Well in the end my Father and I swapped cars; he took custodianship of the Diplomat while I was left with the CD enabling me to sort out it's MOT problems and one or two other jobs as well.
I decided t take it to the same place that did my V6's exhaust,
Classic Custom Exhausts in Hastings. They confirmed for me that the catalytic converter was indeed a bit naff and probably the wrong size and that the rear box had turned into something resembling a colander playing havoc with the emissions.
I decided not to try and track down genuine parts as the garage said they could get me pattern parts that were at least as good quality as the originals and get them fitted the next morning. So I did exactly that.
I turned up the next day at 9am and by 10:30 it was all ready for her MOT retest.
Here's the new back box. Looks allot more substantial than the regular pattern rubbish, hopefully it will last a bit longer that the last one did:
And the new Catalytic converter, also a good quality part by TPcats:
After that it was time for a spirited drive up to Maidstone for the MOT re-test.
It certainly sounds much better now and seems to be more lively in the mid to high RPM range.
After putting it thought it's paces it passed emissions no problem and thankfully I left Maidstone with a clean MOT sheet.
Mission accomplished.
My Father uses this car for work and I'm normally working on weekends when he's not, meaning like ships passing in the night, I rarely get to drive it or have the opportunity to work on it. So I had a few jobs lined up that I've been meaning to do for ages.
For the last few years the car has been fitted with some awful cheepo aftermarket wing mirrors which rattled when the engine was idling and when you closed the doors. I changed these over for some genuine ones from my spares.
I didn't take any photos of this though.
Next thing was to get these on:
These are rare as hens teeth these days and in my opinion far better than the plastic ones that replaced them.
I felt a bit guilty fitting them but finally came to the conclusion that they are only going to gather dust and that keeping the sills free from rust is more important than keeping the mud flaps in their original packaging.
Front ones fitted no problem:
Technically the rear ones are the screw in type for an Astra but when we bought the car these are the type that were fitted (Well one was anyway) so it had the screw holes drilled into the bumper already:
The first and second mounting points line up just fine but the third overshoots the bumper.
The way they were originally fitted was simply to put a screw right through the middle of the mud flap and into the bumper.
Obviously I didn't want to do this so I got some of these cheepo clips from eBay to act as a third mounting point and make them much more secure:
Initially the bolts were far too long:
But 30 seconds with a hacksaw later...
... they fitted like a glove:
Before:
After:
They look a bit far down to me in these photos, especially the front ones. They are installed according to the recommended heights but I may adjust them later.
I do have a set of proper Cavalier rear mud flaps and another set of front ones. These I'm keeping these back though in case the LS ever needs them:
Next job was to give the ignition system a bit of a refresh.
I noticed the distributer was completely knackered. It didn't seem to have any effect on the way the car drove but the inside of the connectors were all corroded and removing the HT leads revealed copious amounts of green copper oxide powder.
So I fitted a new distributer, rotor arm, Bosch HT leads and a new set of GM spark plugs for good measure.
It was cold, dark and raining so I only got these photos from when I fitted the HT leads:
It's been fun driving her. It's surprising how different it feels compared to the Diplomat considering that, apart from a few less toys and being a hatchback, they are essentially the same spec with the same engine, gearbox etc.
Here's a few scenic photos to end on:
