Got one as a birthday gift in 1987 ran good was fairly quick but the motor locked up from no oil that’s what I get for letting my mate borrow it might get another viva motor
A cobalt blue 70s Viva like this was dumped in a carpark right near my infant school in the 1990s. It was there for months, possibly years, along with a Skoda Estelle. I wanted it so much as a kid. Love the speedo, the back light design and most of all the rostyle wheels. Great to see one up and running after all this time! Last one I saw was back in about 2012 in white which had been restored. There are absolutely none to be seen anymore on the roads of Britain, along with most other common cars. In fact it's getting rarer and rarer to see pre 2000s cars here. The scrappage scheme of about 2010 killed tonnes of our everyday retro classics.
I saved my mums car from the scrap yard it was my first car and trying to keep it going on the road parts are near impossible to get I now keep getting sunroof leaks when raining a 1989 Toyota carina 2 she is hard trying to keep the rust down also
I had two in New Zealand. Bought the 2dr in 2006 for $500 plus that again for brake rebuild. Got a white minty 4dr off The Salvation Army for $850.Silly bugger i sold the latter too in 2011 let it die on the beach..i found it in a scrapyard nearby last year...it was well rotten...
Ones left in New Zealand usually have an engine from a later model car. An example would be a Holden Commodore V6, other HC survivors would be South Africa 🇿🇦, known locally as Chevrolet Firenza, another place to look would be in the Benelux nations, these would all be LHD. HC'S in New Zealand & South Africa would all be RHD. Greetings from New Zealand 🇳🇿 😀
I bought an HB Deluxe 90 that was an ex Avis rental in New Zealand. It was a bulk purchase from General Motors New Zealand. The arrange with Avis was to fit a high beam dip switch on the floor, probably from the Holden range in Australia also imported into our country ( NZ ) probably from the HR or HD range of the period. A little bit of trivia otherwise lost to the sands of time.😎👍👌😷
У меня стоит такая же с 2002 года не как не могу покрасить всё денег нет и времени хотя всего-то нужно 3000&но у нас и тяжело заработать плюс четверо детей и пока что постоит значит ещё может сыновья возмуться её делать хотя она вся в комплекте
An old guy drove into the back of my dad's beetle that i was driving one day, summer of 1980,,total write off !! I was 18,,With the insurance money my dad bought me a 1300 viva garaged for years from a lad who,s own dad had sadly passed away ,,,, I fitted a black velour interior from a then accident damaged vauxhall magnum,,and cool rostyle wheels that I painted with the precision of a surgeon ,I can not tell you how much I loved that car,,it ran perfect for years !! Oh and after my dad and I jumped up and down on the beetles rear wings to make sure it was KO,d he bought it back from the insurance company for £80 and spent 3 years restoring it to a show stopper !! Thanks for the memories, ,got a buzz when the engine started up !!
Podziwiam waszą pracę i zainteresowania. Robicie to z pasją . Te stare samochody mają dusze , nie to co teraz wszysko z plastyku . Pozdrowienia z polski i oglądam wasze zmagania i życzę sukcesów.
Hi folks! In great Britain you call it a Vauxhall viva, here we called it an Opel Kadett. Never mind, these car were sturdy, as long as maintenance was done, you could not kill it, just indestructible, one of the best products in car industry, not pretty much glamorous, but could carry you OK for dozens of years. I'm looking for one here in France. Sheers
Still can, other than the fiddly electronic parts. There's just far less need to. I was always having to sort things that broke or fell off my old 90s Polo. These days the most work I've really done on my 2010s Micra is some paint touch up, a thorough clean, some basic oil changes, rotating tyres, new lightbulbs etc, and adding the missing 12V socket. There's just nothing else it's required that I haven't preferred to leave in the hands of a professional mechanic for one reason or another (namely: new clutch, because I have no desire to cock about for two days getting the gearbox off and then back on when I don't have an engine crane, brake parts because I don't trust myself not to fuck up such a safety critical part when a pro can do it in his sleep so quickly that the labour doesn't even double the already trivial material cost, and the exhaust... again, not so much that I can't do it, just that the parts are large enough that you basically have to get them delivered to a garage, and at that point the fitting is more or less free because it's about ten minutes of time with the car up on a lift). The majority of things we see being done here are either familiar from having to keep an older car running in times past, or are sibling tasks (I've done some things they don't here, and vice versa, but they're fairly interchangeable), and I expect that if I had to, I could likely still do them on a modern car. The difference is that they're simply not needed. The parts are better designed and built, and use more hardwaring materials, and simply don't break down or need replaced with the routine frequency that they used to. Plus the electronic fiddly bits are actually a boon in that regard. The need to fiddle with a carb or even the tuning of a more rudimentary singlepoint injector to keep the engine running sweet? Gone. The ECU and the multipoint direct injection takes care of it (and the injectors don't even wear out anything like how they used to). Points, coil, distributor, vacuum advance? Gone, the electronics look after it. Flaky HT leads? Replaced by on-cylinder pencil coils. And again the often unreliable PCs, and the sensors to drive all the above, are no longer the liability they were even ten years ago. Almost all but the most necessary relays have been replaced by solid-state stuff. There's fewer bulbs to burn out as they're all LED instead. Etc. That's not to say there aren't still some weaknesses and corner cutting. The aforementioned clutch wore out rather earlier than I'd normally expect, but then the car is quite long-geared (and is a little short on low end torque) and the state of the carpet suggests its previous owner habitually drove in stiletto heels, which probably led to them riding it quite a bit, especially if they didn't like the high rev sound from holding lower gears for longer. The gearbox itself feels rather like it's made of unhoned pewter, and the synchros occasionally completely miss. The paint finish is about the worst I've ever seen (even that on the Polo hung on until the metal underneath started to rust; the Micra seems much more corrosion resistant, but the paint has simply started to flake away by itself, and seems very susceptible, of all things, to _staining,_ including if you just use a slightly dirty brush or sponge to wash it), but that's probably a sacrifice to the god of weight reduction. And some herbert in their design department thought it'd be a really good idea to make the seats 50/50 split-fold instead of 30/70, as well as giving them a fancy bi-fold design but without the ability to remove them completely with the loosening of a few bolts (as has been possible with every other car I've had) even though you really wish for that when it becomes apparent the fancy folding actually compromises space with the seats stowed, rather than improving it. Oh, and I only know about the brakes and the exhaust because they may as well be made out of cheese; I'm one and a half full systems down so far, and get through a set of pads (and often as not, discs due to warping once the pads wear through) every year. But beyond the gripes, and the slightly increased rate of replacement of certain arguably consumable parts, it's about the most solid machine I've yet owned, and if there's any inaccessible or hard to work on parts of it, they're rendered pretty much irrelevant by simply not needing to ever touch them. It's about as meaningful as considering a video card replacement for my laptop; this one is six years old and was so well-specced at purchase that its performance is still contemporary, and the part that's most likely to fail on me is the keyboard (which is ultimately what did for the previous one, at seven years old, as well as simply becoming obsolete all-round... this one has weathered slightly better on average). OK, I can't "work on" it like I did my old Windows 9x desktops, it's more of a pain to reinstall the OS every six months or upgrade/replace some part of the hardware on an at-least-annual basis... but it's irrelevant, because I _don't need to._ It just works. And when it wears out, I'll have so thoroughly got my money's worth that replacing it outright won't seem in any way extravagant - in terms of material and effort I'll have actually bought less and put less work in than keeping the older type running, Ship of Perseus style.
Had one of these as boy racer, everyone had escorts. Rostyle wheels, sports steering wheel and radio cassette. In light blue, drove it sideways everywhere...aaah rwd biggest loss imo. Rolled it and hit a proper old fashioned steam roller laying tarmac prob about 30 tons. If i had a passenger they would have been dead. The music playing after the car came to rest was “ lovely day - bill withers”. Broke my heart, 3rd party insurance and 2 yrs to go on car loan. First hard lesson in life. Drove it hard for a few years, no problems except cold starting in winter - damp. Easy start spray everytime mo prob. So miss rwd cars. Next car was a HA viva, indestructable little thing that was such fun on wet roundabouts. Never forgot the day i killed my HC as it was my pride and joy. My favourite Gm car was an opel manta berlinetta 2.0 coupe. Drifting heaven and a seriously well built car.
