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Opel Manta GTE Exclusive For Sale By Auction 6/7 November 2021 Anglia Classic Car Auctions


David Graham
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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi all, I’m new to the OMOC, but not to Mantas having had 7 in my youth, including a 2.4 single cam rally car, and a Monaco blue 87 Exclusive that I wish I hadn’t sold in the 90’s

I’m afraid I’m the one who bought this car, and do agree I have overpaid, I had set my limit at £13.5k but you know what it’s like in an auction, and I had decided I was having it, nostalgia getting the better of me. I guess I’ve just spent most of the upgrade budget as well. That said one sold last year for £23k albeit having had a re spray.

I did spend a couple of hours looking over it the other day, and the body work seems very good and solid, there has been a bit of welding and there are a few of rust spots but I don’t think it’s that bad that it needs a full re spray yet.

Was thinking of doing some fast road mods, but first job will be a MOT. Although I do want  to get some 400lb/200lb lowered springs and Bilsteins as the shocks need replacing and it needs lowering.

I’m sure I’ll be back for advice on parts supply, although I do have a 2.4 Frontera head lying around in the garage so already have a BVH🙂

Any help and advice appreciated

Thanks

MM

 

 

 

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Well done for buying it.

A car is worth what ever someone is willing to pay for it and I do not think that you have overpaid for it at all.

Last year rough gte's were selling at auction for more than that and I bet you'll never lose money on it. Enjoy👍

Edited by starmist
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Excellent buy, try finding another one with that kinda mileage, great colour too, its great that you can mod it to your own spec, i personally always thought standard wheels are too narrow for them, standard alloys can be lipped, either by milling or bolt on split rim rings, and most sit way too high, unless you live in speed ramp city, i would just move. Worth considering though recently and in the not so distant past, standard cars are beating modified examples in the price department, worth considering.

Very nice car. 

Edited by ®evo03
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Thanks for the welcome and insight Starmist and evo03.

I agree that standard original cars do tend to have better values these days, so I think I'll keep the modifications to ones that can be returned to standard, even if it takes a bit of work.

Wheels are a dilemma, I like the look of a standard Ronal, but they are limiting in terms of brakes and tyres. I used to have some 15inch 5 star ATS wheels that were the same design as the 13inch Manta SR wheel of the early 80's but sold 20 years ago😟.

I see you can still get A008's in 195/60x14 which may be ok and I think you can still get the vented disc conversions for the 14inch wheel

Question is also what to do with the standard injection, I'm used to running twin DCOE's but you have the clearance issue with the servo, and I don't want to go to the trouble of fitting a biased pedal box on a road car. I have been looking at Jenvey throttle bodies (which are cheaper than DCOE's these days!), not sure if anyone is using them on a Manta though. They do a really short 30mm DCOE style one, which hopefully would fit with the standard servo in place.

All part of the fun

 

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You can get 256x24 mm vented discs and more modern caliper from an astra 16v under the standard 14" wheels which gives a very good brake (have a look at the Audi/astra topics on the forum) I run this on my XE manta along with a rear disc conversion and they are very good brakes. If your drums are working really well, which sometimes they do, they are pretty good. But if they are a bit poor then a disc upgrade using mk4 astra calipers is a good choice, which also go under 14" alloys. You can get a wilwood 4 pot kit under the 14" wheels but i think thats a 246mm or smaller disc to get it all in, along with a smaller pad area than the astra calipers run.

For engine mods i'm not sure if anyone is running throttle bodies with the standard brakes servo setup. If you can get the angle of the manifold right and just above the master cylinder the fluid resevoir can be remote mounted easily. Although the standard injection will run up to around 145-150 you need a good cam, valve size and porting to manage that. The 2.4 head you have is larger valves and will fit but the manifold is different between the 2.0 and 2.4 so finding a carb/body manifold might be harder.

With a good head,cam and throttle bodies along with a mapped ecu you should be able to squeeze a decent chunk out of it, Lambchop on here will probably be able to tell you what sort of output you could get. But you will always be limited by the design of the head with the ports beside each other rather than a crossflow type. There would also be a significant cost to all that.

Of course converting it to a C20XE is a bolt in mod with a little care. Although good donor engines are getting a little harder to find they are out there and start at 150bhp before you do anything to them. There's a reason there are a lot of XE engined mantas and less tuned CIH engined ones.

 

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Hi mantasrme, thanks for the insight. I had not heard of the audi disc/astra caliper set up.  On one of the forums it mentioned you have to modified the discs. Is this the case, and do you have any info? It looks a cheaper and a larger rotor option than the Wilwoods.

Also do you have info on the rear disc set up? Does anybody make the caliper brackets. I did see some brackets for an Astra caliper to fit a Ford Salisbury axle. Was wondering if they would fit direct or with a bit of modification 

Thanks

 

 

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The discs do need modifying by enlarging the centre bore to 73mm and drilling 4 new bolt holes at 92mm pcd to fit the back of the hub. I've just had a couple of sets made up so the numbers are freshg in my mind.

The audi disc is the correct size and offset to work with the astra calipers so is the simpliest option for vented discs. Before that we used to use the astra disc from the calipers but required an Alloy spacer to put the disc in the right place. Oh the astra discs also needed the 4 new mounting holes and enlarged centre so it was way more work and much more expensive.

I might have a little info on the rear disc kits as i make and sell the bracket kits :ph34r: have a look HERE

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Pick a cold wet weekend and go through the project threads on here, all of the above you mentioned has been done before, 

Xe on injection is an easy convert and still probably cheaper than modifying a CIH, but it all depends what you want the car for, 

Just to throw out a few ideas, you have xe, inj, carb, ITB, saab turbo, c20 Let, 2.5 v6, 3.0 v6, 3.2 all without cutting or modding the bodyshell. 

15" ATS CLASSICS are available. 

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10 hours ago, PerfectCousin said:

This one ticks all the right boxes for me luv it..my fave manta for sale ATM not that there is many to choose from that is... show me another..its a sellers market for sure....prices may of peaked though or somewhere near.😎

Edited by evo3000
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