Opel Kadett C 1.2S
When i was 18 years old i wanted a car, but not a modern car and a car which was free of tax. I spent months looking on the internet when this advertise popped up of a Green Opel Kadett. I really liked this car as it was something from the past, it was light simple and taxfree due to age. I bought the car 2 days later as my first car. we drove it home and i fixed some stuff before having it drive properly, but technically it was in oke state. the outside was also fine, but had some scratches.
- Build year: December 1979
- Model: Opel Kadett C 1.2 Sedan
- Engine: Opel 1.2S OHV
- 2 Doors, Race seats, Race steer, SR Rims, chrome styling, 8cm lowered suspension and most importantly a Tow bar
During the years we did alot of maintenance to the car. i had to weld in soooo much already to get the car road legal, but the rust just keeps coming. In 2013 i got a set of beautiful Hella Rally2000 headlights where from 2 far-beams and 2 wide-beams. These look great on the car, and i had them on for several years. In 2019 i decided to drive a few years without the headlights again. In 2017 i came to the conclusion the outside of the car was starting to rust and i wanted to prevent that, so i repainted the car which put it in a nice new layer of paint. This was never to make it look great, just to conserve it. Eventually welding in the lower part of the car was necessary alot after that repaint.
In 2012 i installed a new waterpump as the engine ran hot during driving it resulting in a nice smokecloud on the highway.
In 2018 the car required a new headgasket as it was smoking pretty bad since a few weeks.
In 2020 i was driving over the highway and i was slowly losing enginepower and after a few minutes started hearing knocking noise from the engine bay. That’s never a good sign so i pulled over and shut the engine off. I took a look, but couldn’t figure it out. I tried to drive further but the car had no power left and i had to be pulled from the highway.
It turned out that the crankshaft bearings must be the issue as everything was just shaking arround. Once home i decided i better put the reserve engine in, as i bought that in 2012 for 50 euro when i thought i killed the engine once, but it lasted for 8 more years…
Taking the old engine out and putting the spare one in took about a day of work to get everything connected properly again. After setting the timing this engine would run great and i could drive the Kadett again.
In 2022 i was having a pretty hard time with keeping the car road legal again as it didn’t just have some rust issue, but issues that had been treated by my unexperience came up again. This time i decided it would be best to open everything up and just weld as much new metal in as i could to preserve the car and these kind of issues for years again. This however took me 2 weeks.
Both the driver and passenger floor and a rear floor were completely rotten and i have replaced them with a new inlay which i welded in. the rearseat was rusted throught at both sides where it connected to the wheel housing. Below the rearbench it had no chassis left on the inside, but to reach this i had to open up some metal which was in perfect shape. However i cut this completely open to fix it properly. The wheelhouse also had rust issues so i cut this open aswell and rewelded it.
At the front is where i fixed the car for the very first time when i was 19 years old. I did a bad job back then by the way i welded metal back in place, so i grinded this all open again and welded everything back properly this time.
Later in 2022 i was driving over the highway again and i couldn’t see in the rearmirror. It was misty outside, but not that misty. When i got home i got out, and realised the engine was smoking like a smoke machine. This was the engine i put in in 2020 so i never did any work to it yet. Because it was smoking this bad and not just from the exchaust but also from the crankcase ventilation the suspision was pretty big that the piston rings would be shot. This was a logical explaination as the engine sat unused for over 10 years.
After opening the head of the engine coolant slipped into the cilinders, and it was clear that 2 cilinders just drained the coolant within seconds… These pistons rings where defenitly shot and i started to take the pistons out. While doing so i marked everything to make sure it would be assembled exactly as it seated before. I managed to get a brand new set of pistons rings and we put them in and i assembled everything again. After some tuning this engine ran like it was new without any smoke.