I'm genuinely impressed, being a British car they'd have usually dissolved into a puddle of rust, but that one is surprisingly solid, and still drives too, I'm amazed... :D
Yeah, but it's still a british car, you could keep them in a dehumidified temperature-controlled hermetically sealed underground bunker and they'd still rust away, cos we were just so great with rust proofing our cars from the factory back in the 70s... :P
Oh I know, through political bullshittery, over-powered unions, foreign buyouts & mergers, "that'll do" attitudes and whatnot, the British car industry was never going to last, sure there's sports & super cars made here, but not "cars for the people", but oh well... :)
I'm mainly a Ford man but this particular Vauxhall Viva shape holds some great memories I'm glad there are a few rare looked after examples left I have great fun watching these videos I'm 48 now and this car takes me back to when I was 6 or 7 years old
When I graduated High School, my shop teacher offered me either a '68 New Yorker project car that I had become enamored with over my High School tenure, OR a 1971 Vauxhall Viva GT. At the time, I'd gotten the New Yorker running and driving, whereas the GT still needed a lot of work. So I took the Chrysler. Years later when the internet became a thing, I learned how rare those Viva GT's really where. Even worse is they had a Canada-specific front grille/headlights as Euro-spec lights weren't allowed in Canada. The New Yorker was rare, but the Viva GT's were nearly non-existant! Would be an ultra rare car today!
I just love how you guys can just look in you'r back yard and find a car, make it start and just drive around in them :D this is why i watch Flexiny. thumbs up for you !
I just bought a Vauxhall Viva, De Luxe from 1970, back in December last year. Just a beautiful car, with a lovely personality. Im looking forward to see it drive on the roads again.
I wonder what life that car had, the babies brought home from hospital, kids brought to school in, the many conversations long forgotten and the many people that may have left us.
I spent a sunny afternoon cutting an engine out of an old scrapped viva to replace the seized engine in my HA van, I spent the following afternoon putting a seized viva engine into an HA van....the following week, my HA van was collected for scrap with not one but two seized engines.... happy days.
Vaxhall sitting there for 20 years long time needs everything replace battery hope you get to engine running soon radiator put on freeze this guy knows about auto mechanic in the field awesome video friend bless you around the world Orlando Florida untied states different European vehicles
Grew up with Vivas having come from Luton they were two a penny and very easy to repair and work on. I wish my X5 was so easy to diagnose problems......!
I had one of these approx 31 years ago,similar colour red on black2 door I sprayed the engine bay black,£160 I paid for it,sold it for £90 a few weeks later the clutch had siezed and I was on £35 a week.
I had a 6 year old 71 4 door 1100 as my first car. No power but I was impressed by how large the boot was. Replaced one clutch before moving on to bigger things.
I learnt my spannering on the 1159cc Viva HB and 1256cc Viva E (baby firenza engines) - great car to work on :) Sadly now the engine bay is all electronic etc :(
Having owned a 1968 Vauxhall Viva HB 90 I'm going to assume from the minor rust that this is actually a video on how to care for new car provided by the dealer. All kidding aside I loved my little Viva till it desolved like a soluble Aspirin
What I don't see today with the 1159/1256cc engine is the bleeding of water into the upper heater matrix. This is the heater hose clamp above the distributor. You simply unclamp it with that same funnel & charge the system. Incidentally, it was mentioned in the car instruction manual when new at time of delivery. Failure to do so toasts the heater element with no water in the system.😎👍👌😷
This guy is awesome change the tires replace them tight as mechanic know what you doing if not ask somebody about vehicles sitting there 20 years or more love this video
Kids learning to drive today dont know how lucky they are,my first car was a mk2 escort and my friend had a viva.This nostalgia over these old bangers makes me laugh,what i remember of the cars from that era was that they were gutless tin cans,had zero safety features,needed constant maintenance and were full of rust.Modern cars are 100 times better in every possible way
Car ownership and restoration as always fascinated me. When the average car ends up on the scrap heap after about 20-25 years, yet there are some eccentric petrol heads bent on doing them up again....
I like that. I am putting back on the road a 1977 Audi 100 that has been in storage for 30 years most in Scotland have rotted away. Pre galvanised model.
My first car was a 1971 viva saloon in blue, 4 Dr with a 1256 engine, may happy hours spent listening to 8 track player whilst driving along!, I,d love to get another one now.
It has the rare Vauxhall rear sunvisor and Venetian headliner option 11:37 and easy access to the steering column wiring 13:29. Surprised to see the headlight with missing cover works 13:32
I haven't seen a four stud wheel in years, that hole in that wheelhouse would be for rear seatbelt mounting point. Love your trusty car, I had several of them, so familiar. 👍👌🍺🍻🥃💚
I had a 2.3 liter 1972 2 door sports coupe. A little prettier than the 2 door sedan. I cost me 49.50 a month through GMAC. A $2,700 dollar car back then. My first new car. It had a zenith stromberg CV carburetor. A Ponitiac Firenza SL if memory serves me correctly. Electrics were by Lucas affectionately known at the time as "Lucas the Prince of Darkness." Anyone owning a British car can identify with that! LOL!!!
