1981 Holden Commodore Wagon

Thought i'd throw this thread up, read through the sight & love the wagon's getting built up.
The way i'm building mine some will love whilst others will hate because of engine choice but that's never fazed me - dare to be different so they say. The Wagons over half way through it's rebuild but i'll chuck up some pics with a bit of a run down from the start to where she is at pres......
This is made by General Motors Also....
I'm the 3rd owner of it, body wise she was tidy but the original owner had converted it from a 4 cylinder to a 6 & made a mess of it. Engine was 3 inches to far forward so she drove like a pig, so i soon sorted that. Ripped everything out & replaced it with factory 6 cylinder gear, shortened the driveshaft & tidied everything up. Engine had a burnt out valve so i put a better engine in, 173 cu 6 similar to your old chevy six's. She had a Toyota 5 speed box behind it, after a lot of hassles i finally got her on the road. Heres some pics of her at that stage........

 

Sweet little wagon Dave! Unusual and cool!

 

So that was her for a while but with valve seat recession again because of the unleaded petrol over here i had to track down another head. Two heads later i finally got a good one & had her running sweet but buy that stage i was over it & starting thinking engine conversion time. The 173's were a good engine but were pretty gutless & she drank fuel pretty well to & once they removed lead in the petrol that was the end of them as far as i'm concerned....
What the Holden motor company did when lead was fazed out was do a deal with Nissan & fitted 3 litre Nissan 6's for one model run - The Vl from 86-89. The Vl still shared the same basic body shell but there's a heap of differences, so i thought why not. Tracked down a sweet running Vl wagon & have proceeded to put everything out of the later model into my early girl. Fitting the engine was the easy part as the front ends swap straight over, only thing i had to make was a gear box cross member. Apart from that from engine to diff bolted straight in, i'll chuck up a couple of shots of the gold Vl i used for the conversion......

 

Cheers.....Lot of work going into this one, i'll sort the thread up till where shes at at pres

 

The basic conversion was pretty easy just time consuming, i had to swap the cross member at front that the radiator sits on. Easy as just drill out the spot welds swap it over & weld it up, other thing was the dash frame had to be taken out & the later one welded in. That was the easy part of that, the hard part was sorting the dash top as the later model windscreens were glued in whilst the early ones were held in by rubber. What that meant was the later model dash top was hard up against the windscreen were as the early dash had a gap for the rubber, after some head scratching i decided to see if i could trim the dash top back which worked well - i'll chuck up some pic's of all this.......

 

Holy crap Dave! Didn't realize the work you were putting in here...WOW!

 

Here's a pic of the Transmission cross member i made up, 1'st one i'd made but came up well. I spot welded it together then had an engineer do the final welds....

 

Lol yeah there's been a years work on this already so shes time consuming......

 

Next fun mission was the engine bay, battery is on the left where with the new engine it needs to sit on the right as the airbox sits on the left now. I also wanted to smooth out the factory spot welds & wrinkles etc, i've done the firewall & left side so far. I had to mount the bracket for the new fuse box behind the left strut & drill 2 large holes to run the new wiring loom through also plus a 3rd on the right hand side, going from carburated to injected so the new wiring looms massive compared with the old. I've got the engine in there at pres so i can sort what ever needs done now, will pull it back out to paint the bay once all's sorted. The battery tray on the parts Vl was rusted as well so had to come up with a plan for that, i ended up using a Mitsubishi battery tray & was able to salvage the bracket the power steering resivoir attaches to off the Vl. Welded that up & problem solved..... well more pic's

 

So that's her up to the engine conversion, with the front of her i've changed that to. The next model wagon up had what i believe to be the best looking front of all of them ( My personal opinion ) so i've fitted that up. That was pretty easy, there's some metal to trim back for the new headlights & indicators to fit but other that that she's a bolt up job. Finding some decent panels was the hard part but found some in the end, so 2 later model front guards & a bonnet has her looking good. I'm going to buy new headlights for the front later, just used the old ones to make up conversion looms for them. I'll chuck up some more pics:2_thumbs_up_-_anima

 

At present i'm doing the body work, 2 front doors had rust so replaced them but needed to anyway's. The new wiring has central locking so was easier to fit up the later model doors , on these there was a rust trap from the factory to. The chassis rail runs along the side of the transmission tunnel & on the left hand side they get water in there & take the floor out which this one had done. I've replaced the floor so far just have the outer sill to finish, apart from that she's rust free so a good bonus there. Once i finish that i can put the interior back in - here's a few more pics.....

Just this last piece to finish but wont be hard....

 

So that brings me pretty close to up to date with where things are at, i've lowered the suspension lately & been prepping panels for paint. Bought a 2nd hand set off dished alloys for her, couldnt use the originals that were on it as the 4 cylinder models had a different stud pattern & the brakes were scarey to put it mildly. The 6 cylinder brakes are way better but still not the best, i'll be fitting disks to the rear at a later stage to sort that. Well i'll chuck up some current shots.....

 

So that's pretty much her at pres, just chucked a couple of coats on the inside of the drivers door yesterday. I had a play on photoshop with an old pic for the colour scheme i'm going with.....

Thats how she'll look in the end but with limo tints, not sure how much more i'm going to get done for a while. I'm in Christchurch New Zealand where all the earthquakes have been, where in 1 of the worst hit suburbs so the house is due for the rebuild to start in about 4 or so weeks. Garage has to be done to as it's sunk 150 front to back, bought a portable carport to put her under whilst that's getting done. Have to empty house & garage into a container so will get what i can done in the next few weeks till it hit's the fan here then wait till spring to finish her

 

Quite a lot of progress Dave, she is coming along very nicely indeed! Like the current wheel choice too.

 

Cheers & yeah the dished alloys look the goods, i'll be polishing the outer & painting the centers black so should tie in well....