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kona12
P Plater
25 Posts
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 Posted - 23 Sep 2010 : 9:06:36 PM
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Hey guys i just brought my first car at 15 years old, its a Vn s-pac, very nice inside, its been siting for about 6 months so all she needed was a new battery to get her going. its a series 1 i believe that they de-tuned the series 2s. so yeah i want to learn more and more about this car i got :)
and all for 400 buks :D cheers connor
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Mechknight73
National Driver
1001 Posts
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Posted - 23 Sep 2010 : 11:25:38 PM
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Welcome aboard. Browse the forums for various things, you'll find a wealth of information here. The Series 2 VN differs from an S1 mostly in plumbing. As this engine was originally meant for front wheel drive cars, Holden did a quick conversion, as you can see the stainless steel pipe going from the back of the intake manifold to the front of the engine. The header tank is another difference; S2s did away with this and put in a conventional radiator with a conventional radiator cap.
Parts are easy to interchange; VNs and their ancestors all work on what they call universal tooling; a range of parts common to all models, which means parts from one will bolt onto another without modifying things.
If ever you get stuck with something, feel free to start your own topic on it to fish for answers |
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dryVN
Fully Licenced
228 Posts
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Posted - 23 Sep 2010 : 11:59:15 PM
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Welcome to the site, There are many good points about the VN as a first car.
Reasonable power, fairly safe and cheap on parts and servicing, and if something breaks while your learning to work on it at least any wrecker will have what you need cheaper than the parts on newer car. If you want to learn heaps about this model. I'd recommend to anyone a second hand copy of.
Project VN : (An Australian car for the 1990's) , By Pedr Davis and Tony Davis.
Shows how this model was created from start to finish and is very interesting reading. Best of luck with your new beast. |
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kona12
P Plater
25 Posts
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hsv_babe
Fully Licenced
269 Posts
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Posted - 24 Sep 2010 : 11:55:13 AM
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| I just brought that book off Ebay its fantastic!!!! Really interesting! |
I'd gladly push my holden than drive a bloody ford! |
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Mechknight73
National Driver
1001 Posts
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Posted - 24 Sep 2010 : 5:46:39 PM
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It's a cheap way to update any VN, although even easier to install in a wagon than it is in a sedan. Strangely, it's an "off the shelf" part at Rare Spares. Although why would you bother, when an upholsterer (or if you're suitably crafty, do it yourself) could knock one out in half a day for a fraction of the catalogue price, with whatever fabric you want.
A friend of mine had Project VN, and I'd read it many years ago. The amount of sneaky ways Holden disguised their development mules was amazing, especially fitting a V6 to a VL. The VL was only about 150 or so sales away from stealing the no. 1 sales position from the XF Falcon. Their spies knew the VN was going to be bigger, so they panicked and released the EA Falcon before they really should have. I have seen their wiring harnesses catch fire before my eyes. I have seen one burnt to a cinder, and the lack of metal behind the front bumper is frightening. Knowing things were going downhill fast, Ford Australia secretly bought several VN Commodores and dismantled them; trying to discover the secrets of how Holden managed to raid the international GM parts bin, and build a world class car on a comparative shoestring |
Edited by - Mechknight73 on 24 Sep 2010 5:53:47 PM |
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kona12
P Plater
25 Posts
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Posted - 24 Sep 2010 : 6:03:13 PM
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yeah im loving doing it all DIY and it turned out great :)
i new ford were sneaky buggers, Holden all the way.
