Clio 16v 'YOJ'
Made a new thread due to wanting to change how I wrote it, Mods please delete the old one
Hello all, so this thread begins on a dark Sunday night (6/1/2013), I had been to the C16V new years meet the night before and really fancied owning another clio, was talking to chip about the mini and its oil burning condition we decided it was probably the rings and as I had only just re-built it I didn't want to do anymore damage to the engine and decided I should probably get a better daily car.
I was chatting to one of the other valver owners that lives near me in swindon and he suddeenly sends me an ebay ID and tells me to check it out, sure enough up came this 432 valver in plymouth for £275 buy it now. However it was cheap for a reason, the bottom end on the engine was knocking and so needed a new lump, I did however know the standard engines for these can be bought for peanuts as nobody wants them!
I'd always wanted to own a valver since I was 16, but never really had one as I bought the mini instead, alot of this boils down to the people on the owners club at the time - a lot of these people have left the club now and the people that now go to meets are sound
Text the owner to see if he would take £200 lol and he said no it owed him £275 and he knew he would get that for it, so I agreed to buy it and paid a £50 deposit and agreed to collect it on the 14th.
Now I just had to find a new engine, thought it would be easy but it wasnt lol. Took me two days of searching and in a last ditch effort I messaged one of the welsh members on facebook and he said that he did actually have one spare, it had been reconditioned in 2011 as well
After I had agreed to buy this engine I had about 5 PM's on the owners club offering engines for sale, typical right?
Anyway went on to buy new cambelt and oil filter:
Bought all new engine oil, coolant, power steering fluid and gearbox oil from one of the valver owners known as "Mr Tranself" as he is involved with one of the oil companies for a total of £50 delivered!
4 Sleepless nights went by, was absolutely buzzing to get the car running and on the road and so came the day to go collect the engine. I left at 11:30am and got back in cov for 4pm - Long day driving! I'd been thinking of an appropriate name and decided that Nicole was the perfect name for two reasons 1) The car was an N reg 2) The original Renault marketing campaign involved a character named Nicole.
When I got home, the challenge of lifting the engine out of the car and into the garage came, only we didnt have a crane, I got my housemate Neil (otherwise known as golum in the pics below) to give me a hand lifting it. We put loads of tyres on the ground so we could just lift it up and onto each tyre and eventually got it in the garage:
I left a rather clio sized hole at the front of the garage as well
Time moved slowley over the next few days till sunday arrived and I made the journey down to plymouth to pick up my new car
Upon arrival we saw the clio straight away and liked it straight away there was a few things the owner hadnt told me about such as:
Central Locking doesnt work
Arch still had primer on it
Door doesnt close when you slam it
Boot lock doesnt work
Engine cuts out when its cold enless your revving it
Front tyres need replacing
Mould on the parcel shelf and on the rear floor mats
Front Fog lights dont work
Sunroof or Aerial leaks like a sieve
Sunroof doesnt work
Pass side window wont go back up on drivers switch
Quite a bit of work to do as you can see however, im not fazed I'll get the work done. So I bought the car and rang the AA to coem and get me as the engine was knocking. A recommended mechanic arrived an hour later to make an official diagnosis on the poor valver; a quick decision later he pronounced it "f**ked" and recommended recovery of the vehicle to Coventry. Another hour passed and the first recovery truck arrived, Nicole was loaded onto the back of it and the great journey began!
The next stop was Exeter to be loaded onto an official AA truck, we were early and so we off loaded it while waiting for the AA Man:
Soon the massive AA truck turned up, loaded her up and the next leg of the journey began:
7 Hours and 1 more truck change later we turned up in Coventry got the car on the path, emptied my stuff out from it and went to bed. It was 2:30am at this point, the next morning 5 hours after arriving via the AA, I was buzzing to do something with the car, but it was still snowing and Id managed to get myself comfy on the couch wrapped in my duvet. I eventually got the the car in the back garden and got some photos of it in the garage:
Took a vid of the engine making its noise:
And finally Clio met the new F7P to be fitted on Sunday
ALOT has happened in the past 2 weeks or so:
Oils and Lubes finally turned up
So Kiz from c16v came round with a friend to give me a hand fitting the new engine, didnt take many pics as it was snowing a blizzard while we were working.
Ggot the car up on stands the night before:
Kiz undo-ing the downpipe:
Engine Less
State of the garage during engine re-builds:
Old Engine minus the cams, as I bought the new engine without cams:
Few hours passed and she was still bare:
Bolting on the ancils to the new engine, was so cold my phone camera lens steamed up:
Parts still waiting to be added:
Starting to take shape:
Many Hours passed and this was the result:
The tapping sound has since calmed down, buzzing it was working! Couldnt get the air filter on as it was too cold and the rubber went really hard, waited till next morning to drive it after I put the filter on. Warmed the filter on the gas hob and it went on like a hot knife through butter.
