Clio 182 Track Car & Daily Projects

[Mr Underhill]

Do you know when the croft dates will be released for next year Jon?

If I remember rightly it’s usually end of December. I know when I was sponsoring karting championships the circuits usually gave me dates around November time.

I could probably find out tbh. I’ll make a note to drop them an email.

 

[Twingo 1??]

Ah brilliant. If I can sell a kidney and get the Twingo mapped I will try and do something local as its only 30min away. Mate has a Darrian that needs some miles on it once the engine comes back from Ireland.

 

[Mr Underhill]

Ah brilliant. If I can sell a kidney and get the Twingo mapped I will try and do something local as its only 30min away. Mate has a Darrian that needs some miles on it once the engine comes back from Ireland.

Cool. I really enjoy it when a few lads get together for a good blast. All my mates are old boring farts, so I’ve been travelling to trackdays on me todd for years. Starting to make some track fwends now 😂

 

[FrogJam Motorsport]

 

[Twingo 1??]

Cool. I really enjoy it when a few lads get together for a good blast. All my mates are old boring farts, so I’ve been travelling to trackdays on me todd for years. Starting to make some track fwends now 😂

Ah well if you want some company next time let me know as I am pretty flexible when the kids are at school.
I went karting at teesside the other night in the rain with a few and it was good fun with the lads.

 

[Mr Underhill]

I went karting at teesside the other night in the rain with a few and it was good fun with the lads.

It’s a good circuit that. Sponsored and Co-ordinated the SG Petch Sprint Championship and some of the teams from the Elite Karting Leagues. 9 great years and met some really top drivers and people from that.

Couldn’t get away with it myself as I’m a bit on the heavy side compared to the stick insects that raced in that championship.

The skills they learn translate well into other forms of circuit racing, especially trackdays.

If I had the time I’d start some rookie leagues up again.

 

[Twingo 1??]

It’s a good circuit that. Sponsored and Co-ordinated the SG Petch Sprint Championship and some of the teams from the Elite Karting Leagues. 9 great years and met some really top drivers and people from that.

Couldn’t get away with it myself as I’m a bit on the heavy side compared to the stick insects that raced in that championship.

The skills they learn translate well into other forms of circuit racing, especially trackdays.

If I had the time I’d start some rookie leagues up again.

It's a good little circuit. I am 20st and was 2nd the other night the wet evens out the playing field lol. I used to go to school with the petch kids at Wolsingham.

 

[Mr Underhill]

It's a good little circuit. I am 20st and was 2nd the other night the wet evens out the playing field lol. I used to go to school with the petch kids at Wolsingham.

It’s a small world. Which ones? I’m in the office with Rachael - youngest - and clare’s Just in the office complex across from us. Sam’s my boss these days and Stephen’s still at Durham. Nice people.

 

[Twingo 1??]

It’s a small world. Which ones? I’m in the office with Rachael - youngest - and clare’s Just in the office complex across from us. Sam’s my boss these days and Stephen’s still at Durham. Nice people.

Rachael was in my year at school. Used to like seeing dad Stephen's car collection.

 

[Mr Underhill]

Job for this weekend on the BG daily is to get to the bottom of this oil leak. Uses around half a cup full a year but it’s flippin annoying me.

It’s not coming from the box or the sump, so I suspect it’s the crank oil seal 💭🤔 Got the seal and also invested in the tool. With 3 Clio Sports it kind of made sense.

While I’m there I’m going to change the clutch as I already had one, along with the clutch cable and steering rack bushes.

Just waiting on some gaskets, cable and flywheel bolts, then it’s engine out time. What could possibly go wrong 😑😂

 

[Mr Underhill]

Began the process of stripping parts from the engine. Not sure how much I should remove but I figure the lighter, the better.

I’ll nibble away at it each night so hopefully by Saturday it’ll be pretty much ready to come out.

As much as I’m a little anxious about doing the job, I’m pretty methodical and take pictures of everything. I’m one of those people that puts each tool away after use 🤪

On the upside I’m pretty excited at getting into those nooks and crannies and giving everywhere a damn good clean.

 

[Mr Underhill]

Half a day preparing to remove the engine and box. Just need to assemble the engine crane and it’s ready to come out.

No major dramas and everything seemed to go to plan.

I’m going to be doing quite a lot over the next month as it’s the only area I’ve never really tackled, apart from freshening the top of the engine.

