Last Saturday, I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a new car. It’s another Vauxhall Astra, but this time, it’s an SRi XP with the 1.9 CDTi 150 engine. Nice & economical with shed loads of power!

This is how it looked when I bought it:

On Tuesday, the modding started. I couldn’t help myself! I popped into the local Vauxhall dealer and bought myself a set of velour mats & some washer jets from the new Insigna and Astra J. When I got home, I set about fitting them. I also found a 6-SMD festoon bulb that was left over from my last Astra, so used that for the interior light.

New bulb:

New mats:

I then gave it a clean… This is how it was before:

Rinsed the car then attacked the wheels with some TurtleWax ICE Alloy Wheel cleaner:

After that, I then shampoo’d the bodywork with Zymöl Natural Shampoo:

I then clayed the bodywork using a Meguiars Smooth Surface kit. This was just from the bonnet!

Dressed the tyres using Autoglym Instant Tyre Dressing:

Polished the bodywork with Autoglym Super Resin Polish and then polished the glass with Autoglym Car Glass Polish:

Waxed & finished with Meguiars Cleaners Wax:

Thursday night, I went at it again. When checking the tyre pressures, I accidentally broke two of the valve caps, so while in Halfords, I came across some nice shiny chrome anti-theft ones with the Vauxhall logo on. They’ll probably get nicked as anti-theft ones aren’t that anti-theft anyway, but thought they look good:

Debadged a bit of the rear. I was a bit undecided on what to debadge… the griffin definitely had to go but wasn’t sure about the rest… So here it is before:

The griffin came off…

Then followed by the VAUXHALL badge:

Final result:

Next I wanted to spruce up the engine bay a little bit. I don’t actually have any pictures of the before unfortunately, but my plans are to paint the engine cover gloss black with the centre section in moonland, then add some decals to it. Probably “VAUXHALL” and then the Astra Owners Network web address… Then the airbox and fusebox will be done in gloss black. To finish off, some polished aluminium filler caps. I can only find an oil filler one at the moment, so may have to settle for spraying the plastic ones silver… but will see with that.

I did my first part on Thursday night, spraying the engine cover black… Didn’t come out too badly. A bit patchy, but not bad for a first attempt. Will respray it again when I have the time to do it properly…

Today, Saturday, I hit the next part. The V-grille. I popped into Halfords and bought even more paint…

Unclipped the chrome part of the V-grille… I put the grey plastic part of the grille back on the car & it looks kinda odd!

Sanded down the chrome & then primed it…

And painted it moonland:

So now I’m just waiting for it to dry so I can lacquer it and then re-fit it! While I was out today, I also bought some new rear badges… The new chrome ASTRA badge from the Astra J, and the new chrome & black CDTi badge from the Astra J and Insignia. I’m planning on spraying the bootstrip & fitting these to it… but I won’t be picking those up until Wednesday.

While I was waiting for it to go touch dry for another coat, it pissed it down with rain, so I took some photos of the beading on the car from the wax:

So all in all, I’m pretty happy with it! A lot more to come. Watch this space!