Mk1 Clio RT with Throttle Bodies

[Nic1.4]

Frustratingly there hasn't been much progress lately, mostly due to the car looking like this :dead:

but before the weather set in we did manage to get a few bits done;

Water temp sender for a gauge fitted, not overly happy with the location as it's after the thermostat and so will only read once the engine is up to temp and the stat opens but it will at least show if things are getting too hot

the gauge is a TIM split water temp/oil pressure one so oil take off added

Squeezing the new manifold in didn't leave much room for the fan so we've gone for a front mount one. Verdict is still out on this too, it cools the rad down fine once the engine is up to temperature but it's not been trialled on the road yet to see if it obstructs flow too much.

Back view

Front View

In the scuttle area that used to hold the ECU an oil catch tank has been added. It's a cheapo ebay one for now, planning on getting something better made up with better size breathers once it's up and running.

Another mod I've tried is painting the insides of the headlights. Not seen this done before on a clio so not sure if I'm trailblazing or not. When removing one of the headlights the glass fell off, common problem I've since found out. With the glass off the idea came up of painting the insides black, we've also removed the lenses over the indicators and fitted some silvervision bulbs to avoid orangeyness

Again, I'll wait and see what I think of these once it's up and running.

The list of jobs left to do now is getting encouragingly small, it needs;
2 front tyres
number plates
tracking done
mapping,
MOT

so some time next year then

and one last picture, new camera, snow and playing around with a torch. Reckon the OH has a bit more practice before he gets to publich his work

Nic

 

[Andyrg@ ClioTurbo]

nice little read good work

 

[Nic1.4]

nice little read good work

Thanks! Considering the quality of your last project we'll take that as a compliment :approve:

Nic

 

[ch!ppen]

I like this... Shame it's a ph2 :rasp: But still very kewl.. My first car was a Mk1 RT

 

[Brett]

This is a really cool project. What sort of power are you looking at when its mapped etc?

 

[D4N13L]

Great project thread.

I have just got myself a little mk 1 RT with only 45k.

I really like the height of yours. Is it just springs and standard shocks on front and just dropped torsion on rear?

What springs are they, i know you said spax but are they the 50mm ones?

 

[ch!ppen]

I'd guess they must be around 50mm. My mk1 RT was dropped 30mm and wasn't as low as that.

 

[peterjnew]

Love projects like this, bit different from the norm.

What power do these engines make as standard, and do you have a power figure you'd be happy with when finished?

 

[jamie rigby]

This is a really cool project. What sort of power are you looking at when its mapped etc?

100ish maybe?

i like this, tis a good read, good luck with the MOT and Mapping!

 

[jasonreilly]

Looking very nice! Keep up the good work.

 

[Nic1.4]

I like this... Shame it's a ph2 :rasp: But still very kewl.. My first car was a Mk1 RT

haha, don't!! the OH keeps talking about getting a Mk1 ph1/2 valver, he prefers the earlier shape too!

This is a really cool project. What sort of power are you looking at when its mapped etc?

tbh I've avoided aiming for a power figure, experience says it only ends in disappointment or more bills to find the extra horses

Great project thread.

I have just got myself a little mk 1 RT with only 45k.

I really like the height of yours. Is it just springs and standard shocks on front and just dropped torsion on rear?

What springs are they, i know you said spax but are they the 50mm ones?

wow, that's low milage, good find! Don't know for sure that they are the 50mm ones but as Ch!ppen says they are most likely 50mm just from comparing it to other cars I've seen. The shocks are standard all round, and the torsion bar was lowered..... then raised again after it went waaaaaay too low haha

Love projects like this, bit different from the norm.

What power do these engines make as standard, and do you have a power figure you'd be happy with when finished?

I believe book figure for mine would have been 70bhp, there was a very early carb'd version of this engine that supposedly made 75bhp. Many moons ago it was rolling roaded at Hillpower with just the catback exhaust fitted and it made 73bhp and chatting to Nick at the time he reckoned the exhaust manifold on the engine was a major restriction. Although I've said I dont like forecasting power figures we'd like to see somewhere in the region of 100bhp. OH says if it doesn't make it then direct port nitrous is gooing on lol

Looking very nice! Keep up the good work.

Thanks


Nic

 

[Nic1.4]

Eek, well over a year since the last update!!

Well in that time the car has run, been driven, broken down, fallen apart, been dismantled rebuilt and then broken again. The results of which are I’m pretty much in the same place I was 16 months ago.

