Brisbane budget corsa b

Hi everyone, I hail from the Brisbane western suburbs.

Until recently I've been messing about with mostly Holden Gemini's (Opel Kadett C if you will) but had to give up playing with cars while I was unwell and being treated for cancer.

However I've been in remission for a number of months now and decided to get back behind the wheel, so I set out with the tiniest of budgets to buy the most sorry piece of crap I could afford.

A few days of hunting netted a few choices, first car I went to look at was a combo van but it turned out to be rusted beyond repair.

On a whim I spotted a 1998 SB Swing 3 door advertised for $450 so I went to have a look. the clear coat was absolutely ruined, had various shopping trolley dents, the interior has so many stains that I suspect the car was used as a regular orgy venue, some of the interior plastics were missing, steering wheel was heavily weathered and the indicator stalk couldn't support it's own weight. The rear muffler was also only held on by the hangers stopping the body from sliding off of the muffler inlet.

Now even at this stage I wasn't really deterred, as these are all little things in reality, the motor (C14SE) was in good running order and felt strong with only an occasional misfire that I'm yet to rectify, gearbox felt solid and the clutch, brakes and handbrake all worked as they should. There was zero rust present, tires and suspension all felt and looked great.

I got to talking with the guy about what I needed the car for and mentioned that I needed a cheap reliable daily to get back on my feet after finishing treatment, so he basically came out with "Mate, $300 and she's yours"

SOLD.

I repaired the indicator stalk by replacing the internal spring with one from a ballpoint pen, and fitting a near new rear muffler from a wrecker, pulled out the seats and shampooed the hell out of them, removed 18 years worth of mud and vegetation from the roof gutters and panel jambs and sent it off for a roadworthy.

Came back first time all good, rego'd the next day.

So my running tally so far not including roadworthy and rego is $345.

I've nicknamed it "Scum" and plan to do a fair bit more work to it, starting with chassis strengthening and suspension, then working my way up to brakes and maybe a z18xe swap in the not too distant future. :)
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Welcome, same area same car.
Steffi

Was just reading your build thread, nice job :)

welcome to OA

Welcome to the forum.

Welcome. Nice to see another Corsa on here. Beauty of these cars are that they're fairly easy to work on and easy to upgrade with factory parts.

Z18 swap is easy as (provided you can find a GSi for parts) and a worthwhile upgrade. Calibra/TR Astra front rotors and calipers are a straight bolt on and the rears can be upgraded with complete Corsa C/XC Barina rear discs and hubs. Hubs bolt on, but a little welding work (which @sskustomz could probably help you with) is required for the handbrake cable brackets.

Welcome to Opelaus

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I was wondering about the rear disk upgrade, have seen from a couple of places searching online that the rear disks slightly increase the rear track, has me a little worried as I was planning on buying a set of 15x8 +20 wheels near the end of the week and even those are going to poke a bit more than I'd like :/

And I'm getting mixed info regarding the z18xe, I was under the impression that they were the later style engine with the wider timing belt and the non timing driven water pump, but they were apparently fitted to the ts astra which I thought was the engine I've had trouble with in the past (ex girlfriends car, munched it's head twice) but I have a feeling this was due to the mechanic cutting corners and not replacing the tensioner/idle pulleys.

Can anyone clarify? or what's the most worthwhile swap?

If the rear discs increase track, it's not by much. I think the track is only increased when you use the entire Corsa C rear axle instead of bolting the hubs to the Corsa B axle.

Of the small block Family 1 engines, there's three versions of the 1.8 (all DOHC by the way). First, is the X18XE1 (85kW) engine, this came out in the pre-2000 TS Astra, main features include the presence of a EGR valve and a cable driven throttle body. The X18XE1 also appeared in the Holden JF Viva/Daewoo Lacetti as the F18D3. The later Z18XE (92kW) engine, does away with the EGR in TS Astra models (early XC Barina SRi versions retained the EGR) and has a drive by wire throttle, it also featured in early AH Astra models. The last and current iteration is the Z18XER/A18XER, this is in the later AH Astra and the Holden JG/JH series Cruze as the F18D4. This engine was the one had variable valve timing and the auxiliary belt driven water pump and 103kW.

Either engine is fairly reliable with regular and proper maintenance. Note that the entire timing belt kit and water pumps on the X18XE1/Z18XE are to be changed every 60,000kms for optimum reliabilty. Use of a good quality belt like Gates or genuine GM kit also helps (Gates also supply the genuine GM belts).

Personally, I think bang for buck, the Z18XE swap is hard to surpass. You could also use the C16SE from a TR Astra easy enough, but they're a bit long in the tooth now and around 74kW. It's a bolt in job, but if you're going to go to that effort, you may as well get a Z18 in there. The Calibra C20XE/X20XEV engines are popular swaps, more power than a Z18XE, but heavier and the conversion is more costly with the need for custom mounts and a few other bits and bobs.