This car is popular in Malaysia in end 1960's and early 1970's when I'm in primary school , hehehe , then the Vauxhall Holden came in from Australia ...! regards from Kuala Lumpur.
Beautiful looking cars (with a hint of a dolphin, in my view), but mine was really not very good. And neither was my Bedford HA Van. Neverowned, nor particularly wanted, a Vauxhall since. Except maybe a Royale Coupé or a Calibra.
12:02 this part makes me emotional. It looks like the car is happy to back to the life. So beautiful.
Nosso Mundo me to my dad had a 1973 viva it hardly wanted to start on damp mornings needed new ht leads etc happy days
This is why I subscribed for, to watch as old rusty cars come back to life after many years.
Passed my test in a Viva, 7 December 1972, my 19th birthday, best present ever!
Had the sl90. Put a short block v8 in it.i was also 19 in 73. January, Stock car racing at belle vue.
Got one as a birthday gift in 1987 ran good was fairly quick but the motor locked up from no oil that’s what I get for letting my mate borrow it might get another viva motor
A cobalt blue 70s Viva like this was dumped in a carpark right near my infant school in the 1990s. It was there for months, possibly years, along with a Skoda Estelle. I wanted it so much as a kid. Love the speedo, the back light design and most of all the rostyle wheels. Great to see one up and running after all this time! Last one I saw was back in about 2012 in white which had been restored. There are absolutely none to be seen anymore on the roads of Britain, along with most other common cars. In fact it's getting rarer and rarer to see pre 2000s cars here. The scrappage scheme of about 2010 killed tonnes of our everyday retro classics.
I saved my mums car from the scrap yard it was my first car and trying to keep it going on the road parts are near impossible to get I now keep getting sunroof leaks when raining a 1989 Toyota carina 2 she is hard trying to keep the rust down also
I had two in New Zealand. Bought the 2dr in 2006 for $500 plus that again for brake rebuild. Got a white minty 4dr off The Salvation Army for $850.Silly bugger i sold the latter too in 2011 let it die on the beach..i found it in a scrapyard nearby last year...it was well rotten...
08:54 48.00 KB free of 19.70 TB
Ones left in New Zealand usually have an engine from a later model car.
An example would be a Holden Commodore V6, other HC survivors would be South Africa 🇿🇦, known locally as Chevrolet Firenza, another place to look would be in the Benelux nations, these would all be LHD.
HC'S in New Zealand & South Africa would all be RHD.
Greetings from New Zealand 🇳🇿 😀
My dad was a mechanic for Hertz Rent A Car back in the 60s & 70s. These videos just brought him back man.. Thank you for doing this
I bought an HB Deluxe 90 that was an ex Avis rental in New Zealand. It was a bulk purchase from General Motors New Zealand. The arrange with Avis was to fit a high beam dip switch on the floor, probably from the Holden range in Australia also imported into our country ( NZ ) probably from the HR or HD range of the period. A little bit of trivia otherwise lost to the sands of time.😎👍👌😷
After years without love, now is a great time to put the work in.
Values are on the way up.
У меня стоит такая же с 2002 года не как не могу покрасить всё денег нет и времени хотя всего-то нужно 3000&но у нас и тяжело заработать плюс четверо детей и пока что постоит значит ещё может сыновья возмуться её делать хотя она вся в комплекте
An old guy drove into the back of my dad's beetle that i was driving one day, summer of 1980,,total write off !! I was 18,,With the insurance money my dad bought me a 1300 viva garaged for years from a lad who,s own dad had sadly passed away ,,,, I fitted a black velour interior from a then accident damaged vauxhall magnum,,and cool rostyle wheels that I painted with the precision of a surgeon ,I can not tell you how much I loved that car,,it ran perfect for years !! Oh and after my dad and I jumped up and down on the beetles rear wings to make sure it was KO,d he bought it back from the insurance company for £80 and spent 3 years restoring it to a show stopper !! Thanks for the memories, ,got a buzz when the engine started up !!
Got to love the speedo trying to tell you what grade of oil to use. 10-40 10-40, 20-50, 20-50
This video was curiously satisfying to watch.