Picking up where I left off last time the car got some new boots;

Clio number 2 loaded up to go and get the new boots fitted

Out of interest I weighed the tyres and they came out at 7.5kg each on a size of 195/50/15. When the tyres had been fitted to the wheels I weighed them again and the weight was 12kg making the wheels pretty light at about 4.5kg each I think.
Next came the mapping, tracking and MOT. Thought I had some pictures of my mate doing the mapping, it made for an amusing sight as Will is a big chap, so seeing him squeeze donkey kong esque into the diminutive French hatch was interesting. However I can’t find the pictures so you’ll have to imagine that sight for yourselves.

It did make it to the generic franchise tyre fitters though for tracking;

And eventually after some more mapping to an MOT station for a ‘sympathetic’ MOT. No more said on that front but here is a picture of it out the front of the house waiting to go and get it’s ticket

And it made it into work for a couple of short drives as a bedding in test

After the MOT it’s trial by fire was a drive from Preston to Santa Pod for USC….. “come to the show” I was told, “it’s an experience”. Well an experience it was that’s for sure! But the car made it there mostly without a hitch, I say mostly as the offset on the unknown jap import wheels isn’t 100 percent compatible with Renault’s wheel arch dimensions, so once loaded up with camping supplies and copious amounts of beer there were some erm interference issues haha. The trip down allowed for plenty of live mapping en route and by the time we got there the car was running beautifully at idle and on cruise, no wide open throttle runs had been done though so unfortunately the planned runs up the strip were aborted.

Unfortunately that is also where it all started to go wrong too, after a good but eye opening Friday and Saturday at ultimate street chav we were heading over to Ford Fair on the Sunday. In the usual A43 queue into Silverstone the car started driving badly, then the throttle started racing, then it died. We managed to get the car to the side of the road, popped the bonnet and found the throttle bodies had fallen off.

I’d never been overly happy about my method of joining the bodies to the stub manifold, the rubbers weren’t a perfect fit, the stubs and bodies weren’t perfectly aligned and the bodies didn’t have much stub on the for the rubbers to grip. After letting it all cool down I managed to wedge the bodies back on and tighten everything up again, although I wasn’t confident of the longevity of the repair it was the best I could do. The repair actually lasted long enough to get us to Silverstone, out again and to the first services on the M6 on the way home, it was on the approach to the service that the bodies started to peel themselves off the rubbers again.

We bailed into the services and debated the next move. I was tired and fed up and voted for recovery, until we phoned and asked how long we’d have to wait, this was the weekend of USC and Ford Fair, so as you can imagine it was going to be a few hours before they could get to us. At this point we searched the service sation, and the petrol station to see what we could find to A-Team the car back together again, we returned with a roll of duct tape, and a bungee strap.............. you know where this is going !!

At first we tried the duct tape, tightening the jubilee clamps up then taping the lot up, but it was service station duct tape, it was destined to fail, and didn’t even last a minute before it all peeled apart again. So next up was the bungee, we attached the bodies, clamped it all up than braced them with the bungee as these pictures sort of show

Amazingly this set up made it the next 125 miles home and onto the safety of the drive. It has since all been stripped off and manifold design mk3 has been put into manufacture.

Nic

 

[Nic1.4]

No updates for a year, then two at once

My OH signed up to a welding course at a local college, he'd plenty of MIG welding up to now so the plan was to learn TIG, and I had a good idea for a project, manifold mk3.

I don't know why I didn't previously think about it but when discussing the next variant of the manifold it was suggested to me that I may be able to use the mounting rubbers that would originally have been used to secure the bodies onto a bike. I wish I'd not been so fixated on using hose joiners earlier in the build as these turned out to be the obvious and perfect solution! A couple of days later a set was ordered from the states as that was the cheapest place I could get them from and they look something like this;

and a close up of a couple to show the detail, and the much better clamps for the joiners

Unfortunately I don't have pictures from during manifold production, the flanges were cut from 10mm aluminium and the runners are 36mm ID aluminium tube with a 4mm wall thickness. The flanges were all hand made with a drill, a hole saw, an angle grinder and a lot of patience! 2 of the mounting holes got cocked up and drilled 10mm out of place, measure twice cut once and all that :dead:.... The parts were then all TIG'd together as part of the college course, skimmed by a local firm and tidied up, and ported by me. Pictures show it in various states of being tidied up but the final article looks almost presentable lol

Bodies mounted on look like this;

We've now managed to get it installed and it all fits a treat and is a much, much more solid installation. however the next problem has arisen, the throttle quadrant now fouls with a brake line as they leave the master cylinder... FFS.

Further updates to come once I figure out how to reroute the pipes, move the master cylinder, or modify the linkage, or see how much it'd cost to fit a pedal box !!

