1988 Vauxhall Astra GTE Restoration Part 1

I think the word "enough" is used far too much. I hear it all the time in phrases like "Dave, you have had enough cake / sweets / wine beer etc" and once or twice in phrases like "that's enough cars / motorcycles". Any body that knows car and bike nuts will know that enough cars / motorcycles is approximately how ever many you have at the moment plus one.

I, myself, had been stupid enough to use the word enough just the other day while talking to my Malcolm about his ever growing car collection. He has been showing all the classic signs recently of a man to whom the word enough is more of a challenge than anything else. Internet searches have been happening, cars have been viewed - just out of interest, obviously. Then, along came a seemingly harmless message on Whatsapp from Russell, he had spotted a rather interesting looking Astra GTE of 1988 vintage  in need of a great deal of restoration and rebuilding, it was only 50 miles away, he said. Oh look, it's got most of the bits with it, he said and it's at a sensible price, he said. I knew things were getting serious, not when Malc said he wanted to go look at it but when he wanted to take the transporter to go look at it.

First, though, we needed to ask a few questions to make sure our time wasn't being wasted. the car was advertised on Facebook Marketplace, there were a few photos but we just wanted to make sure it was all above board and genuine so I had quite a long conversation with the owner - a chap called John. Everything seemed good, we knew some parts were missing - the roof liner and windscreen being two fairly major bits but the car had been the subject of some restoration already and it looked pretty good and straight, it had the all important v5 with it.

A price of £1800 was agreed, cash was transferred and the car was loaded on to the back of the tired old transit transporter, there were plenty of guys to help and everything went really smoothly. The journey home was uneventful, it was a beautiful sunny day and driving through the Lincolnshire Wolds is always a pleasure rather than a chore, chatting with Malc is always interesting, I am putting it down as a good day. The car looks fine, it will take a year or more to get done, it will cost a fair old bit too - we will need to find a set of original wheels but the ones on there will help offset the cost of that. Decent ones of these are fetching upwards of 8-10 grand now and I don't expect prices to fall any time soon so I think it's a solid investment as long as we conveniently forget the cost of man hours. If we factor that in it's considerably less attractive.

It was a pleasure meeting John and the rest of the guys at Orwell Street Motors in Grimsby, proper enthusiasts that seemed genuinely delighted that somebody was going to put their classic back together again. They have too many projects on the go and I got the feeling there was a bit of creative difference as to what they wanted to do with the car,hence the stalling of the project.

We couldn't safely get all the bits in the car and didn't want to get pulled for having an unsafe load so we did the sensible thing - we took what we could and will get our preferred courier - Alliance Transport - in Freiston to collect the rest. We always use them, they are very helpful, friendly and super quick, they also have an on line portal which makes booking stuff and keeping an eye on progress nice and easy. This time it will be 2 doors, a bonnet, both bumpers and a few other bits they will need to collect, there is no hurry, we have plenty of other jobs to do first and both lifts are full of 6r4 and Talbot Sunbeam. As soon as one of those is off, the MK1 RS2000 needs to go on so we can work out why it won't start, the carbs need balancing too. Oh well, I expect it will take a lot les time to do all that than it will to get the Astra back in to rude health.