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Everything that went wrong with my cheap hot hatch

James Balazs

5,918 views

The full story of my Astra VXR, and how I bought it as a neglected hot hatch and turned into a savage track car that shoots flames with a forged engine, standalone ECU, rally antilag, flat foot shift, and more.

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20 Comments

@BR1T807 4 months ago (edited)

Started following you 3/4 years ago and always enjoyed the content and effort u put into the videos. During that time finally completed my dream and now im proud owner of a Astra H Opc Nürburgring Edition with loads of mods. Thanks for keep the car alive and every effort on making the car reliable and smoth. Cheers from 🇵🇹

@ajayxo6712 1 month ago

It’s been 2 years since I sold my red Vxr man with that spoiler and vented bumpers . Even when I spoke to you at the shows you loved yours but my Circumstances made me get out of mine and after watching this I’m happy I did and to this day I’d buy another Vxr but I wouldn’t because the maintenance and build is just too muchhhhh. But I’m still here watching all your videos hahahah.

@DjNikGnashers 4 months ago (edited)

For that money, you could have an amazing M140i, or even M2.
But, you obviously love Vauxhall's, so fair play to you for doing a lot of work yourself, respect.

@JordzyBrev 4 months ago

Non vuxhall fan but love the channel just the way your record doing mods is interesting to watch

@BennyRich01 3 months ago

You’ve been through a lot mate, take a breather lol
👏 👏 👏

@Dillinja999 4 months ago (edited)

Damn, glad i bought a type r lol

@approvedsystembaracuda993 4 months ago

Ma boy stay strong you done amazing job keep pushing same way !

@dannyc6553 4 months ago

YouTube getting to close to home jokes aside nice car one road you doing drive bys on looks very familiar

@kriszzt3787 4 months ago

I watched a few of your videos before i bought my astra and have referred to your videos for some of the issues ive had and i appreciate you learning and doing the things yourself in your driveway, i can relate! keep it up, awesome work!

@harryford9009 3 months ago

Bought my e vxr the same time as you did loads to it. Fully track built no money spent. Finally got round to big turbo and my tuner fried my ecu so sold the car to a breaker. Still miss the car and was the best thing I’ve ever driven!

@BobonongBitty 2 months ago

Been great following your journey buddy.. Respect 👍

@EducatedDelinquent 4 months ago

IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS. (Says the man posting 4 days later)

@BennyRich01 3 months ago

Hell of a job in that Astra, I’ve got the GTC VXR ‘J’
Bought it with 68,000 on the clock, had it for 2 years as a daily driver.

I was gonna start upgrading but like you’ve illustrated in your video, we end up going in to deep and changing the whole lot 😂
A small job turn into an entire car rebuild, no thanks haha

@xanousi2804 4 months ago

Very beautiful sounding cars . It’s a shame Vauxhall didn’t build these vxrs with stronger parts from factory so forging isn’t needed . Had mine 2 years so far and running mint but been through 2 engine rebuilds .

@solarpanel9310 4 months ago

I have a 2004 Mercedes car with a N/A m113 engine one day I found a cheap 55 AMG Kompressor / supercharger on eBay I then purchase it think I can supercharge my car on the cheap not realizing I'd also need bigger injectors, a double crank pully, EGR Delete, SIA Delete, different engine water pump & thermostat, engine oil cooler adaptor, AMG type oil cooler, air to water intercooler, electronic water pump, water tank for split cooling, AMG Style fuel rail, AMG Ecu. Long story short I had to spend a lot of money for the parts also for my mistakes. I tried to pin the crank and the crank is now wobbling I used a mushroom filter and it rubbed against the fire wall and the inside of the bonnet and sucked metal dust into cylinder number 8 which is the closes cylinder so the compression is lowest in cylinder number 8 because it's now scored but some how it still runs. James Balazs, I understand.

@TurboMadAlex 4 months ago

My rustys autos engine build only did 1100 before bottom end started knocking 😢

@vitaliiboiko5565 4 months ago

quite reasonable money compared with new cars and what you can get from these cars...

@dylangeorge4016 4 months ago

Interesting to hear about your experience with that engine builder, I went to the same place to get my Astra vxr built and had no issues (so far over 2000 miles in) I might’ve got lucky