Fired it up again and went for a drive:
13.7 miles later this was the result:
Slid on some snow/ice and went into a traffic light. I was absolutley gutted to say the least, rang my dad up verging on the edge of tears and he told me to take some more pictures, then take the panels off and send some more and that we would fix it, it was only bent metal he told me
Took piccies of my white clio so you can see how its meant to look:
I worked out I needed:
Bumper
Bonnett
Wing
Headlight
Boomerang
Subframe
Wishbone
Wheel
The whole corner of the car needed replacing as well.
I sourced a new 432 Front end from a williams 3 for £110 and then got it fitted v loosley.
Got the car home about 10am friday morning and me and dad immediatly set about work. After about 10 mins looking at it, my dad insisted that it could easily be out and we could get it back to shape.
So we set up the ratchet strap with the telegraph pole and pulled it all roughly to shape:
It soon ended up like this:
Set about getting the creases out of the flat piece that the headlight sits ontop and the front cross member:
End of day 1 we had this:
Day 2, we didnt take many pictures, spent the whole day re-building the inner wing as I couldnt get a brand new panel.
As you can see there was alot of rust to patch up, basically we cut the inner wing off, bashed it to a rough shape then used the passenger side as a guide to make it fit the headlight. Spent a few hours or so putting panels on seeing what doesnt fit and why then removing it and bashing and getting it all to fit right then trying again.
End of day two, we has it all welded up and patched all the rust on it and was ready for finishing up today (Sun 27th)
Started about mid day because both me and my dad had some errands to get done, and well we got it finished so we underslead the sections we repaired:
Fixed the exhaust as we noticed it had oil and grease all over the downpipe - it was touching the driveshaft. Beat the subframe and wishbone so it was semi square and much better and more importantly safer to drive.
And how she finished as of about 4 hours ago:
Needless to say My father is a magician and without him YOJ wouldnt have been brought back to life. I am picking up a willaims subframe and widetrack to bolt on, on wednesday and hope to have it fitted by Friday then YOJ will be back to normal
Thanks for reading!
Hello all, so this thread begins on a dark Sunday night (6/1/2013), I had been to the C16V new years meet the night before and really fancied owning another clio, was talking to chip about the mini and its oil burning condition we decided it was probably the rings and as I had only just re-built it I didn't want to do anymore damage to the engine and decided I should probably get a better daily car.
I was chatting to one of the other valver owners that lives near me in swindon and he suddeenly sends me an ebay ID and tells me to check it out, sure enough up came this 432 valver in plymouth for £275 buy it now. However it was cheap for a reason, the bottom end on the engine was knocking and so needed a new lump, I did however know the standard engines for these can be bought for peanuts as nobody wants them!
I'd always wanted to own a valver since I was 16, but never really had one as I bought the mini instead, alot of this boils down to the people on the owners club at the time - a lot of these people have left the club now and the people that now go to meets are sound
Text the owner to see if he would take £200 lol and he said no it owed him £275 and he knew he would get that for it, so I agreed to buy it and paid a £50 deposit and agreed to collect it on the 14th.Now I just had to find a new engine, thought it would be easy but it wasnt lol. Took me two days of searching and in a last ditch effort I messaged one of the welsh members on facebook and he said that he did actually have one spare, it had been reconditioned in 2011 as well
After I had agreed to buy this engine I had about 5 PM's on the owners club offering engines for sale, typical right?
Anyway went on to buy new cambelt and oil filter:
Bought all new engine oil, coolant, power steering fluid and gearbox oil from one of the valver owners known as "Mr Tranself" as he is involved with one of the oil companies for a total of £50 delivered!
4 Sleepless nights went by, was absolutely buzzing to get the car running and on the road and so came the day to go collect the engine. I left at 11:30am and got back in cov for 4pm - Long day driving! I'd been thinking of an appropriate name and decided that Nicole was the perfect name for two reasons 1) The car was an N reg 2) The original Renault marketing campaign involved a character named Nicole.
