Few questions (newbie)

[Brindley]

Good evening all, just joined Cliosport.net!

Just had a few questions that I would like to ask and will appriciate any answers or advice I recieve...

Little bit of info:
For my 18th birthday (september 2012) i'll be getting a Renault Clio Campus 1.2 (58 reg), now I have to admit I have an extremely limited amount of knowledge about cars,
I'm currently taking driving lessons and revising/learning for my Theory Test and Hazard Preception/Prevention Test.

I have a few things in mind that I would like to add/remove/modify my clio these being:

- Remove the standard stock rims and replace with some decent black alloys,
- Change or upgrade the stock exhaust, now many questions fall into this idea like changing for performance? sound? or exterior appearance, well to be honest I would like to change/upgrade the exhaust to make it a abit louder and have abit more of a 'sporty' feel and sound, (I know what your thinking, i'm a wanna' be badboy racer who wants to annoy everyone and drive around doing laps in the town center playing loud music thinking I have a 458 Itallia) That's not the case at all, I would just like to upgrade to have abit more sound and livelyness (spelling) to my Clio,

So the questions are, Can I just visit Halfords and spend £300-£450 on some alloys and say "Can you fit them please"? or does it require alot more than that?
and secondly, who/where/how/what do I buy and find garages or companies to install my exhaust set or parts, how do I know that they are the correct ones and where do I buy parts like that?
Sorry for alot of writing tried to cut it down as much as possible :S Thanks for reading!

Phil.

 

[GoldenMonkey]

Fitting alloys is piss easy, to make it easier on your self though get ones that are designed for your car though so you're not monkeying around with spacers etc. Also I'd say avoid the Halford's own alloys (RipSpeed), they look cheap and are terrible, my friend actually had one of the spokes snap on her Ripspeed alloys.

As for the exhaust, in a 1.2 you wouldn't notice much difference in performance, if ANY what so ever. Would deffo make the car look and sound nicer, so long as you don't get the bees farting in a can special! But maybe think about colour coding bumpers etc too just to help the look!

I will advise for both mods though, if you declare them on insurance, which you should by all means as you're screwing yourself over in the long run if you're unlucky enough to crash, it will effect the premiums on your insurance, an at your age they rip you off worse.

 

[Brindley]

Thanks alot for the quick response GoldenMonkey,

Not sure what you mean by 'spacers' and okay fair enough I'll take an experienced person's opinion, in my mind they are overpriced but then again I have no idea what they look like on a car,

Aye i'm not really looking to improve the performance of the car, just really the sound and look, what are colour coded bumpers? I assume thats matching bumpers that fit onto the car? I haven't a clue where these types of parts can be bought i'll have to do some searching, yeah my friend told me that I should inform the insurance company with what ever modifications I make to the car

thanks again for the quick response!

 

[GoldenMonkey]

Certain alloys will require you fit[FONT=arial, sans-serif] wheel spacers etc so they fit your car both properly and safely, if the alloys are made for your car or you get them fitted professionally you don't have to worry about this though as they'll do all that for you. You can pick up decent alloys cheap online or second hand, if you're on a budget. I had a set of Dezents from my local motaman fitted to my old car last year when I was low on money and they was both cheap and nice, cost me about £350 new, inc brand new tyres aswell. [/FONT]

[FONT=arial, sans-serif]

As for the bumpers, depending on the model you got, sometimes you'll have plain black bumper trim along certain parts, however as you're is a 58 plate I think yours will be fully colour coded anyways.

And yes I'll always advice you declare em just incase you did crash (I must admit I haven't always declared em though)[/FONT]

 

[Knuckles]

Hi and welcome mate

Spacers are 'discs' that fit between the hub and the wheel which 'push' the wheel out of the arch giving the appearance of a wider track.

Wheels are a piss easy change... Literally undo the bolts, wheel off, wheel on, do bolts.
I'm sure someone from here would be happy to help you if you need it.