i just got some paint stripper and alot of sand paper, im going to sand down all the roof and the boot, its all sun damaged though anyway. and get my dads mate t respray it for me for like 500 buks |
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Mechknight73
National Driver
1001 Posts
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Posted - 24 Sep 2010 : 10:56:01 PM
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| Good to have mates in the trade. Just remember to take off any plastic trim near where you put the paint stripper, or it will eat through it. Also, remember to have some finer grade wet and dry sandpaper on hand for when you get to bare metal, for proper finishing |
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kona12
P Plater
25 Posts
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Posted - 25 Sep 2010 : 6:56:01 PM
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| okay thanks mechh i wass wondering do i go down to the bare metal, should i? i still dont know , :) |
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Super low_91
P Plater
49 Posts
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Posted - 25 Sep 2010 : 7:26:15 PM
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| if its staying the same colour just a rough back so its not shiny and the surface is clean,, you shouldn need to go to bare metal, (if i am wrong then someone will no doubt correct me).. when i did my boot i jus roughed it primer an then paint,, still looks good now |
5 Speed Manual Conversion in Progress YAY :) |
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Mechknight73
National Driver
1001 Posts
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Posted - 25 Sep 2010 : 8:18:59 PM
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| So long as there's no surface rust spots; a brown dot on the paint means there's a "hole" in the paintwork, which has to be cleaned out. If you don't that rust spot will reappear later. If there are none you can see, then by all means, just rough the paint up a bit. If you do have any rust spots, you sand down until all you can see is clear metal (only siver in colour) and spray with etch primer, and a bit of ordinary primer to seal it from the elements. Ask your dad's mate for sure, it depends on what kind of surface prep he thinks is appropriate. By the way is the colour a flat colour e.g white or a metallic? |
Edited by - Mechknight73 on 25 Sep 2010 8:20:24 PM |
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kona12
P Plater
25 Posts
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Posted - 25 Sep 2010 : 9:54:14 PM
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wow. thanks so mucch, you dont know how much your helping me here :) <3
its a metallic:) |
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Mechknight73
National Driver
1001 Posts
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Posted - 25 Sep 2010 : 10:42:23 PM
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| Metallics can be trickier with things like colour matching; many spraypainters will get around this by "blending" the colour. In other words, instread of painting just one panel, they'll taper the paint off on adjacent panels. With a flat colour, if you get the colourmatch perfect, it's a lot easier than it is for metallics. |
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kona12
P Plater
25 Posts
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Posted - 25 Sep 2010 : 11:17:13 PM
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| yeah thats all good, i got the primer, and i got the same color as the car in touch up paint from Holden |
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Mechknight73
National Driver
1001 Posts
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Posted - 26 Sep 2010 : 1:46:23 PM
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| It's usually your first car that you learn the most about cars from. I got lucky; when I was 15, I had a part time job in a wrecking yard. Back then, the boss wouldn't strip anything newer than 1980, so I was surrounded by the classics; EK and FB Holdens, HQs, early Falcons. Coupled with my first fulltime job as a driveway attendant in a remote roadhouse. I've seen both the weird and the normal problems, even though I have virtually no formal training in the automotive trades. |
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kona12
P Plater
25 Posts
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Posted - 29 Sep 2010 : 11:15:49 AM
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| yeah its a great car to have, i got like moore then 12 moths to learn and do up my pride and joy:) |
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Mechknight73
National Driver
1001 Posts
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Posted - 29 Sep 2010 : 1:27:32 PM
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| And of course, you have more respect than some "spoilt" brat whom gets a late model car bought for them, abusing it from day one. When I was 15, I was talking to a kid a few years younger than me, whom said he couldn't believe that my parents won't be buying me a car. Of course not! If it's your money, or your loan, it's your decision as to what kind of car you get |
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kona12
P Plater
25 Posts
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Posted - 29 Sep 2010 : 2:09:52 PM
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piss off i brought this with my own money, im doing it up my self because thats what i want to do, im not a rich faggot that gets mummy and daddy to buy every thing for me. mate i have a job i work for it.
and no im not that dumb to abuse the **** out of it. |
Edited by - kona12 on 29 Sep 2010 2:12:57 PM |
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Mechknight73
National Driver
1001 Posts
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Posted - 29 Sep 2010 : 2:14:00 PM
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| I didn't mean you had your parents buy it for you, I meant you're doing almost all of the work yourself, including buying it. Most kids your age aren't this far ahead. I meant that anyone who gets stuff "handed to them on a platter" generally have no appreciation of what they have, and that's clearly not you, as you want to do as much of the work yourself as you can |
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kona12
P Plater
25 Posts
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Posted - 29 Sep 2010 : 2:20:18 PM
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| haha okay i thought you were having a go at me. yeah i got to a snobby school and i deal with **** stains all day. i know where your coming from. im not like that. |
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Mechknight73
National Driver
1001 Posts
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Posted - 29 Sep 2010 : 4:33:44 PM
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| I had those clowns in high school too, but few if any of them were from rich families. Don't worry, you're a decade ahead of them in a lot of ways, they just can't see it yet because Mummy and Daddy still wipe their bums for them |
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kona12
P Plater
25 Posts
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Mechknight73
National Driver
1001 Posts
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Posted - 29 Sep 2010 : 6:08:59 PM
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Well done so far. Remember to sand down the bit behind where the trim goes on the bootlid. For a novice at this, you're doing well. You even had the smarts to shield the other panels from both the sander and the combined dust it makes.