As a child I spent many hours travelling in the Viva and it's great to see this one running again, thanks
Podziwiam waszą pracę i zainteresowania. Robicie to z pasją . Te stare samochody mają dusze , nie to co teraz wszysko z plastyku . Pozdrowienia z polski i oglądam wasze zmagania i życzę sukcesów.
Wonderful. My Grandpa had one just like this, a red 2 door. The car almost looks happy to be bouncing around again!
My first car was a viva hc it went forever, ended up giving it to a mate . Thanks for this memory!
Hi folks!
In great Britain you call it a Vauxhall viva, here we called it an Opel Kadett.
Never mind, these car were sturdy, as long as maintenance was done, you could not kill it, just indestructible, one of the best products in car industry, not pretty much glamorous, but could carry you OK for dozens of years.
I'm looking for one here in France.
Sheers
I always loved the Viva. I think the external styling works even today.
Back in the day when you could fix your own car .
Still can, other than the fiddly electronic parts. There's just far less need to. I was always having to sort things that broke or fell off my old 90s Polo. These days the most work I've really done on my 2010s Micra is some paint touch up, a thorough clean, some basic oil changes, rotating tyres, new lightbulbs etc, and adding the missing 12V socket. There's just nothing else it's required that I haven't preferred to leave in the hands of a professional mechanic for one reason or another (namely: new clutch, because I have no desire to cock about for two days getting the gearbox off and then back on when I don't have an engine crane, brake parts because I don't trust myself not to fuck up such a safety critical part when a pro can do it in his sleep so quickly that the labour doesn't even double the already trivial material cost, and the exhaust... again, not so much that I can't do it, just that the parts are large enough that you basically have to get them delivered to a garage, and at that point the fitting is more or less free because it's about ten minutes of time with the car up on a lift).
The majority of things we see being done here are either familiar from having to keep an older car running in times past, or are sibling tasks (I've done some things they don't here, and vice versa, but they're fairly interchangeable), and I expect that if I had to, I could likely still do them on a modern car. The difference is that they're simply not needed. The parts are better designed and built, and use more hardwaring materials, and simply don't break down or need replaced with the routine frequency that they used to.
Plus the electronic fiddly bits are actually a boon in that regard. The need to fiddle with a carb or even the tuning of a more rudimentary singlepoint injector to keep the engine running sweet? Gone. The ECU and the multipoint direct injection takes care of it (and the injectors don't even wear out anything like how they used to). Points, coil, distributor, vacuum advance? Gone, the electronics look after it. Flaky HT leads? Replaced by on-cylinder pencil coils. And again the often unreliable PCs, and the sensors to drive all the above, are no longer the liability they were even ten years ago. Almost all but the most necessary relays have been replaced by solid-state stuff. There's fewer bulbs to burn out as they're all LED instead. Etc.
That's not to say there aren't still some weaknesses and corner cutting. The aforementioned clutch wore out rather earlier than I'd normally expect, but then the car is quite long-geared (and is a little short on low end torque) and the state of the carpet suggests its previous owner habitually drove in stiletto heels, which probably led to them riding it quite a bit, especially if they didn't like the high rev sound from holding lower gears for longer. The gearbox itself feels rather like it's made of unhoned pewter, and the synchros occasionally completely miss. The paint finish is about the worst I've ever seen (even that on the Polo hung on until the metal underneath started to rust; the Micra seems much more corrosion resistant, but the paint has simply started to flake away by itself, and seems very susceptible, of all things, to _staining,_ including if you just use a slightly dirty brush or sponge to wash it), but that's probably a sacrifice to the god of weight reduction. And some herbert in their design department thought it'd be a really good idea to make the seats 50/50 split-fold instead of 30/70, as well as giving them a fancy bi-fold design but without the ability to remove them completely with the loosening of a few bolts (as has been possible with every other car I've had) even though you really wish for that when it becomes apparent the fancy folding actually compromises space with the seats stowed, rather than improving it. Oh, and I only know about the brakes and the exhaust because they may as well be made out of cheese; I'm one and a half full systems down so far, and get through a set of pads (and often as not, discs due to warping once the pads wear through) every year.
But beyond the gripes, and the slightly increased rate of replacement of certain arguably consumable parts, it's about the most solid machine I've yet owned, and if there's any inaccessible or hard to work on parts of it, they're rendered pretty much irrelevant by simply not needing to ever touch them.