The plan :

1. Fix the oil leaks
2. Clean engine up including sending off as many alloy parts as possible, battery bracket etc..off for aqua blasting
3. Remove subframe, ARB, wishbones and send off for powder coating
4. Replace steering rack bushes
5. Repair or replace the firewall on the bulkhead as it has a tear in it
6. Clean up electrics and give the loom a general tidy up.
7. Give the engine bay a proper clean, remove/treat any corrosion and apply paint where necessary.
8. Replace clutch, cable and old coolant pipes and clamps
9. Send bolts and some brackets off to be zinc plated

And anything else I can find. Should look pretty good after I’ve finished.

 

[Mr Underhill]

And it’s out.

Whipped gearbox off, clutch and flywheel and it’s fairly obvious where it’s leaking.

It’s proper manky in there as well so looking forward to giving it a good clean up

 

[Mr Underhill]

Began stripping and checking parts from the engine tonight.

A bit of cross threading going on with this gearbox bolt. Thankfully still available from Renault.

Whipped the sump off as it would be mad not to and began cleaning it up.

Agitated it with a stiff brush and some B&H surface HD degreaser to dissolve the crap.

Sadly 17 years, road salts and 131,000 miles have taken its toll on the external part of the sump. I’ll probably just paint it and avoid aqua blasting as I can’t trust they won’t blast the inside and where it seals.

Leaving it to soak overnight in a mild detergent and warm water.

 

[Mr Underhill]

Began cleaning up the engine and brackets this week. 17 years of filth and grime right there 👇

Actually taking the engine and box out has been a real eye opener for me, more on that later. Super happy with how these turned out though and can't wait to see it all back on the engine and car.

Had a good think about engine paints and how i was going to approach cleaning it up. It wasn't overly rusty, more oily and dirty, so set about degreasing and removing any corrosion with DEOX-C. I'd have loved to have shot blasted it but i haven't got one of those, so just wire brushed as much as i could.

I went for a charcoal matt finish in the end to try and get as close to OEM as possible. Pretty please with how it looks and it'll really pop once the top end is cleaned and alloy parts are refitted. I hate those refurbed engines with a Black shiny gloss finish that you can clearly see the rust coming through underneath. This one should stand the test of time

New radiator and coolant pipes also arrived as well as some Mikalor Spring Band Clips. Again, trying to stay as close to OEM as possible. These will rust as soon as the damp weather hits them, so i'll be preparing them against that prior to fitting.

Tons of other things going on with the car which i'll update as i go along. This could never be about fixing a few oil leaks. I just can't help myself

 

[FrogJam Motorsport]

Your sump just done with detergent and water overnight?? Looks great!

 

[Mr Underhill]

Your sump just done with detergent and water overnight?? Looks great!

If only Fred. The detergent soak was to soften the grime as some of it was proving difficult to remove. In the end i couldn't get it all out and the pitting was pretty bad in some areas. So i went back to my guy to discuss aqua blasting it. He's a top notch bloke - check out aquablastinguk.com if you need anything doing - and he was super careful not to touch the inside.

 

[FrogJam Motorsport]

If only Fred. The detergent soak was to soften the grime as some of it was proving difficult to remove. In the end i couldn't get it all out and the pitting was pretty bad in some areas. So i went back to my guy to discuss aqua blasting it. He's a top notch bloke - check out aquablastinguk.com if you need anything doing - and he was super careful not to touch the inside.

Was going to say. Looks brand new. I’ll take a look. Going to pull our engine out to rebuild it in the next few weeks so will be seeing what’s what and deciding if we are going to get stuff cleaned up or not. Looks nice though!

 

[Mr Underhill]

Was going to say. Looks brand new. I’ll take a look. Going to pull our engine out to rebuild it in the next few weeks so will be seeing what’s what and deciding if we are going to get stuff cleaned up or not. Looks nice though!

Just helps not getting filthy when working on them. Have you decided on pistons, cams, etc....?

 

[Andy P]

Was going to say. Looks brand new. I’ll take a look. Going to pull our engine out to rebuild it in the next few weeks so will be seeing what’s what and deciding if we are going to get stuff cleaned up or not. Looks nice though!

With all the effort you have put into your build it's got to be worth getting as much as possible cleaned up.

 

[FrogJam Motorsport]

Just helps not getting filthy when working on them. Have you decided on pistons, cams, etc....?

Going to go with 197 pistons and cams so nothing over the top but should give a little extra. Probably a lightweight flywheel and be done with the engine. And hopefully refreshing it all will stop it using a litre of oil a day.

 

[Mr Underhill]

Put a shift in today correcting all the years of corner cutting by previous keepers. Can’t wait to see this finished and back in the car.

