Black 1992 21 Turbo

[DaveL485]

How many 21's can one person tolerate? Not sure. I dont think I am far off the asylum tbh

@Paule78 decided that I didnt have enough on my plate and dumped a black K-Reg on my drive recently, it started and ran but was blowing like a cheap hooker around the turbo and had been sat for a long time (in the netherlands, oddly) so needed a bit of a recomission.

In it comes (at the back)

Heatshield off...and oh look.

Vband gone. Great! Nice easy fix right? RIGHT?

Well. No. Obviously. Little did I know what was in store. We'll get to that in a bit.

Heater blower was inop, motor was seized and the thermal fuse was popped, so replaced the fuse and freed off the motor as best I could. Its very noisy though and will need replacing.

Front discs look.... sub-optimal

Paul is getting these pictures on whatsapp and seeing his car fund rapidly diminish 😂

Tyres from the stone age. (Well, 2013, but still old).

My other active threads:

Renault 9 Turbo https://cliosport.net/threads/phase-1-renault-9-turbo.823533/
Renault 21 Turbo https://cliosport.net/threads/1988-red-r21-turbo.842581/
Renault 21 Quadra https://cliosport.net/threads/my-renault-21-quadra-supershed.821989/
Clio V6 https://cliosport.net/threads/my-clio-with-the-engine-in-the-wrong-end.820665/
Clio 200 Trophy https://cliosport.net/threads/liquid-yellow-220-trophy.840797/
Renault 21 Turbo https://cliosport.net/threads/black-1988-renault-21-turbo.850643/

 

[DaveL485]

Bleed nipples with auto-rust function

I managed to free off 3 by filling them with GT86 overnight. One snapped.

So I had to drill and repair it.

Torx screws missing from rear discs - FFS. I have run out of spares so now the car has one in each disc instead of 2.

Rear discs are crap too but I cant currently source any! Worrying.

 

[DaveL485]

Now on to the exhaust - well the vband turned up and I fitted it. Still blowing - as bad as before. Investigated further and - oh dear. We had 3 broken manifold studs, plus another that was drilled out to M10...but only for about 5mm below the surface. So...manifold off You can see the stains from the blowing and what looks like an attempt to seal with paste... FFS.

Even better the new vband snapped the thread when I removed it. Filed for a refund and bought another.

I managed to get most of the rest of the studs out with heat and care, one more snapped though. This meant the welder came out for stud extraction, sadly it didnt go well this time. I had to (mnanaged to) drill and tap a couple.

The M10 one I drilled out properly, and managed sink a helicoil in to it. This has held fine when reassembled.

I got to the last stud which I was struggling to drill out, it blunted a couple of bits and had me puzzled. I dug around it a bit with a dremel and...

Can you see what that is? Its a broken tap in the hole no wonder it was blunting drill bits! Normally this would be head off, and spark erosion.

 

[DaveL485]

HOWEVER, not wanting to ring Paul up and be like "Yeah you know I spent a shitload of your dosh well now im taking the head off too" I tried to get the tap out with a dremel and diamond tipped bits. Basically, grinding it down from the top. It took A G E S. Over 3 or 4 days I think I must have spend 6 or 7 hours and pretty much every dremel bit in Coventry trying to get rid of it. I had to dremel with one had and squirt water in with the other to stop it burning the bits out in 10 seconds. I must have used 20 or 30 of them!

Close to the bottom, you can see the dimple in the end of the tap

Finally

Of course the hole is now completely monged, so I went for an M12 timesert, with an M8 inner. Threaded...

Timesert in with loctite.

Cleaned up and new studs - what a palava.

Found a turbo oil return leak while I was there, so fixed that too.

Back together

Guess what?

STILL BLOWING. Not as bad, but too much to ignore. What the actual hell.

 

[DaveL485]

Sooooooooooo further digging and poking and listening and I found a missing bolt in the turbine housing, that bolts the core to the turbine housing. Of course, you couldnt get a bolt in there with it fitted because of the position of the castings...OF COURSE. Had to take the turbo core out!

The missing one was the one at 9 o'clock. Made a bolt for it (shortened an M8) and rebuilt it.

After this there was still a blow from the vband so I had to flatten off the mating faces and then, finally, it was acceptable for use. What a trial!

 

[DaveL485]

Now we're on to the recomission items.

Oil, oil filter, air filter, PS fluid, brake fluid, gearbox oil, coolant. New discs and pads up front. New tyres. Belts (Cam, Aux and PS) and cambelt tensioner.

The torx fittings in the caliper hangers were f**ked as per usual so I modded them with 17mm hex's for easier future use.

The air filter was a shitty tiny cone filter, why people fit these stupid things over the enormous OE air filter is beyond me. You need a BIG cone filter. I refitted the airbox and an oe filter.