It's about as meaningful as considering a video card replacement for my laptop; this one is six years old and was so well-specced at purchase that its performance is still contemporary, and the part that's most likely to fail on me is the keyboard (which is ultimately what did for the previous one, at seven years old, as well as simply becoming obsolete all-round... this one has weathered slightly better on average). OK, I can't "work on" it like I did my old Windows 9x desktops, it's more of a pain to reinstall the OS every six months or upgrade/replace some part of the hardware on an at-least-annual basis... but it's irrelevant, because I _don't need to._ It just works. And when it wears out, I'll have so thoroughly got my money's worth that replacing it outright won't seem in any way extravagant - in terms of material and effort I'll have actually bought less and put less work in than keeping the older type running, Ship of Perseus style.
I still fix my 1962 landy 😁
For sure Nic Nak
These days that cars with a lot of bullshit are better but worse
@@markpenrice6253 these electroncis are good but rubbish
Back in the day where your car needed fixing...
Had one of these as boy racer, everyone had escorts. Rostyle wheels, sports steering wheel and radio cassette. In light blue, drove it sideways everywhere...aaah rwd biggest loss imo. Rolled it and hit a proper old fashioned steam roller laying tarmac prob about 30 tons. If i had a passenger they would have been dead. The music playing after the car came to rest was “ lovely day - bill withers”. Broke my heart, 3rd party insurance and 2 yrs to go on car loan. First hard lesson in life. Drove it hard for a few years, no problems except cold starting in winter - damp. Easy start spray everytime mo prob. So miss rwd cars. Next car was a HA viva, indestructable little thing that was such fun on wet roundabouts.
Never forgot the day i killed my HC as it was my pride and joy. My favourite Gm car was an opel manta berlinetta 2.0 coupe. Drifting heaven and a seriously well built car.
That is one tough little car. Thanks for uploading.
I'm genuinely impressed, being a British car they'd have usually dissolved into a puddle of rust, but that one is surprisingly solid, and still drives too, I'm amazed... :D
A barn does wonders for a car, you know..
Yeah, but it's still a british car, you could keep them in a dehumidified temperature-controlled hermetically sealed underground bunker and they'd still rust away, cos we were just so great with rust proofing our cars from the factory back in the 70s... :P
Don't knock the poor old British car. We don't make any home grown, home design cars now.
Oh I know, through political bullshittery, over-powered unions, foreign buyouts & mergers, "that'll do" attitudes and whatnot, the British car industry was never going to last, sure there's sports & super cars made here, but not "cars for the people", but oh well... :)
@Spinler Muckflitt The EU? China destroyed production in the West, not the EU
One of the best cars ever put together, with some cutting edge technology, great work guys👍👍👍
Simon Aldred oh yeah! That coil that doubles as an ozone generator. Some cutting edge technology right there lol
I'm mainly a Ford man but this particular Vauxhall Viva shape holds some great memories I'm glad there are a few rare looked after examples left I have great fun watching these videos I'm 48 now and this car takes me back to when I was 6 or 7 years old
Who else was waiting for the jack to go through the floor?
I was
Me.
Me
Yea me, it actually happened to me once
@steady eddie don't keep us in suspension
I really love the ease of maintenance for these old cars which makes me want to restore a ‘74 Ford Capri.
When I graduated High School, my shop teacher offered me either a '68 New Yorker project car that I had become enamored with over my High School tenure, OR a 1971 Vauxhall Viva GT. At the time, I'd gotten the New Yorker running and driving, whereas the GT still needed a lot of work. So I took the Chrysler.
Years later when the internet became a thing, I learned how rare those Viva GT's really where. Even worse is they had a Canada-specific front grille/headlights as Euro-spec lights weren't allowed in Canada. The New Yorker was rare, but the Viva GT's were nearly non-existant! Would be an ultra rare car today!
@bofursgun Awww, somebody's mommy didn't love him enough!
Arh! So many wonderful memories! Thank-you for sharing some simpler times. 😀
After 20 years it drives es well it's a wonder the cluch hasn't seized just brilliant
And no smoke amazing 👍
Catalisator
I just love how you guys can just look in you'r back yard and find a car, make it start and just drive around in them :D this is why i watch Flexiny. thumbs up for you !
I grew up seeing every other car was a Vauxhall Viva. They looked so good.
Rot box junk crusher fodder
I always loved the Viva; I thought they looked very stylish indeed.
They were, Vauxhall made some pretty stylish cars in the 60s and 70s.
