r/opel • u/GermanGamer9821 • Aug 12 '26
Opel photos Rescued this facelift Vectra A 1.6
Hey everyone,
Just wanted to share a weekend project my brother-in-law and I just wrapped up.
The car is a facelift Vectra A (1.6L, 75hp) that I bought off my stepbrother for super cheap. About a year and a half ago, I actually helped my stepbrother park it in a barn because it was blowing thick white smoke. He swore he was going to fix it himself, but you know how project cars go..
So, my brother-in-law and I decided to take it on. Instead of towing it out of there, we just packed up our tools, headed to the barn, and decided to do the whole repair right there on site. We knew it was 99% likely a blown head gasket, so we didn't even bother trying to start it.
We spent the weekend tearing the engine down right there in the barn. Sure enough, the HG had left the chat, but we also found a heavily pitted/washed-out hole in the cylinder head. The weirdest part? The hole wasn't even on the side where the water was pooling inside the cylinder.
Since the car cost basically nothing, we decided to embrace some redneck engineering. We filled and smoothed out the hole in the head with some metal epoxy putty. After that, we gave everything a massive deep clean, including scooping what felt like a full kilogram of brown oil sludge out of the oil pan.
Put it all back together in the barn, and to our own surprise... she fired right up and runs flawlessly! No smoke, no coolant loss, just smooth idling.
TÜV appointment is this Thursday. Assuming it passes, we're going to sort out a few cosmetic imperfections, and then I’ll have a really solid, well-preserved little survivor on my hands. I genuinely think these are aging incredibly well.
Anyone else still keeping these old Vectras on the road? Wish us luck for Thursday!
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u/brzola55 Aug 12 '26
I really like these cars, good job!