 

[EthanMenace]

Put a shift in today correcting all the years of corner cutting by previous keepers. Can’t wait to see this finished and back in the car.

View attachment 1565346

These sort of pictures always make me very jealous, looking great

 

[Mr Underhill]

These sort of pictures always make me very jealous, looking great

Thanks fella 😀

 

[JamesBryan]

Put a shift in today correcting all the years of corner cutting by previous keepers. Can’t wait to see this finished and back in the car.

View attachment 1565346

You don't realise how tall these complete engines are until they're out the car 😅

 

[Mr Underhill]

A few satisfying jobs tonight correcting a few bodges/incompetencies from Renault “specialists”. I dare say there are very few.

So when I pulled the engine I immediately noticed a few missing bolts on the timing covers. How I never spotted it before is beyond me, but it is a little tight down there oh er 😐

Circled in red are the replacement bolts, which I managed to get from my local fasteners. Thanks to Paul at RMB for his print out which gives you the bolt sizes.

Top cover

Lower plastic cover

So effectively these were missing 5 bolts out of a possible 7. They were tight and haven’t caused me any issues but more worrying is the car went in to get the timing belts, dephaser done at a local Renault Specialist.

Now I can’t say for sure if it went in like that or not but I’d expect a specialist, or any garage for that matter, to have a duty of care. A quick call to say Jon there’s 5 bolts missing, would you like me to sort, would be the minimum I’d expect.

Anyway on to bodge 2. This wasn’t done while the car was in my possession and not by my local specialist, but by one not a million miles away has since gone out of business.

When I removed the box from the engine 2 of the 3 upper bolts were loose. One actually pulled out by hand thanks to the cross threading.

I initially thought they’d been over tightened until I went into my local Renault dealers to see if I could get genuine ones. Luckily you can.

Mechanic - that’s not a gearbox bolt mate it’s off a garden gate or something like that 😂

Tha gearbox bolt.

The garden gate bolt is slightly longer, so the chimpanzee would have found the bolt wouldn’t quite tighten as it’s touching the engine block. A few extra ugga duggas would of then stripped the threads.

Still, it’s all part of the learning curve and we move on.

 

[Mr Underhill]

.

 

[Mr Underhill]

Ended up replacing 3 gaskets as a precaution including sump, thermostat housing and crank oil seal.

Sump was easy thanks to an online workshop manual.

Thermostat housing not too bad once I tilted the engine back to stop a small flow of oil seeping from the block.

And finally the crank oil seal which I managed to put in at the wrong angle, despite using the correct Renault tool 🤦🏻‍♂️

You can’t see it from this angle but trust me it’s not even 😂 I’ve had the engine on a 45 degree angle for 2 days and It’s not leaking. But I dare say that’ll all change when the engine’s spinning at 7,000 rpm.

Removed it, bought another one and will have another attempt tomorrow 😅

 

[Mr Underhill]

Slow progress over the last few days but progress non-the-less.

Current gearbox looking a bit weepy, which is to be expected at 131,000 miles so it's going off for a rebuild. In the interim i'm going to use my spare gearbox from my Black Gold track car, which i removed at 79,000 miles when i had a Quaife diff put in. Just needs a clean up and it'll be spot on.

At the second attempt i got the crank oil seal in. At £41 per seal it was an expensive c**k up on my part, so i made sure the engine was flat on the floor so it couldn't move around. Looks spot on now. How people put these in without the proper Renault tool is admirable.

Finally got hold of a second hand starter shield thanks to @Chambers_RS after our mechanics destroyed my other one when fitting my starter motor last year.

Picking up a TTV Lightweight flywheel tonight to replace my old one as it's past its best, then fitting the clutch. Track day on Monday will no doubt stop me getting the engine back in, but hopefully should be all back in the following weekend.

 

[JamesBryan]

How do those proper Renault seal tools look/work Jon?

I've never had the chance to see one.

 

[Andy P]

@Jon Wright Good to see all the hard work being put into this. I wish I could do a fraction of the amount of work you have done I would save a fortune. Mine weeps from the crank seal and has done since 2013 when I bought the car.

 

[Mr Underhill]

@Jon Wright Good to see all the hard work being put into this. I wish I could do a fraction of the amount of work you have done I would save a fortune. Mine weeps from the crank seal and has done since 2013 when I bought the car.

Thanks Andy. 4 years ago I’d never changed a spark plug, let along whip an engine out 😂.