@@beaufighter245 This was definitely one of them!!
I just bought a Vauxhall Viva, De Luxe from 1970, back in December last year.
Just a beautiful car, with a lovely personality.
Im looking forward to see it drive on the roads again.
Jestem pod wrażeniem... Brawo! ☺
I loved the shape of the fastback Viva E and Firenza
First car I ever drove. Ten feet forward and back.
I wonder what life that car had, the babies brought home from hospital, kids brought to school in, the many conversations long forgotten and the many people that may have left us.
I'm amazed at the knowledge this guy has...
This was just the norm at the time. Back to repairing things instead of just replacing them
Actually, this is just basic knowledge most people knew at the time. As ti e and things have progressed the basic skills ha e been forgotten
I spent a sunny afternoon cutting an engine out of an old scrapped viva to replace the seized engine in my HA van, I spent the following afternoon putting a seized viva engine into an HA van....the following week, my HA van was collected for scrap with not one but two seized engines.... happy days.
Back in the day we used say the Viva would bring you anywhere but never bring you home.
I used to love these, so damn easy to fix, has an 1800 in which i slapped the 2300 in, was rather lively to say the least!
The beauty of simplicity.
One of my friends had a magnum. I think it was 2300. It was way nicer than my viva. Good old days.
Amazing! Used to go about in one of these cars. Really well made back then.
Be good if you restored the whole car.
Even though it is a bit battered. It is still beautiful. I'm really hoping to get my Viva back on the road.
Lordy, brings back memories of catching a Viva Cab from Corby to RAF Alconbury in 1967.
I love how jalopy this car is, especially how the distributor coil is arcing like a taser @ 9:32
Hahaha😂
Vaxhall sitting there for 20 years long time needs everything replace battery hope you get to engine running soon radiator put on freeze this guy knows about auto mechanic in the field awesome video friend bless you around the world Orlando Florida untied states different European vehicles
My first car in 1985 was a Red 1973 HC Viva with Rostyle wheels. I'm sure it had more rust on it though! LOL
Her we called it the Opel Kaptein, but love those! I wish i had one now.
Grew up with Vivas having come from Luton they were two a penny and very easy to repair and work on. I wish my X5 was so easy to diagnose problems......!
How very 70s....love it please restore this gem
Why so many dislikes on this guys videos? He's a fucking hero to bring these old babies back to life!
I had one of those over 30 years ago for a while. Light blue. Lovely to drive.
Most praiseworthy your faith about starting the motor seems to have paid off
my das used to have a viva in yellow , so nice to see it again here, well done :)
I had one of these approx 31 years ago,similar colour red on black2 door I sprayed the engine bay black,£160 I paid for it,sold it for £90 a few weeks later the clutch had siezed and I was on £35 a week.
I had a 6 year old 71 4 door 1100 as my first car. No power but I was impressed by how large the boot was. Replaced one clutch before moving on to bigger things.
Back in the day I always thought the Viva was a great looking car, in fact I still do!!
Congratulations,you are a monster !!! And this was a great,beautiful car !!
I bought a gold viva hc 1256 for £40 when i was 16 and learnt to drive in it. I used to love the speedo and curved gearstick!
I had one in London in the 90s great little saloons, also a HA van 😜
Anyone else spot the arcing at the coil @9:40
You can actually hear it.
I thought that was fancy blue lights and counted as pimped.
The hood beak makes it look like a Pontiac.
Had one back in the late 70's it was gray and my friend had the magnum, I like it...!
I learnt my spannering on the 1159cc Viva HB and 1256cc Viva E (baby firenza engines) - great car to work on :)
Sadly now the engine bay is all electronic etc :(
I remember my mum had one of these, the gearstick used to come off in your hand !!!
One of those cars that I have never liked then.....now I would gladly buy one!!!!
Good job! Are you actually thinking of a restoration?
Having owned a 1968 Vauxhall Viva HB 90 I'm going to assume from the minor rust that this is actually a video on how to care for new car provided by the dealer. All kidding aside I loved my little Viva till it desolved like a soluble Aspirin
What I don't see today with the 1159/1256cc engine is the bleeding of water into the upper heater matrix. This is the heater hose clamp above the distributor. You simply unclamp it with that same funnel & charge the system.
