wheeler dealers.............

Old Vauxhall Vivas especially the Magnums and Firenza coupe often seem to attract modern flash alloy wheels like a moth to a flame. My old bog-standard 1256cc 2-door HC Viva would, in my opinion look a little over-dressed in chrome or mat black  'go-faster' wheels. Built for comfort and not for speed 'ANA' the Viva has the sensible steel wheels with chrome hubcaps that were supplied on the Vauxhall assembly line in  December 1973.


Sporting her newly sprayed 'Yellow Gold' colour ( same colour she was born with) her wheels were looking a little down-at-heel to say the least.


Not one to see a lady looking sad, I had all the old tyres removed by a friendly local tyre depot and took the wheels to 'Stockport Powder Coating'  Grit blasted and powder coated to something like the original silver colour. Back to the friendly tyre depot who shod the  four gleaming wheels with new tyres.......... 


Not exactly flashy chrome - but 'ANA' looks happy in them, and that's all the matters...................

New wheels man.......newly powder coated wheels for 'ANA'
 HC Viva  Chris Hill Copyright.

Windscreen wrangling.......fit a classic windscreen in ten minutes (or so)

Paint and headlining finished..................and now to put all the windows back.   Like fitting a headlining I have never, ever, had the occasion to fit a windscreen in a car. But, I took them out so I should be able to put them back in especially with perfect new windscreen rubbers. What can go wrong??

Ready for a bit of windscreen fitting............'ANA' the Viva after the re-spray.   Chris Hill Copyright.

Not exactly correct that statement.... many years ago I took a Viva side window out to replace the rubber. I tried putting it back with a piece of string like the book says....it was a complete failure when the string broke !!   Loosing faith in that method I tried the hard way with old spoons and lots of swearing. Managed it in the end, but it was a pig of a job.

So I searched 'Google' and lo and behold a Mini owners forum described that exact method (old spoons). So I put the new rubber on the front screen like it suggested and managed to fit the bottom and two sides, so far so good.........and ground to a halt on the home run with the top two corners and the top of the windscreen. Using old spoons and soapy water I gave battle levering the rubber channel over the glass. Over one hour later with an occasional impersonation of Basil Fawlty threatening the car with a 'good thrashing'  I succeeded  with very sore fingers, two bent spoons and my dear calm wife looking around the garage door and asking why I was hitting the windscreen with a bunch of twigs and shouting  "Right.....this is your last chance !" 

I am here to tell you...........THAT IS THE VERY WORST WAY TO PUT A WINDSCREEN IN............there IS an easier way. My wife suggested a professional windscreen fitter. I ignored this lack of faith in my manly abilities and decided to go back to the Indian Rope trick piece of string method.  I actually bought a long length of strong nylon cord actually made for the job....not like the cheap garden string I used last time. You feed the cord all along the rubber glazing channel with the two ends coming out of the bottom centre of the channel. With my glamorous lady assistant applying pressure to the rear windscreen I pulled one of the strings and as if by magic the the rubber flipped over the window flange like it should. I worked progressively in both directions with the two ends of the string occasionally helping matters with a silicone lubricant spray.
Corners need a bit of muscle power but the whole job was done in ten minutes.......most of that time was putting the cord in the channel!!! 

Both side windows were done in the same way, taking about five minutes each side. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy ( well actually silicone spray or WD40 works better)

Flushed with success, I decided to put the new chrome faced nylon bead into the centre channel of the windscreen rubber.  At this rate I should be finished in ten minutes, (what can go wrong?)

I had bought the special tool used for fitting aforementioned bead and realised I did not have a clue how to use it. Again I looked on YouTube, etc, and found a video of a professional windscreen fitter using one.  He did a whole screen in a few minutes so I tried to replicate his method by feeding the nylon trim/bead through the diamond shaped loop and opening the rubber channel at the same time - it just jammed and bent one edge of the 'chrome' surface.

I began to realise that perhaps these bead fitters come in different sizes or perhaps I just did not have the 'knack' no matter how I tried. Trying to suppress my altar ego Basil Fawlty and the desire to throw the bloody thing to the back of the garage, I came up with a cunning plan which I commend to you........

Inserting bead/chrome trim into windscreen rubber.       HC Viva  Chris Hill Copyright

I put one side of the bead/trim into one rubber channel and then used the tool to push the other rubber channel over making a snug fit, this can be done quickly with practice along the 'run' with a bit of lubricant ( warm soap water) to help. Corners are tricky as the bead is straight originally and tries to go back to that shape, so keep downwards pressure on it with your free hand whilst using the tool to lock it into the rubber channel. If that fails........give it a good thrashing !!!!

Not a pretty sight................Original rear windscreen rubber before removal prior to car being resprayed.  
   HC Viva  Chris Hill copyright.