But I’ve been screwed over that many times by careless so called “specialists” I thought I can’t really do any worse myself. I don’t do all my work though. Mark Mayfield did my gearboxe and i’d leave engines to people who know what they’re doing.

If you want to do your crank seal, let me know as I have the proper Renault tool which makes it a doddle-ish 😅

 

[Mr Underhill]

Last bit of work on the daily before I focus my attention on the track car and Croft on Monday.

Got a really good TTV Lightweight Flywheel off a good friend who races in TDT. He fitted it, tested it at Donny and didn’t like it. Karma in action right there.

Got it fitted - new bolts of course - then fitted the clutch and cover.

Ran out of time but made a start on the gearbox. I’d love to take it apart, have all the casings aqua blasted then reassembled. But I know it would never work again 😂

For now I’ll settle with degreasing it and giving it a lick of VHT paint.

Thanks for reading 😀

 

[Andy P]

Thanks Andy. 4 years ago I’d never changed a spark plug, let along whip an engine out 😂.

But I’ve been screwed over that many times by careless so called “specialists” I thought I can’t really do any worse myself. I don’t do all my work though. Mark Mayfield did my gearboxe and i’d leave engines to people who know what they’re doing.

If you want to do your crank seal, let me know as I have the proper Renault tool which makes it a doddle-ish 😅

Thanks for the offer Jon. I may not be brave enough to do it though, the annoying thing is the gearbox has been out twice in my ownership and not once has it been suggested to replace the seal and I forgot to mention it.

I started working on cars from an early age on cars that most forum members haven't heard of but as I get older I have gotten lazy.

I have found the same as you though some so called "specialists" work leaves a lot to be desired.

There is a lot of satisfaction when you do a job yourself and you know it has been done right.

 

[Mr Underhill]

Thanks for the offer Jon. I may not be brave enough to do it though, the annoying thing is the gearbox has been out twice in my ownership and not once has it been suggested to replace the seal and I forgot to mention it.

I started working on cars from an early age on cars that most forum members haven't heard of but as I get older I have gotten lazy.

I have found the same as you though some so called "specialists" work leaves a lot to be desired.

There is a lot of satisfaction when you do a job yourself and you know it has been done right.

If it's not affecting anything then i guess just leave it. The leak on mine was starting to work it's way onto the exhaust. Nothing worse than an oily smelling car after a journey.

I think the problem with a lot of garages is they take too much on, so everything is a rush job. On saying that there's no excuse for not spotting things and letting the customer know.

I was going to give it to Mick at Diamond who was booked 2 months in advance but i was happy to wait as he's got a good rep. I could tell by the comms going back and forth he was well organised and knew his stuff. Sadly it's a days journey for me and i couldn't get the train connection back in time for a meeting i had later that afternoon.

I've got time on my side, so i can just work my way through it at my own pace. Plus i have good techies in the background i can fall back on before taking the plunge. Just hope it all works once i get it back in 🤞

 

[Mr Underhill]

Out with the old. In with the new.

Engine all done, ready to go back in.

Learned so much from the experience that the next one I do will be in a different league.

Now to tackle the engine bay.

 

[Twingo 1??]

Looks brilliant that! When can I drop the Twingo off lol.
Every time you do something like that you learn more to make it easier next time! Also helps when your not fighting stubborn nuts and bolts if you copper grease them when they go back in. I don't do much with cars now but have learnt loads the last few years of tinkering on with atv's.

 

[Mr Underhill]

A couple of hours spare this morning so tackled the heat shield beneath the exhaust manifold. I knew it was an issue as I’d spotted it a few years ago when doing my ARB bushes, but it’s pretty hard to locate and fix.

Held on by one bolt, which was loose, and a cable tie by previous owners. It used to vibrate on hard acceleration so this should be a good fix.

First job was to fix stub on the small bracket which had a snapped off. Easiest fix was to grind it off, pop it out and fit a rivet nut in its place.

One of the captiv nuts on the subframe was also missing so I stuck a rivet nut in, gave the shield a little clean, then refit with some M6 bolts and penny washers. Job done!

 

[Mr Underhill]

Brilliant day at Croft. Not a huge turnout despite weather being near perfect for good laps. Still, more track time for those that showed up. Did a PB as well putting me in the 1:38 club 😊 Car ran faultlessly 🚗💨

 

[Mr Underhill]

Up nice and early to start putting the engine back in.

Took a couple of hours to get to this stage, then a couple of hours trying to get the auxiliary belt onto the bottom pulley of the alternator. What a flippin carry on.

Called it a day after that. Just the hoses, radiator and gear linkage to set up now, then it should be ready to go.