With a Z18, the engine can be had for about $500, you can use the F13 box you already have. You'll need to find a GSi ECU, loom and sensors, as well as the exhaust cam sprocket, timing cover and bottom crank pulley. Most of this is all listed in my how to guide over in the how to section (which probably needs updating at some point). Also, don't use the Z18XE from an AH Astra, it doesn't have the crank sensor mount you will need. I did the conversion on my old GSi, I have a mate who also did this on a pre-facelift C12NZ engined model and I'm also about to do this to a SB Combo van with a C14SE (when I get my SRi sorted, damn clutch).

Awesome, thanks for the info.

I had been wondering about the ecu, the one fitted as per standard appears to be a delco 808 style ecu but from what I've found they are a little different in design and function, I've been thinking about swapping it with one from a camira with the nvram modification to turn it into a realtime tuneable ecu as I planned on modding the engine a little before it goes in.

Would the Astra gearbox be a worthwhile upgrade also? as I could probably pick up a whole car privately for the same cost as buying the engine from a wrecker, also can the C16XE mounts be bought new by any chance as I've already browsed my local wreckers and there are none around.

Yeah, later Opel ECUs get locked down a bit (just ask @SilentShout about the Siemens Simtec70 series ECUs on the Z18XE). Sounds like a decent plan though.

The F17 box from the Astra can be used with your existing shafts I believe and should bolt in, but you will need to convert your clutch pedal for a hydraulic setup, or set the box up to use a clutch cable. I'd be more inclined to go hydraulic, which I believe you can use a JR or JS Vectra clutch master cylinder for. The F17 box is probably the strongest box available for a Family 1 engine, but the standard F13 box will handle a fair amount of power too.

As for the mounts, you use your existing mounts. There's two types of mounts in the Corsa and they depend on whether you have power steering or not. C14SE with power steering and C16XE/X16XE mounts are all the same.

Oh awesome mine has power steering haha, so all I really need to source is ecu and clutch master, sweet as :)

or rather dont ask me about the ecu :lol:

the ecu itself isnt locked down as such, just wierdly programmed. To prevent upstanding citizens such as myself from modifying the ecu, they have placed the x and y axis values in a seperate section of the CAL file to the z axis (the physical tune)

my build im thinking of going for a piggyback as ive spent 1.5 years trying to crack the damn ecu and its not happening -.-

Also welcome to the forums. Will be good to see the car at some meets in the future :)

Lol I don't know a huge deal about fuel injection as I've played mostly with Gemini's and usually stick with suck/blow through carby turbo's.

Is it possible to pull the tune from the Siemans ecu and drop it into the nvram board?

Short answer no, its all dependant on if both ecu's share the same processor and chipset etc. In some cases you can get lucky e.g. simtec 70 and 71 have different processors but both processors are nearly physically identical and so they share the same I/O pathways and use the same code for different functions such as a reset vector etc.

In saying that the simtec 71 and the simtec 76 look nearly identical outside however the 76 had a different chipset that has support for CANbus and thus has different I/O pathways and wont be compatable.

Its all too annoying tbh. The delco units and bosch units are much easier to work with tbh.

What are the 2 ecu units?? I can hunt through all the research i have looking into my ecu hack project and see if i have any reference for it

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Well the ecu I want to use is a Delco 808 from a camira or pulsar or commodore, but I have not the faintest idea how to tune an ecu so I was hoping I could just suck the tune from the stock ts astra ecu, then mod the 808 and upload the stock tune to it to get it in the right ballpark and take it in to have it fine tuned once a few mods are done, nothing fancy, most likely just cams, verniers, intake and exhaust with some minor port matching and smoothing until later when I'm looking to spend a great deal more.

Sadly its not that easy. Siemens wont flash to a delco and vice versa. The hex data would be arranged differently etc.

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To be honest, for what it'd cost to set up a Delco with the right tune, you may as well just go with a Megasquirt ECU or similar.

What's interesting though, a Z18XE running a C16XE GSi Multec ECU (and extractors) makes more power than a Z18XE with the Simtec ECU.

The white Corsa B here in Adelaide with this swap has a bog stock Z18XE and extractors with 2" exhaust. The guy had it dynoed at 82kW at the wheels. Dead stock Z18XE will usually put out around 70-73kW at the wheels. Surely the exhaust doesn't account for all the extra 10kW, but I think the C16XE ECU possibly overfuels the engine in comparison to the Simtec ECU.

It also explains that why the Corsa B with a Z18XE swap is such a quick little machine.

Yeah sounds like for now I'll just stick with the multec ecu, I'll look at changing it to something better later once I've gotten over this whole budget obsession haha.

Actually, some info I just found shows that the JD Camira actually ran a FII 18LE mpfi engine in the early bird versions before they switched them all to single point injection.

Theoretically it'd be somewhere in the ballpark tune wise, maybe something to look at.