When I got home, the challenge of lifting the engine out of the car and into the garage came, only we didnt have a crane, I got my housemate Neil (otherwise known as golum in the pics below) to give me a hand lifting it. We put loads of tyres on the ground so we could just lift it up and onto each tyre and eventually got it in the garage:
I left a rather clio sized hole at the front of the garage as well
Time moved slowley over the next few days till sunday arrived and I made the journey down to plymouth to pick up my new car
Upon arrival we saw the clio straight away and liked it straight away
there was a few things the owner hadnt told me about such as:Central Locking doesnt work
Arch still had primer on it
Door doesnt close when you slam it
Boot lock doesnt work
Engine cuts out when its cold enless your revving it
Front tyres need replacing
Mould on the parcel shelf and on the rear floor mats
Front Fog lights dont work
Sunroof or Aerial leaks like a sieve
Sunroof doesnt work
Pass side window wont go back up on drivers switch
Quite a bit of work to do as you can see however, im not fazed I'll get the work done. So I bought the car and rang the AA to coem and get me as the engine was knocking. A recommended mechanic arrived an hour later to make an official diagnosis on the poor valver; a quick decision later he pronounced it "f**ked" and recommended recovery of the vehicle to Coventry. Another hour passed and the first recovery truck arrived, Nicole was loaded onto the back of it and the great journey began!
The next stop was Exeter to be loaded onto an official AA truck, we were early and so we off loaded it while waiting for the AA Man:
Soon the massive AA truck turned up, loaded her up and the next leg of the journey began:
7 Hours and 1 more truck change later we turned up in Coventry got the car on the path, emptied my stuff out from it and went to bed. It was 2:30am at this point, the next morning 5 hours after arriving via the AA, I was buzzing to do something with the car, but it was still snowing and Id managed to get myself comfy on the couch wrapped in my duvet. I eventually got the the car in the back garden and got some photos of it in the garage:
Took a vid of the engine making its noise:
And finally Clio met the new F7P
to be fitted on Sunday ALOT has happened in the past 2 weeks or so:
Oils and Lubes finally turned up
So Kiz from c16v came round with a friend to give me a hand fitting the new engine, didnt take many pics as it was snowing a blizzard while we were working.
Ggot the car up on stands the night before:
Kiz undo-ing the downpipe:
Engine Less
State of the garage during engine re-builds:
Old Engine minus the cams, as I bought the new engine without cams:
Few hours passed and she was still bare:
Bolting on the ancils to the new engine, was so cold my phone camera lens steamed up:
Parts still waiting to be added:
Starting to take shape:
Many Hours passed and this was the result:
The tapping sound has since calmed down, buzzing it was working! Couldnt get the air filter on as it was too cold and the rubber went really hard, waited till next morning to drive it after I put the filter on. Warmed the filter on the gas hob and it went on like a hot knife through butter.
Fired it up again and went for a drive:
13.7 miles later this was the result:
Slid on some snow/ice and went into a traffic light. I was absolutley gutted to say the least, rang my dad up verging on the edge of tears and he told me to take some more pictures, then take the panels off and send some more and that we would fix it, it was only bent metal he told me
Took piccies of my white clio so you can see how its meant to look:
I worked out I needed:
Bumper
Bonnett
Wing
Headlight
Boomerang
Subframe
Wishbone
Wheel
The whole corner of the car needed replacing as well.
I sourced a new 432 Front end from a williams 3 for £110 and then got it fitted v loosley.
Got the car home about 10am friday morning and me and dad immediatly set about work. After about 10 mins looking at it, my dad insisted that it could easily be out and we could get it back to shape.
So we set up the ratchet strap with the telegraph pole and pulled it all roughly to shape:
It soon ended up like this:
Set about getting the creases out of the flat piece that the headlight sits ontop and the front cross member:
End of day 1 we had this:
Day 2, we didnt take many pictures, spent the whole day re-building the inner wing as I couldnt get a brand new panel.
As you can see there was alot of rust to patch up, basically we cut the inner wing off, bashed it to a rough shape then used the passenger side as a guide to make it fit the headlight. Spent a few hours or so putting panels on seeing what doesnt fit and why then removing it and bashing and getting it all to fit right then trying again.
End of day two, we has it all welded up and patched all the rust on it and was ready for finishing up today (Sun 27th)
Started about mid day because both me and my dad had some errands to get done, and well we got it finished so we underslead the sections we repaired:
Fixed the exhaust as we noticed it had oil and grease all over the downpipe - it was touching the driveshaft. Beat the subframe and wishbone so it was semi square and much better and more importantly safer to drive.
And how she finished as of about 4 hours ago:
Needless to say My father is a magician and without him YOJ wouldnt have been brought back to life. I am picking up a willaims subframe and widetrack to bolt on, on wednesday and hope to have it fitted by Friday then YOJ will be back to normal
Thanks for reading!
