easy enough but a bit fiddly.

Good luck with it all and if you need any advice just ask as I have pulled apart and rebuilt many a cav interior!

Yeah, I knew there is a chance it could be worse but hopefully it will be the only thing, won't be able to tell until I get the interior out and check under the carpet and yeah Ill properly take you up on the interior advise. And yeah, does anyone know the best place to get the LEDs from and what value resistors to use on switches/heater panel, I know what I'm doing with the heater panel it's just component values I can't find a straight answer on.

These look quite good and its a reputable company so you should get quality

http://www.autobulbsdirect.co.uk/vauxha ... 995-1996-n

It's been a while since I've posted so I thought I'd update with the smallest bit of progress I've managed due to a headbangers holiday at Download Festival . But I will soon be taking out the seats and carpets within the next couple of weeks to see what's going on there and if all is as good as I think it should be I'll probably get on with the dash removal and swap . Managed to get the carpet up on the front passengers side due to it being loose, to find the reason, it's had a good welding job done just in front of the seat, which I was told about when I bought the car. Anyway to the smallest bit of work I've been able to get done, the broken socket and holder on the towbar
Got the parts for just over £4:

What it looked like before:

During:

And after, doesn't annoy me every time I see the car now:


As I said its barely anything but it's keeping me busy until I can get the bigger things out of the way.

Good work!

It's the little details that make a car I think.

James McGrath wrote:It's the little details that make a car I think.

Yeah I definately agree, it bugged me that it was such a simple thing but drew attention to the car and made it look a bit rough from the back of the car.

You'll hate mine then with its melted wonky rear bumper pmsl

hipo1024 wrote:You'll hate mine then with its melted wonky rear bumper pmsl

Yeah I saw about the melting my rear bumpers got that dent shown on the first page in the corner and it's bent mine out of shape slightly, needless to say it's going to be changed soon .
As I said previously I was going to have the bumpers and quite a few other bits off of the ecotec cav in the scrapyard by me, found out they'd crushed it a week earlier, was going to have the front and rear brake set up off of it as well .
Yeah little things really annoy me, that's why I decided to get a car a year older than me

I've started removing the rear seats, I managed to remove the bases but later realised I didn't have a T40 to remove the seat backs... But that will be resolved shortly and then I can finally remove the carpet and see what it's like underneath.
Removed:

Removed and out of car:

Prepared for removal without the backing:

Shorter than I originally thought but I spent a while searching for the T40 and socket. I found them after a while and decided to remove the backs of the seats.
Removed:

And all of the back seat out if the car:

Although I didn't take a photo, everything under the carpet where the seats were is like it just came out of ge factory, I don't think the back was ever used much.
Will hopefully have the fronts, centre console and all of the carpet out within a week.

Good work dude I love stripping them out. So straight forward.... until you get to the dash

Bought a few nice bits for the cav today and also saw two Turbo's and a Calibra DTM in one place the first being an M reg white turbo with only I think it was 34k on it, the second being a now pile of parts rough Satin Red turbo which kindly donated a few nice interior pieces to my TD, left there happy and then later became official that it will now be donating its whole Satin Red bodykit a few stone chips and a slight cut into the rear bumper for a previous big bore exhaust... But that will be sorted out. Pics and more details on what I got soon to be uploaded.

Here's what I picked up today:

Satin Red Vectra door handles, the correct facelift shade fuel cap instead of the older shade cap it had and a new gear gaiter that looks like it could be a vauxhall one:

A sun faded black headrest ready parcel shelf (if I can't find the proper ones will other headrest inserts will fit? And what can I use to being the black colour back to the shelf?)

The shelf ready to be set into place, although I won't until I change the speakers in the metal shelf (what specifications should the speakers have?):

Also got the centre console, I'll start to make the armrest fit, what's the best to use to cut the armrest into shape?:

And that's it for now.

Just picked up the Turbo bodykit tonight (Bumpers, side skirts, door moulds and end caps, new bonnet because of bad rust bubbling inside and outside the old one. 90% of the black interior bits I needed, just needs seats, door cards, dark carpet and interior trims that go along the doors are needed for the interior to be done. Now need to fix the signal cable that connects to the aerial as the old one had corroded badly and snapped when swapping the aerial over:

The bits I picked up

The cut into the rear bumper from an angle:

And what will show when when it's on the car:

Just need turbo/GSi fog lights now, also due to the rear bumper being lower, the towbar is too high for the bumper so that'll be removed, anyone want a saloon towbar? Will also need help with removing the wiring properly.

Metallicav wrote:A sun faded black headrest ready parcel shelf (if I can't find the proper ones will other headrest inserts will fit? And what can I use to being the black colour back to the shelf?)

Auto Glym do a fabric dye that's pretty good, mine faded after a couple of years though.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Autoglym-Blac ... 23193cc11b

A guy I know that used to be a valeter said black spray paint works wonders on faded carpets. Never tried it myself but might be worth a try on the underside to test it?

I thought they were dark grey, and not actually black though?

Cavalier342 wrote:I thought they were dark grey, and not actually black though?

Yeah they originally are but it looked really faded when it was outside, when I got it into the car it looks right in place colour wise, but it's probably still a little faded by the look of how faded the speaker covers are. Colour wise when all of the grey is gone and black is in the car it would probably do with being a bit darker.

Also I'll make a proper update soon, got most of all the black bits for the interior now, just need the dark carpet, seats, door cards, the little triangular bits for the rear doors and black wing mirror interior covers.

Ye looks like it's been left out in the sun most of the time....My old L reg Cavalier with blue interior had that, the panels which saw the sun went grey, and if you open the door, the kick-panels were two-tone, grey and blue...

I do like the black interiors but they make an extra challenge of keeping clean....

20 years of UV tends to do that. Some nice progress all the same. I'd be tempted to go with the dye rather than spray paint though - I doubt it will feel particularly nice once its dried.

Alternatively, you could always consider re-covering it with some acoustic carpet?

I've retrimed both my saloon and hatch parcel shelves in anthracite carpet. Easy to do and makes a hell of a difference.

That does make a rather distinctive difference!

Thought I'd finally update, managed to get a few things, I got some 17" alloys:

As I've posted before I'm changing the interior to black, I could have got some Cav Sri seats but that would have been to easy, so I opted for vectra b sri half leathers as They were mint and They only cost me £40 i'm in the middle of trying to adapt them myself, nearly got the backs sorted it's just the fronts I've got to figure out, the seats and vectra:

Some Prefacelift rear decals from opelise on ebay, highly recommended and they have genuine badges for quite a few other manufacturers as well, the ones that I got:

Also got matching mudflaps to the fronts for the rear, silver astra gear knob insert and a vectra documents wallet for a fiver:

Vectra b cdx illuminated sun visors (also available on some other models) they're the same as cav turbo ones apart from the wiring plugs on them, these are from a P reg although they're the same on late models as well, a great little upgrade which are easy to find due to the amounts of vectras in scrapyards even the normal ones seem to be better than cav ones and so do the clips due to the metal inserts.

I've also got new satin red rear doors with electric regulators and loom as they're cleaner than the old ones, that's it really.

The interior is dirt cheap!

Where is that breakers and do they have any cavs in?

HAIRIBO wrote:The interior is dirt cheap!

Where is that breakers and do they have any cavs in?

The breakers is "Jacksons" in ewloe, I was shocked by the price aswell, got them down from £80 I was expecting to get them down to about £70, but my dad knows them there and has been going for the past 13 years or so. They don't have any Cavs there but this place has two but both places are far from you though: