My astra C20XE conversion project

[Varnis9]

Hi all

I always wanted to start my own diary of my astra c20xe conversion. I have been restoring the car since 2017 (!!) when I came back to Cyprus from the UK and finally got a c20xe in my hands. We had the car in the family since 1997, basically from new, and I have always taken good care of it. My first car ever, learned how to drive, took it almost everywhere. And it's still with me. The car was actually imported by the son of Opel's main dealership in Cyprus, which came somehow customized with irmscher front, rear and side skirts, rear spoiler, and corsa gsi 14 inch alu wheels.



Baetween 2007 and 2017 that was my daily driver, until a major fload at my work's parking lot forced me to dismantle the car and start the process! Thankfully my father has a workshop so I have all the space and tools needed for such a job. The only drawback to this was that my house is on the other side of the town, and trying to find space between work, family, kids and the car, was and is still a struggle I am trying to convince myself that this is the main reason that this project has taken so long, and not the fact that these projects just end up being a masive neverending money pit

So as I said, the new engine was imported from the uk at the beginning of 2017, with little to nothing known about it. Took it for a bargain price of 700 quid (roughly 850 euros with shipping) with engine, loom, gearbox, 277mm discs and brakes, and exahust manifold (oh I miss those days!!). The only think I knew about the engine was basically that it come off a corsa.

One think that always really bothered me was that the car had two minor accidents years ago, so the chassis was literally damaged front and rear. Unfortunately, I was too young to pay attention to repairs back then. So the overhauling, or conversion, process began....






Out is the 1.4 engine..




Damaged front end which we did try to repair..

Fixed a much as I could, coated and painted. Unfortunately parts are pretty rare here so didnt have any other options..



Interior and dash out...


And finally a cleaned and painted engine bay...

 

[Varnis9]

Factory floors scrubbed and cleaned ..


Primed...


Painted...


And dynamat installed.


Both sides finished. Also added dynamat down the tunnel and inside the front doors..

 

[Kev_mk3]

Nice to see what your working with

 

[Varnis9]

Nice to see what your working with

Thanks mate. I will try to update as much as I can in the next few days/weeks and then as progress evolves. I have just started another project which is basically a continuation of this astra, that is used as a donor car. So quite a lot coming up.

 

[DavebGsi]

keep us updated! good to see

 

[Varnis9]

This was my first experience with these types of engines, so I started learning as I went through. Initially, I found out that this was the coil pack version, also known as the late type. But something strange started to evolve, looking at the bottom. The markings on the casting seemed to be missing the C, 20xe so I knew there something going wrong. Looking online I found that the letter C on the C20XE was actually desginating the catalytic converter that was later on added due to new emission regulations. But mine was missing, which was contradicting the late type of the cylinder head. The belt pulley on the crank was round though. So something wasnt right... So upon investigation I actually found out that the engine had the late cylinder head type (also confirmed with the part number on the head casting), which was "married" with an early bottom end. I guess the one who did this wanted to make use of the lighter crank in the earlier 20xe version .. (?!) who knows!

So work on the engine began...




Engine fully serviced and refreshed.


Painted.


Engine also came with a set of red magnecor's (that was a nice present)!
Clutch seemed good so did not replace.


Stainless steel breather from tx auto installed. Also bought the stainless steel water pipe that goes behind the engine (no photo though!).


And a few other presents from roose arrived!

 

[Varnis9]

Exhaust manifold also received some love..
A bit of paint and some heat wrap added..

 

[Varnis9]

Engined dropped in...





Moving on to a bit of wiring...









Wiring connected up and piping, exhaust, and hoses also.

 

[Varnis9]

Big 277mm brakes installed with vented discs.



And a set of brand new 17 inch wheels...



The car was also lowered on a set of brand new H&R H&R Cup-Kit 50/40mm

 

[Varnis9]

And now the true story began with over 4 years (!) of troubleshooting and trying to figure out problems and problems...

So as I said earlier in this thread, the engine came to me with no known history. One thing that I found out at the beginning was that the botom end was from and early 20xe, while the head and ecu from the late coil pack type. Since the day we connected the wiring and tried to start the engine, we faced idling issues, hard to start at various conditions, lumpy driving, unexpected shutting down and then not starting, and so on. Despite all these, the engine was running ok at 2500rpm + or second gear onwards. The car would run for a few days (with its lumpy idling, hard to start problems), then it would sit in the garage for a few months. Litteraly chasing our own tails..

During those periods, lots of time and money was spend on new parts, almsot replaced all sensors more than 2 times, beginning from the obvious idle valve, crank sensor, AMF and eveything else that we felt suspicious like injectors. A true money pit... One of the first things that we found out was that some of the sensors, such as the TPS, were wrong! Early type TPS on late type ecu. And also injectors.. cream early ones, instead of late blue.

Wiring loom came out a couple of times, which had quite a lot of problems that I repaired, and head was also rebuild; wanted to eliminate possible air leakages through the guides. ECU was repaired a couple of times due to burned lines, also replaced with a new one. But still to no avail!!

Timing was something that I really cant remember how many times we checked.. I even made a graphic that I shared on social media just to be sure that I understand things correctly. Still the car symptoms were the same.. Sometimes the car would feel sligthly better, but in general not realibly driveable.



Nevertheless, during that time, I found out something that really got me excited about the engine., despite the huge amounts of money and time thrown at it at the time, and the huge frustrations. Upon inspecting, I found that the cams did not seem original. Upon further examination, I verified that both inlet and exhaust cams were actually fast road piper cams!! Considering that I paid 700 quid for the whole engine and auxiliaries, and that the cams cost more than 500 for a brand new set, then that was a true steal!!

But despite my findings, repairs and efforts, the car was still sitting in the garage.. I never felt like giving up, so the more the problems persisted, the more I stood my ground against all..




Inlet cam with piper cam part number..



Exhaust cam with piper cam part number..

 

[Andy_Mk3]

Really like this, never seen a Mk3 with that combination of bumpers with ph2 gsi skirts and spoiler, it looks really good though. It's cool that the car has been in for family for so long.

Great work so far bringing it back up to scratch. Love the XE, rare to see many about these days it feels. It's one thing I wish I had done in the past.

Good result on the Piper cams. Did you ever get to the bottom of the running issues?

 

[Varnis9]

Really like this, never seen a Mk3 with that combination of bumpers with ph2 gsi skirts and spoiler, it looks really good though. It's cool that the car has been in for family for so long.

Great work so far bringing it back up to scratch. Love the XE, rare to see many about these days it feels. It's one thing I wish I had done in the past.

Good result on the Piper cams. Did you ever get to the bottom of the running issues?

Yeah I am still not 100% sure how, but it was all down to a timing tooth being out on the inlet cam.. The problem is that when everything was aligned with the stock timing marks, the car wouldnt run properly. Had to actually do an air leak test on the pistons to actually identify the cylinder leaking!! Then we just fine tuned using our ears, listening to air leaking or not leaking, and eyes on the pressure gauge.

 

[Varnis9]

Carrying on with the thread after a few weeks being off!

So going on with the troubleshooting process, and still chasing our own tails, I was pretty sure that the problem was down to an electric issue, although I refurbed and replaced all sensors and ecu at least 2 times and also repaired my loom. I also run the car through diagnostics like 200 times!! (had my xe converted to OBD2) but still nothing. I was convinced that I was never going to find a solution, at least with the current setup. Evaluating my next moves I started thinking that an aftermarket management system could save the day. At least then I could get a proper overview of how the car works, air/fuel mixture, voltages and so on. So be it. Going through my options I decided to go Megasquirt Talked with Phil which also got me in touch with Shaun from ms2tuning. After giving my requirements, everything was built and I finally received both the ecu (Phil) and wiring loom (Shaun) just before Christmas 2020! Shaun was the guy who would also tune the car remotely for me.