A suggestion I would make, is if the paint doesn't quite match the roof, pick a "beltline" to sand down to; I'd recommend the "pinstripe" indent that runs along the front guards, and the rear quarter panels up to the tail lights. The trims around the windows means you won't have to paint the window frames as well to blend it in. It may be necessary to remove the windscreens to finish the roof (trust me, a job best done by a windscreen fitter. Will cost you from $50-$100, depends on the fitter.) The window frames are one of the places they tend to rust, so while you've got the paint matched to do it, it's better to fix it now if you can, rather than worry about it later. Also, check around the doorjams, from the sill plate on the floor, to under the gutter on the roof. Kill off all the rust before it can start trouble. Any surrounding trims can be taken down with a Phillips screwdriver, so a 5 minute check is worthwhile |
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kona12
P Plater
25 Posts
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Posted - 29 Sep 2010 : 6:52:45 PM
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thanks man.
yeah i got the touch up paint but i still need to sand and prime more before i do that. yeah iv made sure to sand out and put fish oil on the rushed spots to make sure it doesnt come back up. iv spent a few doing that. yeah ill might have to take off the trims,
iv used paint stripper very carefully to get rid of the little marks, and ii used wax and grease remover to clean the surface before i primed it |
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Mechknight73
National Driver
1001 Posts
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Posted - 29 Sep 2010 : 11:02:00 PM
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| Something I once did on mt sister's car at the time (Hyundai Excel. Their paint was crap to begin with!) was to retouch certain areas, even though they were small ones, with a hobby airbrush. The finish can come out better than a spray can. If you have your touch up paint mixed as a tin of paint, you can just add the thinner (I used it 50/50. Anyone step in and correct me if I'm wrong) and while the touch up wasn't invisible, it was a lot harder to see than those brush touchup thingys. |
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kona12
P Plater
25 Posts
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Posted - 29 Sep 2010 : 11:19:36 PM
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| haha you got to love the excels haha :)yeah i really do need more paint, i have a lotto do, is there like a spray on seal that goes on after so it doesnt go all ****ty? why would you put thiner in with the paint wtf?? |
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Mechknight73
National Driver
1001 Posts
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Posted - 30 Sep 2010 : 12:21:30 AM
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Paint thinner is only used to make the paint thin enough to be sprayed out of an airbrush or spraygun properly. It's also used for cleaning up excess paint, and the usualy kind of contaminants on bodywork. Nail polish used to have the active ingredient of paint thinner: acetone.
If you mean is there some kind of seal for the paint container, the short answer is, so long as the container is airtight and won't break down with exposure to the paint the paint won't go off if you leave it aside for a few weeks. I have model paint tins on my bookshelf that I haven't used for a couple of years (almost exactly the same as automotive paint) and they're still fine because the containers are airtight. |
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kona12
P Plater
25 Posts
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Posted - 30 Sep 2010 : 10:37:46 AM
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wow you really know a lot about anything to do with cars haha.
i guess ill stick to ratel can |
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Mechknight73
National Driver
1001 Posts
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Posted - 30 Sep 2010 : 6:05:36 PM
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It's ok to do it either way, so long as you 1. have some airtight containers and 2. always clean out the spraygun when you've finished, especially if it's someone else's.
I class myself as a "bush technician;" I don't know everything, but know enough to not get myself stuck in a corner. The more you learn, the more profitable it can be, whether it's from saving money from doing it yourself, or saving others when you get stuck.
I once made $40 in one afternoon without even asking for payment. The Holden 6 cylinders otherwise known as the Red, the Blue and the Black inline sixes have one main flaw; the original gear that drives the camshaft is made of carbon fibre. At about 200,000km, this gear dies, as the teeth are shredded off it. Not terminal, but hard to fix on the side of the road. I gave a bloke a lift to his mate's house so he could rescue it, stuffed $20 in my pocket before I could say anything.
Also on the way home that afternoon, a Sunbird (4 cylinder Torana) rolled to a halt on the side of the road. The gearbox on these ones has a large metal plate over where the shifter goes. Noting that the bolts had fallen out. I improvised with bolts from the console, and he was so happy, he gave me $20 as well. |
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kona12
P Plater
25 Posts
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