Nic

 

[Final Maxim]

1 word, dedication.

 

[MK1PH3Peter]

This is epic. I really want to meet up with you and compare!!!!

 

[Ay Ay Ron]

That's one hell of a project! Well done for keeping up with it, I would have given up a while back I think!

 

[theduck]

Love this.

 

[Djw John]

Superb project, shame I missed it first time round!

 

[not normal dan]

Came on abit since the last time i posted, i just love the fact its something different. Keep it up

 

[jamie_c]

awesome! mine was an rt but went down the gtt route with it. has it had much of an impact on performance?

oh and one more thing... i checked your dates and i did my headlights black first

keep it up!

 

[andywa]

Fantastic project and some amazing dedication. Look forward to the updates.

 

[ben_r1]

Please sell this car to me!

 

[GSKingsbury]

Great dedication in this thread .

 

[Nic1.4]

Thanks for the continued love all

Found another picture of the bungee'd throttle body setup, had to add it for comedy purposes. Maybe I should sell them as a universal throttle body conversion, fits anything just bungee into place haha

Right then, on from the last problem where the throttle quadrant was fouling a brakeline due to the bodies moving closer to the engine on the new manifold. After some measuring I thought maybe a banjo fitting would give the clearance required, parts ordered from Earl's through my tuner and these turned up a couple of days later

I cleaned up the mounting face on the master cylinder, give the washers a flat surface to seal on

Unfortunately although it gave some more clearance, it still wasn't enough

So back into the garage went the other half and raided his stash of parts. I've always accused him of being a borderline hoarder, much to my chagrin this time the pile of parts turned up trumps and the quadrant off a clio 16v throttle body proved to be smaller in diameter but still retains the eccentric cam shape which helps the part throttle feel to the pedal.

With the brakes sorted the next problem to show itself was the throttle cable was now too long, again due to the bodies moving closer to the engine. We adjusted the cable as far as it'd go but there was still too much slack meaning only half throttle opening was available, OH did suggest it might be a safety measure

We pulled the throttle cable out, and the pedal end looked the easiest to modify so out came the pedal, off came the plastic clip from the cable and a bolt drilled and lock nuts added;

The plan will be to get a proper cable made up at some point with some slightly more permanent fixings on lol.

The car then ran happily for another few weeks and all was well in the world of throttle bodied French hatches. All was well until one day tootling down the motorway to work when it lost power, wouldn't respond to the accelerator and as I made my way across to the hard shoulder started kangeroo'ing Parked up safely I had a quick look but couldn't see anything obviously wrong so phoned recovery and phoned the OH. Diagnosis was pretty quick given the symptoms, fuel delivery, the map couldn't have changed, and on reflection at that point we realised the pump had been quite noisy in recent weeks and it had been reluctant to start on a couple of occasions. Recovery arrived took one look under the bonnet and loaded it straight onto the back of the wagon and took me home haha. Annoyingly once we got home the car started fine, and proceeded to drive fine for a couple of days until once again it started playing up. This time though the pump was noticeably noisy so we decided it was time for it to come out and see what the plan was.

Upon lifting the pump this was visible in the bottom of the tank, sorry for the blurry picture

Lots of bits of muck, including what looks like flakes of paint? Some of them probably up to 10mm squared, so pretty big, and if they were getting stuck to the sock filter on the pump, pretty restrictive An additional problem we noticed was that despite the Haynes manual advising the fuel pressure on the E series engines being run at 3 bar the Walboro pump in the basket is rated at 1-2 bar. The mapping was all done with the fixed reg on the fuel rail set to 3 bar, so a mucky filter, and possibly overexerting the pump appear to have taken their toll.

So now I'm on the hunt for either a clio 16v fuel pump/level sensor basket assuming it's similar to the RT but with better flow, or possibly looking at whether a 172 return set up will fit.

Thanks for the read, I promise more pictures next time

Nic

 

[Oliver_K4M]

As far as I know there are basically two different fuel pumps existing, the one for engines with single-point injection and another for multi-point injection engines.

"small" pump:

E7F, E7J and F3P mono (RN, Baccara)

"big" pump

D7F, F3P multi (RSi), F7P, F7R


best regards
Oliver

 

[Djw John]

Certainly when we went from E7J to F7P we changed the fuel pump as we had it anyway, I seem to recall it was a straight forward swap but it was definitely bigger.

 

[bushell69]

really like what you have done here if you run out of ideas for your clio i have always fort about fitting a 16v head from a 1.4 16v mk2 clio havnt looked in to it that much but it may be possable