Some of my Lada experiences so far...........
Hello! My name is Gavin Rogers and I live in Geelong, Australia, near Melbourne. I have to congratulate you on a wonderful Lada internet page. You must have spent a lot of time on it. As all other members of the world Lada Club I also own a Lada Niva. I’m 18years old and the Lada is my first car. I always wanted a small 4wd for my first car as I have always loved going 4Wding with my father in the past. The Lada seemed the perfect choice. In Australia you can pick up a reasonable Lada for about $5000aus. This is a lot cheaper than you can get a similar Suzuki Sierra for. And besides the Sierras are smaller, slower and just not the same as a Lada. I ended up with a ’87 model Lada that has done 130000km’s. My father and I have spent endless hours working on the Niva modifying and improving it from its basic form.
When I first got my Niva about the only thing that had been modified was the wheels. These had been changed to Suzuki 15inch rims with according tyres. To start with the major problem with the Niva was its ride. When you got to about 100km/h it would vibrate something terrible. As I had just spend hundreds on my teeth I believed it best if all my teeth didn’t vibrate loose, so something had to be done!
The first modification was to change the universal transfer coupling for a c/v joint. Boy did we have fun with this. The part arrived on a Saturday afternoon so we didn’t have time to ring Lada here and ask for instructions. Well the job seemed simple enough, with in ½ hour we had the old joint out and another ½ hour saw the new one in. Great, ready to roll. With the transfer adjusted into the right spot of we set down the road. 10km/h - fine, 20km/h no vibes, 25km/h oh know come back teeth- - the whole car shook, in fact it felt like the transfer was playing skip rope under the car! So limping home we proceeded to sit in the garage and sulk. What had we done wrong? In the end it turned out that we needed to remove a rubber bung from the ended of the transfer coupling. Fun!! Oh well of we go again. At 100km/h the vibration was less but still there. Oh if only I was female! Well what to do now. Finding that the vibration was still there when the transfer was in neutral, we believed that the drive shafts were out of balance. I took them to the balancing centre, the guy had a look at them and laughing told me the uni joints were !@#$#%. Another call to Lada clutching my fathers Mastercard had two reco drive shafts down to me. Upon putting them in the vibration ceased as much as could be expected. My dentist cried.
For at least 5months no more work had to be done on the Lada. In this time I did quite a bit of 4wding. We are lucky here is Oz. I have great 4wding places only 45minutes from my house. In the Otways there are lots of bog holes full of squishy mud. One day after I had finished my last exams some friends and I went out to get a bit muddy and boy did we cope it. On the first bog hole I was dying to impress them with the Niva. So I prodded this hole with a stick, not to deep as far as I could see. So in I went. Going fine, then suddenly I noticed the water getting deeper - much deeper. Finally I got stuck in some water, the only problem was it was lapping up against the dash, on the inside. After winching out we carried on with out problem for the rest of the day. When I got home, shit what a mess, the black inside was now brown, full of silt about 1cm thick - thank God for vinyl.
I go out 4Wding quite often with a mate with Toyota Hilux. It is a mean looking machine with 3inch lift and big mud tyres. I was remarkable surprised when the Lada kept up with it in just about everything. I was very impressed.
I was lucky one day when the Victorian Lada club had it picnic/auction I picked up some very cheap parts. I got a alloy bullbar for $200, rear bar $5, roof racks for $10 and lots of spare hoses and other small parts.
About 2 months ago I had to get new tyres for the Niva. I found that aggressive tyres in 205/75 R15 are rather hard to find. Also the previous tyres were rubbing on the wheel arches in extreme articulation so I couldn’t go up in size. As I said before I was using 15inch Suzuki rims. When I asked Lada about the problem they told me that the Suzuki rims are defiantly not right for the Lada. The Suzuki rims make the wheel track on the Niva too wide, this makes steering harder and also ruins the front wheel bearings. (soon as I replaced the rims the bearings failed with the different load applied). I ended up with Mr Mullian mag 15ich rims and Firestone tyres. The Lada was a different car with new tyres, it was easier to steer and also the tyres no longer got caught inside the arches and they looked a whole lot better.
On my last 4wding trip I noticed a tapping sound in the engine. Inspection it when I got home I discovered that the timing chain was very loose and the tensioner was at its full extension, the chain damper had totally disintegrated and was somewhere in the sump . So of to Lada again to buy a new chain, damper and idler gear. The idler gear is a part I believe is Australian made. It replaces the tensioner shoe with a cog like arrangement and it reduced friction, thus making the engine quieter and more fuel efficient. I will try to draw a picture for you.
It works like a dream. The engine is much quieter. We had and interesting experience fitting it though. Well it went in all right but went to start the car and it wouldn’t kick over. Well we pulled it all apart and checked it all - all timing mark we right. It seemed as though the starter motor didn’t have enough power the kick the motor over. So at 2o’clock in the morning we were tow starting the Niva down the road. It kicked loudly into life and as the near by house lights started to come on we made a stealth get away back into the garage. By this stage all of the oil in the sump had sloshed all over the road as the chain cover was still off. The next day and another trip to Lada (which is about 100km’s from my house) I had a reco starter motor in my clutches. Shit what a job getting the starter motor out. I swear the engineer who designed it was having a bad day and just wanted to piss the rest of the world off. Well now with all this done the car runs like a dream. Gees now that I look back we have done a fair bit of work on the Niva. I beginning to think I bought the wrong car!!….. Never!
This April we are planning to do a trip across the Simpson dessert. We will take two cars, my fathers Jeep and my Lada. The totally trip is about 3000km’s of which 600 are over harsh dessert conditions. Know doubt the Lada will be more than up to it.
I have always forgotten to take a camera every time I have been 4Wding so next time I will tape it to my head! I will sent you some photos later. It would be great if you could forward the Lada clubs mail to me at nivags@classic.msn.com. Thank you.
From Gav
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