Time to write a quick summary just to keep the diary up to date;
Not many miles at all, as previously mentioned my commute is quite short and primarily urban, the car does hardly any work at all. Most of the graft is done by the two front lower ball joints trying to cope with London’s speed humps; I have calculated I go through roughly a set in 12 months regardless of the quality. The current ones are TRW and were put on summer of 2020.
Anyhow, I had quickly spoken about an upcoming skiing trip sometime in late January, so the weeks leading to that were spent doing some good ol’ maintenance to the Clio.
Clichè oil change job, this happens every 5k miles or 6 months at the current rate, the clocks say we are at 130k and change, but I know the engine has 28307 more miles than what the car thinks, real figure is around 160k.
This time I had to get creative when sourcing my genuine Renault filter. I refuse to pay more than a tenner for the part, as every mk2 dCi owner should, and so the search on eBay is always on; this time the prey is a NOS item, with a date stamp going back to 2008, I hope it still remembers how to filter oil, £7.99.
Part numbers are different old vs new, but they are visually identical. (Any info is appreciated).
Oil is the good old Helix 5w40, comes off the tap at work.
The whole 5L jug was needed to get to the proper level, I was happy to see no leaks other than a dribble from the back of the turbo. This is a job I’ll just have to do at some point it seems.
Right after it was time for the yearly fuel filter replacement; this is me just trying to delay the inevitable (ie injection pump demise), but it only costs around £20 per year, and on these cars you can virtually do it with no tools.
I usually buy Delphi filters, but I wasn’t able to find one for less than £40, which is way too dear.
A nice Bosch unit goes in instead, just as good, less than half price.
Another maintenance task was cleaning the K&N panel filter, which is something I had just forgotten to do last year, it was well overdue. In fact it took a whole lot of rinse and repeat to actually be able to see through the pleats, shame on me.
With that done, fresh oil and new fuel filter I decided it was also time for what it’s now another yearly occurrence: polish the flipping headlights for the 72638363rd time. How the hell there’s still material to buff on those it’s beyond me !!
After 20 or so minutes of faffing with the ever so recycled 3m kit, the result was… probably good enough for another couple of months!
I’ve heard of some sealing compounds that should protect the plastic.. I’m all ears if you have any experience to share.
I grabbed some Thule ski carriers just because they were cheap. I wasn’t sure I was going to need them as apparently, all the slopes would be walking distance from the hotel. After trial fitting I decided to bring them as a precaution, but stored in the boot. I’ve learned the hard way how fuel economy plummets if any crap is on the roof.
Last item on the list was to look at the battery.
Ive been rocking a small 44ah Banner battery that I scavenged from the scrap pile at work more than 4 years ago.
I know this sounds pathetic but read on: this little fella has been coping brilliantly. The car should have a 55ah battery, or probably even bigger, but I never knew that. I abuse the absolute hell out of it: cold mornings, my DYI start and stop technique (patented), countless sky trips with sub zero cold starts (in fact the YouTube video of the car starting in -15 is now at some 50k views [emoji23]) and the thing did not care !
Until very recently. It has suddenly lost its spark, and one time got close to getting me stranded.
Unable to once again find a similar size battery at work, I decided to shamelessly steal the battery out of my old BM and shoehorn the thing in the Clio.
It fits! Just.
Good to go then?
I think so !
The destination was Sestriere, Italian Alps.
Never been there, it’s a slightly longer drive compared to the usual Chamonix, still around the 12/13hour mark from London.
The trip down was in two stages, as one of my friends was going to hop on in Brussels. This meant Sestriere was reached in two days (also 2x covid tests, excellent).
Leaving London with just above half a tank meant I barely made it to Luxembourg in the early hours of the next day, after leaving Brussels at 5am. Literally 80 miles on empty, don’t want to do that again.
However £1.18 a liter diesel was worth it, the 50L fuel tank swallowed 54 liters, we literally arrived on fumes. Felt good but was nerve racking.
I wasn’t helped by the fact that my mate decided to rent his snowboard directly in Brussels, and the damn thing did not fit inside the car, not in a way you could drive 10+ hours anyway. So out came the ski carriers and roof bars, bye bye 60mpg !!!
The drive went smoothly. Nobody around, the brakes were only touched to slow down at peage booths. 72 on the cruise control got us there by mid afternoon, the rest of the gang was driving from Rome in a merc V class and had a slightly shorter route, we arrived 2 hours later having started driving an hour earlier than them !
The now 11 year old winter Continentals were back on duty for the occasion. They are literally on just to be legal, fairly useless at gripping anything, let alone snow or ice, otherwise.
Good tyres, they’re just too old and I don’t like to throw away tyres with tread still on.

For the whole week the Clio sat in the cold but dry hotel car park. The only time we needed to use the car to try a French resort, my brothers (and ex grandad) shiny Picasso made much more sense.

A week later we just packed the car and headed north. 3up this time, one of my mates was coming back to London with me, plus the one to drop off in Belgium.
Snowboard on the roof plus a 90mph rush to Calais meant I got some pretty grim mpg on this trip, 51 average, less than 600miles of range.
1700 miles and change, 3 tanks or so.


All in all I’m always happy with the car. Can’t ask it to do any better frankly. 80mph loaded with crap on the roof, driving all day, I don’t think it’s bad going for what is almost 20 years old.
Could be better on these long drives, I always get home thinking I should get a Volvo v50. But the reality is that it would only make sense once or twice a year; for the rest of the time, the Clio just about ticks all the boxes.
Oil is almost to the minimum after the trip, i now see turbo cartridges in my sleep, terrific.
Thanks for reading !