Dont bother touching the engine/exhaust at all. It's literally pissing money away that I doubt you need to do being 18.

A couple of simple mods that would make your car look sportier would be


Get a dunamique/cup spoiler. I doubt yours has a spoiler?

Get some 03-06 dynamique/172 (or any other Renault) alloys

Fit a 172 rear bumper and a ph3 (03-06 I believe) dynamique bumper.

Then your car would look spot on and they're all insurance friendly mods

 

[Brindley]

Okay hopefully they will inform me on what they're doing to my car when installing and fitting my new alloys, I don't want to just have them do it because I would like to be educated abit haha,

Okay, I have an image of the car that I will be getting (its just a different license plate but still 58) and another picture of the same car but with mods that I would like to have my car look similar too, if you would like to see those images then just ask and advise me on what I should think about, look for and go ahead with or leave it,

Not too keen on things like lowering my ride as i'm in college at the moment and the bumps all around the college are a pain for some drivers :-S and tinting my windows letting like 30% light through because I don't want to be a police magnet and okay thanks haha I don't blame you if they rip you off with high premiums!

 

[Brindley]

Hello Knuckles, thank you for the welcome!

Okay that makes abit more sense now thank you, in the future I might make a post asking for advice on fitting rims if I don't ask a garage or company to do it for me,

Oh right okay, what if the exhaust modification is a decent price and I have enough to spare? But fair enough I rather use it on petrol to run the car than to have a nice exhaust but no gas haha,
Wow okay, erm by spoiler you mean like the huge wing type things on cars similar to those on the fast and furious etc? haha sorry for my lack of knowledge, i'm 99% sure that the Clio doesn't have a spoiler, ahh yes i've seen these pop up before with people talking about 172 and 182 or 180 or something along those lines, I assume these are model types of bumpers? does ph3 mean similar to like mark 3 or mark 2?

another question is I live in Newport Gwent, Wales and i'm not sure what your knowledge is like of this area but I don't seem to see any modification garages or anything around but I guess you have to know people instead of knowing places these days, I see alot of modified corsa's, saxo's and quicksilver 106's with wraps few bumper mods and mods to their rear and front headlamps but not sure where they get these done!

Thanks for the reply!

 

[Brindley]

I just found something that adds to my list of desperate modifications - hopefully i'm aloud to post this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is0192Tau8s&feature=related, any advice on getting something like that then please feel free to post, thanks!

 

[Knuckles]

172-182 is the 2.0 litre version of your car. Your car is a mk2, the ph1(phase/prefacelift) has the round headlights, the ph2 (phase/facelift)is

And the ph3 has 'protruding' fog lights


The spoiler is the wing lol but a lot more subtle than the fast and furious ones lol.

Ill try any explain better tomorrow when I'm on a laptop lol

 

[Brindley]

Okay thank you Knuckles, I think i'm understanding abit more now on phases, I was looking on Wiki at phase 1 and phase 2 and I think the 1.2 i'm getting is phase 2 cos' it is very similar, thanks for your feedback and information I really appriciate it!

 

[Dan@M.A.D]

Hi and welcome mate

Spacers are 'discs' that fit between the hub and the wheel which 'push' the wheel out of the arch giving the appearance of a wider track.

Wheels are a piss easy change... Literally undo the bolts, wheel off, wheel on, do bolts.
I'm sure someone from here would be happy to help you if you need it.

Dont bother touching the engine/exhaust at all. It's literally pissing money away that I doubt you need to do being 18.

A couple of simple mods that would make your car look sportier would be


Get a dunamique/cup spoiler. I doubt yours has a spoiler?

Get some 03-06 dynamique/172 (or any other Renault) alloys

Fit a 172 rear bumper and a ph3 (03-06 I believe) dynamique bumper.

Then your car would look spot on and they're all insurance friendly mods

Don't forget to jack it up first (Ask someone who knows what they are doing) as you sound a little lost.