1995 Clio 1.8 16v - Project 'not a project'

[C16V_Adam]

Starting a thread to keep track of the work I am carrying out to my 1995 Naples Clio Valver. I bought this car as a roadworthy rolling project which is just what I wanted, I already have a long term project (started in 2012 and probably has another decade to go ) so was determined to get a car that needed tidying up but I can use and enjoy now. I absolutley do not want or need another car that is going to be off the road for a long time.

Enter my valver

Now obviously the arches are shot, standard stuff. And the sills seemed a little bit...spongy... in places but generally reasonably solid. They should be fine until I can do a proper job on them next year, for now I can just drive and enjoy the car. It does however have some jobs that need doing.

-The roof is leaking and the IR reciever is bagged up
-There is a really irritating whistle coming from the engine
-The drivers door does not lock and unlock
-The passenger door window does not work
-The electric mirrors do not work
-The side repeaters do not work
-The horn does not work
-The seat fabric is unstitched on both seats
-The front bumper is barely attached and looks ugly due to being cut up for a previous FMIC
-The bonnet is rusty and dented
-The paintwork has lacquer peel all over
-1 tailgate hinge pin is broken

First job was to have a look at the leaky roof, and decided to have a look at the ariel first and aha! it is loose! So I remove the ariel and clean it up and stick it back on with some tiger seal.

Then I build a little dam and check my work...

Perfect, it's not leaking. Job Done.

I had probably better check the sunroof though just to be sure

oh..

So out comes the sunroof, and I can see why it was leaking. There is not much in the way of original manufacturer seal. Somebody has been here before and there has been an attempt to seal it with silicone from the inside. I clean up the roof and sunroof frame throughly, mask them both up and use a whole tube of tiger seal before refitting the sunroof and cleaning up the bead.

I put it on thick, taking no chances

Another dam built, another leak check carried out. A vast improvment, no longer streaming in. There is a slight trickle that I can see it coming past the seal on the window glass. So i open up the sunroof manually (as the sunroof motor also doesn't work I forgot to put that on the list!). I clean the surround and seal thoroughly cleaning all the gunk out from underneath the lip of the seal. This seems to do the trick and it is holding the water at bay.

Next job was to have a look at why the passenger window wasn't working, I have no pictures of this because that turned out to just be a blown fuse. Replaced the fuse and jobs a good 'un, albeit it winds up and down very slowly.

I remove the door cars anyway to find out why the electric door mirrors aren't working and the drivers door lock and also lube up the window regulators at the same time. The mirrors aren't working because the aren't plugged in, and they aren't plugged in because someone has cut the plugs off the loom for some reason! So I managed to source 2 complete door looms from a top bloke on facebook who had them spare in his loft and posted them to me for no charge. Swapped the door looms and got the passenger mirror working, however the driver mirror still doesn't work. I need to do some more investigation into what the issue is, if it's the switch of the mirror itself.

I replaced the drivers door lock actuator also whilst the door cards are off, and that solved the problem of the door lock not working. Another job done.

Next job, investigate why the horn is not working. I find this is also not plugged in when I take the bumped off, easy fix then. But just plugging it back in doesn't help. The horn looks very corroded and connecting it direct to the battery produces no sound. So a generic 2 tone horn is ordered from ebay and fitted, and that is another job ticked off the list.

Next I look into the side repeaters, pop them out and find no bulb or bulb holder in there. So I take the arche liners out and dig around and find this set up, a bulb bodged into the look with what looks like speaker wire! Not sure what the plan was to hold it in the side repeater as it has no holder. And it doesn't work anyway, it the same on the other side.

I order and fit some generic LED side repeaters from ebay as a quick fix, they are smoked and are 'animated' style. I don't like them but are a quick solution, I will be ordering the correct parts for the original look down the line.

 

[C16V_Adam]

Next I tackle the bumper and bonnet. Luckily the car came with a spare boot, bonnet and front bumper. I stripped the bootlid and drilled off the hinges and scrapped the rest, it wasn;t in good condition and I don't have the space for it. I decided to rub down and tackle the bumper myself.

It isn't perfect but I am pretty happy with how it turned out on a rattle can job (plus have you seen the rest of the car? )

I had planned to do the bonnet also but I underestimated just how much time and material this takes, I used way more paint on this bumper than I thought I would and I just ran out of time. So I stripped the spare bonnet and prepped a little bit of rust along the front edge before sending it off to be painted.

I don't have any picture of the resprayed bonnet, but I do have picture of it 4 days after collecting it after I dropped it right on the corner whilst trying to fit it on my own

Many swear words were said.

I will straighten that out and and touch it up another day, for now it is back off and in the garage as I need to do some work on the engine anyway.

Time for a poke around underneath to see how bad these sills really are...that was a mistake.

Well there goes the 'not a big project' then. Needs front and rear jacking point, inner and outer sills on the drivers side. Passenger side it a lot more solid at the front but needs a repair to the inner and out sill towards the rear arch. So this work will be carried out over the winter with the aim to have it all done and MOT'd for the spring. It is disspointing but it is probably my fault for digging too much with a screwdriver, and I would rather just get it sorted now than let it get worse.

Whilst I was under the car I noticed the front wisbone bushes were perished, so I had them off and replaced the bushes. I was looking to replace the whole arms but couldn't find reliable information on the correct wishbones. Most websites insist that all MK1 wishbones are the same including the williams, some websites same all the same except 16v and williams which are the same etc etc, so I just decieded to replace the bushes.

 

[C16V_Adam]

I investigated the whistling noise convinced it is an air leak in the vaccum system as it is come from around the inlet manifold somewhere. After a comment from my wife about how strong it smells of petrol after running I thought hmm you're right and had a look at the fuel injectors. Maybe a little bit wet but not too bad, but with the engine running a squirt of WD40 around the no4 injector changed the note of the whistle. So I stripped out the fuel injectors to replace the injector seals.

I have also replaced the injector plugs on the loom as the original plugs were brittle and broken

I also carried out a smoke check on the intake and it is leaking slightly from the inlet manifold area, so as you have to remove the injectors to remove the inlet manifold I figure I may as well do this at the same time. And as I have to drain the coolant to remove the radiator to remove the inlet manifold I may aswell do the timing belt and water pump.

I had already had a quick look at the timing belt to see what condition it is in, helpfully the last person to do it wrote the date and mileage on it

May 2021 and 134K, so it has barely done any mileage since, less than a thousand, But it is over 5 years old and it will give me peace of mind to change it.

And that's pretty much where it is at today. Complete the engine work and then start cutting into the body work.

Whilst I was doing the wishbones I noticed the brake pads are clearly too small for the discs. Quick look at the haynes manual says the discs should be 259mm diameter and these are 285mm.

Can anbody shed any light on this? Do these look like the original hubs/calipers but with a caliper spacer and bigger discs? or is this set up from a different model?

Cheers for reading this far, I will update when there is more.