browno
ClioSport Club Member
Evening All,
I am posting a thread on behalf of my brother who has just bought himself a tidy 172 cup which has an issue that we are trying to resolve thus far without success. The car itself is an 03 plate 172 cup with 79,000 miles, with 3 previous owners - it being bought from a local guy who is a Renault Alpine specialist, and who has had it 2 year (and did the cam belt 2 years/15k miles ago). It is completely standard apart from a power flex upper engine mount, and has had a recent coil pack, leads and plugs.
The car drives really well once on the move, but at idle or when moving off it is very lumpy and wants to stall as you move off, which is pretty poor - the engine is also quite mobile with quite a bit of vibration passing through into the cabin. Both of these characteristics are definitely not normal clio behaviour - I have a 182 which has been owned from new, and he owned a 172 for a while back when it was new too, so we know the cars, and this is totally different to my 182 (which does have a lumpy idle - but doesn't struggle to run)!
I have tried to capture the behaviour in the video below - the engine idles normally for the first 30 seconds or so after start (either hot or cold) and then starts to "chug" and seem as though it is struggling to keep running, along with quite a bit of engine movement as it rocks quite noticeably.
As we observed this (we hadn't noticed it when we looked at the car), we thought it should be an easy fix. There are no faults showing when plugged in, and so we thought we would begin by looking at sensors - and have used my 182 as a source of known good parts to save spending lots on a wild goose chase - so far we have swapped and tried the following with no improvement: inlet air sensor, MAP sensor, crank sensor (a new one was in the box of bits with the car), throttle body and coil pack, we have also taken out the injectors and all four appear to be firing and injecting at similar rates, and all four plugs are nice and grey and appear recently replaced.
I have looked on the live data while the car is running and can't see anything I can interpret as odd. We have also had it looked at by a friend (also an ex-172 owner) at our garage - and he has suggested checking the vac lines off the inlet for leaks/blockages. I was also wondering about taking off the cat to see if that has perhaps collapsed causing the engine to labour at idle. Beyond this, the only other thing that I can see to check is to get the timing tools in and check it is timed up correctly - and if that checks out onto compression checks.
This is proving somewhat frustrating as we were hoping that the car was as good as it had looked when we went to view - and want to get this sorted so that we can progress with fettling and improving the car ready for some fun in the spring, so any help and advice from the CS experts would be much appreciated!
I am posting a thread on behalf of my brother who has just bought himself a tidy 172 cup which has an issue that we are trying to resolve thus far without success. The car itself is an 03 plate 172 cup with 79,000 miles, with 3 previous owners - it being bought from a local guy who is a Renault Alpine specialist, and who has had it 2 year (and did the cam belt 2 years/15k miles ago). It is completely standard apart from a power flex upper engine mount, and has had a recent coil pack, leads and plugs.
The car drives really well once on the move, but at idle or when moving off it is very lumpy and wants to stall as you move off, which is pretty poor - the engine is also quite mobile with quite a bit of vibration passing through into the cabin. Both of these characteristics are definitely not normal clio behaviour - I have a 182 which has been owned from new, and he owned a 172 for a while back when it was new too, so we know the cars, and this is totally different to my 182 (which does have a lumpy idle - but doesn't struggle to run)!
I have tried to capture the behaviour in the video below - the engine idles normally for the first 30 seconds or so after start (either hot or cold) and then starts to "chug" and seem as though it is struggling to keep running, along with quite a bit of engine movement as it rocks quite noticeably.
As we observed this (we hadn't noticed it when we looked at the car), we thought it should be an easy fix. There are no faults showing when plugged in, and so we thought we would begin by looking at sensors - and have used my 182 as a source of known good parts to save spending lots on a wild goose chase - so far we have swapped and tried the following with no improvement: inlet air sensor, MAP sensor, crank sensor (a new one was in the box of bits with the car), throttle body and coil pack, we have also taken out the injectors and all four appear to be firing and injecting at similar rates, and all four plugs are nice and grey and appear recently replaced.
I have looked on the live data while the car is running and can't see anything I can interpret as odd. We have also had it looked at by a friend (also an ex-172 owner) at our garage - and he has suggested checking the vac lines off the inlet for leaks/blockages. I was also wondering about taking off the cat to see if that has perhaps collapsed causing the engine to labour at idle. Beyond this, the only other thing that I can see to check is to get the timing tools in and check it is timed up correctly - and if that checks out onto compression checks.
This is proving somewhat frustrating as we were hoping that the car was as good as it had looked when we went to view - and want to get this sorted so that we can progress with fettling and improving the car ready for some fun in the spring, so any help and advice from the CS experts would be much appreciated!