  

Get ahead - get a headlining................

After forty-two years, the interior 'headlining' was looking very sorry for itself. A large split had developed and the white vinyl material had turned yellow in parts with age..... a bit like me.

Time for a new headlining.........sorry state of the original in my HC Viva

Old headlining about to be removed........holes are where the right hand sun-visor is located.

With all the glass removed for the re-spray this was a convenient time to renew. Like all the challenges that this restoration has thrown at me, I was about to attempt something I had no previous experience with. I was once again on unknown territory. In my professional life as a press photographer non of these skills had ever been required. Fitting a pre-1980,s traditional car headlining has become something akin to Zepplin building even if you are in the car trade!!!!!!!!!  Cars now have pre-formed, press-fit interior roof lining which is a very easy job compared.

So..........after plenty of research on YouTube, Google, etc, also surprisingly the official 'Vauxhall Viva Service Training manual ' titled 'Body- HC Viva' that for once had a very useful few pages on this.

So ...............I first removed the old headlining. So far so good. Lining material is held in place by tensioned steel rods that are placed in sequence and it is important that you mark them somehow to enable them to return in that sequence.

New headlining was sourced from Ebay and cut from an original pattern together with the 'pockets' for the loops. Place the rods into the pockets of the new lining in the same order as they came out...........I marked No1 as the one closest to the front windscreen.

New headlining.   Viva HC  Copyright Chris Hill

Rods are tensioned back into their nylon cups in holes on the side of the roof. I found that the considerable tension had split some of these nylon pockets and for a while progress stopped dead. I found similar nylon 'cups' on Ebay that were actually for a MK1 Ford Escort with a slightly larger (1mm) diameter and they fitted perfectly after drilling out the hole to size.

Using a tin of contact adhesive purchased from 'East Kent Trim'  the edges are glued to the top window openings all around and then the waste cut off. I did this a bit at a time and found the adhesive actually very forgiving enabling me to occasionally to take the material off again and re-tension it if it seemed too slack.
Plastic clips were used to keep in place until the glue was dry.

Clips used to keep headlining in position whilst the contact adhesive drys. Pictured is the front windscreen opening and the wires are for the interior light/rear view mirror assembly.                   Viva HC blog. Copyright Chris Hill 

Altogether not an easy job especially putting the interior light/rear view mirror housing and sun-visors back onto the now pristine headlining.......you have to cut into your newly fitted headlining to fit all three items. I would not like to tackle this job with the front/rear windscreens and rear side windows in !!

New headlining fitted and awaiting fit of sun-visors.     Viva HC blog  copyright Chris Hill

Painting a Viva part 2.

Spraying a car in a small single garage is not the easiest things to do. I had removed  most of the large panels ( doors, bonnet and boot lid ) and these were actually sprayed outside on a couple of those rare warm, windless days. Remainder of the body  was a struggle because of the lack of space in the garage, but with some perseverance I eventually managed it.

Panels sprayed with cellulose 'Yellow Gold' and the paint ready for 'mopping' with Farecla finishing compounds. Glass front and rear and side were not re-fitted until after the paint polishing/compounding. Vauxhall Viva

After a couple of weeks to let the cellulose harden, I  decided to 'colour sand' the already decent finish. This is done by wet flatting the paint again with fine 1500 grit and then using two grades of  Farecla fine finishing compound ( Farecla G3 and Farecla G10)together with a 1200 watt heavy duty polisher. Polishing part is known as 'mopping'  


I used a Silverline polisher which takes M14 fit 150mm polishing sponges..........blue sponge for the first polishes and soft red for the fine finishing polishes. Silverline polisher is about £50 which is cheap compared to others, but I am not going to use it everyday like a commercial car body finishing company so I thought it was good value...and so far it has done the job. It starts slowly when first applied to the paint to avoid 'burn' and can be used a different speeds. Method I used is to spray water onto the sponge, add a small amount of compound to the centre of the sponge and then spread it around the area with the sponge without the polisher turning. Start polisher at a lower speed and then work to higher speeds with more Farecla compound applications. It is hard work to do a whole car, but well worth the effort.  You will get some 'spray' from the water mixed paint/compound, so I cover any glass or rubber strip because it is a pain to clean off afterwards.

One of the excellent uses for this polishing method is the ability to remove small paints runs from the sprayed cellulose. In my small garage I found that it was easy to knock my elbow on the wall  behind when making a 'pass' with the spray gun.......this then slows the gun and a small run can develop. After the paint has hardened I flatted the 'run' with 1200/1500 grit paper and then polished using the Farecla compound. If you ever do this be very careful during the flatting and visually check continually against the light to ensure you are not going through the paint surface onto the primer. If you have big time runs through bad spray gun set-up and technique, it is often better to flat and paint the panel again.