Plugs, NGK TR7IX gapped to .55mm

View attachment 225283

I didnt take any pics of the belts save this one when it was all done

Cooling system is horrific, full of rust, its been left with no coolant in for some time by the looks of it. Bought some flush for it.

 

[DaveL485]

I got most of it done, then got the car outside to flush the rad, which went well. Ran it with the flush in and no thermostat. FLushed it through a few times and ran it up to temperature, the fans were due to come on, and in gratiture for all my efforts, it decided to burst the radiator. Brilliant.

Another call to poor Paul with the news, and we decided a new ally rad was the way forward so that was ordered.

It showed up from China about 3 weeks earlier than expected, which was nice!

Spot the mistake.

 

[DaveL485]

Spot the mistake.

After i'd swapped the fans to the correct side (front) of the rad (lol), in it went.

The old air filter box was in the boot, so I used it, the clips were all missing though so I gaffer taped it for now until I can get hold of some

Better

Brief test drive resulted in a very flat engine with no boost - someone didnt refit the actuator clip (duh) so resolved that and also found the source of the nasty knock on the passenger strut...loose topmount nut!

Before

After

Another test drive and she's running sweet, boosts well and holds temp. The cooling system is yukky again, I think itll be a few more flushes before its reasonable. So much silt in there. It has a small weep of coolant from the front somewhere too, to be investigated. I also fixed a leak from the header tank, loose jubilee.

The courier came with my tyre delivery, he didnt look pleased as he unloaded 3 sets , so I got the tyres fitted and back on the car too.

Hopefully now just the gearbox oil to change, then an MOT test followed by a bit more road testing and its not far off done.

 

[DaveL485]

Ah, forgot, I had to trim the rad top down to fit the chargecooler too, it wouldnt quite fit. Not convinced on the chargecooler, it gets hotter then I would expect. More like a chargeheater!

 

[Rojer]

Pardon our interruption...

@DaveL485

 

[DaveL485]

Pardon our interruption...

@DaveL485

Seen it - no thanks. I'd be at 1500-2k max for that, given it was sat for so long.

 

[R3k1355]

Does it have an intercooler or a chargecooler as stock?

 

[Krarl]

I absolutely love every one of your threads Dave

Especially these ones, where people drop their car off and you spend your time being super anal and fixing everything to better than anyone else would! 😂

 

[DaveL485]

Does it have an intercooler or a chargecooler as stock?

The OE car has 2 intercoolers, a fat one sat low in the OS front wing getting a nice cold air feed from the front bumper. The second one sits above the rad at the front. On this car, the second intercooler has been replaced with a chargecooler.

 

[R3k1355]

What's the heat exchanger like for the chargecooler? Vast majority of the time when people try to do an aftermarket chargecooler conversion they massively underspec the heat exchanger, think using something similar to an oil cooler will be sufficient.

 

[DaveL485]

I absolutely love every one of your threads Dave

Especially these ones, where people drop their car off and you spend your time being super anal and fixing everything to better than anyone else would! 😂

Thank you, I'm cursed with a love of these stupid old things it seems.

With current labour rates if you can't spanner yourself, its just not realistic to run a 21 (or many other classics) now, for example i'm maybe 80-100 hours into the other black one thats here - at a normal garage thats what, £70/hr at best? Thats over five grand in labour. Ain't happening. I dont work for free, but its a lot less than that. It makes it a realistic prospect lets put it that way, and also you know itll be done right.

 

[DaveL485]

What's the heat exchanger like for the chargecooler? Vast majority of the time when people try to do an aftermarket chargecooler conversion they massively underspec the heat exchanger, think using something similar to an oil cooler will be sufficient.

Its basically an oil cooler thing. I'm not keen, but its not my problem tbh, i'll leave that to the owner to sort

 

[Krarl]

Thank you, I'm cursed with a love of these stupid old things it seems.

With current labour rates if you can't spanner yourself, its just not realistic to run a 21 (or many other classics) now, for example i'm maybe 80-100 hours into the other black one thats here - at a normal garage thats what, £70/hr at best? Thats over five grand in labour. Ain't happening. I dont work for free, but its a lot less than that. It makes it a realistic prospect lets put it that way, and also you know itll be done right.

Mate, your attention to detail is far greater than most of the 'specialists' I've seen

I wouldn't worry about taking an old car to you to fix up, based on the pics you don't just bodge it to f**k

 

[DaveL485]

Mate, your attention to detail is far greater than most of the 'specialists' I've seen

This is why I do all my own work, terrified of what would happen if someone f**ked my car up. I wouldnt react well, especially my 21

I go to a very select few personal friends for things I cant do. Fortunate to have built that network over time.