A brand new wiring loom!



A brand new ecu!

 

[Varnis9]

Once everything was properly connected to the car, we could run some first tests to see what was going on. From a first glance it seemed that the manifold pressure that the new MAP sensor was measuring was a bit high. But in the beginning not so much attention was given to it, since as I said the timing was spot on with the stock timing marks (who knew..!).

And to be honest it was a good think, as we spend the next months to a year+ tearing down whatever had a tiny possibility of being the root to the problem. And yeah, we found more problems which we fixed, but you guess, the main problem was still there!!!

Testing ecu shell for ground resistance.



One of the main electrical issues that we fixed had to do with the engine grounds. You see the chassis wasnt properly grounded (could see a very high resistance at one of the ground spots behind the sill cover on the driver's side), so had to make new grounds and added a few extra grounds here and there.

Ground spot culprit!



Shaun was with me at all times, and to be honest I dont know what I could have done without him. Hours and hours spend messaging to each other, and remote tuning using anydesk, data logging, sending it back, changing the log file, reuploading on the ecu and the story goes. Just imagine that he never even looked the car in person!!

 

[Varnis9]

One of the things that Shaun suggested at some point was to remove the standard idle valve and go for an idle stepper motor, since for some reason he noticed that the idle vale could not be adjusted properly in Tunerstudio.



So with a bit of wiring we installed an idle valve stepper motor off a Renault, which actually helped but still most of the start and idling problems were there.

 

[Varnis9]

A bit of wiring to make the stepper conversion. We had to delete the idle valve wires and add new ones directly to the ecu board.

 

[Varnis9]

Being almost out of thoughts at that point, and nearly 5+ years into the project, we really didnt know what to think more. Shaun insisted that the idle and hard start problems were caused by the high manifold pressure, which was caused by misallinged timing. So, having literally no other ideas we decided to do another air leak test, despite the fact that the timing marks were SPOT ON.
So we took the valve cover off, removed the sparks, and started the process... We immediately spotted that something was not right. Despite the fact that the piston was at TDC, the readings showed that there was indeed some leakage through the valves. We could actually hear the air going past the valves and out of the spark hole. Rotating the camshafts back and forth slignthly each time, after removing the belt, we found out that there was indeed some kind of timing advance. So after spending some time we managed to stop the air leakage. So the original timing marks on the cams and crank, were wrong all the way !!!!!

Dont know how and why, but a tooth was out on the inlet cam. We then hooked up the laptop to the ecu and we verified that the manifold pressure had come down to normal levels. The car started right up with no effort.

So the nightmare was FINALLY coming to an end..

We finally did a couple of more tuning sessions, we also re tuned the ingition timing and the car is now fully mot'ed and road taxed.

 

[Varnis9]

Coming back to my thread after some time now. Want to carry on with the updates as I go on with the project. So last May I bought a donor astra f mk3. After more than 2 years of patiently searching for one, I finally got one in my hands. A 1.4L, 5door in white colour, with factory AC, and with a seized engine. Managed to get it for €350, a total bargain.

So the plan is to use this car as a solid base to built a new one and transfer everything from my old astra including body kit, engine, ecu etc. As I said in my first posts, the old astra was damaged front and rear, so it always bothered me. This car will not only be used just to built a solid car, but the plan is to make a show car. So hidden wiring and piping, battery to the boot etc. I am also planning to do an electric steering pump conversion just to get rid of the bulky pipes.



So the work finally began by taking the engine out..

 

[DavebGsi]

good progress

 

[Varnis9]

Started removing auxiliaries, like the radiator, power steering pump and pipes, A/C system etc..



And also tackling the wiring!

Labelled everything just to keep track of it, before I start plannign the rewiring process.





So the plan is to keep the original rerouting in and out of the bay through the bulkhead, and hide the lot behind the servo. Of course I will delete everything that is not needed.




So I removed evey connector that is not needed. Then pulled them wires through the bulkhead and into the car. I will sort out these later on.