Incidentally, it was mentioned in the car instruction manual when new at time of delivery. Failure to do so toasts the heater element with no water in the system.😎👍👌😷
This guy is awesome change the tires replace them tight as mechanic know what you doing if not ask somebody about vehicles sitting there 20 years or more love this video
Kids learning to drive today dont know how lucky they are,my first car was a mk2 escort and my friend had a viva.This nostalgia over these old bangers makes me laugh,what i remember of the cars from that era was that they were gutless tin cans,had zero safety features,needed constant maintenance and were full of rust.Modern cars are 100 times better in every possible way
Car ownership and restoration as always fascinated me. When the average car ends up on the scrap heap after about 20-25 years, yet there are some eccentric petrol heads bent on doing them up again....
I like that. I am putting back on the road a 1977 Audi 100 that has been in storage for 30 years most in Scotland have rotted away. Pre galvanised model.
Yes they were simple to maintain and fix. Good job though, because you had to on a regular basis. ...yes I had one in the early 80s.
My first car was a 1971 viva saloon in blue, 4 Dr with a 1256 engine, may happy hours spent listening to 8 track player whilst driving along!, I,d love to get another one now.
我喜歡這輛舊車，希望它能長壽。許多問候和對舊車的持續成功救援。
wow..i had one of these..and a envoy epic..cool little cars...
Still a beautiful motor...
It has the rare Vauxhall rear sunvisor and Venetian headliner option 11:37 and easy access to the steering column wiring 13:29. Surprised to see the headlight with missing cover works 13:32
Back in the days when cars were simple to maintain and run
beautiful little car, would see it restored...
Had a red one of these In 1990 bought second hand 12 years old with just 35000 miles on the clock. Was wife's first car. She hated it. I loved it
Listen I am old enough to remember these cars.. The Vauxhall Viva was a piece of shit then, and still is now.
Beautiful. It runs. Now for full restoration.
I like the spark on the top of the coil when it starts up
I used to have one of those. I don't remember too much about it, other than having
problems with the prop shaft going out of balance.
My Father had one when we where kids. All I remember was it braking down every month LOL
Sounded to me like the points had closed a little . Great to see it run. Try that after 20 years with a mokka
Opel Mokka first start after 1 month
I remember having a 1972 viva the gearstick kept coming out of the gearbox when trying to select reverse.
I haven't seen a four stud wheel in years, that hole in that wheelhouse would be for rear seatbelt mounting point.
Love your trusty car, I had several of them, so familiar.
👍👌🍺🍻🥃💚
Never seen one before looks cool front grills look like Pontiac 64 Tempest
Such a beauty
This reminds me of a macc lads video from the 80s
I had a 2.3 liter 1972 2 door sports coupe. A little prettier than the 2 door sedan. I cost me 49.50 a month through GMAC. A $2,700 dollar car back then. My first new car. It had a zenith stromberg CV carburetor. A Ponitiac Firenza SL if memory serves me correctly. Electrics were by Lucas affectionately known at the time as "Lucas the Prince of Darkness." Anyone owning a British car can identify with that! LOL!!!
Mud is clearly a great rust prevention method.
This car is popular in Malaysia in end 1960's and early 1970's when I'm in primary school , hehehe , then the Vauxhall Holden came in from Australia ...! regards from Kuala Lumpur.
Excellent car...i love from Argentine
Beautiful looking cars (with a hint of a dolphin, in my view), but mine was really not very good. And neither was my Bedford HA Van. Neverowned, nor particularly wanted, a Vauxhall since. Except maybe a Royale Coupé or a Calibra.
Get it back on the road
Good cars them Vauxhall’s love the viva
She sounded like a Supermarine Spitfire , in her resuscitated state .
the rear rims are opel steel sport rims from 1960-1980 from opel Ascona opel Manta and opel gt
The rostyle wheels were used on a lot of gm cars of that era, 70-80
@@joolsfreeman4359 Not just GM, MY MGB GT had them and I remember older Rovers, I'm sure some Fords as well. Not a GM part.
@@clanmac66 yes the hillman avengers and many vehicles used that design, Ford and gm use different stud patterns tho.
Was the bodywork restored after this video? Would be great to have seen it fully restored. I would love a Viva.
Holden in Australia made some changes...
LJ Torana GTR XU-1 Specs:
On sale: 1970-72
Engine: Inline 6 cylinder, 3310cc 16, OHV, 12 valve
Power: 140kW @ 5600rpm
Torque: 271Nm @ 4000rpm
0-97 time: 8.4 seconds (claimed)
Weight: 1098kg
Price new: $3455